2016 Postmortem

DetlefK

(16,423 posts) Wed Aug 10, 2016, 11:20 AM Aug 2016

The many ways Trump is an archetypical fascist in the mold of Mussolini.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/08/donald-trump-is-not-adolf-hitler-but-he-is-a-fascist-here-are-an-italian-experts-reasons-why/

Hitler had a complete philosophy. Donald Trump, with his mish-mash of positions, is not Hitler. He more closely resembles the original Fascism, which originated with Mussolini.

“Mussolini did not have any philosophy; he had only rhetoric … Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.” Eco also argued that the men who ran Mussolini’s movement did not have the intellectual chops to control the movement they led, but they had tapped into some “archetypal foundations” that allowed their rhetoric to resonate with an audience that was disenchanted with the modernity they found themselves living in.

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Eco’s first three points are about the rejection of modernity — which is crippled by too much intellectual thought — and the embracing of a traditional past. Trump has continually criticized a culture of “political correctness,” which he holds responsible for the decline of traditional values.

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His comments that John McCain is not a hero because he “allowed” himself to be captured, or his recent macho posturing about how he had always “wanted” a Purple Heart all continue to paint a portrait of a man with a skewed sense of masculinity.

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This dismissal of thinking, of intellectualism, of expertise as some kind of elitist conspiracy to keep Trump’s followers down may play for a lot of laughs, but it sounds a lot like the Fascist rhetoric that Mussolini used to come to power in 1922.

What matters to Fascists, according to Eco, is “action for action’s sake,” where “thinking is a form of emasculation.” Anyone who has ever tried to parse Trump sentences in order to tease out the rational thought behind them may wonder why they are so effective, but that mixture of macho swagger and “we don’t need no stinkin’ badges” claim to authority is working. When Trump casually mentions that perhaps Second Amendment followers will have to stop Hillary Clinton, the threat is not only clear, but the triumph of action over words is proclaimed from the podium.

Several of Eco’s points also illustrate how Fascism is intolerant both of dissent and of outsiders. Fascism thrives as an echo chamber, where a select group, who know themselves to the true heirs to their nation’s traditions, affirm each other’s thoughts and speeches. Eco said that “For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.” David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK, told white Americans that “voting against Trump is treason to your heritage.”

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And those who follow Trump applaud this behavior. They confuse critical thought with criticism, and believe that to ask questions of a candidate, or of a country, is to somehow weaken it in the eyes of its “enemies.” Certainly Vladmir Putin does not put up with criticism.

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“Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist.”

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Along the way, he invokes the tropes of Fascism: its racism, its reliance on a mythical pasts, its traditions, its hatred of foreigners. Most of all, Trump uses the rhetoric of Italian Fascism — a reliance on strings of words that stir feelings but which mean nothing — to move the mass forward.