'Warnung:' A Repeat
"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
Bundesarchiv Bild 102-04062A%2C N%C3%BCrnberg%2C Reichsparteitag%2C SA- und SS-Appell. Now wouldn't Trump like to have a rally THAT size!
(Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org),
The Trump/Fascism danger is now being widely recognized. (Actually, it is the Republo--fascism danger, roaring down the track [2021], for which Trump is just the brightly glowing headlamp. But not too many observers want to make that connection --- yet.) For example, on the day I began writing this column, Nov. 21, 2023 (the day before my 87th birthday, by the way), The New York Times had a front-page story headlined: "Autocratic Tone Intensifies Fears of Trump's Plans." The word fascism even appears in the URL cited just above.
Last week, I republished my "early-warning" column from 2015 entitled "Is it Hair Trump or Herr Trump?" This week I am republishing a much earlier "early warning" column --- about Hitler's Nazi Germany. It was entitled "Warnung; Warnung Auch:" "Warning; Warning Also." As a sequel to my repeated column of two weeks ago, I thought that it would be useful to also republish that "Warnung," from 1935, once again, as the Trump-fascist danger is becoming even more openly spoken about, by Trump himself, and others (such as, as his close ally The Heritage Foundation).
In the past, fascist-leader-wannabees have rarely spoken openly about just what they would do, on the violence/Constitution-of-the-nation-sundering side, if and when they took over. Trump is historically unique in that regard. He, and the ruling-class supporters of his, like those ensconced in The Heritage Foundation, are hardly being shy in telling us how they would trample over the Constitution and the laws of the land enacted pursuant to it. From arbitrary arrests, imprisonments, and executions to (more mundanely, in this context) destroying the Federal Civil Service (again, without taking into account the laws under which it exists --- a distinctly fascist way of doing things). And so, I republish here a column drawn from a book on Nazi-German-as-it-was-happening, originally published in 1935 (Nazi Dictatorship: A Study in Social Pathology and the Politics of Fascism).
My Introduction to that column read:
"About 4 years ago, in a used bookstore, my son came across a fascinating book of history and political science on the development of fascism in a nation-state. Knowing my interest in this subject matter, he purchased it and forwarded it to me, tout suite. At that time, in this space I presented a few excerpts from that book. Now, given what we as a nation will be facing should the Republo-fascists take one House of Congress, or even worse, both Houses, in the upcoming mid-term elections, as well summarized recently by The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg (as well as many others to be sure), I thought that it would be useful to revisit those excerpts, published back then. As I did at the time, I presented them with certain edits and alterations for present relevance. This time around, I will put those edits and alterations in italics to make it clear exactly which text is updated. As it happens, the text which has been updated here is very limited. Most of what is presented here is exactly the same as it was in the original.)"
And so, from that column and the work which makes up the bulk of its text, with a few updates/additional comments to/for that text, if you will, in italics:
"A wholly definitive study is still impossible, because of the timing, and because many indispensable sources of information, such as party and organizational archives, such documents as income tax returns, intra-leadership communications, and 'classified [for various reasons] documents,' are as yet closed to scholars (unless leaked). With regard to many events, judgments must be based upon admittedly incomplete evidence. These difficulties, which always beset the student of contemporary politics, are aggravated here by the determined and well-organized efforts of the new government and party-in-power to discourage incisive research into its methods and objectives and to misrepresent many of its goals and techniques for reasons of political expediency. Deception is a political imperative in all government. In this regime, it is an applied science and a fine art.
"The new leaders who 'think with their hearts' repudiate all objectivity and scientific detachment as evil products of liberalism... Under these circumstances any effort at objectivity implies per se the adoption of an attitude evoking negative emotional response from the officials under observation. Like every form of highly emotionalized and subjectivized mass politics, Trumpism demands acceptance or rejection, period.
"Only a social revolution can destroy the Trumpist state. Only an upheaval in which the political power of the economically-dominant sector of the ruling class is permanently broken by mass action from below can offer hope of weakening the grip upon the sources of power of the Trumpist state. The new Trumpist absolutism is the only possible source of power for the ruling class in the age of increasingly concentrated monopoly capitalism, since it protects their interests far better than any imaginable alternative.
"In the run-up to Trumpism, the true left in the United States accepted this view of the situation. But their small size, the destruction of the militant trade unionism that they had led many years before, undertaken by a concerted effort of the ruling class across the nation, and the incredibly destructive in-fighting over who indeed were the 'true leftists,' especially in relationship to the history of the Soviet Union and its leadership, and over the 'lesser of the evils' proposition, with the resulting failure to form a Popular Front, rendered them very limited in what they were able to do to effectively fight the onslaught of Trumpism. At the same time, the bourgeois liberal forces over the years leading up to the triumph of Trumpism, on the one hand implemented a large number of policies and programs which led directly into the hands of the Trumpites, and on the other, because of their politico-economic history and record, they were totally unable to design and present an electoral politico-economic program that was a clear alternative, capable of defeating the Trumpites."
END OF THE QUOTATION, HERE.
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The basic text, for which I have taken the (obvious) liberty --- with a few italicized comments here and there --- of putting it into the contemporary U.S. context, is hardly contemporary. In fact, as noted above, it is drawn from a remarkable book entitled The Nazi Dictatorship: A Study in Social Pathology and the Politics of Fascism, by Frederick L. Schuman, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. "So," you might say, "what is so remarkable about that? A zillion of so books have been written about the Nazi era, a few even from a true left-wing perspective." "Well yes," I would respond. "That is so. Except that the first edition of this book, from which the bulk of the (edited/updated-to-be-sure) text above was drawn, was published, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, on April 22, 1935, with the second, historically updated edition published on May 11, 1936."
With this understanding, it should be quite easy to see where, in the original, words like "Nazi," "fascist," "Communist Party of Germany," "Socialist Party of Germany," and so forth appeared. (And oh, by the way, in 1935-36 Prof. Schuman predicted the coming of the Second World War, as a natural outcome of fascism in most, but not all countries [e.g., Franco Spain] and its need for perpetual expansion.) There are many lessons for the opposition to Trumpism to be drawn from this book and the history it presents, from a then contemporary perspective.
As for a definition of fascism-in-the-21st century, on the Trumpian model, this is the one that I am using currently:
There is a single, all-powerful executive branch of government, in service of a capitalist ruling class that controls, for the most part, the functions of production, distribution, finance, and exchange. There is no separation of the principal governmental powers: executive, legislative, and judicial. There are no independent media. There is a single national ideology, based on some combination of racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and authoritarianism, homophobia, and xenophobia. There is a political party supporting the movement. There is a state propaganda machine using the big and little lie techniques. There may be a full-blown dictatorship, a charismatic leader, engagement in foreign wars, and the use of the mob/private armies to enforce governmental control."
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As regular readers know, I have written extensively on contemporary Republo-fascism. Further, I have pointed out that the fascist movement in today's Republican Party had its origins many decades ago (see my "forward history" The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022, the first version of which projected history of American Fascism, 2001-2022 was published in 1996).
Obviously, Trump is not anything like the creator of the movement (except as a poseur), Benito Mussolini. That is one of the ways in which he is distinctively different from Adolf Hitler, Mussolini (who seems to be making an after-life comeback in Italy), Francisco Franco, or the "fascist waanabe," Republican love-object, Viktor Orban (among others, for example history's first fascist-type dictator, Admiral Miklos Horthy of Hungary). Further, for Trump, as is being revealed in whole cloth by his current screaming, at its center, for him, it is personal: "These people individually and collectively, have all done these terrible things to me, and I am going to get back at them, in spades."
Further, Trump is a figurehead, or (as also noted above) as I have characterized him, he is "the headlamp on the Republo-fascist train that is roaring down the track." Unlike Hitler, Mussolini, and etc., he has no ideology about government and governing, for what purposes. It's all about him and where his head is in the moment. To be sure, he is a very talented headlamp (if one could possibly use such a simile) and indeed a very valuable one for the U.S. Fascist Right. Further, it is unlikely that the Republican Party could have gotten to where it is at this juncture of U.S. history without him. But he is hardly a thinker. Of course, that does not make him any less dangerous, especially since he has real thinkers-of-the-Right firmly behind him (as in The Heritage Foundation again). But, harking back to the text of Prof. Schuman, again from the mid-1930s, in one way or another even without Trump per se, they surely would have gotten to one version or another of where they are now.