Someone linked to this elsewhere and I didn't want to rant all over their thread, so here you go.
Someone linked to this elsewhere and I didn't want to rant all over their thread, so here you go.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/21/how-fascist-is-donald-trump-theres-actually-a-formula-for-that/?utm_term=.07a5ddc06a22
I super disagree with this guy, especially about the violence issues.
Firstly, I think he is not confining himself entirely to the paths up to but preceding the election/anointing of The Leaders in this case.
Secondly, you compare the behavior within the cultural context to which it belongs. If he's hyper-nationalist for America, he's hyper-nationalist. (+2 more Benitos)
Thirdly, there may be no official affiliation between Trump and the KKK and the neo-Nazis and others, but I have news for the professor, they wear uniforms. Many of the white supremacist crowd likes to dress up in military or paramilitary garb and weaponry. And some of them use it on other people. (+1 more Benito)
The most grossly egregious (it's huuuuge) mistake he makes is to suggest that violence is not implemented. Aside from anything else, there's been a widespread campaign of online violence that has had real world consequences. Further, any advocate for those who've suffered violence or abuse will tell you that verbal abuse is real.
People have been ejected from Trump's rallies, he offered to pay legal costs if his supporters hurt a protestor while kicking him out, he told them to knock the crap out of someone if they were going to throw a tomato after someone had thrown one at a prior rally. No, Trump himself doesn't personally order all the violence that's trailed in his wake, but neither did Hitler. (+2 more Benitos)
He's at least 31/44 Benitos. There's been a documented upswing in anti-semitic rhetoric and certainly online mediated violence, in anti-muslim online and real world violence, and, in fact, in institutional anti-african american policies and actions. Trump didn't start any of this, but he is facilitating its mainstreaming. While he didn't start a new party, he is leading the deliberate underbelly of the Republicans in living out their Jim Crow fantasies, preventing people from registering to vote, assuming they allow them to vote at all, and planning for a legislated future permanent underclass while claiming to be on their side.
He's more than enough fascist for the here and now, and that's 31 Benitos too many.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/21/how-fascist-is-donald-trump-theres-actually-a-formula-for-that/?utm_term=.07a5ddc06a22
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/21/how-fascist-is-donald-trump-theres-actually-a-formula-for-that/?utm_term=.07a5ddc06a22
I super disagree with this guy, especially about the violence issues.
Firstly, I think he is not confining himself entirely to the paths up to but preceding the election/anointing of The Leaders in this case.
Secondly, you compare the behavior within the cultural context to which it belongs. If he's hyper-nationalist for America, he's hyper-nationalist. (+2 more Benitos)
Thirdly, there may be no official affiliation between Trump and the KKK and the neo-Nazis and others, but I have news for the professor, they wear uniforms. Many of the white supremacist crowd likes to dress up in military or paramilitary garb and weaponry. And some of them use it on other people. (+1 more Benito)
The most grossly egregious (it's huuuuge) mistake he makes is to suggest that violence is not implemented. Aside from anything else, there's been a widespread campaign of online violence that has had real world consequences. Further, any advocate for those who've suffered violence or abuse will tell you that verbal abuse is real.
People have been ejected from Trump's rallies, he offered to pay legal costs if his supporters hurt a protestor while kicking him out, he told them to knock the crap out of someone if they were going to throw a tomato after someone had thrown one at a prior rally. No, Trump himself doesn't personally order all the violence that's trailed in his wake, but neither did Hitler. (+2 more Benitos)
He's at least 31/44 Benitos. There's been a documented upswing in anti-semitic rhetoric and certainly online mediated violence, in anti-muslim online and real world violence, and, in fact, in institutional anti-african american policies and actions. Trump didn't start any of this, but he is facilitating its mainstreaming. While he didn't start a new party, he is leading the deliberate underbelly of the Republicans in living out their Jim Crow fantasies, preventing people from registering to vote, assuming they allow them to vote at all, and planning for a legislated future permanent underclass while claiming to be on their side.
He's more than enough fascist for the here and now, and that's 31 Benitos too many.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/10/21/how-fascist-is-donald-trump-theres-actually-a-formula-for-that/?utm_term=.07a5ddc06a22
As I said, "How you can tell a dude wrote that: he thinks Trump doesn't fetishise youth (probably because he doesn't think women really are people; very few men do). FFS, Trump told a ten year old girl he'd be dating her in ten years. His fetishising of youth (in women) is the creepiest thing about him." Plus at least two if not three Benitos. (There are no Trump Youth stomping around. Yet.)
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah. You are so right. I ranted over on the comment thread by the other posting, but one of the reasons it's hard to do exact parallels here is that the Nazis especially subverted already existing cultural institutions and ideas.
ReplyDeleteBoy Scouts and Girls Scouts are just not as big a thing anymore over here, but they are a huge big deal to some of the now considered main stream right-y so-called evangelicals. Which is why they started their own versions when being gay was no longer specifically disallowed, among other things. Scouting organizations were/are exactly what the Hitler Youth was promoted as: helping to build strong young American German minds and bodies. Ready to do their duty and go to the aid of any citizen in need. Blah blah blah.
Meanwhile, we are not a country still trying to dig itself out of a disastrous war and treaty, although you can argue that we are in a world wide economic downturn and it's probably worse than people are letting on. And we haven't been a pawn of Empires for over 200 years. In fact, unlike Weimar, we are the big bully in the room.
The parallels will not be exact. But they are much closer than he thinks. At least the man seems academically qualified to have an opinion, though, unlike Trump. In fact, iirc, Mussolini was probably more academic than Trump.
Looking at McNeill's list, I get the same impression that I get from some other studies of fascism, that it primarily concerns itself with the fully mature fascism as it expressed itself in Germany and Italy in the 20s and 30s, while it misses to consider that the US of the 2010s are not Italy or Germany of the 1920 (or even the US of the 1920s, which had its own fascist movement).
ReplyDeleteIf one uses Roger Griffin's definition, that of "Fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism", then Trump hits it dead center. That said, Trump expresses more of a politicial-personal campaign rather than a political movement.
Also, this today...buzzfeed.com - The Alt-Right Has Adopted An Old Nazi Term For Reporters
ReplyDelete"A panel of German linguists, in response, named “Lügenpresse” the worst word of 2014."
ReplyDeleteYeah, so um, if Germany gets it, what's our problem and why is it so hard for some people to just face it head on and say no, not here, not ever.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
ReplyDeleteI don't know why this is my table flipping moment, but it is.
It's ok. Many tables died to bring us this election.
ReplyDelete