Is it Hair Trump or Herr Trump? Redux
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
Trump - the Fascist Tangerine. I've used this illustration before, on the Trump-fascist comparo, but it surely still fits.
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: Alisdare Hickson from Canterbury, United Kingdom) Details Source DMCA
The Rage of Trump, with which most readers of these pages (as well as the majority-of-tuned-in U.S.) are (too) familiar, has become all the rage for front page and front-of-your-screen news for the past several weeks. Trump, in talking ever-more openly about: the "vermin" who constitute his opposition, locking up (presumably without trial, although on what grounds they might be tried is an open question) enemies of his in the legislative and judicial branches, at the Federal, state, and local levels, is sounding evermore fascist. (Do see the definition of "fascism" which I use, at the end of this column.) To say nothing about how he would transform the Federal government (apparently without seeking legislative authority to do so).
And then, of course, there is his grand plan for illegal immigrants, even ones who have been in the U.S. for quite some time, obey the law and pay their taxes, as well as for "birthright citizens" (a legal category established by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution) which would involve arbitrary arrest, imprisonment in "camps," and arbitrary deportation. (By the way, literally on the night of the day they took power [Jan. 30, 1933] the German Nazis began rounding up perceived enemies of their incoming regime and put them into already prepared camps. They came to be called "concentration" camps, because the prisoners were packed in so tightly.) And so on, and so forth. And so, an increasing number of people who pay any attention to politics and government in the United States are becoming increasingly concerned (or in the case of those who like the Trump-approach to government and governing, increasingly joyful/supportive).
Not that Trump's clearly fascist tendencies (that is they are clear to anyone with any knowledge of the history of 20th century European fascism) were not seen fairly early on. For example, in a New York Times review of Ruth ben-Ghiat's very important book "Authoritarians from Mussolini to Trump" Francis Fukuyama noted that:
"Ever since the 2016 election, observers like Timothy Snyder, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt speculated that Donald Trump could undermine American democracy and move the country in an overtly authoritarian direction. That possibility grew more plausible over the years of the Trump administration, as he sought to undermine a growing list of American institutions that stood in his way, including the intelligence community, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, the courts, the mainstream media (which he branded "enemies of the American people") and of course the integrity of elections themselves. Trump made his authoritarian instincts clear by refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the 2020 election."
(Well, Francis, it looks like history has not come to an end after all. [Couldn't resist.]) As it happened, Prof. ben-Ghiat wrote one of the early warnings against Trump-the-fascist, after the 2016 election. As it happened, in October, 2015, I published a column entitled "Is it Hair Trump or Herr Trump." Given the increasing amount of, to be sure very frightening speculation on this subject, and the appearance of more and more evidence that it is indeed the latter of the suggested titles above, I thought to reproduce that column again here.
That is even though I have already re-published it a couple of times. As the Trump-fascist danger gets ever closer and closer, I don't think that the warning, even one from eight years ago, can be repeated too many times. And so, here is substantial excerpt from that column from 2015.
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"The Web is suddenly crawling with images of Trump as Hitler the idea has apparently caught on. To what extent this is the weight of the establishment attempting to quash Trump as an unwelcome messenger is anybody's guess at this time.
"In America anything goes, given the appalling level of political illiteracy in the political class and media, not to mention in the masses, so you can believe that, yes, there is now an increasing amount of speculation the new "buzz "that Donald Trump has one or more characteristics in common with the German Nazi Chancellor/President/Dictator (yes, he was all of those things) Adolf Hitler: Click Here; Click Here; Click Here, ; Click Here, Click Here.
"And there has been at least one plea to stop doing so: Click Here).
"So, I thought, I might as well enter the game.
"First, the similarities. There's the racism, the xenophobia, and in Trump's case substituting for Hitler's extreme prejudice against one religious grouping, the Jews, it's another, the Muslims, and adding on of course the "illegal aliens." There's the speaking style and with it the ability to whip up the right audiences into a frenzy. (One difference: Hitler's was apparently well-practiced, while Trump's apparently isn't.) There's the frequent name-calling in re opponents.
"There's the "our nation must be great again." Germany had lost the last big war it fought. Now while the U.S. cannot be said to have "won" the last big one it engaged in, the War on Iraq, while millions of people on the region have clearly lost much, starting with their lives, militarily at least the U.S. did not lose. (However, the U.S. may actually be on the verge of losing militarily in Afghanistan, joining a long line of foreign forces, from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Union that failed there, militarily.) But that doesn't stop Trump from trumpeting on the "great again" theme, just like Hitler did.
"For Hitler, after the Jews, the Great Enemy was "Soviet Bolshevism." For Trump it seems to be Russia (although I do think that bunches of U.S. persons are confused on the point of whether the U.S. enemy is Russia or the Soviet Union, especially with the constant demonization of Russian President Putin who is the new 'Stalin,' of course. And yes folks, on a newscast on MSNBC on the morning of October 1, 2015 I actually heard a reporter refer to Russia as 'the Soviet Union,' not once but twice, before she caught herself. Further, you know there's that new Steven Spielberg movie about Gary Powers and the spy swap just out. Certainly some viewers are going to be confused about which country is which in that one.
"Then there are the vague promises of a great future from both, without telling much about exactly how they planned/plan to get there. There's the ample use of the Big Lie Technique, like Trump's describing the supposed 9/11 bombers as "illegal aliens," except that they were all in the U.S. on visas. (But that sort of thing is common to all of the current crop of Republican leaders, and most of the rest of the political class in America.) There are other similarities too, but among the most important, a characteristic that kept/keeps both men going is that they didn't/don't embarrass. They never had/have to apologize, explain, defend. They were/are the prefect avatars of Lee Atwater's consummate principle of politics: "Always attack; never defend." (Would that the Democrats would learn this principle, but that's another story.) Finally, it is clear that Trump just loves personal power, just like Hitler did.
"Now for the differences, and they are important, historically. First, Trump does not have nearly the mass following that Hitler had. [Remember: this was written in 2015. Now he has got a mass following in spades, even though they only have a cap, not a Storm-Trooper's uniform (yet).] While before the functional coup d'etat of January 30-31, 1933, Hitler's Nazi Party never did command more than about 37% of the vote (in a country where most people voted), Trump has only gotten into the 30's, of Republican voters, which amounts to about 15% of the total. Of course, we do have to remember that in a Presidential election, only about 50% of the eligibles vote and in 2016, Republican voter suppression will begin to exact a major impact on the number of Democratic votes recorded.
"Second, Trump does not have a mass, very well-organized political party behind him, personally. For Hitler the National Socialist German Workers Party. (Yes, it is hard to believe, but that was indeed the literal translation of what "Nazi" in German stood for, a calculated move to steal some wind from the Socialist Party of Germany's [SPD] sails, and from other genuine workers' formations, including the Communist Party of Germany [KPD].) The Nazi Party provided huge electoral clout in the localities in which it was powerful). If Trump does get the Repub. nomination, we really don't know what the National Republican Party will do for him. But whatever that would be, it could not compare to the personally loyal Nazi Partei Deutschland.
"Third, Hitler had a huge (up to three million part-timers strong) private army, the 'Sturmabteilung,' the SA, the Storm Division, the much feared and despised, and in other quarters admired, Brownshirts." They were his enforcers, frequently engaging in violence against his primary opponents, the Communists, the Socialists, the trade unions, and the liberal-to-Left press. As documented by numerous historians and journalists, the NSDAP was cradled from inception by the Reichswehr (the German Army under the post-World War I Weimar Republic) and paid for from the beginning by major members of the German ruling class, led by the steel magnate Friedrich "Fritz" Thyssen. (An early [1923] foreign supporter of the Nazis was a U.S. person named George Herbert Walker. [Sound familiar?].) Trump has nothing like this. But since there is no organized resistance at present to the kind of long-term authoritarian threat that Trump might become or suggest to better skilled politicos in the future, that is immaterial.
"Fourth, one huge (huuuuge [!]) difference in practice is that while Hitler was arguably the world's greatest Keynesian political economist, in terms of his vision of the government's role in making the economy hum, Trump would likely get as far away from that as he possibly could. The one exception might be the U.S. massively crumbling infra-structure, which might be as big a focus for Trump as it was for Hitler (except that Trump would likely attempt to privatize any major expansion).
"Fifth, as far as we can tell so far, Trump has no Thyssen equivalents. He is wealthy (although it is not known for sure just how wealthy he is). And he seems, as part of his calculated appeal of being "un-bribable," not to be seeking outside ruling class money. So we don't know how much he could attract.
"Finally, and this is certainly another major difference, obvious to many here but important to note for the record: Trump seems to have no firm belief system. Presently, he is of course riding racism of two types: a) no one who supports him has forgotten his racism-based, dog-whistled "birtherism," you can count on that, and b) of course the anti-Latino (especially Mexican for some unknown reason maybe because they are the closest ones) variety. His tax plan clearly benefits the wealthy (including himself) even more than they are already benefited by it. His xenophobia is right out front see his attack on the Syrian refugees. As noted, he has grandiose ideas for "making America great again" (as if it were not, militarily at least, right now). But characteristically, he has given no clear details on how he would do that, on either the financial or the military side. And so on and so forth.
But Trump has moved around on the ideological side of things. He has in the past been rather a liberal, endorsing a single-payer health care payment system and freedom of choice in the outcome of pregnancy, being some sort of friend of the Clintons, and was certainly not until 2012 an outspoken Republican. Hitler, in contrast, had his malignant political philosophy --- a very firm belief system --- based on the relatively new political anti-Semitism that was first formed in his native Austria in the 1870s, as well as his xenophobia, probably based in part on the fact that he was not a German himself, but an Austrian. For Hitler, this was all firmly wrapped around his messianic ego (in that sense like Trump, who appears to be a raging megalomaniac). Just read Mein Kampf.
"But Hitler was not an anti-Semite in the first instance for electoral purposes (although he used it in that way). He really believed that 'The Jews' were not only the cause of every single problem facing Germany, but the rest of Europe as well. He really believed that if 'The Jews" were all killed, the world would be a much better place. He really believed that the "Aryan" German people (you know, blond like Hitler, slim like Goering, and tall like Goebbels, as the old joke goes) amounted to a 'race,' were superior to everyone else, and deserved to rule the Earth. He really believed that 'The Slavs' were also an inferior people (a belief that may well have remained with him even when the Red Army was closing in on the entrance to his Berlin bunker). Trump does not seem to have that level of racialism or even that degree of intellectualism. In that area, Trump is a likely midget.
"And so, do I think that 'Trump' equals 'Hitler?' Well, not yet [that is, from the perspective of 2015]. But hey, you never know in a land as benighted as America. And remember: international events always play a big role in how the capitalist ruling class plays its cards at home."
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The definition of "fascism" that I use is: "There is an all-powerful executive, which has total control of all of the functions of government. It is in the service of a capitalist ruling class. There are no independent judicial or legislative branches, at any level. Of course, there is no Constitution, that is a body of law standing above and controlling the actions of any of the three branches of government. There is no independent media. There is a single national ideology, based on some combination of: racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, religious bigotry and authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, and in some, but not all, cases imperialist expansionism. There is a State propaganda machine, massively using both the Big and Little Lie Techniques. There may be: a full-blown dictatorship, a charismatic leader, engagement in foreign wars, the use of the mob/private armies for the maintenance of domestic power. There may be transitional forms.