On Fascism

[homersapien 11,362]

On 9/5/2018 at 7:15 PM, PUB78 said:

 

Also, look at the destruction and removal of CSA monument or of historical significant persons who owned slaves. Trying to erase or change history, coming from the left.

 

Removing these statues is not an attempt to "erase or change" history.  In fact, it's just the opposite.

The statues themselves were an attempt to change - or rewrite - history by many southerners.  It's never too late to get it right.

[homersapien 11,362]

28 minutes ago, augolf1716 said:

Thanks homer I'll check it out. Rick Steves has been around forever doing his travel show. 

 

Yeah, I love his travel shows.   Apparently he's is a professor of Roman history, which I never knew. This documentary is very good.  It would be perfect to use in a political science or history class.

[AUbritt 611]

On 9/12/2018 at 9:49 PM, augolf1716 said:

britt why so interested in Fascism serious question. As for myself I watch a lot of the AHC channel which shows a lot of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini history

Because Trump is appealing to a lot of fascist methods. If you read through the last article I posted, it's really scary to think that folks went from celebrating together on one New Year's Eve to not speaking or attacking one another just a few years later. The schism between so-called 'conservatives' and 'liberals' in this country took a really nasty turn with Trump. He's using the same playbook as the illiberal democracies of Europe (probably because he's being spoonfed by Putin).

Now, referring to that last article, my reading of Trump puts me on the side of the Dreyfus affair that appealed to "the idea" of France as built on ideas and principles and opposed to those who saw France as a country of "blood and soil" that was justified in convicting Dreyfus (just because he was an Alsatian Jew). John McCain calls for Americans to remember the first sort of idea of America in his final letter to us.

I just want those who believe they are being "truly American" by embracing Trump to take a really hard look at what sort of America they are defending.

By the way, I don't think Trump is an ideological fascist. I think he's naturally fascistic in terms of character traits, and I think he sees these tactics as a way to increase his influence and wealth. He's an "end justifies the means" type, combined with thinking that his "end" is the only one that counts. He's dangerous. He's just a lot less dangerous if people don't enable him.

[DKW 86 7,419]

On 9/13/2018 at 10:26 AM, homersapien said:

Yeah, I love his travel shows.   Apparently he's is a professor of Roman history, which I never knew. This documentary is very good.  It would be perfect to use in a political science or history class.

Steves is a family favorite at my house. We usually have him on the DVR at any time.

[triangletiger 1,599]

On a related note, here's an interesting opinion piece by Ross Douthat that I read yesterday:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/15/opinion/sunday/conservatism-after-christianity.html

Quote

Conservatism After Christianity 

One of the many paradoxes of the Trump era is that our unusual president couldn’t have been elected, and couldn’t survive politically today, without the support of religious conservatives … but at the same time his ascent was intimately connected to the secularization of conservatism, and his style gives us a taste of what to expect from a post-religious right.

The second point was clear during the Republican primaries, when the most reliable churchgoers tended to prefer Ted Cruz but the more secular part of the party was more Trumpist. But it was obscured in the general election, and since, by the fact that evangelical voters especially rallied to Trump and have generally stood by him.

Now, though, a new survey reveals the extent to which a basic religious division still exists within Trump’s Republican Party. The churchgoers who ultimately voted for Trump over Clinton still tend to hold different views than his more secular supporters, and the more religious part of the G.O.P. is still the less Trumpist portion — meaning less populist on economics, but also less authoritarian and tribal on race and identity.

The survey was conducted by the Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins for the Voter Study Group, who analyzed the views of Trump voters based on their frequency of church attendance — from “never” to “weekly” or more often. The trend was consistent: The more often a Trump voter attended church, the less white-identitarian they appeared, the more they expressed favorable views of racial minorities, and the less they agreed with populist arguments on trade and immigration. 

 

The differences were particularly striking on race. For instance, a quarter of Trump voters who never attend church describe being white as “very important” to their identity; for the most frequent churchgoers voters, it was 9 percent. Among non-churchgoing Trump voters, only 48 percent had warm feelings toward black people, compared to 71 percent of weekly churchgoers; the same sort of pattern held for views of Hispanics, Asians and Jews.

Churchgoing Trump voters were still more culturally conservative than Hillary Clinton voters — more likely to support the death penalty, more skeptical of immigration — and their views of Muslims, interestingly, seemed to have been influenced by Trump’s own rhetoric, becoming more hostile between 2016 and 2017.  

But in general, churchgoing Republicans look more like the party many elite conservatives wanted to believe existed before Trump came along — more racially-tolerant, more accepting of multiculturalism and globalization, and also more consistently libertarian on economics. Secularized Trump voters look more like the party as Trump has tried to remake it, blending an inchoate economic populism with strong racial resentments.

Interestingly in the survey the different groups make about the same amount of money, which cuts against strict economic-anxiety explanations for Trumpism. But the churchgoers and nonchurchgoers differ more in social capital: The irreligious are less likely to have college degrees, less likely to be married and more likely to be divorced; they’re also less civically engaged, less satisfied with their neighborhoods and communities, and less trusting and optimistic in general.

This seems to support the argument, advanced by Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner among others, that support for populism correlates with a kind of communal breakdown, in which secularization is one variable among many leaving people feeling isolated and angry, and drawing them to the ersatz solidarity of white identity politics. 

Meanwhile frequent church attenders, already a minority within the wider society, are also a minority within the Republican coalition. Relatively few Republicans are explicitly religiously unaffiliated (though that number has been climbing too), but only about a third of Trump’s 2016 voters are in church on a typical Sunday, and almost half attend seldom or not at all.

This suggests a possibility that should worry both Trump’s religious supporters and anyone who finds his style of conservatism racially toxic. Despite their resistance to that toxicity, the churchgoers in this survey did vote for him, making a pragmatic bet that his policies on abortion and religious liberty were worth living with his Caligulan personal life and racial demagoguery. To defend that bet, some historically-inclined believers have cited past cases where Christians accepted bargains with a not-particularly moral leaders — including the way the early church accepted the patronage of Roman emperors, from Constantine onward, whose personal piety was limited at best.

But the Constantinian bet involved a rising religion allying with a worldly power to accelerate its growth and gains. The bet under Trump involves the reverse sort of situation: A Christian community trying to make the best of its decline, and allying with a leader whose core appeal depends upon and possibly furthers the de-Christianization of conservatism.

Such a bet might be understandable as an act of desperation. But it’s hard to see how it can reverse de-Christianization, and easy to see how it might accelerate it. Which, on the evidence of this survey, is something that secular liberals should fear as well.

 

[AUbritt 611]

https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006154922/fascism-leaders-america-trump.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

Video from a Yale philosopher, in case y'all prefer that to written arguments.

[maxwere 82]

Britt, very good thoughts.  I think the species of the thing you are looking for is best characterized as 19th century "Old Hegelian" (as opposed to the younger).  Both are revolutionary, anti-Chrisitian, though the former retains syncretistic rhetoric of the State.  Both ideologies are collectivist and seek to squash individual liberty.  Has American conservatism moved to a more collectivist bent?  Absolutely!  To that end Trump is as good a representative as any.  But Trump (or any leftist populist equivalent) is a symptom of our own indebtedness to the state.  Its "the people" that should concern us.

[AUbritt 611]

3 hours ago, maxwere said:

Its "the people" that should concern us.

You mean, you think we should be concerned about the people supporting fascism?

It's not lost on me that most of the current fascistic regimes have been democratically elected. I guess I have enough faith, still, in the American people that they will wake up and vote him/them out.

My reason for posting this stuff here is precisely because I don't think most of the folks supporting Trump are fascist. I think most don't believe Trump is fascist. I've said before I don't think he is, ideologically, but rather by natural bent. He certainly is methodologically. I think it's mostly about enriching himself and his family (so, making foreign policy on that basis, as we see with the Saudis). But there are fascists emboldened by Trump; and I think for very good reason.

But Trump is dangerous as hell, for all of these reasons.

[AUbritt 611]

A tougher Richard Spencer.

[maxwere 82]

15 hours ago, AUbritt said:

You mean, you think we should be concerned about the people supporting fascism?

My reason for posting this stuff here is precisely because I don't think most of the folks supporting Trump are fascist. I think most don't believe Trump is fascist.

IMO, calling it Fascism is too narrow a characterization to preserve credibility.  Trump is a pragmatist/crony capitalist.  In other words, he's largely who "the people" (who oppose the left) want him to be.  The people (public opinion) is largely the construct of media propaganda.  No one ever got brainwashed reading Mein Kampf.

Populist movements are world wide phenomena.  Some are far left.  All are collectivist (democratic) and ultimately totalitarian.  The myth in the beginning is always that the leader represents the people to the corrupt state (ie the swamp or the millionaires and billionaires).  When in practice, its the leader that (ad)"ministers" the corrupt state unto the people.

Regardless of where you are on the issues, chances are the next president won't solve it whether you agree with them or not.  Its the increasing view that the next president CAN or should solve the problems identified in the issues that is of great concern to me.

[homersapien 11,362]

3 hours ago, maxwere said:

IMO, calling it Fascism is too narrow a characterization to preserve credibility.  Trump is a pragmatist/crony capitalist.  In other words, he's largely who "the people" (who oppose the left) want him to be.  The people (public opinion) is largely the construct of media propaganda.  No one ever got brainwashed reading Mein Kampf.

Populist movements are world wide phenomena.  Some are far left.  All are collectivist (democratic) and ultimately totalitarian.  The myth in the beginning is always that the leader represents the people to the corrupt state (ie the swamp or the millionaires and billionaires).  When in practice, its the leader that (ad)"ministers" the corrupt state unto the people.

Regardless of where you are on the issues, chances are the next president won't solve it whether you agree with them or not.  Its the increasing view that the next president CAN or should solve the problems identified in the issues that is of great concern to me.

Maybe so, but having a POTUS who doesn't create more problems - or accentuate the ones we already have -would be a huge improvement over Trump.

[AUbritt 611]

4 hours ago, maxwere said:

IMO, calling it Fascism is too narrow a characterization to preserve credibility.  Trump is a pragmatist/crony capitalist. 

Agree that he's a crony capitalist, but I still think he fits many of the characteristics of Ur-fascism outlined earlier in the thread. So, I don't think comparing him directly to Hitler is particularly useful, if we think of Hitler as the limits of fascism. I think Jason Stanley tries to make this point implicitly in the video (i.e., that we shouldn't think of fascism as either Hitler or Mussolini).

[maxwere 82]

38 minutes ago, AUbritt said:

Agree that he's a crony capitalist, but I still think he fits many of the characteristics of Ur-fascism outlined earlier in the thread. So, I don't think comparing him directly to Hitler is particularly useful, if we think of Hitler as the limits of fascism. I think Jason Stanley tries to make this point implicitly in the video (i.e., that we shouldn't think of fascism as either Hitler or Mussolini).

You know, that list can be applied to leftist revolutionaries too?  The Bolsheviks represent a tiny minority.

Most American's left and right are in their heart of hearts trapped in a kind of populist theater.  It's much easier to stake a claim as "not (better than) the other".  When from a non partisan view, the similarities are eerie.

Does Trump carry a certain cult-of personality similar to dictators of the past (and present)?  Absolutely.  I think its more a symptom of opportunity, than grand ideology.

[homersapien 11,362]

30 minutes ago, maxwere said:

You know, that list can be applied to leftist revolutionaries too?  The Bolsheviks represent a tiny minority.

Most American's left and right are in their heart of hearts trapped in a kind of populist theater.  It's much easier to stake a claim as "not (better than) the other".  When from a non partisan view, the similarities are eerie.

Does Trump carry a certain cult-of personality similar to dictators of the past (and present)?  Absolutely.  I think its more a symptom of opportunity, than grand ideology.

Is one worse than the other?

[homersapien 11,362]

31 minutes ago, maxwere said:

You know, that list can be applied to leftist revolutionaries too?  The Bolsheviks represent a tiny minority.

Most American's left and right are in their heart of hearts trapped in a kind of populist theater.  It's much easier to stake a claim as "not (better than) the other".  When from a non partisan view, the similarities are eerie.

Does Trump carry a certain cult-of personality similar to dictators of the past (and present)?  Absolutely.  I think its more a symptom of opportunity, than grand ideology.

Similarities of what? 

Certainly not policies - or even values. 

[AUbritt 611]