This diary includes portions of prior diaries about Trump voters, and the explicitly fascist nature of his campaign, and expands upon those themes.
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I begin with the call to action from Elie Wiesel.
From The Elie Wiesel Foundation website, here is an extended excerpt from his Nobel prize acceptance speech:
I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago. A young Jewish boy discovered the Kingdom of Night. I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish. It all happened so fast. The ghetto. The deportation. The sealed cattle car. The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.
I remember he asked his father: "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed? How could the world remain silent?"
And now the boy is turning to me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.
And then I explain to him how naïve we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe. (emphasis added)
These words are expressed so clearly, that I cannot hope to add anything, other than Wiesel is speaking to each of us today, as we face the incoming Trump administration, and the sickening reality that sixty million Americans voted for him, and 45% of eligible voters sat silently on election day.
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From a prior diary about Trump voters, and conservatives generally, based on the work of Theodor Adorno:
See if this sounds like any conservative politician or voter you’ve know your whole life:
a. Conventionalism. Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values.
b. Authoritarian submission. Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
c. Authoritarian aggression. Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
d. Anti-intraception. Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender- minded.
e. Superstition and stereotypy. The belief in mystical determinants of the individual's fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.
f. Power and "toughness." Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.
g. Destructiveness and cynicism. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
h. Projectivity. The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
i. Sex. Exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."
These variables were thought of as going together to form a single syndrome, a more or less enduring structure in the person that renders him receptive to antidemocratic propaganda.
These are not psychological features that are amenable to patient listening and reasoned discourse— in fact, patient listening and reasoned discourse are precisely the sort of displays that a conservative proto-fascist will respond to with disgust and hostility— (see items d., f. and g., above).
Try to understand them, reason with them, and you will be met with either dismissive contempt, or violent hate.
These are sixty million of your fellow citizens, and they don’t think any of us, not one person who calls themselves a progressive-- especially those who are not white heterosexual Christian males --deserve any place in society, are entitled to political representation, or equal protection of the law.
Believing otherwise, no matter how much you may want to, will get a lot of us imprisoned and killed.
It would be a mistake, I think, to say that fascism has been re-packaged and ‘rehabilitated’. I don’t think it ever went anywhere. It suffered electoral and tactical defeats following WWII, but I don’t think Trump voters were ‘conned’ into voting for a fascist regime by appealing to their ‘economic concerns’ or through a ‘populist message’. Populist appeals and playing on economic insecurity is modus operandi in how fascism recruits its very willing troops on the ground (ordinary, workaday people in ‘mainstream communities’).
In another diary a few days after the election, I cited the essay of Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism; in it, Eco identifies the mechanisms by which fascism draws in ordinary folk who feel ‘aggrieved’:
I believe no one who has read the history of the rise of fascism in Europe, or witnessed what conservatism, as embodied in the GOP for the past half century, has espoused, should be the least bit surprised. The people who voted for Trump voted for him because he is autocratic, not in spite of it. They voted for him because the support what he says, and what he has promised to do.
Umberto Eco, who lived through the ascendance of Mussolini, and the rise of fascism throughout Europe, gave us the clearest description of what fascism is, and why it appeals to those drawn to it, in his 1995 essay Ur-Fascism:
Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.
Irrationalism also depends on 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. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values…
Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why 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. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.
To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. (emphasis added)
Those that make use of the narrative of the sufferings of ‘the White Working Class’ obscure why this group is fertile for recruitment by fascists (I’m white and working class too, as are my wife and children, so why weren’t we taken in?)— resentment tied to cultural identity and affiliations.
The economic and social concerns and hardships of a white working class Trump voter are not different than those of a Latina, African-American, or Syrian refugee family. In fact, the WWC Trump voter is likely to be better off financially, have greater opportunities, and don’t face daily discrimination. Yet, as Eco notes, they attribute their concerns and hardships to anyone they perceive as different from them and their tribe.
This dynamic— ascribing personal hardship to nefarious efforts to unfairly help ‘unworthy others’— sets the stage for fascism, as John Pollard describes in his book, The Fascist Experience in Italy:
Fascism began its life on 23 March 1919 in Milan, the industrial, commercial and cultural capital of Italy, when an assortment of Futurists, ex-revolutionary syndicalists, ex-revolutionary socialists and ex-servicemen led primarily by Mussolini founded the Fascio di Combattimento. The name was chosen with care: the word fascio, simply meaning group, was selected in preference to the word ‘party’ to demonstrate that the new political movement wished to have nothing to do with the old, ‘corrupt’ parties of the existing political system. From fascio came fascismo, meaning the movement and its ideology, and fascistali for its followers. The word combattimento was meant to convey the idea that Fascism was a movement of struggle and action, and it reflected the crucial formative influence of the war on the movement and its leaders. Indeed, the Fascists, or ‘blackshirts’ as they were known from their most typical garment, assumed a paramilitary character and appearance from the start, thanks to the presence of so many ex-servicemen and the adoption by the movement of the rhetoric of interventionism, the wearing of uniforms and the carrying of weapons. (pg. 24)
But if there was a militant, not to say revolutionary, mood among the rank and file, then it is clear that the leadership of the working-class movement had not elaborated a revolutionary strategy. In particular, some of the leading figures in the Socialist Party preached revolution but had no practical plans to bring it about. A famous headline in the party newspaper, Avanti!, of November 1919 epitomises their attitude: ‘All we have to do is wait’. (pg. 29)
This to me sounds like the ‘Tea Party’, and to a lesser degree, libertarians, who ‘preach revolution’ without any constructive goal, but rather the destructive focus of ‘tearing down the corrupt government’. These are groups who will be ripe for a leader that claims (a la Trump) that he will ‘finally get something done’.
Agrarian Fascism established strongholds in Emilia, Tuscany, Umbria and the lower parts of Lombardy and Venetia, and even spread into the Marches. But as late as October 1922 Fascism was a little-known force in the South of Italy precisely because the phenomenon against which it was largely a reaction—agrarian socialism—was almost entirely absent from among a peasantry that was effectively held in check by permanent forces of land ‘guards’ working on behalf of the landowners. The major exception to this situation was the Tavoliere district of Apulia region. Here bitter conflict between organised peasant unions and large-scale capitalistic farmers or farm managers created the ideal conditions for squadrism. While the efforts of the landowners were crucial to the development of agrarian Fascism, by themselves they would not have been able to make it into the mass movement it became. Where did the thousands, and hundreds of thousands come from? Initially, they emerged from the other rural groups which felt threatened and offended by the Socialist victory in the provincial towns and cities—salaried employees of the landowners, shopkeepers and small businessmen and local professional people. A further group included small peasant proprietors and tenant farmers, leaseholders and even sharecroppers. Some of the latter felt threatened by the unprecedented dominance enjoyed by the Socialist-controlled councils and peasant leagues… (pg. 31)
Who finds the fascist message appealing? Those that believe they have been unfairly displaced in the economy and social order, but of course this presumes that they are entitled by birthright to a higher status than the ‘usurping others’ who they fear will displace them. Again, to emphasize the inherent bigotry that fuels fascism— it arises from resentment tied to cultural identity and affiliations:
1 Human races exist
2 Big and little races exist
3 The concept of race is purely biological
4 The present population of Italy is of the Aryan race
5 The racial composition of Italy has remained unchanged for a millennium
6 A pure Italian race now exists
7 The racial question in Italy must be considered from an exclusively biological point of view, without any religious or philosophical implications
8 The Jews do not belong to the Italian race
9 The Hamitic and Semitic races are not Aryan
10 No miscegenation must be allowed to contaminate the Italian race (pg. 131)
Like Trump supporters, the fascists claim they are simply superior— morally, certainly, and having special claim of ownership of the country and it’s institutions. Democracy has nothing to do with it:
For the Fascists, will and intelligence were the base of their moral right, coupled with the fact that they were ‘the brave and strong’, rather than possessors of any historical or democratic legitimacy. The idea of a dynamic, enlightened minority is implicit. (pg. 124)
This concept of the ‘superior group’ immediately subordinates any who are deemed to fall outside the superior group. In contemporary America, conservatives refer to themselves as ‘real Americans’, just as the Italian fascists spoke of ‘the imperial destiny of the Italian people‘ (pg. 126). The interests of the (self-anointed) superior group are intertwined with the functions of the state— the state serves this group, and this group is empowered and entitled to enforce its wishes, through the instruments of state authority:
Here we have, in the clearest terms, a rejection of the liberal-democratic doctrine of individual, imprescriptible human rights, and its corollary, the ‘mechanistic’ idea of the state as a convenience, as the result of a contract between individuals to promote their common interests and nothing more. The Fascist idea of the state is organic: that is, the individual cannot ‘choose’ to belong to it, but belongs to it, unconditionally, by virtue of history and genealogy. By the accident of his birth he comes under the authority of a nation/ state and belongs to it body and soul: he is an organic part of it. Hence, all human activity—economic, cultural, political, religious—comes into its purview. Ultimately, the individual exists for the state and not the state for the individual… (pg. 126)
Since all activity within the country is subsumed within goals of the state, an economic model that directs production and the workforce to meet the needs of the state was devised:
Corporatism is an Italian Fascist creation… Fascist corporatism is an integrated, unified vision of life and of man which influences every human activity, individual and collective, and consequently also the economy. (pg. 128)
The next time you hear someone celebrate ‘the entrepreneurial spirit’ of the American investor (the ‘makers’ in Ayn Rand’s parlance) or some Supreme Court justice argues that ‘a corporation is a person’ in the eyes of the law, remember that this vision of a corporate state was the creation of fascists, perhaps fascism’s crowning achievement.
The corporate economic model is by definition anti-democratic— that’s precisely what it was designed to be. In that sense, a corporate scam artist like Trump, who uses the laws to his own benefit, and simply ignores them when not convenient, is the purest expression of the fascist economic model.
What the election has taught us that fascism never went away, it barely went into hiding. In Italy, not long after WWII, when pretexts arose, the fascists re-emerged, often violently:
Other aspects of the legacy of Fascism constituted threats, sometimes potentially mortal, to the democratic system itself. In particular, the resurgence of squadrism, the use of violence for political ends, threatened to destabilise the new republic…
… right-wing political violence most strongly manifested itself in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This was a period of student and youth agitation, new social movements, including women’s and gay liberation, widespread social unrest and trade union militancy in Italy. This was accompanied by a massive increase in electoral support for the Communists—peaking at over a third of the vote in the 1976 elections. The neo-Fascist terrorist gangs of this period were a backlash against all this left-wing activity and also against the emergence of leftwing terrorist groups such as the Red Brigades. Whereas the left-wing terrorists tended to attack, maim and sometimes kill individual targets, such as ex-prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978, the terrorists of the right—who significantly used the names of the Fascist squads of the 1920s and 1930s (similarly, many leftwing terrorists looked back to the partisan bands of wartime resistance for inspiration), such as S.A.M. (‘Mussolini Action Squad’)—often planted bombs in public places which killed dozens of innocent bystanders and passers-by. All this was part of a so-called ‘strategy of tension’, a campaign designed to lead to a breakdown of law and order and a consequent collapse of public confidence in democratically elected government, precipitating a takeover by the army. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s there were several unsuccessful coup attempts. (pg. 136)
Conservatives perhaps adopted less obvious terms to couch their ideology in (some, like Jeff sessions, not so much), but at it’s core it never strayed from the core of bigoted authoritarianism, relying on the state, and the corporate economy, to impose their will:
The events of the last few years raise many questions about the Fascist legacy:
1 Is Fascism/neo-Fascism finally dead in Italy, apart, that is, from the hard-core activists mentioned above?
2 Have the neo-Fascist leopards changed their spots?
3 Are we now really in a post-Fascist era, as Fini and his friends, and some Italian historians, contend?
Many people, both inside and outside Italy, would answer ‘No’ to all these questions.
… the behaviour of Fini and his political colleagues has been ambivalent in the extreme. On the one hand, he has condemned the ‘Nazi-skins’ for commemorating Mussolini’s appointment as prime minister on 31 October, when he said of them, These young people have nothing in their brains, they should be sent to the mines’; on the other hand, he has also publicly declared that, ‘Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the twentieth century’ (pg. 143, emphasis added)
Elected and appointed GOP officials, and overtly conservative institutions, are the operational arm of fascism within the state— judges, police departments, the New York FBI office, the Heritage Foundation, ALEC, etc. The presence of conservative proto-fascists within institutions of authority ‘greases the rails’, and provides cover for a fascist grab of a democracy:
Another important aspect of the legacy of Fascism was the survival, in increasingly powerful positions in the armed forces and security services, the judiciary and the civil service, of large numbers of Fascist sympathisers. (pg. 137)
And they have now shown that they are perfectly comfortable with threats of violence (ask Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell if they think those that shouted ‘hang Hillary’ at Trump rallies should be prosecuted, or even simply disavowed— oh right, they fully accept Trump as mainstream now, so forget that I even I asked). One need not look far to see examples such as Dylan Roof, the DC pizzaria shooter, or any number of Trump rallies, to see this in our country, present day.