Tom Nichols (former Republican and former professor at the U.S. Naval War College; also five-time Jeopardy champ), has a great November 16 essay in the digital The Atlantic. He argues that Trump has finally crossed the line from mere authoritarianism to full-blown fascism, which he defines and characterizes in a compelling paragraph. He notes how he (Nichols) was reluctant to use the word fascism earlier partly because he was aware of how emotionally potent words are sometimes used and inflated for their dramatic effect, like war on poverty, war on drugs, and war on terror, and how that very inflation ultimately diminishes their impact.
I remember expressing the same idea when I reviewed a book on ageism years ago that, among various other sins, compared in some detail ageism (prejudice against old people) to Nazism, as if a Holocaust survivor might agree and say “oh yeah, they’re about equal.” The problem, of course, is that when you hyper-inflate your use of a dramatic word, or draw a comparison between two very unequal things, a critical auditor or reader sees the disjunct between what you want him to think and the actual reality, and that undermines your credibility. It also can be a disservice to history, as the ageism authors proved, by equating non-equal things in order to enhance the ignominy of the speaker’s (in this case the authors’) particular bete noire. I suspect this was Madeline Albright’s reluctance to characterize American politics of just a few years ago as fascist because she had experienced it first-hand as a young girl in Europe. Nichols was wary of the “f-word” when applied to Trump early on, observing that he could see Trump’s potential fascism but did not want to use the term because Trump had not yet “crossed the line.” But Nichols says that now Trump has crossed that line in two recent bellowing, semi-stream-of-consciousness speeches, one in which he described immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” and the other, in Claremont, New Hampshire, where he says:
“We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country … On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible … legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
This is Mein Kampf language, pure and simple. Note that there is not a reference to “radical right thugs,” such as Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the modern American equivalent of Hitler’s Brownshirts. The word vermin is also right out of Hitler’s playbook, suggesting that the Jews of Hitler’s era, and the immigrants, antifa, and Black Lives Matter of ours, are “sick” and less than human, and need to be “root[ed] out.” Given Trump’s limited vocabulary, his use of vermin may suggest that at least some of the speech was ghost-written, and if so, that just tells us how surrounded he is by fellow fascists. The choice of vaguely archaic, almost biblical verbs–drive out, cast out, throw off, root out--implies Hitlerian purification, but the means of purification are not specific–concentration camps? Deportation to–somewhere? Imprisonment? Murder? Civil War? Meanwhile Trump’s “poisoning the blood of our country” is exactly the same as Hitler’s semi-sacred, race-pure Aryanism, and it’s designed to summon from the deep the grievances and resentments of whites who are unable or unwilling to see contemporary fascism when it stares them in the face.
Add to all of this Trump’s promise of “retribution” if he is re-elected. Has there ever been a presidential candidate whose party platform consists of his personal, self-proclaimed victimization and his consequent infliction of “retribution”? And is our nation so currently debased that over forty percent of its voters have been conned into thinking that is what they want?
As I’ve suggested before, this is no longer just about one man vs. another, an honorable Democrat vs. an honorable Republican. This is about voting for democracy, or voting against it.
John Rachal's Blog
The Fascism Is Now Official
November 20, 2023 at 3:36 pm (Political Commentary)
Tom Nichols (former Republican and former professor at the U.S. Naval War College; also five-time Jeopardy champ), has a great November 16 essay in the digital The Atlantic. He argues that Trump has finally crossed the line from mere authoritarianism to full-blown fascism, which he defines and characterizes in a compelling paragraph. He notes how he (Nichols) was reluctant to use the word fascism earlier partly because he was aware of how emotionally potent words are sometimes used and inflated for their dramatic effect, like war on poverty, war on drugs, and war on terror, and how that very inflation ultimately diminishes their impact.
I remember expressing the same idea when I reviewed a book on ageism years ago that, among various other sins, compared in some detail ageism (prejudice against old people) to Nazism, as if a Holocaust survivor might agree and say “oh yeah, they’re about equal.” The problem, of course, is that when you hyper-inflate your use of a dramatic word, or draw a comparison between two very unequal things, a critical auditor or reader sees the disjunct between what you want him to think and the actual reality, and that undermines your credibility. It also can be a disservice to history, as the ageism authors proved, by equating non-equal things in order to enhance the ignominy of the speaker’s (in this case the authors’) particular bete noire. I suspect this was Madeline Albright’s reluctance to characterize American politics of just a few years ago as fascist because she had experienced it first-hand as a young girl in Europe. Nichols was wary of the “f-word” when applied to Trump early on, observing that he could see Trump’s potential fascism but did not want to use the term because Trump had not yet “crossed the line.” But Nichols says that now Trump has crossed that line in two recent bellowing, semi-stream-of-consciousness speeches, one in which he described immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” and the other, in Claremont, New Hampshire, where he says:
“We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country … On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible … legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
This is Mein Kampf language, pure and simple. Note that there is not a reference to “radical right thugs,” such as Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, the modern American equivalent of Hitler’s Brownshirts. The word vermin is also right out of Hitler’s playbook, suggesting that the Jews of Hitler’s era, and the immigrants, antifa, and Black Lives Matter of ours, are “sick” and less than human, and need to be “root[ed] out.” Given Trump’s limited vocabulary, his use of vermin may suggest that at least some of the speech was ghost-written, and if so, that just tells us how surrounded he is by fellow fascists. The choice of vaguely archaic, almost biblical verbs–drive out, cast out, throw off, root out--implies Hitlerian purification, but the means of purification are not specific–concentration camps? Deportation to–somewhere? Imprisonment? Murder? Civil War? Meanwhile Trump’s “poisoning the blood of our country” is exactly the same as Hitler’s semi-sacred, race-pure Aryanism, and it’s designed to summon from the deep the grievances and resentments of whites who are unable or unwilling to see contemporary fascism when it stares them in the face.
Add to all of this Trump’s promise of “retribution” if he is re-elected. Has there ever been a presidential candidate whose party platform consists of his personal, self-proclaimed victimization and his consequent infliction of “retribution”? And is our nation so currently debased that over forty percent of its voters have been conned into thinking that is what they want?
As I’ve suggested before, this is no longer just about one man vs. another, an honorable Democrat vs. an honorable Republican. This is about voting for democracy, or voting against it.
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