Recently saw a video on this.
Most of the answers given are bonkers!!
Most of the answers given are bonkers!!
The Maga **** & Fascism
- Thread starter Kinky Melinky
- Start date
That’s just all vibe based though. The article even admits the important material stuff(The actual threat of communism, militarised political party, street fights, etc)isn’t the same so talks about the memes and Trump saying untrue facts instead.
Ending with this
That is just standard conservatives since the 90’s.
There were more German peasant farmers than germans in the army under Nazi rule.Most germans in the 30’s didn’t own a personal radio and the army was made up of more horses than tanks. All that’s is to say Nazi German was a fundamentally different place to a 2023 global super power.
America is the most advanced capitalist country on the planet. Even on the most basic things like pure numbers US conservatives do shite with young voters(Anyone under 50). They don’t have the people to make up a youth wing let alone the mass support for a full scale take over of the government.
If people want to argue that in some abstract way Trump is channeling his inner Hitler particles then maybe I guess. But it seem no different than right wingers arguing Bernie wants to be the new Fidel Castro because he visted Cuba once.
Not sure what this has to do with anything.
Well yes, obviously. But fascism has nothing to do with the 1930s specifically. It's also not primarily an economic ideology.
There's nothing about fascism that says they can't come to power democratically. In fact, abusing and subverting democratic norms and traditions is pretty much baked into the process.
I don't get this need to make sure that both sides are equally bad at any given thing. The fact that liberals certainly misused the term fascist when talking about the likes of Bush Jr, does not mean that scholars warning of fascist traits increasingly appearing in modern political movements is just the same. Nor does it mean it's the same as Lauren Boebert calling Joe Biden, a liberal capitalist to his core, a communist.
Last edited:
Here's Robert Paxton for example, who is an undeniable expert on fascism, and someone who has been naturally hesitant to use the word in the past. The point is that fascism is not one monolithic thing. It's not "what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 40s - and nothing else". Movements will have some traits, but not others. As Paxton says, the willingness to incite violence to subvert democracy is one of those traits. I get how you would be unwilling to use fascism to describe the MAGA movement in 2016, but Jan 6th crossed a very specific line.
I strongly recommend his Anatomy of Fascism for anyone, btw. It shows the diversity (heh) that exists among fascist movements.
I strongly recommend his Anatomy of Fascism for anyone, btw. It shows the diversity (heh) that exists among fascist movements.
I had to take a shower after watching that coffee with Trump supporters video. These people are long gone.
A fascist - if we want to be simple - is someone (or a group of people) which overtake a state and subordinate its institutions to the will of a particular ideology. It wasn't called fascism when the Patriot Act was declared (it was in left-wing corners) but that was a fascist movement. Snowden revelations - fascist inasmuch as wholesale dragnet state surveillance of the police force of a state upon the state's own people, with corporate tie-ins, see Nazi Germany for the link between corporations and general usurpation of the democratic movement (better than the "communists" being the most simple synopsis of the struggle in Germany post-1918: corporate power, including the middle class, went that way rather than the way of Lenin whom the Germans themselves, of course, put on a train to Russia to overthrow the Tzarist regime for war-aims).
I prefer totalitarianism to fascism or communism because that is really what is being spoken about from different "angles". Orwell was critiquing totalitarianism, not fascism or communist per se (in Animal Farm, Farewell to Catalonia, where he went to report against the "fascist" totalitarian element, and 1984 which is closer to modern day reality, and neither communist nor fascist, than people freely admit - back to Snowden, etc., which is but the tip of the iceberg).
Hannah Arendt on "fascism" remains a far more cogent analysis than Eco's 14 points. She charts the entire period and sociological struggles which accounted for what she coined as the "Banality of Evil" (a totalitarian mentality which silently, and slowly, overtakes a body-politic). That has been happening long before Trump arrived on the scene but is perhaps only most visible now because it reaches a point of inflection. Ironically, then, the Sanders left and the Trump, non-fascist base, whatever part that is, have agreements regarding the abuse of state power the incremental increase in institutional takeovers (corporate sponsored, thus wealth inequality among each base) of the body politic.
One thing the US and Germany have in common is perpetual war economy. The US never has left that behind. It shows within the state via mass abuse and shootings and general violence and obviously beyond it. The US, as everyone, before and since Eisenhower knows, is built around a war-machine and that is a complaint shared by both left and right (it is not just a valid complaint but a necessary one). Hitler had no plan beyond conquering Europe and then making terms with the US. Anyway, totalitarianism is banal, too, and it is everywhere (not in the "you cannot say this" sense, for the West, but in the "nothing is going to change, significantly, despite what you say": corporate power to be precise).
I prefer totalitarianism to fascism or communism because that is really what is being spoken about from different "angles". Orwell was critiquing totalitarianism, not fascism or communist per se (in Animal Farm, Farewell to Catalonia, where he went to report against the "fascist" totalitarian element, and 1984 which is closer to modern day reality, and neither communist nor fascist, than people freely admit - back to Snowden, etc., which is but the tip of the iceberg).
Hannah Arendt on "fascism" remains a far more cogent analysis than Eco's 14 points. She charts the entire period and sociological struggles which accounted for what she coined as the "Banality of Evil" (a totalitarian mentality which silently, and slowly, overtakes a body-politic). That has been happening long before Trump arrived on the scene but is perhaps only most visible now because it reaches a point of inflection. Ironically, then, the Sanders left and the Trump, non-fascist base, whatever part that is, have agreements regarding the abuse of state power the incremental increase in institutional takeovers (corporate sponsored, thus wealth inequality among each base) of the body politic.
One thing the US and Germany have in common is perpetual war economy. The US never has left that behind. It shows within the state via mass abuse and shootings and general violence and obviously beyond it. The US, as everyone, before and since Eisenhower knows, is built around a war-machine and that is a complaint shared by both left and right (it is not just a valid complaint but a necessary one). Hitler had no plan beyond conquering Europe and then making terms with the US. Anyway, totalitarianism is banal, too, and it is everywhere (not in the "you cannot say this" sense, for the West, but in the "nothing is going to change, significantly, despite what you say": corporate power to be precise).
Last edited:
Horseshit. “The left never wanted to understand why the MAGA thinks and acts the way they do.” It’s pretty simple, really: white nationalism with a sprinkling of Christian identity movement politics.
There’s nothing to delve into, to discover what makes the MAGAts tick. The MAGA strongholds also happen to be former slave states, and it’s no coincidence. These same areas are hostile to anything multicultural because it undermines their worldview of the USA being chosen to carry the banner of Jesus.
The MAGAt brain is nothing new. The Jim Crow laws, the opposition to civil rights, the antagonism of gay rights - it’s all part and parcel of the same low-intelligence, Christian bigotry, with roots in white supremacy. It’s not a secret and there’s nothing to learn from talking to MAGAts who are unconcerned with facts and immune to reason.
As the MAGAt movement grows more fascistic (if that were possible) they will shed the window dressing of fealty to the constitution. Plenty of people arrested and convicted of the Jan. 6 insurrection suggested getting rid of the constitution and installing true believers in congress, which is nothing short of a fascistic overthrow. The same people are fans of Trump, not of any coherent set of policies but an almost knee jerk pro-wrestling fanaticism that seeks to elevate a person to an unstoppable position of power. These people would gladly support getting rid of the 2-term limit, and that would be the end of the American experiment.
Could Trump have run as a Democrat? What might have happened then with his fanatics?
So you’re saying that when the left calls the right ‘fascist,’ it holds the same appropriateness as when the right calls the left ‘communist?’
There have been fascistic elements within the US government since WWII regardless of who was in power. The MAGA movement has further emboldened & illuminated such. Are we seeing a rise of the Fourth Reich currently? Don’t know, but we are far more closer to it being possible than a decade ago. Current flavor fascism doesn’t have to embody exactly what existed in the 30s just like current flavor Republicanism doesn’t embody what existed in the 1860s.
I assume if he never went MAGA, the MAGA fanatics would just be regular boring Tea Party fanatics. Though maybe someone else would have picked them up instead. Trump didn't create the conditions that led to his rise, he just supercharged them.
He didn’t have the name recognition in the 90s as he did in the teens due in large part to the show. It was around 05 iirc that he & his people started cottoning onto the fact that the republican base was ripe & malleable. Obama in the WH then catapulted Trump to a figurehead on the right basically with his birth certificate nonsense.
He just never had the numbers with voting dems to really matter.
He could Bloomberg his way into the debates, at least.
A million times this!
This is what we've been subjected to lately. This was last Sunday.
But we need to understand them.
Maybe I’m just too much of a vulgar Marxist and this is where we will disagree but imo there’s is a fundamental economic basis to fascism. Everything from its base petite bourgeois support to the country conditions(Germany was both very developed in certain sectors and underdeveloped in most of the country)
WW1 and the Great Depression along with the 1930’s are essential to fascism. Even something like steel production is incredibly important to understanding it.
I don’t find the vague timeless fascist checklist that can be applied throughout history to that helpful.
There’s plenty of scholars who argue that warning of fascism today are useless. It’s not about making both sides equally bad but trying to make sense of what people are saying.
Honestly I think it’s just as wrong. Both are misunderstanding political and economic systems.
What happens in your cranium when Trump truths that someone is a 'Marxist fascist?'
Is it like 'tilt' on a pinball machine? Or just laughter?
He has been rather prolific in using those two words together as descriptors recently.
You'd have to be at their level to "understand" them. I'm never stooping that low.
They'd have propbably supported Ted Cruz!
The only thing you need to understand them is have more than 2 brain cells
If Trump has a defining policy, it has been the border wall and preventing immigrants from crossing the border from Mexico. It's a powerful idea that binds together all manner of Americans across the country and he is a powerful and charismatic salesman. Anti-immigrant rhetoric then plays into notions of race and white supremacy and defending the interests of working class and rural Americans. Keep America white-ish and we'll make it great again.
Then again, I live in a state that is rural and 94% white and the people here just don't get MAGA at all. Trump only polled 31% against Biden 66%. So there is hope.
Then again, I live in a state that is rural and 94% white and the people here just don't get MAGA at all. Trump only polled 31% against Biden 66%. So there is hope.
Without checking the numbers, Vermont or Maine?
Mostly laughter then realising I’ve just lost a good number of brain cells listening to him talk.
Ideally Trump should be in prison until he dies but also he should get host a nightly talk show from his cell. It’s probably what he would want as well.
Vermont.
Gotta be Vermont.
Oh I'm planning a trip up there late fall. I feel better about it now.
I'd disagree. There are lots of similarities even if things are far from identical. The far right in particular are using many familiar fascist (or fascist adjacent) tactics, often with some success. For example, combining popularist strongman, anti-democratic, fear of other, control the narrative with the unrestrained propoganda and attacks on real journalism themes to hugely damage democracy.
C U N T would have used far fewer letters.
Agree that it’s dangerous but I don’t think any of these tactics are exclusive to the far fight. Anti-democratic, fear of other, control the narrative with the unrestrained propoganda and attacks on real journalism pretty describes the second George Bush Jr era after September 11th.
It was the “liberal” Tory government of David Cameron which went into The Guardian offices and destroyed files. Under New Labour we had - “British jobs for British workers” slogans.
Even the Trump “strongman”(The guy spends a his time bitching about others celebrities and dancing to the Macho Man by Village People)is closer to the Bush Jr dumb cowboy schtick.
It’s all really bad but I don’t see how its fascism.
I'd say it is far far more weaponsied by the far rightthan any other group and it therefore has far more influence and s far more dangerous.
It also isn't new. Murdoch has been a it for decades. But it is getting more and more insane and dangerous.
Cameron was very far right of what I'd consider centererist and had no problem using fear of foreigners as a political weapon even though he though brexit had no chance. The fecking idiot. And Labor, like center/left parties world wide have (had to?) pander to such things it seems.
I think Trump/MAGA/Associated far right nonsense is far closer to fascism than what has come before (recently). Not a fascist dictatorship (yet) but some of the danger signs are there. feck knows what insanity would follow if Trump ever got back in.