Tag: fascism

Today’s WorldView: Not that kind of leader

The following article by Ishaan Tharoor was posted on the Washington Post website March 28, 2017:

“An analogy is haunting the United States,” writes American political scientist Sheri Berman, “the analogy of fascism.”

Before last year’s election — and even in the months since President Trump took office — many observers wrung their hands over how to understand the politics that fueled his rise. Sure, there are obvious distinctions to be made; nobody invoking the “analogy” seriously believes the hideous slaughters of another era are imminent. Continue reading “Today’s WorldView: Not that kind of leader”

If We Don’t Act Now, Fascism Will Be on Our Doorstep, Says Yale Historian

The following article by Steven Rosenfeld was posted on the AlterNet website March 13, 2017:

Timothy Snyder warns: History gives us a bunch of cases where democratic republics became authoritarian regimes.

How close is President Donald Trump to following the path blazed by last century’s tyrants? Could American democracy be replaced with totalitarian rule? There’s enough resemblance that Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who studies fascist and communist regime change and totalitarian rule, has written a book warning about the threat and offering lessons for resistance and survival. The author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century talked to AlterNet’s Steven Rosenfeld.

Steven Rosenfeld: Three weeks ago, you said that the country has perhaps a year ‘to defend American democracy.’ You said what happens in the next few weeks is crucial. Are you more concerned than ever that our political culture and institutions are evolving toward fascism, resembling key aspects of the early 20th-century European regimes you’ve studied? Continue reading “If We Don’t Act Now, Fascism Will Be on Our Doorstep, Says Yale Historian”

Trump and Republicans see a ‘deep state’ foe: Barack Obama

The following article by David Weigel was posted on the Washington Post website March 7, 2017:

President Trump’s weekend allegations of a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to wiretap his 2016 campaign confused intelligence analysts, befuddled members of Congress and created fresh work for fact-checkers. Within 24 hours of his allegations, made on Twitter, the administration conceded that the president was basing his claim not on closely held information, but on a Breitbart News story quoting the conservative radio host and author Mark Levin.

But in conservative media, where the claim originated, Trump has gotten credit for cracking open a plot by a “deep state” of critics and conspirators to bring down his presidency. And the perpetrator is former president Barack Obama. Continue reading “Trump and Republicans see a ‘deep state’ foe: Barack Obama”

A Handy 14-Point Guide To Identify Fascist Leaders

The following article by Kali Holloway was posted on the Alternet website December 8, 2016:

In 1995, Umberto Eco, the late Italian intellectual giant and novelist most famous for The Name of the Rose, wrote a guide describing the primary features of fascism. As a child, Eco was a loyalist of Mussolini, an experience that made him quick to detect the markers of fascism later in life, when he became a revered public intellectual and political voice. Eco noted that fascism looks different in each incarnation, morphing with time and leadership, as “it would be difficult for [it] to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances.” It is a movement without “quintessence.” Instead, it’s a sort of “fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions,” he wrote.

Eco’s famous 14-point list outlines what the author dubbed “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism”—and it fits hand in glove the political persona created by Donald Trump. Hours after 60 million Americans voted to give the presidency to a dangerously incompetent narcissist whose campaign was based on nativist fear-mongering and racist appeals, British historian Simon Schama lamented that Trump’s newly sealed win would “hearten fascists all over the world.” Sure enough, congratulations poured in from far-right admirers around the world, who recognized Trump as one of their ilk. Continue reading “A Handy 14-Point Guide To Identify Fascist Leaders”