6/6/2025

 Friday, June 6, 2025

D+191/136

1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, 1st US victory of WW I

1939 The ship MS St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Europe, began sailing back to the continent after it was refused entry into America. Approximately a quarter of those on board would perish in the Holocaust.

1944 Operation Overlord: D-Day began  in Normandy, France

1958 French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle said Algeria would always be French

1966 Stokely Carmichael launched the "Black Power" movement

1972  The US bombed Haiphong, North Vietnam; 1000s killed

1975 The Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam was established

1977 The "Washington Post" reported that the US had developed a neutron bomb

1981 Maya Lin won the competition to design the Vietnam War Memorial

1982 30,000 Israeli troops invaded Lebanon to drive out the PLO

2015 My dear Aunt Monica Cummings died

2018 Convicted drug trafficker, Alice Johnson, granted clemency by US President Donald Trump after Kim Kardashian highlighted her case

2019 German serial killer nurse Niels Hoegel was jailed for a second life sentence for the murder of 85 more people (previously convicted for six). Germany's worst post-war serial killer.

In bed at 9:20, up at 5:50.  56°, high of 67°, cloudy morning, sunny afternoon.   

Geri had her chipped tooth crowned this morning, or temporarily crowned.  The permanent crown won't be in for about two weeks.

I ordered new eyeglasses yesterday at Costco for $240.  New prescription after the removal of the cataract from my right eye.

 

I've been feeling pretty crappy lately,  I seem to have hit a plateau on a downslope, arthritis affecting my lower lorso, recurring pain around my right kidney, some torpor, almost (but not quite) stunned by what is happening in and out of the White House with 3 and 1/2 years to go. As I write this, however, I am boosted by Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal cavorting on the tray feeder, she shamelessly fluffing her feathers with her tail feathers raised, the two of them lasciviously kissing with food in their mouths. O wondrous day!

Is This Fascism is the lead essay in the current London Review of Books, June 5, 2025, by Daniel Trilling, the author of books on refugees in Europe and the far right in England.  Excerpts:

One​ way of thinking about fascism is to see it as historically specific: a reactionary mass movement produced by the economic and social chaos that engulfed Europe after the First World War. Fascism promised national rebirth through the violent cleansing of enemies at home and conquest abroad; to achieve this required public consent to the undoing of democracy. Where fascism took root, it grew rapidly beyond its base among the frustrated lower middle classes, attracting support from ‘the politically homeless ... the socially uprooted, the destitute and the disillusioned’, as the German communist Clara Zetkin put it. Its supporters were organised into parties with uniformed paramilitary wings. They operated in what the historian Robert Paxton has called an ‘uneasy but effective collaboration’ with traditional elites, which wanted to maintain order and crush the left. Fascism, from this perspective, was born of particular social conditions that are unlikely to recur in the same form.

The other way of thinking about fascism is as a constant presence. Some see it as the expression of a human tendency towards domination. ‘Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed,’ Judith Butler wrote recently in relation to trans rights, ‘you’re operating within a fascist logic.’ Others see it as an inherent feature of unjust, oppressive societies. Fascism, Langston Hughes wrote in 1936, ‘is a new name for that kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America’. Aimé Césaire argued that interwar fascism was the result of a ‘terrific boomerang effect’: all the brutality of European imperialism – which had dehumanised the coloniser as well as the colonised – was visited on the home continent. Many historians and political theorists have described fascism’s appeal to the emotions. Paxton called them its ‘mobilising passions’: a sense of overwhelming crisis and victimhood, a fear of the decline of one’s group, a lust for purity and authority, a glorification of violence. Fascism could return in ‘the most innocent of disguises’, according to Umberto Eco, who grew up in Mussolini’s Italy, because we are all vulnerable to its emotional pull. . . . . .

Twentieth-century fascism appears to have little in common with today’s leading far-right movements. These groups share a political style – populism – which purports to be more democratic than that of its opponents. Populists, whether on the right or the left, portray themselves as authentic representatives of ‘the people’, in contrast to corrupt governing elites. Far-right populists seek to redefine ‘the people’ along narrow national, ethnic or religious lines [Remember Sarah Palin's "real Americans']  They like elections (as long as they win) [Donald Trump], but dislike the parts of the system – independent courts and media, intergovernmental bodies – that examine or restrain their power [Donald Trump]. Unlike interwar fascism, far-right populism does not seek to bring society under total state control. Some far-right populists, such as Nigel Farage, even claim to be libertarians. For the most part, far-right populism doesn’t share the expansionist territorial aims of interwar fascism, Trump’s sabre-rattling at Canada and Greenland notwithstanding; indeed, if anything links far-right populist programmes, it’s the call for a retrenchment of borders, whether political, cultural or economic. [Agree re Canada, disagree re Greenland and Panama Canal Zone, wher  DJT hasn't ruled out use of force of arms.] . . . . . 

Does it even matter whether we have an answer to the question ‘Is this fascism?’

It does matter. As the historian Ian Kershaw says, trying to define fascism is ‘like trying to nail jelly to a wall’, yet for all its slipperiness, ‘fascism’ describes a uniquely destructive force in politics, and one for which we don’t have a better word. Unlike other forms of authoritarianism, such as military dictatorship, if left unchecked it is not only murderous but suicidal. Interwar fascism involved millions of people in the effort to purify national communities, initiating a spiral of violence that led to war, genocide and self-immolation. Its devastating potential was rooted in the paradoxical promise of a revolution carried out in defence of hierarchy. As Paxton noted, this led either to entropy, as the movement failed to deliver, or to increasing radicalism, as leaders raced to meet the expectations of their followers. (Unlike most governments, as the historian David Renton points out, the fascist parties in Italy and Germany became more radical once in office.) Fascism involves a form of collective behaviour that seems unaccountable. Many in the interwar period were slow to recognise the danger it posed, seeing fascism merely as a tool of ruling-class oppression or as mass irrationality, rather than as a force with a logic and a life of its own. Today, ‘fascism’ is useful as a political concept only in so far as it enables us to spot its destructive potential before it fully discloses itself. As Primo Levi wrote, ‘it happened, therefore it can happen again.’

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[Me]  If there is one clear th,ing it is that there is no conventional or agreed-upon definition of "fascist" or "fascism."  Several years ago, I read a book from the library on fascism and the author emphasized this ambiguity of meaning.  Nonetheless, I use the terms pretty freely in reference to Trump and Trumpism because, although there may be features that differentiate Trump and Trumpism from the broad concept of "fascism," the features that they have in common predominate.  Check all that apply: (1) Opposition to Marxism and socialism, (2) Opposition to cultural and poltical liberalism, (3) Glorification of the State, (4) Extreme nationalism, (5) Imperialism, (6) Opposition to parliamentary or constitutional democracy, (7) Totalitarian ambition, (8) Military values, (9) Acceptance of racism, (10) Conservative or reactionary economic policies, (11) Mass mobilization, and (12) Control of education as character building.

The features I focus on start with the glorification of the State and extreme nationalism.  These were clearly present in Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, and Trump's MAGA movement emulates them.  "America" to Trump and his followers is a dream state of the U.S. after the Second World War, when the U.S. was the sole hegemon in the world, most other nations having been ravaged at leasst economically by the war  It is the America before Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, before the sexual revolution and The Pill, the America of school prayer, 'one nation under God'.

Secondly, I focus on opposition to parliamentary or constitutional democracy.  The last thing that fascists believe in is that all men are created equal.  Ask Donald Trump and Elon Musk.  I'm rather sure that they and many other extremely wealthy and/or powerful people believe themselves to be different in kind from hoi polloi, the masses, 'ordinary' people, innately superior.  Hitler believed that democracy undermines the natural selection of ruling elites.  So did Mussolini and Tojo.  One might argue that so did our Founding Fathers, who had a great fear of democracy as 'mob rule.'  The right to vote was rrestricted to men (not women) with property.  The Electoral College was created as a protection against democracy.  Senators were chosen by state legislators, not by direct vote.  The voting power of Southern slaveowning oligarchs was increased by the infamous 3/5ths rule of legislative apportionment, etc.  Our revered Constitution was hardly an endorsement of democracy, of one man / one vote, or of all men are created equal

 Thirdly, I focus on totalitarian ambition.  It is not enough to control the machinery of government; fascists strive to control the whole of society and culture, the legal and judicial system, mass media, education, schools and universities, the military, any institution or organization that can affect the perceptions, moods, and willingness of hoi polloi to believe and follow the Beloved Leader, der Führer, il Duce.  We note Trump's concerted efforts to bend to his will, using his vast wealth and the levers of government, the mass media, the legal profession, the universities and scientific research communities, the professional military leadership, etc.  "I run rhe coountry and the world" he told interviewers Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic on April 24th of this year.  And that's just the way he wants it.

Fourthly, I focus on the acceptance of racism.  The ultimate example of course is the Holocaust, but consideer:  Trump's attitudes on immigration, especially on immigrants from "shithole countries" vs. immigrants from Norway; the targets of his travel bans; his broadside attacks on DEI programs, any programs intended to favor anyone who isn't White and male, and the tools he uses to root out such programs throughout the society and the culture.

Lastly, I focus on mass mobilization.  The Nazis had the Nuremberg rallies, torchlight parades, bonfires, huge banners with swasticas, Nazi salutes, and Seig Heil!, and Joseph Goebbels.  Trump has had Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson, the death of 'the Fairness Doctrine,' AM radio and Fox News, social media, and MAGA hats.

That's enough congruence between Fascism and Trumpism for me.  He's a fascist through and through and so are a great many of his supporters.  As Pogo said, we have met the enemy and hi is us.