In my writing and interviews, I have consistently referred to Donald Trump as a fascist. I have received a great deal of resistance to that claim. Do you think this description is correct? If not, then what language should we use to describe Donald Trump?
One of the problems with American discourse is that we just assume everybody is a friendly democratic parliamentarian pluralist until proven otherwise. And then even when it’s proven otherwise we don’t have any vocabulary for it. He’s a “dictator.” He’s an “authoritarian.” He’s “Hitler.” We just toss these words around.
The pushback that you are talking about is 95 percent bad. Americans do not want to think that there is an alternative to what we have. Therefore, as soon as you say “fascism” or whatever it might be, then the American response is to say “no” because we lack the categories that allow us to think outside of the box that we are no longer in.
Is this a function of American exceptionalism?
Yes, it is. We made a move towards intellectual isolationism in a world where no kind of isolationism is possible. The fact that democracies usually fail is a rule which can’t apply to us. If you examine American society, there are high points and low points. But there is certainly nothing which puts us in a different category than other people who have failed, whether it’s historically or whether it’s now.
I don’t want to dodge your question about whether Trump is a fascist or not. As I see it, there are certainly elements of his approach which are fascistic. The straight-on confrontation with the truth is at the center of the fascist worldview. The attempt to undo the Enlightenment as a way to undo institutions, that is fascism.
Whether he realizes it or not is a different question, but that’s what fascists did. They said, “Don’t worry about the facts; don’t worry about logic. Think instead in terms of mystical unities and direct connections between the mystical leader and the people.” That’s fascism. Whether we see it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we forget, that is fascism.
Another thing that’s clearly fascist about Trump were the rallies. The way that he used the language, the blunt repetitions, the naming of the enemies, the physical removal of opponents from rallies, that was really, without exaggeration, just like the 1920s and the 1930s.
And Mr. [Steve] Bannon’s preoccupation with the 1930s and his kind of wishful reclamation of Italian and other fascists speaks for itself.
The most important point of disagreement that I have with Ana’s points at the time is that she seemed to be contemptuous of the central claim that Trump was (and still is to this day) a would-be dictator. [I apologize if I’m not 100% correctly summarizing Ana’s points.]
I care much less about whether we call Trump a “Fascist” (specifically) than I do care about TYT commentators understanding that we are dealing with a man and a movement which have given off many tell-tale signs for nearly a decade now, of seeking to end the rule of law, and start a pseudo-free-society that is ruled by the caprice of a man or group of men, with all of the violence, chaos and injustice that this would entail. Yes, I know the country is almost there anyway, but that is no excuse for failing to diagnose when we see a person and a group of hysterical consumed-with irrationality backers who are in the final analysis trying to put an official end to what is a flawed-but-good Constitution.
I might add, another hallmark of some violent dictators of the 20th century, and their regimes, from what I can remember of my studies, is their attacks on reason itself… their attempts to bend perception of the truth, even to make a point that they control citizens and their perception of matters. This describes Trump “to a T”. I am struck, just to cite one example, of Trump’s recent disagreement with the reporter, when the reporter recognized that the “MS13” tattoo was clearly a fake. It was important to Trump to get the reporter to go back on his perception of reality. We should keep this in mind as he and his enforcers attempt to take this path with so many of us. In the end, it is probably Trump’s attacks on reason itself that turned me against him when I first paid attention to his candidacy in 2016, whether it was his attempts to deny reality, or deny the value of clear logic, reason and rationality (such as his heavy reliance on and championing of ad hominem reasoning), or some other stratagem against reason.
Cenk rightly said at the time that even if we are put back on our heels and do not use the term “fasicst” (because of the claim, however debatable, by some in the conversation that the term cannot be applied meaningfully) we are still left with the key point which is how do we describe a would-be dictator? In watching the other day, I saw him continue to get some of this right. I am quite disappointed that TYT does not seem to have interviewed Snyder, and have my share of other criticisms of TYT, but there many ways in which I am not disappointed with TYT, nor with Ana. She’s often a very good or even sometimes an exceptional voice. I don’t want to spend my time criticizing her so much as straightening out that we do need to talk about the direction of Trump toward violent authoritarian rule, whether we decide that is rightly called fascism in his case, or something else..
Sorry, can’t find it; but my memory is good and I know I saw it. Six months ago BEFORE Trump got seated, she had that fascist argument with Cenk. Subsequent to that, after some demonstrably fascistic policies getting acted on, there was a screenshot from another Prog outlet with her having a slightly embarrassed face and next to her was an “Oops”. It might not have been a formal apology made on Turks, but it was an embarrassing acknowledgement for her.
It is really hard to find it because of the mountain of Prog youtube releases in response to Trumpers “flooding the zone” with batshit crazy actions+orders…
Thanks for taking a look, and I’m sure you saw something, but I will believe she reversed herself on this matter when I see it.
As far as I know, she had the sharp disagreement with Cenk approximately end of October, which is three months before Trump took the oath of office.
This link has some further comments she made around that time. She was not backing away from her comments. It’s not that helpful to the effort to see if she has changed her views, but it is helpful in understanding how deeply she was committed to her point of view at that time:
Again, the less important issue to me here is whether the exact right term for Trump was “fascist”. However, Ana in the link above did not even understand the extent to which Trump was committed to some sort of Constitution-undermining liberties-undermining authoritarian rule. That is the main issue for me.
Everything old is new again: the Repub “Obama is a lizard man” gambit. Change the subject from the tariffs (more precisely: the incompetent execution of tariffs…) having been a colossal disaster.
Even though they will never cite it in their legal opinions, the judges on the World Trade and Supreme Courts are hep to his insider tips money printing machine, and are on track to shut it down…
Here is my idea of a meme or quote which I wish that the managers at TYT would consider, as they appear to avoid (as far as I know) calling a would-be dictator a would-be dictator.
“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.” ~ Hannah Arendt
The first point was to point out that he’s NOT just a fascist, but a disinformer and so much more. He’s the Joker from the dark Batman movie series.
The point of the Hall of Presidents was just some levity about Bunker Boy. Was it discussing his fascistic tendencies? Nope. But it was just a combination of a timely joke and pushback on Bunker Boy.
Ok, thanks for the response. My thought was simply that someone like Trump or his minions are ok to have our conversation devolve into lower value content. They spend a fair amount of time encouraging and trolling us to help us go there.
This is a photo that is important to my thinking on the topic. Again, I don’t think it’s critical that we diagnose Trump specifically as a “fascist” or “some other form of right wing violent repressive enemy of the rule of law”, but we should oppose the point that he is just some bumbling power-seeking fool. He is vindictive and has shown multiple signs, since he started opening his mouth in 2016 in seeking office, that he is an efficacious enemy of the rule of law, that he particularly employs a lot of the tactics that classic 20th century repressive regimes used in undercutting our powers of reason and our perception of the truth, and that he seeks a situation where what he says goes.
I may be imagining things a bit, but I think in recent days I’ve heard some brief inclusion of mention of statism or fascism in one or two broadcasts. I just don’t watch enough TYT, and don’t keep good enough receipts (and for all I know, the mentions have been there for awhile from other hosts at TYT) but in any event, I just wanted to mention it’s possible there may have been some improvement. Someone please correct me if I am off.
With that said, I wanted to take a moment to give my opinion of where we are seeing fascism, and where we are not:
In my opinion:
It is not fascist or statist, in an of itself, to expel undocumented immigrants from the country. It is fascist or statist to use the unresolved immigration difficulty left to this administration and congress by previous administrations and congress as a pretext to call in the military against peaceful demonstrators, attempt to find a toe-hold for declaring martial law, engage in racist profiling of citizens to determine if they should be rounded up, expel those who are here legally, etc.
It is not fascist or statist, in and of itself, to seek to end state funding of education. This is a libertarian, or capitalist, but not a fascist point of view. It is definitely fascist or statist to selectively defund education and to use this defunding as a toehold to try to manipulate the educational institutions, which students they admit, what they teach, which faculty to hire, and what they research. The selectivity and other factors here show that the Trump administration is not at all behaving in a libertarian or capitalistic manner, but ultimately going for a fascist or statist power grab instead of defending freedom.
