[P2P-F] Fwd: Trump is Indeed a Fascist..And It's NOT Just Trump.. one expert on fascism

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tikkun <magazine at tikkun.org>
Date: Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 7:39 PM
Subject: Trump is Indeed a Fascist..And It's NOT Just Trump.. one expert on
fascism
To: Michelsub2004 at gmail.com


<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lAt6Xr74BN%2BO3jLGrhAmPAVIzlaqYSmS>
You can read this online at http://
www.tikkun.org/nextgen/one-expert-says-yes-donald-trump-is-a-fascist-and-its-not-just-trump-2
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ISDAoR7roUN00PWMwm8LQAVIzlaqYSmS>
January
5, 2016

Editor’s Note: Tikkun magazine is a 501-c-3 non profit that is precluded by
law from endorsing political candidates or opposing them. But we are not
precluded from publishing articles by our readers who take strong stands
about electoral issues. We have a tiny staff and do not have the capacity
to verify empirical claims made by our authors–so it’s up to you to make
those inquiries on your own.  On the other hand, as the magazine that came
into existence as “the voice of Jewish liberals and progressives and the
alternative to Commentary magazine and the voices of Jewish conservatism
and conformism in American society,” even though we are now ALSO both a
Jewish voice AND an INTERFAITH voice for secular humanists and militant
atheists AS WELL as for Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and any
other religion that cares about human rights, social justice, environmental
sanity and peace, we have a special interest in challenging fascism and
other anti-democratic or hate-promoting social movements whether they be in
the U.S., Israel, or any other society.  So we are proud to present below
one such inquiry into whether we are now facing the emergence of a fascist
movement in the U.S., and welcome responses from our readers and invite
other analyses including those that challenge the perspective we are
printing here.  — Rabbi Michael Lerner   RabbiLerner.Tikkun at gmail.com
*One Expert Says, Yes, Donald Trump is a Fascist.  And It’s Not Just Trump.*

Richard Steigmann-Gall



*In ways* that immediately brought to mind dangerous parallels with the
yellow Star of David patch worn by Jews during the Third Reich, Donald
Trump in November suggested that Syrian refugees, posing as allegedly
dangerous Fifth Columnists, should wear badges on account of their Muslim
faith so that they could not infiltrate American society and carry out
plots against the nation.  When asked by a reporter whether he thought the
comparison with Nazi Germany was a fair one, Trump responded “you tell me
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=CQDl0RdRgAPEgSGSt2F1JUrcyULrrO16>.”
So shocking have been these and similar statements that not just liberal
voices and outlets, but even conservative ones, began to speculate whether
Trump is, in fact, a capital-F fascist.  This proposition had
circulated on leftist
websites and blogs
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=enI5322PAuwXokd9TfkySUrcyULrrO16>
for
months, fed by outrage at Trump’s positions (usually stated unabashedly and
flippantly) regarding immigration, foreign policy or torture.  At the end
of November, this proposition started to enter the mainstream, with
CNN.com’s article openly considering the question, interviewing published
scholars of historical fascism to ask for their expert opinions
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=POrpgUyYALOrSHlg1t4FJUrcyULrrO16>.
Dozens of other mainstream outlets then began to run their own
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=khZqcsAW7Lrij%2FpZ6dZYEUrcyULrrO16>
“Is
Trump a Fascist?” pieces as well.

It is perhaps a reflection of their hesitance to validate the abundant
overuse of the “F-word” in American public discourse that published
scholars of historical fascism have shied away from concluding that Trump
is a fascist.  Steve Ross of the University of Southern California, while
conceding that Trump’s anti-immigrant xenophobia is “very dangerous,” would
not go so far as to say it is “fascist.”  Stanley Payne, long given to a
meticulous, phenomenological definition of fascism, argued that in no way
could Trump be considered one
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=g4yTBI22Jm%2F8pXSzyEd4y0rcyULrrO16>.
British scholars like Roger Griffin have weighed in on this question as
well, coming to similar conclusions.  Arguably the leading American scholar
of fascism, Columbia University’s Robert Paxton, similarly denied that
Trump is a fascist, but conceded that he can “understand why some people
might be inclined to point out similarities between Trump and fascist
leaders,” adding: “He’s good at making astonishing speeches that make
people sit up and take notice. So there’s some of that manipulation of
public emotions that is visible with Trump.”  One sees a pattern in the
analysis, in which one or two aspects of Trump that are worrisome are
conceded to “look fascist,” but that other aspects of Trump’s personality
or platform means the bill does not fit
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=1Ss6jG1LMpdJ0TdNlcJdOUrcyULrrO16>
.

Whether the comparison hinges on issues of style or substance, the question
of whether Trump is actually fascist or “merely” xenophobic, demagogic and
populist has so much traction for American audiences because Fascism
remains embedded in our history and collective memory, perceived to be the
greatest historical enemy of the “American Way.”  Fascism is the ultimate
violation of American values, so evil that we were willing to ally
ourselves with the Soviet Union in the 1940s in order to destroy it.  Since
then, the “F-word” has been used as a term of abuse, a kind of grammatical
mud slung at one’s ideological opponent, much more than as a
dispassionately applied category of analysis.  But that both sides of the
political aisle in American politics are now using it to describe a
politician, has given us an opening to revisit the question.  Aside from
the political usefulness of using the word to discredit a figure whom the
left detests and the right fears, does Trump actually hold up to the label
of “Fascist”?  Is the comparison between Trump and historical fascists at
all useful?  And, perhaps most importantly: aside from using “fascist” as a
descriptive moniker applied to one man, what does the question tell us
about the state of American politics and the American electorate?

*Many scholars* have insisted that a person or a politics cannot be fascist
unless it holds up against a check-list of “fascist minima,” attributes
that are almost always about externals.  Whether it is goose-stepping,
salutes, shirts of the same color, parades, armbands, or other eye-catching
props, an American public raised on cable TV documentaries regards fascism
as something that must be obvious to identify visually.  And occasionally
fringe groups come along, most notoriously the American Nazi Party, to
serve up the demand for a visually identifiable fascism.  Most of the
internet commentariat or scholars who have been interviewed about Trump’s
fascist bona fides have avoided discounting the question on the grounds of
style – though oddly, given how much he decries the search for externals in
his own scholarly work, Paxton has recently emerged as something of an
exception.  So far most observers have looked to essential questions of
substance; the “platform” that Trump seems to uphold, and that his public
seems to clamor for.  How fascist is this platform?

In spite of his recent insistence that he’d need to see “identically
colored shirts”
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=zFooD1pD33KIIHqZC8DWyErcyULrrO16>
to
take the question of Trump seriously, Robert Paxton has been one of the
most persuasive advocates for taking a deeper view.  Weary of the
“bestiary” approach of describing fascism by its appearances, in his magnum
opus from 2004 *The Anatomy of Fascism*, Paxton seeks instead to explain
how fascism understood itself; the social traction of fascism as a
political movement; and what kinds of political and economic conditions
were necessary for it to grow and eventually succeed.  Rather than
presenting a series of unalterable criteria that read like a check-list,
Paxton shows how fascism develops in context, embodying and taking
advantage of a series of “mobilizing passions” to build and maintain a
following.  The leading of these passions include:

   - an overwhelming sense of crisis that cannot be solved by traditional
   methods;
   - the subordination of the individual to the group and the maintenance
   of group purity;
   - the group’s belief that it is a victim;
   - the need for the authority of a natural chief, whose qualities and
   instincts rise above abstract reason;
   - and the use of exclusionary violence as part of an effort to reverse
   perceived decline.

In all of these ways, Trump not only reveals that he is indeed fascist, but
perhaps even more importantly that his followers – even as some of them are
in the habit of describing their own enemies on the left as “fascist” and
who have loudly professed their disinterest in a caudillo – are actively
seeking fascist solutions to problems that ail them.

***

*The perception* of national decline is one of Trump’s most persistent
points on the campaign trail.  Anyone who has been observing the Tea Party
can see that Trump is happy to tap into a long-percolating narrative of
degeneration and the ruination of great American traditions through the
corruption of the political establishment.  Populism in this country has
historically always railed against the “plutocrats” of the nation’s
capital; Trump extends this narrative of working against “rotten politics”
in ways that radicalize it and open up new paths towards a “solution.”  One
of his most ominous declarations makes this radicalization abundantly clear
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=B7GnU%2Fi1OaaBtmI1Ls4pu0rcyULrrO16>:
“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before … And certain
things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country.”
Watch out, Trump warns; new realities mean that America must depart from
its usual political methods.

Observers of Trump commonly contend that this radicalization still cannot
constitute fascism because of the American tradition of parliamentary
democracy, one that Trump insists he wants to uphold.  Merely entering
electoral politics, we are assured, ensures that Trump cannot be fascist
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=oYpI3PRnzoX8a6yiywVpiwVIzlaqYSmS>.
What such arguments fail to appreciate is that fascists all came to power,
or sought to, through the democratic process.  Not just by winning
executive power, but also legislative power.  Upon entering the
legislative, they attempt to make parliamentary government so
dysfunctional, so despised, that they would then be able to promote
themselves as the sword that would cut through the Gordian Knot of a
political chaos they helped create.  The Tea Party once more provides the
most compelling evidence of this fascistic tendency – one that Trump would
surely extend.  The failure of Kevin McCarthy’s brief gambit
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=yho63MrPs2l5eOuPEoVuZErcyULrrO16>
for
the role of Speaker of the House in October was widely – and correctly –
perceived as just one of many instances of Tea Party congressional zealotry
against the “establishment.”

Deliberate congressional obstruction against standing procedure illustrates
a desire to create a political “revolution.”  Aimed against a president
whom Trump and most Tea Partiers openly believe acquired his office
illegitimately
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=pJ8BUbmqVX7UsFFT1Q1%2BukrcyULrrO16>,
such obstruction also demonstrates a need to constitute an “alternative
civic authority” which defends the community’s “legitimate” interests in
the face of a failed legal state – the political prerequisite of fascism,
says Paxton.  The replacement of McCarthy with one of the Tea Party’s own,
Tim Ryan, only succeeded in an environment of complete surrender to any
sense of normal parliamentary compromise.  And now that he has attempted to
conduct normal parliamentary business through the passing of a budget, Ryan
himself
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=oWnvRL%2BscMVJIaI3XabmjUrcyULrrO16>
has
become the latest target of Tea Party rage.  There is no sense in which the
political “conversation” that forms the core of parliamentary democracy is
anything but a source of contempt to the Tea Party, their constituents, and
to Trump, who happily promotes himself as a strong man who would cut
through the clutter of the parliamentary process.  In spite of observers
referring to the McCarthy episode as “chaos” or a “laughing stock,” it is
more accurate to say that the episode reflected the Tea Party’s methodical
agenda to infiltrate parliamentary democracy in order to render it
impotent.  What they seek to replace it with is, at this point, an open
question; but Tea Party quest for a strong man who will lead the country
through plebiscitary rule
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lAt6Xr74BN%2F8GxTpSMq72AVIzlaqYSmS>,
while formally leaving the institutions of parliamentary democracy intact,
must be considered a very real possibility.

*The supremacy* of the group over the individual is a broad idea.  It can
mean economic protectionism to the point of autarky.  It can mean the
retention or even expansion of social paternalism for “real” members of the
national community (or the *pays réel* as it was known to Fascist thinkers)
at the expense of those who are deemed alien to the community and wrongly
permitted inside it (the *pays légal*).  Or it can mean the prohibition of
the individual’s right to controlling their own bodies (ie: abortion) in
the name of communal values.  The American self-conception of a nation of
rugged individualism would seem to immediately discount any consideration
of the “group over the individual” that fascism necessitates.

According to journalist Eric Levitz, among many others, Trump’s pride in
deal-making at the expense of others, as well as his celebration of his own
playboy lifestyle, displays too much individualism
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=FTPq%2B%2B3IOFdDGO63JYBsVUrcyULrrO16>
to
qualify Trump as a fascist.  Historian Isabel Hull has similarly dismissed
the possibility of Trump as a fascist on account of hisopportunism
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NWgg2HP0nFJJQEpBALO8R0rcyULrrO16>.
What these conclusions overlook, however, is the well-documented ability of
fascist leaders to line their own pockets and engage in opportunism, even
as they claim to represent the selfless virtues of the people they rule.
It hardly contradicts the logic of fascist communalism for some in the
national community – particularly its leaders – to completely change
political orientations (as did Mussolini) or to earn incredible wealth
while promoting the interests of the group.  Fascism, unlike socialism, has
never had a problem with class inequality.

There are ways in which the interests of the group finds particular
expression, both in Trump’s platform and that of fascist thought, in the
realm of economics.  The combination of government expenditure on social
programs – most obviously Social Security – with the call for strong
protectionism seems, insofar as it blunts the neoliberal imperative to
generate maximal wealth for the owner class, to be the traditional
attributes of the progressive left.  On the other hand, the most
vituperative and open expression of racist, anti-immigrant sentiment seems
clearly to be the provenance of the hard right.  In fact, the combination
has historical precedent in populist fascism.  Lee Drutman points out
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2BIxEiadVxRSo5MiPPpDmE0rcyULrrO16>
that
Trump’s combination of anti-immigration xenophobia – at that point
concerned with expelling millions of Mexican citizens, but subsequently
fortified with cultural hysteria about Muslim refugees from Syria – with
strong support for upholding government entitlements and imposing tariffs
on cheap Mexican and Chinese imports, earns him a unique following of
disaffected Americans – white, lower-middle class, and déclassé – which no
other establishment Republican can capture.  Concerned as they are with
tearing down all barriers to shareholder profit, establishment free-trade
Republicans do not reflect the interests of a majority of their own voters,
according to Drutman.

A similar dynamic pertains in historical fascism, where eagerness to employ
social protectionism and back-to-work government programs, even to the
point of deficit spending, went hand-in-hand with economic and social
exclusion of those deemed no longer part of the national community.  Both
these “leftist” and “rightist” programs violate the theology of
laissez-faire economics, while still protecting the profit motive of
community members and upholding the necessity of class difference; but the
combination of the two is unique to the economic nationalism of fascism.
While Trump has yet to advocate a full-on fascist autarky, in which the
nation would isolate itself from the global economy and entirely sustain
its own needs without dependence on international trade, like the fascists
of the 1930s, in the name of protecting the national community, he is much
more willing than other establishment politicians – even many Democrats –
to defy the ineffable, neoliberal logic of simultaneous tax cuts and budget
cuts.  Indeed, not only does his vast fortune not disqualify him as a
fascist; it ensures that he can run for the presidency without currying
favor from fellow economic elites who bankroll the other GOP candidates and
who seek the further dismantling of the welfare state.  As he put it
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KM%2FRTf9%2FfjgQNr9jJ3vEN0rcyULrrO16>
on
conservative talk radio while extolling the virtues of Canadian-style
single-payer health care, “you have to take care of poor people.”

*Trump hammers* relentlessly on the idea that his America is becoming a
victim – of aggressive foreign leaders who are taking advantage of weak
leadership from an illegitimate executive; of media gate-keepers of the
establishment who work for elites instead of the greater whole; or more
perniciously, of the decline and demise of “real” Americans themselves.  As
he put it in the second GOP presidential debate, “This is a country where
we speak English, not Spanish.”  On other occasions, Trump has professed
his love of the Christian Bible, and “strongly considers” the possibility
of closing mosques.  In such moments, Trump is happy to tap into a Tea
Party preoccupation with demographic calamity brought by a higher rate of
child-birth among non-whites than whites.

As Harvard’s Danielle Allen has put it
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=mDULFoepaM%2B6FtiYR3VLsErcyULrrO16>,
Trump’s core constituency is based on “those whose well-being, status and
self-esteem are connected to historical privileges of ‘whiteness’.”  (A
whiteness, it should be added, that was meant not to erase, but to
transcend class difference; in this way, the billionaire can decry huge
compensation packages for corporate heads as a “complete and total joke
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=v0FBoIl%2F116JmeMNPTiIUUrcyULrrO16>.”)
Declarations from the Klan
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=a4OsKtGJ07qakvN7MKoYrkrcyULrrO16>
(a
group which Paxton describes in his *Anatomy* as “fascist”) and other white
nationalist groups
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=bRP36ondKgYQrPBx3mN57ErcyULrrO16>
reveal
that they consider Trump a boon to their own cause.  Trump’s rallies, while
not filled with garbed Klansmen, nonetheless form a mirror image of white
resentment, filled as they are with emotional, volatile crowds calling for
restored national greatness, openly and unapologetically tinged with racist
sentiment
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=yoV95mPInvaYr%2BzCizjTS0rcyULrrO16>.
Historical fascism also expressed the anxieties of a once-dominant,
majoritarian “center” whose positions of privilege, they told themselves,
were similarly being eroded by “outsiders” defined both racially and
economically – except instead of Jews and Marxists then, it is Mexicans and
Muslims today.

*Regarding the* question of a natural leadership personality, we have the
most obvious point of fascist contact.  Even for those who otherwise reject
the contention that Trump is fascist, his personality style and the kind of
rapture he invokes in his audience are readily conceded as fascistic.  The
hypermasculine cult of personality he has developed around himself has,
from the start, been his calling card.  It is not just a matter of his
blustering personal style or his charisma behind a podium.  He touts his
natural leadership abilities and his Elmer Gantry success story in the
private sphere, his ability to do so never diminished among his
constituents by his actual track record of multiple professional failures.
He insists, like any good fascist leader, that his instincts will prevail
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2Bld6ed5qb8AXnQOLPwYio0rcyULrrO16>
over
the limited intellectual abilities of his rivals.  His misogyny is directed
not just against predictable female targets on the left, but also against
those on the right who would question his credentials to lead.  Whether it
is mocking Carly Fiorina’s presidential candidacy by asking “Would you vote
for that face?”
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=phw%2FMenOFCG4%2Fvygb2gi0ErcyULrrO16>
or
describing Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during a Democratic
presidential debate as “disgusting,” Trump seeks to discredit women’s roles
in the nation’s political life.  Like fascist leaders of the past,
personally insulting women does nothing to diminish his standing among
female voters who bewail the erosion of traditional gender roles and
actively applaud Trump for his “manliness
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=5V7nWwUQuMsjynEiaK7dAwVIzlaqYSmS>
.”

But there is also a deeper, ontological point of convergence with
fascists:  Trump’s ability to sustain credibility with his audience in
spite of a flagrant disrespect for empirical reality.  Like fascist leaders
of the 1930s whose worldviews so consistently flew in the face of
observable fact, so it is with Trump: by one estimate only seven percent
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NH%2BFKA9fhPL0Nbn%2B%2Fjf5wgVIzlaqYSmS>
of
what he relays as facts can be described as correct.  What would normally
hound a career politician in a liberal democracy – lying to or misleading
one’s constituency for the sake of vote-getting – in Trump’s case does
nothing to diminish his following.  His base are just as drawn to an
alternate worldview as he is, impervious to easy demonstrations that his
claims about Muslims celebrating 9/11 in Jersey City, or the racial nature
of American street violence, are patently false.

*Finally, and* perhaps most vitally, we have the question of a militarist
ethic of violence.  Trump lacks a militia or a band of armed followers,
which could augur poorly for a fascist.  Fascist movements have typically
formed their own parties, with their own militias or paramilitary
ancillaries.  Even though it would make sense for Trump and the Tea Party
to formally found a third party
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=JUOTWwjq8P3chI3naQCdWUrcyULrrO16>,
their route to power so far has been via infiltration of a preexisting
political party rather than the creation of a new one.  But Trump’s embrace
of violence at his own rallies still sets him far apart from anyone else in
the political establishment.  This has taken the form of the violent
expulsion of a Black Lives Matter protester at an Alabama rally in
November, which was accompanied by racist taunts.  When asked about the
violent nature of the encounter, Trump went so far as to endorse it
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=msDs0%2BQq%2BTa1sq%2Fh4Y6OzErcyULrrO16>:
““Maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely
disgusting what he was doing.”  While protestors are known to disrupt
nearly all political rallies, no other candidate has gone so far as to
describe such interruptions as “absolutely disgusting.”  This represents a
radicalization of Trump’s own previous attitude to violence at his rallies,
where Trump happily ginned up his public’s hostility for non-white
protesters while makingnominal calls
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2FoJmmbLnLvxh2S%2FZRUsplErcyULrrO16>
(mostly
ignored) that they not be hurt.  While this hardly constitutes a fascist
ethos of the beauty of violence, the radicalization visible at recent
events – including open displays of blatant racism
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=wwAOvmmIeaDFQmXmoaXxwwVIzlaqYSmS>
among
his audience – portends of heightened violence at future Trump rallies; at
his current pace, Trump looks increasingly willing to abide and even
encourage this growing violence.

Aside from this question of Trump encouraging violence at his own rallies,
there is a comparable populist movement which articulates many of the same
obsessions with political decline and illegitimacy of current government,
and which have been easily the most menacing in their threat to use
violence: the Oath Keepers.  While the Trump campaign has not yet actively
cooperated with the Oath Keepers, the shared set of ideological
preoccupations between them, as well as the Tea Party, are clear.  Ever
since the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of America’s most
visible foe, the political landscape has been dotted with paramilitary
militias that stoke conspiracy theories of American greatness being
undermined from within.  Like the Tea Party which came after it, these
groups speak to the fears of the “beleaguered” white Christian American.
The Oath Keepers, in actively seeking confrontation with elected
government, take this militia dynamic a step further.  Like the original
fascist organizations in the 1920s, the Oath Keepers are made up of
veterans as well as police officers and others who feel they are truer
representatives of the nation’s values than its “corrupt” and “decadent”
officials.

Distrustful of the *pays légal*, the Squadristi of Italy and Freikorps of
Germany were similarly established by veterans after WWI to defend the
interests of the *pays réel*, in the process creating a “parallel
authority” in their quest for legitimacy.  In doing so, these
paramilitaries sought to paint actual authority as an alien force.  In
precisely the same progression, the disaffected, conspiratorially-minded
veterans of the Oath Keepers tell themselves they have “no choice” but to
“save” the American nation.  Whether “patrolling” the streets of Ferguson
with military-grade weaponry after the protests that gave rise to Black
Lives Matter; menacingly aiming those same weapons
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=uRJon1xixvHMVDa1jX6%2Fl0rcyULrrO16>
 at *pays légal* authorities at the ranch of tax-evader and racist Cliven
Bundy; or promising to prevent government authorities
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2BIxEiadVxRSOEhcF%2ByEoeUrcyULrrO16>
from
making Kentucky civil servant Kim Davis comply with the law, the potential
for extra-legal violence, while yet to be seen, is obvious.  The seizure of
Oregon federal property by Cliven Bundy’s son Ammon
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=yo15C%2FVK60Wg01XT%2F9sNOkrcyULrrO16>
does
not include the involvement of the Oath Keepers; but this most recent
instance of paramilitary extremism brings with it not just the same milieu,
but the same “passions”: veterans who understand the nation better than
elected officials; defense of the “real nation” against illegitimate state
authority; and a willingness to die for the cause
<http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NPfpB%2F1lQaQ9cxrCMLLwwErcyULrrO16>.
If Oath Keeper and related radical militias have not yet engaged in
full-scale vigilante violence that marked fascist paramilitaries, it is
because cooler heads of government authorities have so far prevailed.  They
will continue to seek out confrontation when they can.

***

*No compromise* over any issue.  Emotionally overdetermined intransigence.
Racialized fear of demographic “calamity”.  A politics of socio-cultural
resentment. This is the ideological content of fascism’s historical
electorate, as well as Trump’s “grass roots.”  It would be missing the
forest for the trees to complain that Trump does not personally inhabit all
of Paxton’s “passions.”  The larger, much more pressing question is not
whether Trump lives up to a necessary “fascist minimum”, or even whether he
is a clown or false flag: It’s whether there is a significant portion of
the American population who have been waiting for a Trump.  With every new
envelope he pushes, his audience grows more enraptured, not less.  More
enthralled, not less.  There have been demagogues throughout American
history, and the electorate has made sure they remained marginal figures.
Should Trump be defeated in this election cycle, the anger and resentment
he has stoked will not simply disappear.  We must worry, then, about a
larger fascist “mood” in the United States.  The Tea Party and the Oath
Keepers, as only the two most obvious exponents, together show that the
answer is “yes.”

Diagnosing the problem as fascist leads to the question of a solution.
What becomes the utility of knowing Trump is fascist?  For the historian of
the 1930s, the answer seems clear: either the forces that could coalesce
against it remain divided, vowing to eternal enmity, as happened in Germany
on the eve of Hitler’s ascent to power; or they create a united front,
however unwieldy, as happened with the Popular Front in France a few years
later.  In the former case, the left accused the center of being scarcely
better than the right.  In the latter case, a coalition of center and left,
long at odds with each other over questions of ideology and strategy,
looked at results in Germany as a salutary lesson to be avoided. They
bridged their considerable differences and succeeded in staving off a
domestic French fascism.  Should the right in this country fail to coalesce
around Trump, and he runs as an independent, then a victory for the
Democratic candidate – even should that candidate be Bernie Sanders –
becomes very likely.  But should Trump win the GOP presidential nomination
and rally the party around him, it will be incumbent upon those on the
left, however “centrist” or “socialist,” to put aside their differences and
once more defeat the forces of fascism.



Richard Steigmann-Gall is Associate Professor of History at Kent State
University, where he served as the director of the Jewish Studies Program
from 2004 to 2010.  He has published widely on fascism, Nazism and
antisemitism.  His book, *The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity*,
came out in 2003 through Cambridge University Press.
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