The author of “How Fascism Works“, Yale philosophy professor Jacob Stanley, tells NPR that the leadership cult around Donald Trump, the president’s enemy-traitor rhetoric, and other markers, show the U.S. is losing its democratic status — in effect, slouching toward fascism. Bill Whittle doesn’t “want to hear any of that nonsense”, and humbly offers to help Prof. Stanley to understand how fascism works.
Background Resources:
Fascism Scholar Says U.S. Is ‘Losing Its Democratic Status’
[The NPR Political Podcast, September 6, 2020]The G.O.P. Delivers Its 2020 Platform. It’s From 2016 [The New York Times, August 25, 2020]
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Bill Whittle Network · Yale Fascism Expert Tags Trump Leadership Cult, Enemy-Traitor Rhetoric Risks
25 replies on “Yale Fascism Expert Tags Trump Leadership Cult, Enemy-Traitor Rhetoric Risks”
Great description Bill. For years I have been questioning how it is that fascists are described as right wing/conservatives. Essentially there is no difference between communism and fascism. And they are both forms of socialism.
It’s intersesting that the NPR peice describes Stanley as a “Yale Fascism Expert”. From what he says it seems that the term doesn’t actually mean, as you might expect, someone who is an expert on fascism. It clearly means someone who is expert in using the label “fascist” to smear his opponants.
Bill’s correct, the word “fascist” is so degraded as to be next to useless these days and “right wing” isn’t much better.
Fascist, as Bill said, now pretty much means anyone disagreeing (especially winning a debate) with a regressive leftist or anyone disliked by them.Right Wing, is now just a watered down form of fascist for many comentators.
In the run up to the French revolution the radicals who wanted change sat on the left side of the French national assembly and those opposing it (or at least opposing radical change) sat on the right. It’s a very crude way of describing politics in a sophisticated modern political system. The Donald has been reviled as challenging much of the established order and bringing a great deal of change, is he left wing?
Back in 1993 dear old, sad old Auntie BBC came in for some flack (and indeed mockery) when BBC News actually described the old school commies attempting a coup against Boris Yeltsin as “right wing”. Of course, in the context of Soviet/Russian politics at the time that could be defended as technically correct, but in the context of the BBC’s audience and their understanding of politics to describe the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s Deputies as right wing is somewhere between ludicrous and deliberately misleading.
If they’d applied this logic to the Brexit debate then the Remainiacs would be the right wingers as they are trying to defend the status quo while we patriots of the Leave side are in fact being very left wing by demanding radical change.
The term fascist is used almost as slightly weaker form of Nazi and both are used as terms of political abuse by people who know next to nothing about them other than they are powerful magic against patriotic right wingers in the English speaking world. Really Nazism and fascism are quite different beasts that share some traits but are linked more due to history than ideology.
As Bill says, Mussolini’s party referred to itself as fascist having adopted the fasces is conscious imitation of the Roman Empire. Franco’s Spain (1936-1975), Salazar’s Portugal (1933-1974) and Metaxas’s Greece (1936-1974) have all been called fascist by various folk at various times but did not describe or think of themselves as such. They all have things in common with fascist Italy, but also important differences. For a start, Portugal and Spain remained carefully neutral in WWII while Greece was invaded first by Italy and then by Germany, hardly ideological unity. They were all nationalist, socially traditional, anti-communist and were not afraid to supress elements they considered dangerous, but they varied greatly in how these things played out.
This is fast becoming a blog post rather than a comment, so I’d better start fleshing it out. In the meantime, you might like this article from the Independent back in 1998 on Hitler’s socialist credentials.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialist-dream-1186455.html
Bill and Scott….hug it out, boys.
Interesting how the Fasces is prominently featured at the House of Representatives rostrum. 🤔
Not positive, but I suspect that is related to “E Pluribus Unum” in some way.
As Bill mentioned, the core point is that someone (authorized to be on the floor) can stand up in the House or Senate and accuse the Speaker or the Leader or the President or the AG or … of vile and and fowl things, and the Capital Police still cannot or do not come in and take that person way.
With some restrictions related to libel law, any of us can say the same anywhere and also not (usually) expect to be dragged away in chains or zip ties.
HAH! The current Speaker of the House is a bird-brained-fool, so I suppose your spelling error was apropos. Thanks for the chuckle.
In Rome the Fasces were carried by the Lictors, civil guards who walked in front of senior offcials of the Republic and later the Empire. The Fasces in the House of Representatives are in emulation of Rome, presumably dating from way before the adoption by Mussolini. Like the swastica, they’re a symbol once widely used before being given a very dark and toxic gloss in the 1930s and 40s.
Also in Lincoln’s chair at the Memorial.
Bill at 3:20 about “Fascism … always landing in Europe”: Internet says Tom Wolfe (1976?)
The hypocrisy of the Left is a staggering offence to the upright and an unperceived impediment to those who are willing to stoop so low. Academics now silence all opposition through the cackling chorus of political correctness, empty platitudes, and vague and unfounded accusations, like the ones that riddled those two preposterous articles. It’s typical of the Defecting Dems, and their MSM allies, to label every one of their opponents as what the Dems are — fascists!
Once again, projection by the left. They all fell into the cult of 0bama, therefore there must be a cult of Trump.
Bill, as Lionell said in his comment, you found the single most important point – collectivism vs individualism. All I’ll add to his comment is that anyone who supports collectivism by definition must hate or, at least, be indifferent to, their own life, as well as everyone else’s. They must ultimately be willing to die for the imaginary collective or, worse, give up even their own children as human sacrifices.
Collectivists – even those who merely speak about collectivism’s mildest form, “the common good” (which also doesn’t exist) – make me sick.
(I couldn’t even get my own son to condemn sacrificing the child he and his wife had struggled to have after three miscarriages and being told by doctors that they would never have children of their own. His mental gymnastics trying to explain it away gave me torn muscles.)
Folks, we have just witnessed a perfect example of a strong, enduring friendship. Bill loses his cool at Scott for interrupting his defense against an accusation of being fascist. Scott exemplifies patience during Bill’s outburst. Bill apologizes later for said outburst.
It was beautiful to behold. If only the political divide in our nation was so easily repaired. May God bless America.
The criticism of Barr really frosts me , it was Eric Holder who called himself the President’s wingman and said out loud that he had to support ‘his boy’ (let a white person try THAT one!)
Where are all the cult-of-personality-fascistic poster/banner portraits of Dear Leader? I haven’t seen any of them since the end of the last administration. I seem to recall a three-color one in a Warhol-esque manner that wasn’t red, white and blue. I could never figure that out.
Good point. But that is “what about ism”
And that is not fair! — Antifa dicta # 17.
Um, well, maybe I was being too facetious?
Bill: YES! It is individualism vs. collectivism. The individual is the repository of individual rights. The collective obliterates the individual as having no rights except those recognized by the collective. Hence, your rights depends upon who controls the collective. Reality not withstanding.
The basic fact is that a collective does not exist. Only individuals exist. A collective is only an aggregation of individuals and has no rights superior to that of any individual. If the individual has no rights, the collective also has no rights.
Yet, our language has been so corrupted that it is used to pretend only collectives exist and only collectives matter. The individual is to be the disposable property of the collective. Further, any individual member of any collective is to be the unquestionable disposable property of any collective. There could be no clearer path to extinction than that. Hence, extinction is the ultimate goal of any collectivist. It need not be a stated goal. It is simply the inevitable consequence.
And yet perhaps there are “collective” institutions that can legitimately operate in the best interest of something as big or bigger than themselves even as a group of individuals. Tom’s comment above sort of implied the Congress might fit this view (Nah!!). I was thinking of the military being under the “reduced rights” of the UCMJ, even as the civilian leadership of the DOD is not. The military is of course also a group of individuals but as individuals they may elect or be forced to give up their lives in pursuit of the “collectivist” mission. And the commanders and political leadership must also at times harden their hearts to that kind of loss, putting the “collective” higher than the individuals that make it up.
We consider a politicized military to be less effective (as a military) than one that is/ remains apolitical. Obama may or may not have understood that as he introduced more “diversity” of leadership thought into the upper ranks. But maybe he was after something closer to the SS or the Stasi.
Your point is well taken, though, in the case of the Dept. of State, where it appears the SOS employees/diplomats have come to revere the SOS itself as an institution (collective) rather than what was best for the country as a whole. (Politicized from within rather than from outside?)
There are activities and goals that require more than one person to implement. However, that multiple individuals mutually agree on a common goal and organization does not mean a collective (borg?) is formed. Each individual MUST and CAN ONLY act as an individual and retain ALL of their individual rights. They simply coordinate their activities to meet the previously accepted common goal.
If and when that common goal is no longer acceptable to one or more individuals, they have the right to exit working toward that goal. If the people in charge of the common project presume to refuse to recognize the individual rights, they become illegitimate and the organization should be disbanded or placed under proper management.
I agree the above is not today’s situation. Our individual rights are violated wholesale by all levels of government. We are nothing but ATMs for the government to drain and discard like old shoes and dirty socks. See my second paragraph for details about what should happen.
Vote Trump 2020 and we might have a chance. Otherwise prepare for the worst.
What is interesting to me is how so many of these supposedly fundamental arguments take place in the absence of definitions of terms. Further, from my own observation it seems that the ones who wish to keep the definitional waters muddy, if not sow confusion purposely, are on the Left. “Shut up!, they explained” is something they own, not us.
Bill’s point, amplified by Mr. Griffith – it’s Collectivism vs. Individualism – is the proper focus of the discussion. Even within that context differentiating between the isms, from an economic point of view, could be useful to anyone interested in which one most conforms to reality, and to what is proper to a human being.
Individualism: Where the owner controls the fruits of his own effort.
Fascism: Where the State tells the owner what to do with his property, but it appears the owner has control. The owner is a puppet.
Socialism: The State controls the owner’s property. No more fooling around, except with semantics: It calls private property “the means of production”, in hopes of fooling “the proles.”
Communism: The People own the means of production. Capital “P”, not individual people who actually could claim a right to their own property. Since, as Mr. Griffith points out, the Collective does not exist, control reverts back to the State. Imagine that.
I don’t remember where I first saw this, otherwise I would attribute it.
A final observation: I have never seen anyone on the Right refer to human beings, in toto, as “proles”, “the masses”, etc. Nor do I see, very often anymore, anyone on the Left extolling the virtues of freedom or individual rights.
Ultimately it is self ownership or state ownership. There is no third option. Even if the men of government were angels, the difference is the difference between life or death.
If I do not own myself and my life’s product I am nothing but a rightless slave to be used, abused, and disposed of at the whim of my owner. This is an existence worse than death.
There is nonparty on the Euro political spectrum that beleives what the American right believes. Free Enterprise, rule of law, property rights and individual sovereignty.
That description sounds a lot like Obama.
The big difference between Barrack Obama and Donald J. Trump is that the former lacks character — his cult was based solely upon the color of his skin. Obama is the incarnate antithesis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream.