On her show last night, Rachel Maddow gave a succinct, and rather eloquent, explanation of Trump including “fascists” among those vermin he intends to eradicate upon his 2024 electoral victory: he is calling those to the left of him (about 70% of us) “fascists” so that word becomes neutralized when we want (accurately, IMO) to apply it to him and his policies. To make it meaningless, in other words, a word that everyone on the political spectrum tosses around as a general term of abuse, the goal being to drain the term “fascist” of any specific descriptive force, and to make (dumb) voters think “Oh, that word doesn’t really mean much of anything.”
It was only a few moments of her rather excellent discourse on Trump’s goal more broadly, but it was well done, and something we need to remember going forward.
That’s right out of their playbook. And I don’t mean that sarcastically, it’s a known strategy of the right to take words the left uses and add more and more definitions to it until it becomes a nebulous boogeyman the right can use to scare people and a now-useless term to the rest of the world. They did it to Black Lives Matter, Antifa*, Critical Race Theory, Woke etc.
If they start calling everyone they don’t like, for any reason at all, a fascist, the term will lose all meaning. Hopefully, at least within academics, they maintain the correct meaning, so we can be guided back on track at some point.
*I’m interested to see how Trump will bumble through an answer when reporters start asking him to explain why he’s referring to the left as fascist and anti-fascist. Also, I’d love someone that gets him to sit down for an interview to ask him to explain what definition of fascist is. I’ll keep saying it, when people use these boogeyman terms (CRT, Woke etc), ask them to explain it. It puts them on the spot and forces them to admit that they don’t know what they’re talking about. Seriously, the next time someone on your facebook feed mentions CRT being taught at the local elementary school, very nicely say “What’s CRT?” or “I’ve heard of critical race theory, but what is it?” and see if they can answer you. They can’t and we know they can’t because CRT isn’t taught in grade school. They might as well be telling people the kindergarten needs to get rid of their “In depth analysis of Quentin Tarantino scripts, comparing and contrasting Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained” series.
It’s good that Maddow and others try to nail down labels like ‘fascism.’ You’d think voters would see reactionary people like Putin or Mussolini as fascists. Trump might try to label maybe Newsom or other progressives as fascists but that’s because he’s talking to those who don’t read.
I don’t think Trump and his ilk, to include today’s republican party, and Putin want to gut the word of any meaning. They want it to continue having the connotation of evil, just like the word Nazi. They just want those who are fascists, the aforementioned Trump et al, to not be called that, but to use the word for their opponents hoping their followers will slaver along and consider said opponents to be evil.
It does motivate me to get some progressive resources from the library. That way at Thanksgiving when my bibliophile nephews ask me what I’m reading, we can have a teachable moment.
That was more of a general rant on what they do. But with fascist, specifically, I don’t think Trump actually meant to say it. I’m guessing it wasn’t part of his speech, but he just accidentally tossed it in when he saw all the other terms (marxist, communist etc) in the next like on the prompter. In the clip I saw, he said it more than once, so either I’m wrong and someone wrote it down or he didn’t mean to say it, but then doubled down on it.
Hopefully, this will peel off a few more supporters.
The funny thing is, if (when?) he’s called on it, a normal response would be ‘that was my mistake, I meant to say antifa and I read it wrong’. Trump’s response will likely be a word salad that convince no one but himself that fascism is a leftist thing.
This. How many times have we heard, “liberals are the real racists?” A lot of conservative policy can be boiled down to “I know you are but what am I?”
He also called people on the left “vermin”, BTW, which probably sounded better in the orignal German. I’m sure the mainstream media will wring their hands over this, just like they did when Clinton talked about deplorables.
But, yes, the right is trying to remove any meaning from that term. Nicely explained by Maddow, but no one who needs to hear it will hear it.
I’ve been wondering (in an idle, going-nowhere kind of way) if the Dems should change their name to the Vermin Party, to make the point that we are those who Trump wants to exterminate, and if you don’t think so, that’s all the more vulnerable you are to extermination.
It’s been done occasionally, with a few MAGA politicians. Generally they will just respond with something like, “We all know very well what it means. If you don’t, you can Google it.”
Sounds like fodder the Democrats could use for some campaign ads next year. Show/read the text about “rooting out vermin” then ask “Hitler? Or Trump?” Might get some swing voters who are not Nazis to reconsider Trump.
The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
The humiliation by the wealth and force of their enemies. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. "All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.
He’s been treated like a baby ever since he rode down the Golden Escalator. He’s been allowed to evade follow up questions, but they rarely ask him follow up questions because they know the results would be unusable word salad. Or hurt his feelings and be banned from press conferences.
I think the ship sailed on this one long, long ago. Even before Trump came along, the terms “Nazi” and “fascist” had been way watered down. I recall how LGBT people were called the “Gaystapo” or feminists called “feminazis”. And, of course, Russia calling Ukraine fascist/nazi despite Russia being the invader.
I brought this one up to my mother, ardent Trump supporter, asking her her if she was at all concerned over how anyone who disagrees with Trump, even former allies, are branded as RINOS and attacked. It didn’t concern her in the least and she was gleefully watched the Republicans turn against the likes of Liz Chaney. The only fault my mother had with her was that she didn’t believe Trump won the election.
May I introduce you to Vermin Supreme, perennial presidential candidate. His platforms include a free pony for every American, zombie awareness, and time travel research.
I’ve been thinking along similar lines. The world war we fought against fascism ended almost 80 years ago, and I’m not sure most people on either side could accurately define the word beyond knowing that it connotes something bad.
IMO, we’re better off describing Trump’s and Republicans’ tactics as bigoted, racist, sexist, inhumane, dictatorial and anti-democratic rather than labeling them as fascist.
