“Trump is a Fascist dictator”
Blogger OregonMuse at Ace’s writes:
I’ve never understood the ‘Trump is a fascist dictator’ schtick. What has he ever done? Name one thing that he has done that is dictatorial. Issued a few EOs? That’s pretty much par for the course for every president these days. Put kids in cages? That was a program started by Obama. I can tell you some things he hasn’t done. Like this summer, when blue cities were burning, he could’ve signed some sort of emergency decree, then used that authority to send in military units to quiet things down. But he waited for the state governors to act, as it is their primary responsibility. He waited until he was asked to send National Guard units.
That’s not dictatorial. That’s pure federalism. In fact, I would say that Donald Trump is probably the one president most respectful for federalism and aware of the boundaries between federal, state, and local government in modern times.
I think I can shed some light on this by saying that looking for rationality here is futile, because that’s not what it’s about. What it is about is several things at once.
There’s a segment of people driving the “Trump the fascist” narrative, some of them in the press or the upper echelons of the Democratic Party and even some prominent Republicans or former Republicans, who know it’s garbage but who hate what he’s doing and how he threatens their own interests (such as, for example, being in the pay of China, or having power). They therefore cynically say any number of things like this in an attempt to influence public perceptions.
Then there’s another group who have a visceral negative reaction to Trump’s tweets or his brash manner or his hair or his gut or a combination of some or all of them and who think something like this: “brashness or boldness on the political side opposed to me equals fascism” and/or “brashness or boldness on the part of someone I don’t like equals fascism.” Sometimes such people know what fascism actually is, but I think that’s rather rare. More commonly, I think, this group means “fascist” in the general sense of “someone I don’t like who does something powerful that I don’t agree with.”
So that group – which I think is a pretty large group – hears the “fascism” and “fascist” accusation against Trump (or against just about anything the GOP might muster up the courage to do) and the designation sounds right to them. Not only does it sound right, it sounds like an obvious truth that doesn’t need argument or proof and with which only the most uninformed, idiotic, or evil people would disagree.
So much of the Left’s “reasoning” is ipse dixit and name calling.
“No evidence” is the most laughable one.
And just because the Fake News says there is a pandemic that doesn’t mean the entire economy needs to be shut down.
I’ll never forgive the Dems and Fake News for creating this crisis that benefits China.
And you can be sure neither Joe and Kamala will get a dime in reparations from China.
Jason Stanley, an academic ignoramus with an endowed (and well-remunerated) chair at once-respectable Yale, has written an exceptionally stupid book, supposedly on the subject of “fascism”, in which the entire argument is basically “everything I dislike is fascism, and everyone I dislike is a fascist.” The subject of academic grifters aside, the even more important issue is the logical case (massive amounts of empirical evidence aside) for arguing that the election was stolen, since the Democrats had “means. motive, and opportunity”, the obvious motive being perceiving themselves as possessing the entirely righteous and moral imperative to remove, by any means necessary, the single worst human in the entire history of the species.
In my hometown Boston Globe you will see many comments in political related stories stating that Trump should go to jail, will be wearing an orange jumpsuit soon , blah, blah, blah. To which I ask “For what crime will be he be sentenced to jail time?”
Crickets.
It always makes me laugh. The original fascist was Mussolini, who was a Marxist socialist. He and Lenin even debated the right way to bring it into existence, though they came to different conclusions.
We are all familiar with the Left’s tactic of referring to presidents who are Republican as being authoritarian (you know, the next Hitler). 3 days ago, a useful idiot of the Left sent out an email to a large circle of frends expecting a sympathetic response. In it he described President Donald J. Trump as “authoritarian,” with the usual dearth of anything approaching real evidence. Yet, he glibly used the term “authoritarian” 4 times.
Within 5 minutes this response was sent by a friend of one of my friends:
For me, Trump as been a revelation. I thank G-d for making him our President, and I pray that G-d gives us FOUR MORE YEARS of POTUS DJT.
Fascist just fits with racist, sexist, xenophobic etc. in the list of things the left calls people they don’t like or disagree with. Evidence doesn’t matter because if they say it then it’s true.
The “Trump is fascist” crowd get their information from CNN and other suspect legacy media.
What many don’t look at, or won’t look at, is that fascism as practiced (leaving aside the Nazi racism) was oligarchical control from the top in which corporations and large businesses had to follow the dictates of the State. This doesn’t differ at whole lot from the Great Reset vision of the current elites. Add in their increasing devotion to a new, anti-white racism, and they are the complete package.
Isn’t it ironic in this time when hate speech can get you fired, or otherwise sanctioned, that calling the President of the United States a Fascist, Nazi, or even Hitler, is perfectly acceptable to those in what was once polite society?
Not that it matters to those people that they are first of all demonstrating an abysmal ignorance of history. Or maybe in the case of Academics, I should say an abysmally selective knowledge of history.
If I live long enough I won’t be surprised if, at some point, there is some frantic revisionism, and many will conclude that by comparison, Trump was a very effective President, who used his domestic powers with an admirable degree of moderation. Stranger things have happened. I expect a fairly high level of pain in the nation’s future.
Your observation is spot on. We live in an Orwellian world. Trump did not spy on the press like Obama did. Trump did not sign an arms treaty with Iran and then refuse to subject it to senate approval. I suspect Obama was on the losing end of more 9-0 SC decisions than Trump. It was Obama more than anyone in the last 50 years who worked to create an imperial presidency. Supposedly Trump likes authoritarian leaders, but it was Obama and friends who gushed it up with the Castros. The Washington elite hated Trump because he deprived them of access to the international swamp and the hundreds of millions of dollars that flowed to their bank accounts. Back to business and the real estimate market in DC for $10 million homes will literally and figuratively go through the roof,
Dunque:
NY government attorneys are trying very hard to pin something on him, hopefully (hopefully for them, that is) some sort of tax evasion charges that actually could carry a prison term.
I agree there isn’t a rational that isn’t based on controlling the narrative in a way that’s negative to Trump. However, the question ought to be asked. In addition, I’d like to know how Trump is homophobic or racist. I have heard that the racist is supposedly about being anti-immigrant, except for the fact he has married two immigrants to the US and his children are children of immigrants.
Looking at Alank’s comment above; the converse is sad as Gov. Cuomo rakes in various awards despite the fascist things he has done under emergency decree.
Look no further than Lansing MI for a fascist dictator(ess).
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/12/14/294466-n294466
The Wretched uses State Police to prevent Republicans from entering the State House of Representatives. State Police owe their loyalty to the office not to their constitution. Pension and paycheck over the people.
zombies hear what they have been taught to hear and respond obediently.
I imagine that a lot of people calling Trump fascist couldn’t define fascist. (Honestly, I think that a lot of them would have a hard time defining the word “bicycle.”) Of course, there is also psychological projection which is endemic to the left. By calling others fascist they convince themselves they are not. Also, some are cynically just using the term to manipulate the people who can’t define fascist (but know it’s bad.)
People think: Trump is conservative.
And they think: conservative = right wing.
And they think: right wing = fascist.
So they skip all those middle steps and jump straight to “Trump is a fascist.” What he *does,* how he actually governs, doesn’t matter. What matters is applying labels, as a shortcut in thinking.
Of course, most news sources encourage that kind of “thinking.”
Ira, that was a great comment your friend’s friend wrote!
Simply put, anyone in disagreement with them is a fascist.
I point to Harry Potter author J.K.Rowling’s disagreement with permitting biological males to compete in female sporting competitions as “proof of her being a fascist”.
Nor does it matter whether her accusers actually believe her to actually be a fascist. It’s actual rhetorical importance lies in its intimidation and invalidation of any disagreement, however reasoned.
Great observation from Steve Hayward at Powerline after Trump won in 2016:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/11/the-great-liberal-freakout.php
The Great Liberal Freakout is under way, as we’ve noted below. Here’s my haul.
The head of the Joint Center for Political Studies, which the Washington Post describes as a “respected liberal think tank,” reacted to Trump’s landslide thus: “When you consider that in the climate we’re in—rising violence, the Ku Klux Klan—it is exceedingly frightening.” Castro, still with us, said right before the election: “We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.” Claremont College professor John Roth wrote: “I could not help remembering how economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism—all intensified by Germany’s defeat in World War I—to send the world reeling into catastrophe… It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our post-election state with fear and trembling.” Esquire writer Harry Stein says that the voters who supported Trump were like the “good Germans” in “Hitler’s Germany.” Sociologist Alan Wolfe is up in the New Left Review: “The worst nightmares of the American left appear to have come true.” And he doubles down in The Nation: “[T]he United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era.” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, keeper of the “Doomsday Clock” that purported to judge the risk of nuclear annihilation, has moved the hands on the clock from seven to four minutes before midnight.
Oh wait, did I say this was the reaction to Trump?? Sorry—these are what the left was saying the day after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Some things never change.
I have come to some interesting analysis. My father died at 27 when I was 3 in service of the Marines and I had a traumatic experience myself as an enlisted Marine. I have a cousin whose father was an air force reserve colonel and he is so anti trump despite having voted Republican (according to him) in every other election before now. It’s easy to call Vindman a “hero” if your father was a reserve colonel but never sacrificed his life and you never had to fight for your country. I feel like punching my cousin in the face some days.
Yesterday on social media I was told that Republicans are “ communist”. What in the ?????? Then today, on a local news article on FaceBook, a college girl declared that in Communism, “the people” not “ the government “ own the means of production….
RockMeAle & jon baker,
Earlier today I ran across a quote where someone on the left was expressing fears of a right-wing fascist coup. There are books on amazon expressing the same paranoid fears.
The projection is verifiably pathelogical.
Every Republican President in the postwar era was labeled a “fascist” by the left (Ford probably less than all the others). That’s not new. What’s ‘new’ (over the last five to ten years) is the leftist worldview thoroughly permeating the Zeitgeist.
And so:
“Eisenhower is a Fascist”. Stated only in certain segments of certain college campuses, by leftist agitators and by a handful of ‘radical chic’ Marxists. Not acceptable in wider society, with repercussions for those who expressed it in such circles
“Nixon is a Fascist”. Stated by all of the above, and also much wider among university students and faculty, most antiwar protestors, certain corners of the mainstream media and Hollywood. Mostly (but not entirely) unacceptable in wider society, with minimal repercussions for those who express it in such circles.
“Reagan is a Fascist”. Stated by all of the above, but with wide acceptance in most academic circles. More commonly hinted at in the mainstream media. Sprinkling such sentiments in wider society might result in furrowed brows and some whispers, but no repercussions beyond that.
“W is a Fascist”. Stated by all of the above, openly and emphatically, to much approval. Openly stated in wider society, with much approval. Stating it is a mark of high intelligence and moral righteousness. The furrowed brows and whispers come to those who openly disagree.
“Trump is a Fascist”. Stated by all of the above and the default position among all ‘intelligent’, “empathic”, “right-thinking” people. A given truth accepted and promulgated in virtually all corridors of academia, the MSM and the entertainment industry. Common among the Zeitgeist; the only opprobrium at times, quote severe, up to and including, being ‘canceled’) comes to those who vocally disagree, with furrowed brows and whispers for those who choose to stay silent.
The long march through through the institutions is almost complete.
First, thanks to Ira for his friend’s long list of Trump’s so-very-authoritarian actions.
Second, on the “everyone I don’t like is a fascist” theme – the examples are too numerous to list, but here are two particularly egregious cases I’ve been reading about today. Everyone here could add others.
ICYMI, Professor Katz was the only faculty member at Princeton who criticized a letter by activists making outrageous demands, including implementing a Committee to determine if anyone was making or publishing “racist” work.
All of the links in the PLB post were excellent and important; the video shows Professor Katz to be an exemplary speaker and a very courageous man, and it is a shame there are not more like him.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/how-to-lose-friends-influence-people.php
This is the video link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDSVdJv3dKM
The other case in point is that of Joseph Epstein (not the one who killed himself), who has been cancelled for making light of DR Jill Biden’s pretentiousness.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/joseph-epstein-canceled.php
Scott continues with this observation and appends a helpful graphic.
https://i2.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2020/12/Screen-Shot-2020-12-14-at-8.25.21-AM.png?ssl=1
I probably could have said Professor Doctor Katz, but that might have gotten us too close to the other epithet-of-choice of the Left.
Sidebars to the Katz Kase:
Conor Friedersdorg kinda sorta thinks this was a raw deal for the Prof, but maybe he kinda deserved it. The main point is many of the signers of the demand letter have a rather nuanced view of integrity and academic rigor.
Somehow that seems rather characteristic of, oh, maybe… fascists.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/what-princeton-professors-really-think-about-defining-racism/614911/
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Benito Mussolini
“Anybody I don’t agree with”
The entire Democratic Party and the MSM (but I repeat myself)
I agree labels of fascist are thrown around, like racist because they have been defined in such vague ways to fit whoever you don’t like.
George Orwell said this in 1944: “By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come…”
He also said: “…The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable”…In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning…”
“…But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.”
Apparently it’s not a recent phenomenon.
https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc
@ Aesop Fan,
Thanks. I had in fact, uncitically assumed that P.O.S. Elect Biden’s wife, was a practicing medical doctor; since the prospect of someone who is not an MD, a tenured full professor, or at least a tenured assistant professor, going around calling him or herself “Doctor”, seemed too excruciatingly preposterous to be taken into consideration.
It demonstrates a clownish and pathetic striving for a reflected intellectial – and possibly moral – eminence which she does not deserve. Reminds me of those stolen valor cases wherein a stateside draftee who had spent his military career policing cigarette butts in Washinton State, takes up parading around in civilian life as a decorated combat vet.
Mike K undoubtedly knows many more doctors socially than I do. So on the social use of professional titles by medical personnel, I’d tend to defer to any corrections he might offer. But I do know a few well-credentialed medical doctors on a close and personal basis; and outside of the hospital or the university they introduce themselves by first and last name rather than professor or doctor.
Almost no one in modern times would even call themselves by such an honorific if it were not for the reflected luster and prestige which the medical profession lends to the more general term.
dr. Jill Shill (is shrill).
Not even piled higher and deeper.
Educational Disfunction resulted in the award of an “advanced” degree to she (who must be obeyed).
There’s a wacky Brit sci-fi sitcom, called “Red Dwarf,” which has run for 13 irregular seasons since 1988. I’ll not bother explaining it.
In one episode the main character, Lister, goes back in time to meet his teenage self and change history for their benefit. However, he’s horrified to discover how immature his younger self is. Old Lister tells off Young Lister:
Stop saying everything’s crypto-fascist!
You make me sound like a complete git!
Thanks to Brian E for the Orwell. (OK, I knew it. The 4 volumes of his essays are never far from my bedside.)
Ages ago – late 60s – I started checking on what “fascism” actually meant.
1. In those days there was far more intellectually honest discussion.
2. The closest thing to consensus was that it was a “third way” sort of melding of elements of Right and Left, but actually more the latter, but repackaged to appeal to the middle classes more.
3. The whole thing came down to ostensive definition, that is, a matter of who and what was referred to as “fascist”, rather than a formal definition of the sort Socrates would have wanted.
4. There was really only a subset which can be unequivocally called “right wing”, that being the counterrevolutionary variety. Salazar and Franco are the exemplars. I suppose you might include the Austrians, who are overlooked because they were (a) anti-Nazi and (b) not Anti-semitic.
I could hardly believe one of our best US friends, a super-intelligent Slovak doctor (MD) as well as PhD researcher at US NIH, told us immediately upon our visit:
“Trump is Hitler”.
Those who hate Trump, mostly for irrational reasons of style and desire to be class-superior, signal their virtue by insulting him. Funny, it’s now common, and commonly called “virtue signaling”.
She’s very nice, very generous – we stayed with her for a couple of days in DC. She has a few medical patents. She taught herself to write computer code, very well, so as to help in her neurological work. I argued with her until we agreed to not argue about it and instead have a fun time. Which it was. She uses Ghee, clarified butter. I wasn’t so impressed, but it was fine. Just expensive. Two months ago, it showed up in our nearby Kraj potraviny (market), which carries many “bio” foods.
Nice people can be useful idiots, too.
Listened, again, to “Just walk away, Renee”.
Now on to Classic IV – “Stormy”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Sua_QTDs0 “Bring back that sunny day”
I think most Reps should be calling the Dems the semi-fascist Dems.
Because they support lying. And cheating in elections.
And violent riots, especially against the inferior black people.
And they’re racists – they support Affirmative Action for inferior blacks, because they believe Blacks are inferior. Which they do, but feel guilty about – and the idea of “white privilege”, which is not their fault, allows them to believe they are “morally superior” without making any individual changes themselves.
We need more funny conservatives making more funny jokes about how despicable so many Dems are. Even nice ones, who are useful idiots, if they think Trump is a fascist.
https://68.media.tumblr.com/04fc1f0342461ae25581d3d0bee50ff6/tumblr_ol6vdyzn7p1qcbo9lo1_1280.jpg