Is Donald Trump a fascist? A historian of fascism weighs in | Hacker News Reader

Is Donald Trump a fascist? A historian of fascism weighs in

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42 pointsjseliger56 comments

There's a famous joke that "fascist" in politics just means "I don't like you"

It's just an ill-defined insult at this point. George Orwell had interesting things to say.

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc

I've seen more than a handful of presumably right-wing commentators on Reddit of late arguing that the Nazis were actually socialists or 'communists' rather than a right-wing group. The ensuing (typically unresolved) argument comes down to how fascism is defined for each person. Fascism is clearly in the eye of the beholder.

Nazi is national socialism. Fascism was in Italy and Spain.

The Nazi party was socialist in much the same way the DPRK is democratic.

Weird that they put the word in the name of the party when they didn't know what it means.

They knew what it meant. I think putting that word in the name was a cheap way of appealing to the disaffected working class early on.

It wasn't all that different from Soviet Union back then. Or current DPRK for that matter.

Wrong. Hitler had great admiration of Mussolini all the way up to Mussolini's death. Hitler copied Mussolini (including the Roman salute) and used Italy's dictatorship as a model for Germany's.

Fascism in Spain didn't come until after fascism took over both Italy and Germany, and only did with the help of both of those countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica

And Mussolini copied it all from Gabriele D'Annunzio's irredentist Regency of Carnaro in Fiume 1919-20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Regency_of_Carnaro

I don't think the political spectrum is a simple straight line, as the traditional left-center-right labels would imply.

If you travel far enough along that line, extreme politics of either flavour will for all practical purposes converge.

If not in ideology, then implementation.

It was an evolution. The party started as an anti-capitalist worker's party with a left-wing manifesto and parts of the party wanted to collaborate with the communist party.

However, Hitler jettisoned the left-wing aspects, cozied up to the capitalists and aristocrats to fund the growth of the party and reshaped the party inspired by Mussolini's fascists. The early socialist manifestos were an embarrassment for the party as it grew and it never attempted any of what that early party sought like disbanding the army, expropriating land from owners etc.

Here is the the early manifesto. The only thing recognisable from what the Nazi party eventually became is the anti-semitism:

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Points.html

Quite correct. Goebbels was on the left wing of the party originally, but was ultimately a Hitler loyalist. The Night of the Long Knives in June 34, and the killing of Ernst Roehm, was all about the purging of any threats from the the left wing of the party.

The terms right-wing and left-wing are as meaningless as the term fascism.

Duel between fascist versus socialist in the upcoming presidential election?

The essential difference between totalitarian state and military junta seems to be popular support. With junta, you can trust that almost nobody is loyal directly to the dictator, they just want money and stay alive. So you can bribe anybody. In totalitarian state you can never be sure who will take "cause of the party" as his own. So lives of normal people are affected in totally different way.

There has been two types of totalitarian popular movements so far: nationalistic and international. Fascism falls in the first category, Communism in the second. The problem of communist is that it never has been able to spread the revolution as originally intended. So they have fallen back to "Socialism in one state" policies everywhere.

Given the similarities, it's not surprising that the left usually tries to paint fascism as "far right" or "ultra nationalist". The first is simply incorrect, the latter on the other hand is kinda misleading. Nationalism is also the basis for all systems of national governance, so you can be ultra nationalist while supporting democracy, monarchy or pretty much anything else. Even Stalinism when that dude was still alive.

This is a political story, but it's also unusually interesting in HN's sense, so we've exempted it from the usual penalties.

If you're going to comment, please be sure you're doing so out of intellectual curiosity, the guiding value of this site. Partisan boosting and bashing is off topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Obligatory: http://www.alternet.org/files/story_images/bo151216.png

That's genius!

Fascinating stuff. As ever, the answer is "it's complicated". We can see Trump adopting (presumably unconsciously) some of the tropes of fascism; the business with the plane, for example. This doesn't, of course, make him a fascist in itself.

I suspect that he would qualify as an authoritarian nationalist on some level, but whether he is interested in the kind of martial law usually associated with fascism seems less certain to me.

The plane example was a weak cherry pick in a weak article overall.

Trump is a bigot, but it's too early to say whether he's a fascist.

FDR forced Japanese citizens into internment camps, but history does not remember him as a fascist.

I'm not being an apologist for Trump's comments. But they're just not enough to classify him as a fascist.

If he advocates for more foreign wars, additions to the Patriot Act, or nationalizing entire industries, then we're getting warmer. Though, maybe he can claim one or two of those.

Couple of thoughts:

The greatest relative strength of USA was right after the WWII when US GDP and industrial capacity was more than the rest of the world combined, had unmatched military capability and nuclear supremacy. Since then in geopolitical terms US is in decline.

The peak of US economy looking from the point of the middle class was 1969 - after that there were oil shocks, stagflation, outsourcing and hollowing out of the middle class. with a short blip upwards in the late 90s when US was reaping the benefits of winning the cold war and the computing boom.

And right now US is in a almost decade long depression if you exclude the SV,Wall street, and some landlords.

So there is both relative and real decline for big parts of the US public.

I don't think Trump is a fascist. Or even a particularly authoritarian hard liner.

And he has so far respected the letter of the US constitution. All of his vitriol has been towards people that are not US citizens. And the Supreme Court has made it clear that if you are not a US Citizen being in US is privilege, not a right.

He says that he thinks trump never read a book on Hitler, but he at least owned a book of his speeches, according to his ex wife.

Owning a book and reading it are two different things. We all own books we've never read.

Why on earth would you own a book you've never read?

It was gifted to him IIRC.

Because you haven't gotten around to it yet but plan on reading it eventually.

Or just because you want to signal status by publicly displaying your bookshelf.

I tell myself I'll get around reading them eventually. Although the backlog well is in to the hundreds now, so I don't imagine I actually will.

There's a word for it: tsundoku

I've bought around 8 or 9 books in the last few months and haven't read any of them yet. They go on my bookshelf until I'm done with my current reading.

I tend to read them in chronological order of purchase.

Because you are planning to read it and haven't? In my case, decades have elapsed between purchase and reading. And I imagine that Donald Trump can afford to purchase more books than I can.

Or because your decorator thought that they looked good on a shelf? But I would question the judgment of a decorator who thought that a book of Hitler's speeches was just what the room needed.

Everyone should read Mein Kampf, a book which set out Hitler's world view and one which as we know had dreadful consequences affecting every person on this planet.

This recent interview with a scholar of Mein Kampf is one of the best things I've heard on NPR in years. Fascinating from start to finish, way more than I expected.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/14/463028807/the-failed-coup-that...

And now even non scholars in Germany are allowed to read the book.

http://forward.com/news/328950/mein-kampf-no-longer-banned-i...

It was banned by applying copyright law, so Germans could legally buy and sell existing copies. From a comment by a book dealer I understood that supply reliably exceeded demand.

That was the occasion for the interview and they go into it at the end.

It's funny how many people oppose Trump on the basis of his "Mexican wall" idea, while supporting Hillary.

Meanwhile, the "Mexican wall" already exists (Google it!), and Hillary voted for it:

> I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in

http://www.latintimes.com/hillary-clinton-bragging-about-bui...

This article on the Atlantic is, I think, a bit better and more interesting:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/don...

(Pretty much the same conclusion, though).

He looks like the bad guy in Dead Zone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_%28film%29

But he is more a populist than a facist.

Setting aside Mr. Trump...

"The trends are not downward unless you were offended by the presence of a black man in the White House."[3]

Except we are still expected to live in a 'post-911'[1] state[2] of fear.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQu_mYI3Vxs

[2] https://cryptome.org/2015/09/potus-15-0911.pdf

[3] Wow. Talk about painting the people you disagree with.

Agreed. Populist candidates like Trump and Sanders have as much clout as they do exactly because the country is in decline. And the public is tired of the elitist run media telling them otherwise.

The harder the media pushes their delusional reality, the harder the public pushes back, and the stronger Trump becomes.

Not that I hope for such a thing. But it's entertaining to see the media's propaganda continue to backfire on them. And they act totally oblivious as to why.

Trump is not a fascist. No way

He is a narcist. He spent like first 8 minutes of his first speech after winning New Hampshire saying things like

I love you. You love me. I have lots of money. You love me.

Actually Hitler was a narcist so maybe Trump is a fascist.

Aren't racist, sexist, and xenophobic enough?

Because I'm sure I can think of plenty more adjectives that I can apply objectively. I disagree with the article that 'fascist' is one of the worst things to be in today's world and those three things above (as well as the rest that could've gone there) are much worse.

Not at all. Calling something or someone racist, sexist or xenophobic does not by itself means much or invalidate. A policy may be such and still effective or optimal.

Lets take Europe migration crisis - 70% of the incoming people are single, young and male - that is the demographic that is impossible to integrate and they skew gender balance which is sure way to create social tension. A policy to exclude them and only let women, children and families will be all of those 3 (and couple more isms), but i think it will lead to better outcome for Europe than the current situation.

Trump doesn't believe in anything, but he is mining the writing of the paleoconservative movement (the traditional right) for popular appeal.

Hilarious

The things Donald Trump says (such as "stop Mexicans from coming into our country illegally" or "ban Muslims from immigrating to our country until we're confident in our terrorist screening process") offend a LOT of people. People who don't believe such things should be said, or even talked about. People who, when someone says these things, viciously attack them, saying they are morally wrong for thinking those things. People that band together as a group to silence those who dare utter what they deem "inappropriate" or "politically incorrect" or "shouldn't be said, it's racist!"

In other words, I'd argue that Donald Trump, rather than being a fascist, is a reaction against fascists. Liberal fascists who squash the dissent against their group think with social media lynch mobbing.

Its not the racism, the misogynistic comments or the xenophobia.

Its the power trip. Its how he treats people directly.

For example: http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-protester-roughe...

You're misusing the word fascist. You probably mean something more like 'hard-liners' or 'extremist'.

This is just the Tolerance Paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Except not really. There's no movement on the left to outlaw what trump is saying. Pointing out something is racist on twitter is not "squashing dissent".

Erm, people have been trying to get him tossed off Twitter [1] and banned from entering various countries [2] and apparently some of his most vocal supporters have had their Twitter accounts mysteriously locked-out [3]

[1] http://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/01/30/1847207/why-does-twi... [2] http://thevine.com.au/politics/australians-want-ban-donald-t... [3] http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/02/08/twitters-attempt-to...

I know the left is famous for its disorganisation but a single person quoted on Slashdot and some disgruntled Australians hardly demonstrates a movement to silence Trump.

That's just the free market at work!

How on earth is Breitbart anything approaching a reliable source.

TIL: Racism trumps fascism (pun well fucking intended).

People have just as much of a right to call Trump a racist and fascist as he does to say the things he does. No matter how much it might hurt someone's feelings.

You use a lot of strong language to describe what is only (free) speech: "viciously attack", "silence those who dare utter", "squash dissent", "lynch mobbing".

The difference is that journalism comes with responsibilities, that are largely getting ignored. This article was supposedly exempted from political penalties because it's "so interesting". But if you look at it, it starts with the assertion

"Trump’s campaign has stirred bigoted feelings in the electorate and played to voters’ worst fears and prejudices"

has the first interview response say

"he’s totally foreign to any of the skills that are wanted in a president of the United States"

and then hopes you'll consider the rest of the article middle-of-the-road political analysis. Well, maybe if you're inclined to the "anyone who supports the candidate I don't like must be evil or stupid" line of thinking, you'll go for that notion. And you'll keep being befuddled by how more and more of the population seems to have gone mad...

Now, here's where I'll stick in the caveat: I'm not American, I don't really care who America elects (it's not up to me), but the problems with journalism in your country are the same elsewhere.

It is not politics that is broken; it is journalism, and the public knows it. People do not blame politicians for the 15-second sound bite or for spin, they blame the journalists because they know dang well that the politicians do soundbites because if they did long reasoned speeches the journalists would just cherry-pick whatever bits they liked to paint whatever narrative they liked. In the last few years, journalism has gone over the tipping point -- journalists are all over Twitter as the voice of the public, and Twitter re-tweets the journalists. It all becomes very circular, and quickly spirals away from any reality -- media and social media both get targeted by activism campaigns. Twitterstorms have too often become media headlines in themselves, and it has killed media credibility. Today the narratives all reek of being inventions.

"Trump is a clown", "Trump is bigoted", "Is Trump a fascist" and yet his numbers keep going up -- it's nothing about anger or a more prejudiced population (nobody's replaced the US population between 2012 and 2016...) It pushes votes to Trump because media narratives are now actively unbelieved.

Sanders and Trump sound extreme? The electorate doesn't care (why should they -- the "establishment" in congress and the courts will stop all the extreme ideas anyway). But it's a marker that they're not saying just what you're allowed to say. Jeb's biggest gaffe was when he commented "you can't say that" about Trump. Do you reckon the US public wants to elect a president who would shirk from expressing their opinion for fear of a Twitterstorm?

Sanders is perhaps a genuine socialist campaigner. Trump is essentially a smart operator who was the first to realise that this year you can essentially ride "F you, Twitter" all the way to the bank.

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