Buric writes: "In an interview with Slate, the historian of fascism Robert
Paxton warns against describing Donald Trump as fascist because 'it's almost
the most powerful epithet you can use.' But in this case, the shoe fits. And
here is why."
Donald Trump. (photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Trump's Not Hitler, He's Mussolini: How GOP Anti-Intellectualism Created a
Modern Fascist Movement in America
By Fedja Buric, Salon
13 March 16
n an interview with Slate, the historian of fascism Robert Paxton warns
against describing Donald Trump as fascist because its almost the most
powerful epithet you can use. But in this case, the shoe fits. And here is
why.
Like Mussolini, Trump rails against intruders (Mexicans) and enemies
(Muslims), mocks those perceived as weak, encourages a violent reckoning
with those his followers perceive as the enemy within (the roughing up of
protesters at his rallies), flouts the rules of civil political discourse
(the Megyn Kelly menstruation spat), and promises to restore the nation to
its greatness not by a series of policies, but by the force of his own
personality (I will be great for fill in the blank).
To quote Paxton again, this time from his seminal The Anatomy of Fascism:
Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program. This explains why
Trump supporters are not bothered by his ideological malleability and policy
contradictions: He was pro-choice before he was pro-life; donated to
politicians while now he rails against that practice; married three times
and now embraces evangelical Christianity; is the embodiment of capitalism
and yet promises to crack down on free trade. In the words of the Italian
writer Umberto Eco, fascism was a beehive of contradictions. It bears
noting that Mussolini was a socialist unionizer before becoming a fascist
union buster, a journalist before cracking down on free press, a republican
before becoming a monarchist.
Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions. He selfishly
guards his image of a self-made outsider who will dismantle the
establishment in the words of one of his supporters. That this includes
cracking down on a free press by toughening libel laws, engaging in the
ethnic cleansing of 11 million people (illegals), stripping away
citizenship of those seen as illegitimate members of the nation (children of
the illegals), and committing war crimes in the protection of the nation
(killing the families of suspected terrorists) only enhances his stature
among his supporters. The discrepancy between their love of America and
these brutal and undemocratic methods does not bother them one iota. To
borrow from Paxton again: Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the
brain. For Trump and his supporters, the struggle against political
correctness in all its forms is more important than the fine print of the
Constitution.
To be fair, there are many differences between Italian Fascism of interwar
Europe and Trumpism of (soon to be) post-Obama America. For one, Mussolini
was better read and more articulate than Trump. Starting out as a
schoolteacher, the Italian Fascist read voraciously and was heavily
influenced by the German and French philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and
Jean-Marie Guyau, respectively. I doubt Trump would know who either of these
two people were. According to the Boston Globe, Trump speaks at the level of
a fourth grader.
There are other more consequential differences, of course: the interwar
Italy was a much bigger mess than the USA is today; the democratic
institutions of this country are certainly more resilient and durable than
those of the young unstable post-World War I Italy; the economy, both U.S.
and worldwide, is not in the apocalyptic state it was in the interwar
period; and the demographics of the USA mitigate against the election of a
racist demagogue. So, Trumps blackshirts are not marching on Washington,
yet.
Also, as a historian I have learned to beware of historical analogies and
generally eschew them whenever I can, particularly when it comes to an
ideology that during World War II caused the deaths of 60 million human
beings. The oversaturation of our discourse with Hitler comparisons is not
only exasperating for any historian, but is offensive to the memory of
Hitlers many victims most notably the six million Jews his regime murdered
in cold blood.
Finally, rather than explaining it, historical analogies often distort the
present, sometimes with devastating consequences. The example that comes to
mind is the Saddam-is-like-Hitler analogy many in the George W. Bush
administration used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was an
unmitigated disaster. The overuse, or misuse, of a historical analogy can
also make policy makers more hesitant to act with equally disastrous
consequences: the prime examples are Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s when the
West attributed their inaction to stop the slaughter in each country by
arguing that these massacres were not like the Holocaust.
Thus, for a historical analogy to be useful to us, it has to advance our
understanding of the present. And the Trumpism-Fascism axis (pun intended)
does this in three ways: it explains the origins of Trump the demagogue; it
enables us to read the Trump rally as a phenomenon in its own right; and it
allows those of us who are unequivocally opposed to hate, bigotry, and
intolerance, to rally around an alternative, equally historical, program:
anti-fascism.
The Very Fascist Origins of Trumpism
That white supremacist groups back Donald Trump for president of the United
States, and his slowness to disavow the support of David Duke, all
illuminate the fascistic origins of Trump the phenomenon. In fact, Paxton
acknowledges that while Fascism began in France and Italy, the first
version of the Klan in the defeated American south was arguably a remarkable
preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe.
That the KKK was drawn to the Trump candidacy, and that he refused to
disavow them speak volumes about his fascistic roots.
Like Fascism, Trumpism has come about on the heels of a protracted period of
ideological restlessness. Within the Republican Party this restlessness has
resulted in a complete de-legitimization of the so-called GOP establishment.
Benito Mussolini came to the scene in the 1920s at a time when all the known
isms of the time had lost their mojos. Conservatism, which since the
French Revolution had been advocating for monarchy, nobility, and tradition,
was dealt a devastating blow by the First World War, which destroyed four
major empires (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German), made
universal male suffrage (mostly) the norm, and eliminated a generation of
aristocrats. Although initially seen as victorious, liberalism, in its
emphasis on equality, constitutions, parliaments, and civil debates, quickly
proved unable to solve the mammoth problems facing Europe after the war. To
the millions of unemployed, angry, and hungry Europeans, the backroom
politicking and obscure party debates seemed petty at best, and deserving of
destruction at worst. Shoving millions of Europeans into nation-states they
saw as alien to their ethnicity created huge minority problems and sparked
irredentist movements including fascists and their many copycats. The
success of Lenins Bolsheviks in Russia and their protracted, terrifying,
civil war made Communism unpalatable for most Europeans.
Enter Fascism. Fascism promised people deliverance from politics. Fascism
was not just different type of politics, but anti-politics. On the post-WWI
ruins of the Enlightenment beliefs in progress and essential human goodness,
Fascism embraced emotion over reason, action over politics. Violence was not
just a means to an end, but the end in itself because it brought man closer
to his true inner nature. War was an inevitable part of this inner essence
of man. Millions of European men had found this sense of purpose and
camaraderie in the trenches of the First World War and were not going to sit
idly by while politicians took it away from them after the war (famously,
after the war Hitler was slow to demobilize and take off his uniform).
Fascists main enemies were not just Marxist politicians, or liberal
politicians, but politicians in general.
It is therefore no coincidence that the most common explanation Trump
supporters muster when asked about their vote is that he is no politician.
Trump did not invent this anti-politics mood, but he tamed it in accordance
with his own needs. Ever since the election of Barack Obama the Republicans
have refused to co-govern. Senator Mitch McConnells vow that his main
purpose would be to deny the president a second term was only the first of
many actions by which the Republicans have retreated from politics. The Tea
Party wave meant an absolute refusal to compromise on even the most
essential issues, which were central to the economic survival of the
government if not the entire country (the Debt ceiling fiasco anyone?!). But
since then it has gotten worse: now even the establishment Republicans who
had been initially demonized by the Tea Party, such as Mitch McConnell, have
openly abrogated their own constitutional powers by refusing to exercise
them. This has been most evident in their blanket refusal to even hold a
hearing for a Scalia replacement on the Supreme Court. In other words, the
Republicans themselves, not Trump, broke politics.
The anti-intellectualism of Trump has also been a long time in the making.
It was the Republican establishment that has for decades refused to even
consider the science of climate change and has through local education
boards strove to prevent the teaching of evolution. Although not as explicit
as the Fascists were in their efforts to use the womans body for
reproducing the nation, the Republican attempts at restricting abortion
rights, and women access to healthcare in general have often been designed
with the same purpose in mind. Of course American historians have pointed to
this larger strand of anti-intellectualism in American politics, but what is
different about this moment is that Trump has successfully wedded this
anti-Enlightenment mood with the anti-political rage of the Republican base.
Still, for a fascist to be accepted as legitimate he has to move the crowd
and from the very beginning of his candidacy Trump has done this by stoking
racial animosity and grievances. It is no coincidence that the Trump
phenomenon emerges during the tenure of the first black President. It bears
remembering that Trumps first flirtation with running for office was
nothing more than his insistent, nonsensical, irrational, and blatantly
racist demand that President Obama show his birth certificate and his
Harvard grades. This was more than a dog whistle to the angry whites that
the first black President was not only un-American, literally, but that he
was intellectually inferior to them, despite graduating from Harvard Law. If
one considers this original sin of Trump then the KKK endorsement of his
candidacy and Trumps acceptance of it seem less strange.
Like Mussolini, Trump is lucky in his timing. When Mussolini created his
Fascists in 1919 there were numerous other far right, authoritarian
movements popping up all over Europe. As Robert Paxton reminds us, by the
early 20th century Europe had gotten swollen by refugees, mostly Ashkenazi
Jews who had since the 1880s been escaping pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Culturally and religiously different they caused reactions amongst the
Europeans that are strikingly similar to the way in which many European
politicians have reacted to the influx of Muslim refugees and migrants from
the Middle East and North Africa. The Hungarian governments building of a
fence to prevent Muslim migrants from coming in and its rhetoric of foreign,
Islamic, invasion is just one of more noted examples of Islamophobic
euphoria sweeping rightwing and fascistic movements into power all across
Europe. As Hugh Eakin points out in the New York Review of Books, even
Denmark, the beacon of civilized, tolerant, Europe has become susceptible to
the xenophobic fear mongering: hate speech now passes for mainstream
discussion (the Speaker of the Danish Parliament claims Muslim migrants to
be at a lower stage of civilization). The head of the newly elected
right-wing party in Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has described migrants as
parasites who bring diseases. Thus, it is no coincidence that Trump often
references the refugee crisis to point to the ineptitude of European
politicians and to simultaneously warn of a yet another jihadist terrorist
attack. Trump would feel perfectly at home in the company of the new
generation of European authoritarians like Viktor Orban of Hungary or
Vladimir Putin of Russia. He does not care that Putin considers America
Russias historic enemy because for Trump the real enemy is within.
The Trump Rally: An exercise in community building
If we historicize Trump in such a way, his rallies become much easier to
read. For Trumps supporters, the pushing and shoving, and even the outright
violence, against protesters, and the menacingly carnivalesque atmosphere
are, to an extent, an end in itself. Just observe how groups at Trump
rallies spontaneously come together to roughen up a protester. The sheer
emotional intensity of their facial expressions shows us precisely why they
support Trump and why no policy proposal from any of his competitors can
ever come close to diminishing Trump in his supporters eyes. Violence is
electrifying and community building as much as it is devastating for those
on the receiving end. Action over politics.
But it bears reminding that the crowds have transformed Trump as well. At
the beginning of the campaign he seemed taken aback by protesters, but
recently he has begin to egg them on (Id like to punch him in the face).
Simultaneously, he has gotten more confident on stage, bolder in his outrage
proposals (ban all Muslims from the U.S.), and more theatrical.
This transformation brings to mind a moment in the history of another
authoritarian, the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic whose ascent
to power wrecked the country of Yugoslavia and caused a series of vicious
civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced
millions. When Milosevic first appeared on TV he did so as a mid-level
member of the Communist party and spoke with the dry jargon of a Marxist
intellectual. In 1987, party bosses sent Milosevic to the volatile Serbian
province of Kosovo to quell a riot by Serb locals who were complaining that
the majority Albanians had been perpetrating violence, and even genocide,
against them. Feeling abandoned by the government, the Serb nationalists
surrounded Milosevic telling him that Albanians were beating them. Milosevic
hesitated. He began to employ the party jargon of national unity and
promised to solve their problems, but the crowd grew rowdier and at one
point, Milosevic looked scared. Thats when he uttered the phrase that would
transform him from an anonymous politician to a Serb nationalist leader: no
one can dare to beat you! The crowd erupted in cheers, propelling his
career during which he destroyed not only his own party, but also the
country at large. He would die nineteen years later in a prison cell at the
International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands.
This is not to say that Trump will cause a civil war in the U.S., or that he
will commit war crimes (although he did promise to do the latter). But the
destruction of the GOP looks all but imminent should he be the nominee. We
should be warned that fascist demagogues are often made on the sly, almost
imperceptibly, and that the fires they stir up tend to spread rather
quickly. The pull of history on individuals is often inexorable. In his
excellent portrayal of Nazification of German life, the historian Peter
Fritzsche recounts a story of Karl Dürkefälden, a German living in the town
of Peine during Hitlers ascent to power. An opponent of Nazis, Karl
expressed in his diary a profound sense of shock at how quickly his whole
familymother, father, and his sisterunderwent a conversion to Nazism
during the early 1933. In one particularly poignant scene, Karl is standing
at the window of his house alongside his wife looking at the Nazi May Day
celebrations, in which the entire, now Nazified, community participates,
including his father. He struggles to remain on the sidelines not because he
is a convinced Nazi, but because his entire community is caught up in what
he called Umstellung, a rapid
adjustment or conversion to Nazism, in the
words of Fritzsche.
Individuals who successfully resist historical Umstellungs are unfortunately
few and far between. This is why we celebrate them. Those who succumb to
them are much more common. The case of a young man by the name of Drazen
Erdemovic from the Bosnian war is telling in this regard. Born in a mixed
Croat-Serb family, the twenty-four year old Erdemovic found himself in 1995
a part of the Bosnian Serb firing squad executing Muslim men around the town
of Srebrenica: by his own admission, he personally murdered seventy Muslims.
After surrendering to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Erdemovic said:
I have lost many very good friends of all nationalities because of that war,
and I am convinced that all of them, all of my friends, were not in favor of
a war. I am convinced of that. But simply they had no other choice. This war
came and there was no way out. The same happened to me.
They had no other choice. This war came and there was no way out. Once
unleashed, the demons of history are too difficult for any individual to
resist on his/or her/ own no matter what their backgrounds or political
beliefs of the moment. This is why resistance to such atrocities always
requires a movement, a community, and in fighting Fascists this was
Anti-Fascism.
Branding Trumpism Fascist has the political benefit of mobilizing disparate
forces in the fight against him just like the antifascist coalition of World
War II led to unprecedented alliances between ideologically disparate forces
(the Soviet-American alliance being the primary example). In the American
context, seeing Trump as a 2016 reincarnation of Mussolini can unite
Democrats, Republicans, independents, Naderites, neo-cons,
constitutionalists, and others, into a broad anti-Fascist coalition which
would bring Trump down and save our democracy.
In conclusion, the Fascism analogy is admittedly not a perfect fit. When it
comes to ideologies, no analogy is. This is because ideologies change
through time. The religious anti-Semitism of the Middle Ages was very
different from its racial reincarnation during the nineteenth century, the
latter of which was picked up by the Nazis (although religious anti-Semitism
still remained a part of it). The anti-imperial, liberal, nationalism of the
first half of the nineteenth century was very different from its more
virulent, expansionist, and repressive kind at the beginning of the
twentieth. Stalins Bolshevism was much scarier and arbitrarily deadlier
than Lenins. In other words, just like the overuse of historical analogies
should not make us too quick to embrace them, a search for a perfect
ideological replica of interwar Fascism should not blind us to its ugly
re-emergence in 2016.
Today, the echoes of Fascism are all too audible to anyone willing to hear
them. Having lost one country, Yugoslavia, I really dont want to lose
another one.
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Donald Trump. (photo: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/11/trumps_not_hitler_hes_mussolini_how_gop_anti
_intellectualism_created_a_modern_fascist_movement_in_america/http://www.sal
on.com/2016/03/11/trumps_not_hitler_hes_mussolini_how_gop_anti_intellectuali
sm_created_a_modern_fascist_movement_in_america/
Trump's Not Hitler, He's Mussolini: How GOP Anti-Intellectualism Created a
Modern Fascist Movement in America
By Fedja Buric, Salon
13 March 16
n an interview with Slate, the historian of fascism Robert Paxton warns
against describing Donald Trump as fascist because its almost the most
powerful epithet you can use. But in this case, the shoe fits. And here is
why.
Like Mussolini, Trump rails against intruders (Mexicans) and enemies
(Muslims), mocks those perceived as weak, encourages a violent reckoning
with those his followers perceive as the enemy within (the roughing up of
protesters at his rallies), flouts the rules of civil political discourse
(the Megyn Kelly menstruation spat), and promises to restore the nation to
its greatness not by a series of policies, but by the force of his own
personality (I will be great for fill in the blank).
To quote Paxton again, this time from his seminal The Anatomy of Fascism:
Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program. This explains why
Trump supporters are not bothered by his ideological malleability and policy
contradictions: He was pro-choice before he was pro-life; donated to
politicians while now he rails against that practice; married three times
and now embraces evangelical Christianity; is the embodiment of capitalism
and yet promises to crack down on free trade. In the words of the Italian
writer Umberto Eco, fascism was a beehive of contradictions. It bears
noting that Mussolini was a socialist unionizer before becoming a fascist
union buster, a journalist before cracking down on free press, a republican
before becoming a monarchist.
Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions. He selfishly
guards his image of a self-made outsider who will dismantle the
establishment in the words of one of his supporters. That this includes
cracking down on a free press by toughening libel laws, engaging in the
ethnic cleansing of 11 million people (illegals), stripping away
citizenship of those seen as illegitimate members of the nation (children of
the illegals), and committing war crimes in the protection of the nation
(killing the families of suspected terrorists) only enhances his stature
among his supporters. The discrepancy between their love of America and
these brutal and undemocratic methods does not bother them one iota. To
borrow from Paxton again: Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the
brain. For Trump and his supporters, the struggle against political
correctness in all its forms is more important than the fine print of the
Constitution.
To be fair, there are many differences between Italian Fascism of interwar
Europe and Trumpism of (soon to be) post-Obama America. For one, Mussolini
was better read and more articulate than Trump. Starting out as a
schoolteacher, the Italian Fascist read voraciously and was heavily
influenced by the German and French philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and
Jean-Marie Guyau, respectively. I doubt Trump would know who either of these
two people were. According to the Boston Globe, Trump speaks at the level of
a fourth grader.
There are other more consequential differences, of course: the interwar
Italy was a much bigger mess than the USA is today; the democratic
institutions of this country are certainly more resilient and durable than
those of the young unstable post-World War I Italy; the economy, both U.S.
and worldwide, is not in the apocalyptic state it was in the interwar
period; and the demographics of the USA mitigate against the election of a
racist demagogue. So, Trumps blackshirts are not marching on Washington,
yet.
Also, as a historian I have learned to beware of historical analogies and
generally eschew them whenever I can, particularly when it comes to an
ideology that during World War II caused the deaths of 60 million human
beings. The oversaturation of our discourse with Hitler comparisons is not
only exasperating for any historian, but is offensive to the memory of
Hitlers many victims most notably the six million Jews his regime murdered
in cold blood.
Finally, rather than explaining it, historical analogies often distort the
present, sometimes with devastating consequences. The example that comes to
mind is the Saddam-is-like-Hitler analogy many in the George W. Bush
administration used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was an
unmitigated disaster. The overuse, or misuse, of a historical analogy can
also make policy makers more hesitant to act with equally disastrous
consequences: the prime examples are Bosnia and Rwanda in the 1990s when the
West attributed their inaction to stop the slaughter in each country by
arguing that these massacres were not like the Holocaust.
Thus, for a historical analogy to be useful to us, it has to advance our
understanding of the present. And the Trumpism-Fascism axis (pun intended)
does this in three ways: it explains the origins of Trump the demagogue; it
enables us to read the Trump rally as a phenomenon in its own right; and it
allows those of us who are unequivocally opposed to hate, bigotry, and
intolerance, to rally around an alternative, equally historical, program:
anti-fascism.
The Very Fascist Origins of Trumpism
That white supremacist groups back Donald Trump for president of the United
States, and his slowness to disavow the support of David Duke, all
illuminate the fascistic origins of Trump the phenomenon. In fact, Paxton
acknowledges that while Fascism began in France and Italy, the first
version of the Klan in the defeated American south was arguably a remarkable
preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe.
That the KKK was drawn to the Trump candidacy, and that he refused to
disavow them speak volumes about his fascistic roots.
Like Fascism, Trumpism has come about on the heels of a protracted period of
ideological restlessness. Within the Republican Party this restlessness has
resulted in a complete de-legitimization of the so-called GOP establishment.
Benito Mussolini came to the scene in the 1920s at a time when all the known
isms of the time had lost their mojos. Conservatism, which since the
French Revolution had been advocating for monarchy, nobility, and tradition,
was dealt a devastating blow by the First World War, which destroyed four
major empires (Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and German), made
universal male suffrage (mostly) the norm, and eliminated a generation of
aristocrats. Although initially seen as victorious, liberalism, in its
emphasis on equality, constitutions, parliaments, and civil debates, quickly
proved unable to solve the mammoth problems facing Europe after the war. To
the millions of unemployed, angry, and hungry Europeans, the backroom
politicking and obscure party debates seemed petty at best, and deserving of
destruction at worst. Shoving millions of Europeans into nation-states they
saw as alien to their ethnicity created huge minority problems and sparked
irredentist movements including fascists and their many copycats. The
success of Lenins Bolsheviks in Russia and their protracted, terrifying,
civil war made Communism unpalatable for most Europeans.
Enter Fascism. Fascism promised people deliverance from politics. Fascism
was not just different type of politics, but anti-politics. On the post-WWI
ruins of the Enlightenment beliefs in progress and essential human goodness,
Fascism embraced emotion over reason, action over politics. Violence was not
just a means to an end, but the end in itself because it brought man closer
to his true inner nature. War was an inevitable part of this inner essence
of man. Millions of European men had found this sense of purpose and
camaraderie in the trenches of the First World War and were not going to sit
idly by while politicians took it away from them after the war (famously,
after the war Hitler was slow to demobilize and take off his uniform).
Fascists main enemies were not just Marxist politicians, or liberal
politicians, but politicians in general.
It is therefore no coincidence that the most common explanation Trump
supporters muster when asked about their vote is that he is no politician.
Trump did not invent this anti-politics mood, but he tamed it in accordance
with his own needs. Ever since the election of Barack Obama the Republicans
have refused to co-govern. Senator Mitch McConnells vow that his main
purpose would be to deny the president a second term was only the first of
many actions by which the Republicans have retreated from politics. The Tea
Party wave meant an absolute refusal to compromise on even the most
essential issues, which were central to the economic survival of the
government if not the entire country (the Debt ceiling fiasco anyone?!). But
since then it has gotten worse: now even the establishment Republicans who
had been initially demonized by the Tea Party, such as Mitch McConnell, have
openly abrogated their own constitutional powers by refusing to exercise
them. This has been most evident in their blanket refusal to even hold a
hearing for a Scalia replacement on the Supreme Court. In other words, the
Republicans themselves, not Trump, broke politics.
The anti-intellectualism of Trump has also been a long time in the making.
It was the Republican establishment that has for decades refused to even
consider the science of climate change and has through local education
boards strove to prevent the teaching of evolution. Although not as explicit
as the Fascists were in their efforts to use the womans body for
reproducing the nation, the Republican attempts at restricting abortion
rights, and women access to healthcare in general have often been designed
with the same purpose in mind. Of course American historians have pointed to
this larger strand of anti-intellectualism in American politics, but what is
different about this moment is that Trump has successfully wedded this
anti-Enlightenment mood with the anti-political rage of the Republican base.
Still, for a fascist to be accepted as legitimate he has to move the crowd
and from the very beginning of his candidacy Trump has done this by stoking
racial animosity and grievances. It is no coincidence that the Trump
phenomenon emerges during the tenure of the first black President. It bears
remembering that Trumps first flirtation with running for office was
nothing more than his insistent, nonsensical, irrational, and blatantly
racist demand that President Obama show his birth certificate and his
Harvard grades. This was more than a dog whistle to the angry whites that
the first black President was not only un-American, literally, but that he
was intellectually inferior to them, despite graduating from Harvard Law. If
one considers this original sin of Trump then the KKK endorsement of his
candidacy and Trumps acceptance of it seem less strange.
Like Mussolini, Trump is lucky in his timing. When Mussolini created his
Fascists in 1919 there were numerous other far right, authoritarian
movements popping up all over Europe. As Robert Paxton reminds us, by the
early 20th century Europe had gotten swollen by refugees, mostly Ashkenazi
Jews who had since the 1880s been escaping pogroms in Eastern Europe.
Culturally and religiously different they caused reactions amongst the
Europeans that are strikingly similar to the way in which many European
politicians have reacted to the influx of Muslim refugees and migrants from
the Middle East and North Africa. The Hungarian governments building of a
fence to prevent Muslim migrants from coming in and its rhetoric of foreign,
Islamic, invasion is just one of more noted examples of Islamophobic
euphoria sweeping rightwing and fascistic movements into power all across
Europe. As Hugh Eakin points out in the New York Review of Books, even
Denmark, the beacon of civilized, tolerant, Europe has become susceptible to
the xenophobic fear mongering: hate speech now passes for mainstream
discussion (the Speaker of the Danish Parliament claims Muslim migrants to
be at a lower stage of civilization). The head of the newly elected
right-wing party in Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has described migrants as
parasites who bring diseases. Thus, it is no coincidence that Trump often
references the refugee crisis to point to the ineptitude of European
politicians and to simultaneously warn of a yet another jihadist terrorist
attack. Trump would feel perfectly at home in the company of the new
generation of European authoritarians like Viktor Orban of Hungary or
Vladimir Putin of Russia. He does not care that Putin considers America
Russias historic enemy because for Trump the real enemy is within.
The Trump Rally: An exercise in community building
If we historicize Trump in such a way, his rallies become much easier to
read. For Trumps supporters, the pushing and shoving, and even the outright
violence, against protesters, and the menacingly carnivalesque atmosphere
are, to an extent, an end in itself. Just observe how groups at Trump
rallies spontaneously come together to roughen up a protester. The sheer
emotional intensity of their facial expressions shows us precisely why they
support Trump and why no policy proposal from any of his competitors can
ever come close to diminishing Trump in his supporters eyes. Violence is
electrifying and community building as much as it is devastating for those
on the receiving end. Action over politics.
But it bears reminding that the crowds have transformed Trump as well. At
the beginning of the campaign he seemed taken aback by protesters, but
recently he has begin to egg them on (Id like to punch him in the face).
Simultaneously, he has gotten more confident on stage, bolder in his outrage
proposals (ban all Muslims from the U.S.), and more theatrical.
This transformation brings to mind a moment in the history of another
authoritarian, the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic whose ascent
to power wrecked the country of Yugoslavia and caused a series of vicious
civil wars that killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced
millions. When Milosevic first appeared on TV he did so as a mid-level
member of the Communist party and spoke with the dry jargon of a Marxist
intellectual. In 1987, party bosses sent Milosevic to the volatile Serbian
province of Kosovo to quell a riot by Serb locals who were complaining that
the majority Albanians had been perpetrating violence, and even genocide,
against them. Feeling abandoned by the government, the Serb nationalists
surrounded Milosevic telling him that Albanians were beating them. Milosevic
hesitated. He began to employ the party jargon of national unity and
promised to solve their problems, but the crowd grew rowdier and at one
point, Milosevic looked scared. Thats when he uttered the phrase that would
transform him from an anonymous politician to a Serb nationalist leader: no
one can dare to beat you! The crowd erupted in cheers, propelling his
career during which he destroyed not only his own party, but also the
country at large. He would die nineteen years later in a prison cell at the
International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands.
This is not to say that Trump will cause a civil war in the U.S., or that he
will commit war crimes (although he did promise to do the latter). But the
destruction of the GOP looks all but imminent should he be the nominee. We
should be warned that fascist demagogues are often made on the sly, almost
imperceptibly, and that the fires they stir up tend to spread rather
quickly. The pull of history on individuals is often inexorable. In his
excellent portrayal of Nazification of German life, the historian Peter
Fritzsche recounts a story of Karl Dürkefälden, a German living in the town
of Peine during Hitlers ascent to power. An opponent of Nazis, Karl
expressed in his diary a profound sense of shock at how quickly his whole
familymother, father, and his sisterunderwent a conversion to Nazism
during the early 1933. In one particularly poignant scene, Karl is standing
at the window of his house alongside his wife looking at the Nazi May Day
celebrations, in which the entire, now Nazified, community participates,
including his father. He struggles to remain on the sidelines not because he
is a convinced Nazi, but because his entire community is caught up in what
he called Umstellung, a rapid
adjustment or conversion to Nazism, in the
words of Fritzsche.
Individuals who successfully resist historical Umstellungs are unfortunately
few and far between. This is why we celebrate them. Those who succumb to
them are much more common. The case of a young man by the name of Drazen
Erdemovic from the Bosnian war is telling in this regard. Born in a mixed
Croat-Serb family, the twenty-four year old Erdemovic found himself in 1995
a part of the Bosnian Serb firing squad executing Muslim men around the town
of Srebrenica: by his own admission, he personally murdered seventy Muslims.
After surrendering to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Erdemovic said:
I have lost many very good friends of all nationalities because of that war,
and I am convinced that all of them, all of my friends, were not in favor of
a war. I am convinced of that. But simply they had no other choice. This war
came and there was no way out. The same happened to me.
They had no other choice. This war came and there was no way out. Once
unleashed, the demons of history are too difficult for any individual to
resist on his/or her/ own no matter what their backgrounds or political
beliefs of the moment. This is why resistance to such atrocities always
requires a movement, a community, and in fighting Fascists this was
Anti-Fascism.
Branding Trumpism Fascist has the political benefit of mobilizing disparate
forces in the fight against him just like the antifascist coalition of World
War II led to unprecedented alliances between ideologically disparate forces
(the Soviet-American alliance being the primary example). In the American
context, seeing Trump as a 2016 reincarnation of Mussolini can unite
Democrats, Republicans, independents, Naderites, neo-cons,
constitutionalists, and others, into a broad anti-Fascist coalition which
would bring Trump down and save our democracy.
In conclusion, the Fascism analogy is admittedly not a perfect fit. When it
comes to ideologies, no analogy is. This is because ideologies change
through time. The religious anti-Semitism of the Middle Ages was very
different from its racial reincarnation during the nineteenth century, the
latter of which was picked up by the Nazis (although religious anti-Semitism
still remained a part of it). The anti-imperial, liberal, nationalism of the
first half of the nineteenth century was very different from its more
virulent, expansionist, and repressive kind at the beginning of the
twentieth. Stalins Bolshevism was much scarier and arbitrarily deadlier
than Lenins. In other words, just like the overuse of historical analogies
should not make us too quick to embrace them, a search for a perfect
ideological replica of interwar Fascism should not blind us to its ugly
re-emergence in 2016.
Today, the echoes of Fascism are all too audible to anyone willing to hear
them. Having lost one country, Yugoslavia, I really dont want to lose
another one.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
