On Tuesday, the New York Times published a long interview with Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who Googled an online definition of fascism before saying of his former boss:
Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.
Also on Tuesday, the Atlantic published a report that Trump allegedly said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”
The revelations have dominated discussions on Fox News, and prompted two-dozen GOP senators to call for Tr—haha, just kidding.
Instead, Democrats and their supporters once again contend with a muted reaction from the media, the public, and politicians, who seem unmoved by Trump’s association with the F-word, no matter how many times Kamala Harris says “January sixth.”
One exception was Matt Drudge, the archconservative linkmonger who has been hard on Trump, who ran a photo of the Führer himself. This proved the rule, argued Times (and former Slate) columnist Jamelle Bouie: “genuinely wild world where, on trump at least, matt drudge has better news judgment than most of the mainstream media.”
Debates about Trump and fascism have been underway for a decade now, and applying the label seems unlikely to convince or motivate anyone. But the lack of alarm underlines a deeper question that doesn’t require a dictionary to engage in: Why do so few Americans, including many on the left, seem to take seriously the idea that Trump would use a second presidency to abuse the law to hurt his enemies?
Maybe it’s because Democrats have studiously avoided confronting Trump about some of the most controversial, damning policy choices of his first term, or the most radical campaign promise for his second. You simply can’t make the full case against Trump—or a compelling illustration of his fascist tendencies—without talking about immigration. Immigration was the key to Trump’s rise and the source of two of his most notorious presidential debacles, the Muslim ban and the child separation policy. Blaming immigrants for national decline is a classic trope of fascist rhetoric; rounding our neighbors up by the millions for expulsion is a proposal with few historical precedents, and none of them are good…
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Fascism doesn’t stick to Trump … because all media keep a painting him as a sensible, reasonable, acceptable politician that has no ties to fascism.
If media from day one had kept hammering the fact that Trump is a far right politician with far right tendencies that will usher in far right ideology … he wouldn’t have become as popular as he is now.
The uncomfortable truth is that far too many people are entirely comfortable with a far-right agenda and rhetoric. Especially if it gives them permission to look down on someone else.
Also poor political education has people thinking of fascism as 1) some almost mythological evil far removed from modern sensibilities, and 2) a problem of the past. Neither is true.
Yes but only as far as it goes with rhetoric. Like it’s on TV.
When it gets real many will wonder what happened.
Yep.
The part about lacking political education also means fascists are commonly identified as those who start world wars and drag people into gas chambers. Which is reversed to naively argue they can’t be fascist before that point. Disregarding that this is of course not how the nazis started out either.
It’s like they just want to win the game without thinking about what the game is.
His cult base wants a dictator on day 1. Why would they have problems with him being a Nazi/Glorious Leader.
To an independent voter, concerned about inflation etc, it’s easy to chalk up accusations of fascism as Democrat fear mongering, akin to how the Right describes everything they don’t like as communism.
It doesn’t help that culturally, the Left is associated with calling almost everything sexist/racist/another ist.
Even if we’re right about all of it, to an Independent who doesn’t agree, those cries just get muted the same way I assume no one here has been remotely convinced/swayed by all the accusations of socialism or communism.
I just don’t understand how these people move through the world. Yes, it’s exhausting to be plugged in, and it’s totally possible to consume too much “news”, but how do people just not think about the wider world? I mean, I’ve got a job and a family, and I somehow manage to also be concerned about current events and global affairs.
I dunno. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I am crazy.🤷
The optimist in me thinks that maybe they’re more plugged into municipal politics or their local charities or whatever. The realist in me says some people are just broken, exhausted, working multiple jobs and struggling to keep food on the table. The cynic in me says it’s the same as well off people who think of themselves as good people while wearing sweatshop clothes; it’s a lot easier to not think about the wider world too carefully.
I mean, listen, I put my sweatshop pants on one leg at a time like everyone else, and I still manage to pay attention. I don’t always have the deepest understanding of stuff, but how deep do you have to dig before you understand “I’ll be a dictator on day one” is not ok?
how deep do you have to dig before you understand “I’ll be a dictator on day one” is not ok?
I think most independent voters watched that and laughed. Most dictators don’t say they’ll be one.
Frankly, I think that comment is one of the more clever things trump has done. It got huge play on the Left with everyone else going “come on, no dictator would say that.” But because Left leaning media treated it with the same breathless urgency with which they treat his actual scary dictator-esque musings, it waters it all down.
I think this is part of why people tune out coverage of this stuff, it’s hard to separate what we should actually be concerned about from the silliness.
You simply can’t make the full case against Trump—or a compelling illustration of his fascist tendencies—without talking about immigration.
The Democrats’ approach to immigration is genuinely unpopular, even with many people who are going to vote for Harris anyway. I think a strong case for Trump as an enemy of democracy can be made without talking about immigration, but if you (the general you) can’t do that then it’s probably better not to say anything at all unless you want to help him.
Also from the article (which I agree with):
To be sure, Democrats are wary of getting stuck talking about an issue where Trump always polls better than Harris. Backlash to a Democratic president and a surge of migrants at the Mexican border have helped make Americans suspicious of immigration at levels not seen since 2001. As Atlantic staff writer Rogé Karma explained to Mary Harris on Wednesday’s What Next, the share of Americans who think immigration should decrease has risen from 28 percent in 2020 to 55 percent today. And some polls have found that a majority of Americans support mass deportations.
But results like that are an indictment, not a vindication, of Democrats’ reluctance to talk about immigration. Mass deportation would separate 4.4 million U.S. citizen children from their parents. It would require the largest police action in American history, wipe out millions of jobs, cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and destabilize the economy. Industries from milk to housing construction would be damaged for years. Los Angeles and Houston would see their populations fall by 10 percent; Florida would lose 1 in 20 residents. A million mortgages could be at risk.
I.e. Democrat’s position is unpopular because they offer little-to-no pushback to anti-immigration arguments. In fact, Harris, Biden, and many Democrat politicians, seem to be embracing the anti-immigration narrative. In a sense, they are complicit in aiding fascism, IMO.
I think the proposed approach would be perceived as defeatism. Voters would see one candidate saying “the problem is too big to solve” and the other candidate offering solutions. It doesn’t help that Democratic policy is what has been making the “problem” bigger recently.
I also think that restricting immigration (especially illegal immigration) is not inherently fascist.
Ideally, the Democrats would be unabashedly pro-immigration and advocate for solving the “problem” by making it much easier to immigrate legally and getting those currently undocumented, documented. This would make immigrants harder to exploit, address fears of immigrants under-cutting wages, and paying more taxes and social security. That addresses all the somewhat legitimate worries I can think of; the rest of the “problems” I can think of are just rooted in racism and lies. Immigration has been and is a net-positive for the U.S., and a pro-immigration stance should be an easy argument to sell to voters that’s also backed up by many studies and data; including conservative think-tanks like Cato. Pro-immigration sentiments were very popular in the U.S. until this recent bout of anti-immigration propaganda. Even now, Americans hold contradictory opinions, like being pro-mass-deportation while being in favor of expanding pathways to citizenship: https://www.mediamatters.org/immigration/polling-around-mass-deportation-far-more-complicated-right-wing-media-let
Because half of America are happy to give actual freedom away if it means literally forcing the other half to comply.
Fascism is what’s for dinner and Christians are hungry!
It does, in fact, stick to him. It just doesn’t matter. I think the hard thing for people on the left to understand is that for roughly half the country, fascism isn’t a bad thing. People scream “fascism” like it’s the ultimate insult.
First of all, it’s so overused by hyperventilating gaming-chair leftists that it’s lost its rhetorical effect, and second of all, accusing someone who wants an authoritarian leader to take power and enact violent vengeance on half the country is, literally, a fascist. They want fascism. You’re just calling them by their name.
And since there appears to be, at best, as many of them as us – both in the general population and in the political establishment – it doesn’t really do anything. The fact is, fascism is here, it’s not going anywhere in the near future, and, to paraphrase the famous quote, one third of this county wants to kill a different third of this country, and the final third is content to watch.
It’s like calling a white supremacist a racist and expecting them to get mad or have their feelings hurt.
First of all, it’s so overused by hyperventilating gaming-chair leftists that it’s lost its rhetorical effect
Except it’s not, and never was. Leftists were correct to have been calling Trump “fascist” since a decade ago; his more recent actions have proven it. The fact that “centrists” are slow on the uptake is hardly the left’s fault!
I’m not talking about proper application here, and I’m not talking about when people label Trump a fascist, which is clearly and obviously warranted as I noted, but I’m not going to sit here and bicker with you about it. It’s very obvious that almost anyone and anything will be labeled “fascist” by some people on the left – and people on the right, frankly. It’s overused. It’s used by some as a blanket insult for someone or something they disagree with.
And I’m pretty sure you know that, and are just defending those that you feel use it appropriately, and I’m here for that.
It’s overused. It’s used by some as a blanket insult for someone or something they disagree with.
But it’s really not, though. It’s used a lot nowadays because the people the term gets applied to keep doing more and more fascist shit!
(Okay, I’ll sort of agree that it’s “overused” by people on the right – but that’s not because they’re confused about what it means; it’s because they’re deliberately trying to destroy the meaning of the term to deflect from their actual fascist behavior. In fact, arguments like yours only help them do that, so it’s time you quit talking now.)
On the line that starts “Certainly…” it’s getting cut off by some weird formatting issue. If you edit the text and eliminate what I assume is a random tab before that sentence it will start to wrap around correctly and the full text will be readable.
As opposed to what?
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