In recent weeks, Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party and, at least for now, the frontrunner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has come close to fully embracing fascism, authoritarianism, and white values. I’ve seen you. Hegemony and anti-Semitism.
Just before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump joined rapper Kanye West (aka Ye), who has become a public supporter of Hitler and Nazism, and Nick Fuentes, an openly white supremacist and Holocaust denier. hosted the infamous dinner party at the Mar-a-Lago headquarters. and neo-Nazis.In response to the ensuing controversy, Trump reportedly told his advisers he would not denounce Fuentes Because he hesitates to alienate his most ardent supporters: far-right extremists. During a dinner conversation with Fuentes, Trump reportedly turned to West and said, “He understands me.”
Trump isn’t just “flirting” or “playing petty” with such people, in mainstream journalism parlance. In reality, he just continues a long pattern of such behavior. He described neo-Nazis and other white supremacists as “very respectable people” after the 2017 Charlottesville riots, and made clear against the QAnon conspiracy cult, the Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, and similar groups. We have expressed strong support and coded support.
In his book States of Exclusion, historian Richard Frankel provides the following context for the relationship between Donald Trump, American neo-fascism, and Nazi Germany.
[A]Already the images of Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler have been linked in public debate. Such comparisons are often dismissed as hysterical hyperbole or bipartisan rhetoric, but this contemporary German historian believes that America Once again seeing enough common ground with the Dark Ages of history to sit down and explain the dangers we now face.
Whether or not Donald Trump has concrete plans as president, it is clear that he has an idea of what America should be, a kind of ideal community of nations.
For Trump, “Make America Great Again” means making America a white, Christian, male-dominated society. The authoritarian power he desired allowed him to maintain the appearance of democracy, but in reality, only “real” Americans were able to enjoy certain rights.
The rest of society, marginalized, will be ruled by the whims of Trump’s dictatorship. And were they pushed over the boundary? They will no longer care about “real” Americans.
It is a vision that recalls Hitler’s creative endeavors. his An ideal community of nations — a society in which only ‘real’ Germans benefit from citizenship.
last Friday, Joe Bidenstriving to assume his self-appointed role as the nation’s conscience, posted this on Twitter:
Just want to clarify a few things:
The Holocaust happened.
Hitler was a demonic figure.
Rather than providing a platform for anti-Semitism, our political leaders should invoke and reject anti-Semitism wherever it hides.
Silence is complicity.
Biden did not specifically name West, Fuentes, Trump, or conspiracy theory influencer Alex Jones, reflecting his deep-rooted desire to serve as a healing and uniting force.
Perhaps the president should have done so. Providers of hate should be held accountable. That being said, however, Biden is still very much a victim of public education, by engaging in some form of public education and emphasizing the role of blatant misdeeds and discourse in the context of the crisis of American democracy and its associated struggles. For the most part, this kind of moral engagement was lacking in the American political class and news media in the Trump era. from.
A morbid fear of using direct moral language is rooted in a false commitment to “ordinary politics” that prioritizes concepts such as compromise and moderation, at risk of appearing unfair. It is also rooted in the guiding assumption that moral language should be avoided in politics. Prejudiced or judgmental. The same elite groups that eschew moral frameworks continue to rely on the myths and fantasies of American exceptionalism, and the mystical belief that all “Americans” are fundamentally good.
These failures opened up a space for Trumpism, neo-fascism, white supremacy and anti-Semitism to thrive and thrive. In a 2019 interview with Salon, philosopher Susan Niemann pondered these issues of evil in the Trump era.
Donald Trump meets all the criteria for using the word evil – and he continues to do so every day. Evil is a word to use with caution. I think a lot of people, especially some liberal centrists, were put off by being told that George W. Bush was evil. I also argued that Bush was evil, which I explored in his book Moral Clarity. Unfortunately, the word “evil” is so overused that many people think it’s a bad word.
disagree. When we abandon the use of language like “evil,” we leave the strongest language weapon we have in the hands of those least capable of using it. But the caution and apprehension in using that language is understandable. Given the mechanics of Trump’s supporters and the broader right-wing movement in America, I’m not sure that describing Trump as evil actually brings clarity to the conversation. This does not mean that you should avoid using precise words to describe things.
By refusing or reluctant to discuss transpasm and neo-fascism in clear and direct moral language, these forces develop and amplify disingenuous claims about “free speech” It develops and amplifies disingenuous claims about, and the way liberal democratic traditions recognize such values.
In reality, fascists, white supremacists, and anti-Semites are intellectually dishonest actors who, of course, are not really committed to the liberal democratic tradition. It just tries to exploit weaknesses. Liberal democracies rely as a prerequisite on shared notions of truth and empirical reality. White supremacy and antisemitism are based on the fiction that “race” is a biological fact rather than a social construct, and that the “white” race and “Western civilization” are separate from black people and black culture. based on the closely related fiction of being and being better. brown person. In fact, all of these categories are modern inventions of questionable value, and their historically and culturally conditioned definitions are constantly changing.
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Too many liberals and progressives lack a critical understanding of power and politics and are reluctant to provide a platform for such malicious actors or engage them in a “debate.” wanting too much. It just justifies their toxic and dangerous thoughts.
Up to this point, Republicans and “conservatives” have succeeded in establishing themselves as guardians of “values” and “morals” with the support of the docile news media. It was always a silly claim, and obscene today. If pro-democracy Americans can successfully present Donald Trump’s movement and neo-fascist rights in clear moral terms, they will change public opinion and gain significant traction in the fight to save democracy in the country. The options before us are clear enough. Beyond sensitivity and desire for “dialogue,” avoiding moral high ground invites disaster.
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