Trump claims that Democrats want to "indoctrinate your children with poisonous anti-American lies in school." If there's a meaningful distinction between this sort of stuff and fascist rhetoric, I'm not sure what it is. pic.twitter.com/SPPuAGPZvm - Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2020
JASON STANLEY: So, fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed threats by leftist radicals, minorities and immigrants. He promises only he can save us. In the RNC, what we saw is we saw a cult of the leader. The Republicans didn’t even bother to provide a platform. They just said, “Whatever Trump wants.” We saw four of the six long speeches given by Trumps. So, Hannah Arendt, in Origins of Totalitarianism, warns that the first step towards authoritarianism is when a political party starts to value party over parties, meaning one political party treats other political parties not as legitimate opposition but as traitors to the country. The next step is when that political party, that engages in this kind of behavior, just becomes taken over by a social and political movement devoted to one leader. And that, I fear, is what we’re seeing. When I published my book two years ago, people accused me of hysteria, of exaggeration, and they listed reasons why we shouldn’t be afraid of fascism in America, despite its deep roots in this country. And the reasons they’ve given, I’m afraid, have fallen to the wayside. They’ve given reasons like, you know, the institutions remain independent, the Justice Department remains independent. They’ve given reasons like there are no right-wing militias tacitly endorsed by the administration. So, Arendt calls our attention to the fact that the Nazi government refused to condemn the violence of right-wing - right-wing, far-right violent people on the streets attacking Jews. They refused to condemn them. They didn’t endorse them; they just refused to condemn them. And Arendt said that was giving them permission. So, you know, we’ve seen four years of chaos here, and yet we’re being told that this is law and order. So, we’re seeing militias on the street endorsed by the president. We’re seeing the administration echo a conspiracy theory that looks, really, a great deal like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the early 20th century conspiracy that Judeo-Bolsheviks were behind liberalism and controlled the media, controlled the cultural institutions, where bankers were in cahoots with media and the art world to bring about world communism. We saw that at the RNC. Senator Tim Scott talked about Manhattan elites and Hollywood moguls supposedly trying to bring socialism to the United States. This mixture of a wealthy elite and communists is reminiscent of some of the worst conspiracy theories of the 20th century. So I’m very concerned here. We’re seeing - people said, “It’s not fascism, because they’re not attacking democracy.” Well, what are the attacks on the elections about, if not attacks on democracy? So, while I don’t think Trump himself has a vision, has some kind of grand vision, as the fascists of yore has, as Timothy Snyder has called it, this is “not-even fascism.” I think we’re seeing a structure emerge, with figures like Stephen Miller, with all the sort of white supremacist ideologues in this administration, that could bring about, definitely, a turn to authoritarianism. https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/4/jason_stanley_fascism_trump
Trump claims that Democrats want to "indoctrinate your children with poisonous anti-American lies in school." If there's a meaningful distinction between this sort of stuff and fascist rhetoric, I'm not sure what it is. pic.twitter.com/SPPuAGPZvm
- Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 13, 2020
JASON STANLEY: So, fascism is a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of supposed threats by leftist radicals, minorities and immigrants. He promises only he can save us. In the RNC, what we saw is we saw a cult of the leader. The Republicans didn’t even bother to provide a platform. They just said, “Whatever Trump wants.” We saw four of the six long speeches given by Trumps.
So, Hannah Arendt, in Origins of Totalitarianism, warns that the first step towards authoritarianism is when a political party starts to value party over parties, meaning one political party treats other political parties not as legitimate opposition but as traitors to the country. The next step is when that political party, that engages in this kind of behavior, just becomes taken over by a social and political movement devoted to one leader. And that, I fear, is what we’re seeing.
When I published my book two years ago, people accused me of hysteria, of exaggeration, and they listed reasons why we shouldn’t be afraid of fascism in America, despite its deep roots in this country. And the reasons they’ve given, I’m afraid, have fallen to the wayside. They’ve given reasons like, you know, the institutions remain independent, the Justice Department remains independent. They’ve given reasons like there are no right-wing militias tacitly endorsed by the administration. So, Arendt calls our attention to the fact that the Nazi government refused to condemn the violence of right-wing - right-wing, far-right violent people on the streets attacking Jews. They refused to condemn them. They didn’t endorse them; they just refused to condemn them. And Arendt said that was giving them permission.
So, you know, we’ve seen four years of chaos here, and yet we’re being told that this is law and order. So, we’re seeing militias on the street endorsed by the president. We’re seeing the administration echo a conspiracy theory that looks, really, a great deal like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the early 20th century conspiracy that Judeo-Bolsheviks were behind liberalism and controlled the media, controlled the cultural institutions, where bankers were in cahoots with media and the art world to bring about world communism. We saw that at the RNC. Senator Tim Scott talked about Manhattan elites and Hollywood moguls supposedly trying to bring socialism to the United States. This mixture of a wealthy elite and communists is reminiscent of some of the worst conspiracy theories of the 20th century. So I’m very concerned here.
We’re seeing - people said, “It’s not fascism, because they’re not attacking democracy.” Well, what are the attacks on the elections about, if not attacks on democracy? So, while I don’t think Trump himself has a vision, has some kind of grand vision, as the fascists of yore has, as Timothy Snyder has called it, this is “not-even fascism.” I think we’re seeing a structure emerge, with figures like Stephen Miller, with all the sort of white supremacist ideologues in this administration, that could bring about, definitely, a turn to authoritarianism.
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/9/4/jason_stanley_fascism_trump
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