Peter Dreier is a professor of politics at Occidental College in California.
In this article, he analyzes Trump’s inaugural speech and points out the language and ideas of fascism.
An excerpt:
“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first,” Trump said. By branding his message “America First,” Trump was echoing and invoking a motto of the isolationist, anti-Semitic crusade in the 1930s that wanted the United States to appease Hitler.
“Indeed, Trump’s entire speech was a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland crazy quilt of words that meant the exactly opposite of what was expressed. It was an angry rant, reflecting the personality traits of an insecure bully: narcissistic, thin-skinned, revengeful, and impulsive, lacking empathy or humility.
“Fascists claim to speak for “the people,” while pursuing policies that overwhelmingly benefit a handful of the favored – families, cronies, corporations, and loyalists.
“Today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, “ Trump said today, “but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.” Later, he proclaimed: “January 20th, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.”
“Like other fascists, Trump claimed to speak for the “forgotten men and women,” whose voice has been ignored, whose job has been exported, whose neighborhood is unsafe, whose living standard has declined.
“Fascists always attack current politicians while claiming the mantle of “the people.”
“We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action,” Trump said today, using the same words he used several days earlier to defame Cong. John Lewis, a civil rights icon who, unlike Trump, put his body on the line countless times to make America a more humane and inclusive society.
“Fascists seek to unite the country behind a smokescreen of patriotism while scapegoating the weak and powerless.
“We are one nation, and their pain is our pain,” Trump said. “We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny.”
“But his speech was a series of deflections away from the core problem facing the United States: the growing power of a tiny wealthy elite – sometimes called the “1%” but in reality the .001% — over our economy and politics.
“Trump has populated his Cabinet and top advisors with some of America’s wealthiest and greediest people, corporate robber barons, militarist zealots, Wall Street titans, right-wing conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, and racists, some of them (like Trump) born wealth but who have demonstrated no inclination for public service or even noblesse oblige.
“To deflect attention away from the super-rich, Trump – like fascists throughout history – points his fingers at and scapegoats others. In today’s speech, he avoided explicit reference to Mexican immigrants, Muslims, China, Hollywood, the media, unions, and Jews – groups he castigated throughout the campaign. But his address included many dog whistles that his core supporters understand.
“We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own,” was Trump’s dog whistle to America’s white supremacist “alt right” movement, who want to deport undocumented immigrants while eliminating the social safety net from those who live here and contribute to our society.
“Trump personifies the worst aspects of corrupt crony capitalism. He inherited his father’s real estate empire, made possible by federal government housing subsidies. He has curried favor with Democratic and Republican politicians at the local, state and national level by contributing millions of dollars in campaign donations. He has abused the nation’s bankruptcy and tax laws to avoid his responsibility to his lenders, employees, business partners, and the country as a whole.
“In his address, Trump pledged that “We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and hire American.” But Trump has used undocumented immigrants to construct his glitzy apartment buildings and hotels. Most of the ties, suits, shirts, and other clothing items sold as part of the Donald J. Trump Collection are made in overseas sweatshops. Even the “Make America Great” caps worn by Trump supporters at the inauguration event, were made in China!
“Like fascists everywhere, Trump’s speech included a list of troubles he intends to fix, without pointing out that they were caused by the policies, people, and principles he embraces.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am glad you picked up the lack of accountability of the 1% It was very clear to me in his speech that he blamed everything on government but did not focus on the true culprits who are stealing the middle class from us, the 1%.
I wish our press would dig deeper!
The principles that define and identify fascism: anti-intellectualism (facts are malleable to fit a predetermined worldview), prejudice (the sum total of past experience), and irrationalism (a sort mysticism built on delegitimizing social bonds and institutions). Trumpism: check, check, and check.
Someone got a perfect photo of Trump for Peter Dreier’s discussion. My deepest fear is that these and other well-informed analyses will be dismissed as “part of the problem,” meaning you are WRONG if you are part of the “intelligencia.” This seems to be the Republican strategy in Arizona, as indicated in the post by Gene Glass.
In a world where a person’s wealth appears to be a “qualification” for having enough experience to hold office, in Trump’s understanding a person’s IQ will have little to do with intelligence, and much more to do with income. (i.e. having a lot of money and wanting to make much, much more money is “smart”).
“Trump has populated his Cabinet and top advisors with some of America’s wealthiest and greediest people”
I bet, this will be his downfall and the downfall of the whole 1%.
Trump is trying to turn back the wheels to the time when the wealthy openly ruled the land. We know how that ended in France and elsewhere. In the last 100 years, the 1% became much more sophisticated, and were pulling strings from behind the scenes. But now more and more of them think, it’s safe to rule directly. They just haven’t learned history.
A WSJ article is confirming that Steve Bannon wrote most of the speech. I couldn’t access the article, if anyone here can share.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-strikes-nationalistic-tone-in-inaugural-speech-1484957527?tesla=y&mod=e2tw
Ho hum … Nixon was a ‘fascist’ and Reagan was a ‘fascist’ and George W Bush was a ‘fascist’ …. Our very very wonderful public schools turn out a population of whom 40% don’t know against whom the US fought in WWII, and apparently also produces some professors who match them in historical ignorance.
If the word ‘fascism’ is used to describe all nationalists and super-patriots, all demagogues who appeal to the masses vs the elite … then most politicians in history and most of the ones ruling the world today are ‘fascists’. The obnoxious hard-Leftists on college campuses who disrupt and shut down conservative meetings are then ‘fascists’.
The difference between communists and third-world socialists, on the one hand, and the Nazis, on the other, disappears — which indeed is a popular right-wing theme (‘Hitler was a socialist’).
These are perilous times, and we need cool reason to navigate them, not cry-baby name-calling. Trump is bad news, and one of the minor bits of damage he’s done is to destroy some people’s ability to analyze reality.
doug1943: No need to get into it, I’ve written reams on this on past posts, but Trumpism fits the classic definition of fascism. It is not the most extreme form, Nazism. That is the distinction you miss.
GregB — I’d be interested in reading what you have written, if you could supply a link.
Nationalism, authoritarian government, irrationalism … these have been with us a long time, well before Mussolini and Hitler. See, for example, Napoleon, both the original and Napoleon III. Such movements and governments are almost the norm, in fact.
Why did we feel to apply a new word to the movements and governments these men created?
I would argue that it’s because these movements, quite consciously, did two things, both in imitation of the Communists: (1) they organized an extra-parliamentary ‘combat party’ which could take power, if needed, via an insurrection, and (2) they appropriated, demoagogically, the social program of the Left. (This gives rise to the absurd argument that the Nazis were a Left-wing party.) Unlike the Communists, their rule protected capitalism rather than destroying it.
We can certainly find elements of this sort of thing both before and after Hitler and Mussolini, but it’s a question of when quantity turns into quality. If ANY political movement that appeals to nationalism is called ‘fascist’, the word loses all meaning and we become unable to make the critical distinctions we need to analyze social reality.
However, you may have made a case that refutes me, so I would like to read it.
Here’s what I wrote last month in https://dianeravitch.net/2016/12/22/trump-national-security-advisor-met-with-austrian-rightist-leader-at-trump-tower/
There is a difference between being fascist and Nazi. Nazism is a particular virulent strain of fascism that incorporates a cult of personality, anti-Semitism, an aggressive, self-serving foreign policy, and elimination of enemies through violence or deportation.
Fascism at its core is built on an anti-intellectualism that informs the public policy process. In making policy, it relies on a mythology built on a misinterpretation of history that believes perfectibility can only be achieved through instinct and superstition–a superstition built on anti-intellectualism and prejudice. Prejudice, according to a fascist, is a virtue because it confirms historical experiences and traditions. Science is therefore negotiable. If it does not fit preconceived notions, it is suspect and therefore mostly invalid. The idea of prejudice also incorporates the notion that some elites are predestined to lead the masses.
Another core element of fascism is a belief that violence, or at least the palpable fear of violence, is a virtue, a primary policy option, and a valid method to organize society. That, combined with a faith in the progress through irrationality, makes it so unstable. For example, in the post WWII world, it was generally accepted that the goal of foreign and domestic politics and governing was a nebulous idea of peace and prosperity. A fascist would argue that historical evidence would suggest that this “rational” approach has, paradoxically, created the chaos, as they see it, of the modern world. Therefore, irrationality–making deliberate decisions that go against what had previously been considered rational–is actually the path toward progress and prosperity. In modern parlance, this means “conventional wisdom” must be discarded and radical, unproven ideas actually work.
Therefore ideas like “public education has failed, so let’s do something radically different,” “industrialism was built on fossil fuels, therefore the idea that we should foster green energy flies in the face of experience,” “labor unions have destroyed the working class, therefore get rid of them and focus on personal responsibility,” “we’ve had extremes in weather in the past, so what’s happening today is just part of a normal cycle,” or “the U.N. and alliances failed to create a lasting peace, so therefore we should discard them and dictate to the world why our historical experience is superior” fit into a fascist worldview. These ideas are founded in notions of anti-intellectualism, prejudice, determinism, and the threat of state-sanctioned violence.
Trump is a fascist, not a Nazi. When we discuss whether he is an anti-Semite, we miss the point. His primary enemies are Muslims, Hispanics, liberals, and anyone else who conflicts with his limited world view. If he has any anti-Semitism, it is selective. He has pragmatically embraced the utilitarian view of Israel and Judaism espoused by the extreme religious right, the view that Jews are not “saved” but are convenient and necessary to fulfill biblical prophecy. This fits into the fascist principles described above.
The one area where Trump embraces Nazism is in the idea of Gleichschaltung. He believes that political opposition is illegitimate. His “to the winner go the spoils” view is extreme. He is not a small “d” democrat. He believes that all governmental agencies and representative bodies must be aligned to his worldview, as limited as it is. The next logical step, if this is effective, is to do the same with non-governmental institutions and individuals.
When we focus on whether he is a Nazi or anti-Semite, it gives him cover and room to act on a whole range of issues. As I have written before, the choices of his cabinet portend a strategy of total war against small “l” liberal democracy. His hope is that the opposition will be split by having to defend on too many fronts and this will cause a collective exhaustion that will open the floodgates for fascist principles to win and become institutionalized and broadly accepted by the public.
Trump and his minions are American fascists, not Nazis.
Thanks, Greg. We can expect a daily flurry of outrages and lies to divert us from yesterday’s lies. He did this during the campaign. He will destroy public confidence in all institutions to make himself more powerful
doug1943: One more historical note struck me in your 2nd comment. The intellectual father of fascism is Joseph de Maistre. He was an early 19th century envoy of the Kingdom of Savoy who spent most of his career in St. Petersburg. The king both respected and feared the impact Maistre might have on his subjects, so he sent Maistre as far away for as long as he could. Maistre was great admirer of Napoleon and wanted to advise him. They never met because the king specifically prohibited it. He feared that Napoleon, with Maistre’s counsel, would become even more powerful and eventually swallow up all of Europe. Napoleon’s hubris prevented that, but he did have an imprint on Europe that no one had until Hitler came along.
“The intellectual father of fascism is Joseph de Maistre. ”
So not Mussolini? I thought at least he was the godfather. Mussolini himself writes
The Fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet.
Greg — thanks for the interesting reply. I’ll read your original essay. I know of de Maistre but have never read him.
It has always seemed to me to be ahistorical to project modern social developments too far backwards. I do agree that fascism drunk deeply from the well of irrationality, romanticism, blood-and-soil ‘thinking’, etc, and that these are not something new, and that in general many modern social conflicts have their analogues in the past.
However, if these alone mark out a political movement as ‘fascist’, then there are a lot of ‘fascist’ regimes in the Third World. (It’s why I’ve always been uneasy with the term ‘Islamofascist’ — it’s true that the methods and political goal of the extreme Islamists have much in common with fascism, and it’s good to emphasize that point, but I think it’s over-stretching the word ‘fascism’ to use it to apply to this new pestilence.)
I would not argue with people who want to characterize as ‘fascist’ the methods of political movements that physically attack the meetings of their opponents, try to enforce Truethinking in the areas where they have power, say that analysis of this or that problem can only be done by people of a certain race, that objective truth does not exist, etc.
Thus much of the far Left/identity-politics people today use fascist methods, but I wouldn’t characterize the organizations as ‘fascist’, just as I wouldn’t characterize Third World authoritarian nationalists/tribalists as fascists — so I don’t use the word ‘fascist’ to characterize the Hindu chauvinist Modi in India today, nor Peron in Argentina, nor Pinochet in Chile, although, again, these men and their movements had/have points of congruence with fascism.
I do agree with you that Hitler’s regime had significant differences with Mussolini’s, although I think the points in common were enough to use the same term for both. From the other side, I recall someone arguing that the Nazis were not qualitatively different from the Church-Army-Throne regimes of Central Europe at that time. Using my criteria, one wouldn’t call the Franco movement ‘fascist’ — they were classical authoritarians defending the existing order with violence, although the circumstances in which they came to power resulted in a regime not far different from Mussolini’s.
One point I really want to make — and it’s orthogonal to the argument about the nature of Trump — is that it is often clarifying to avoid use of the word ‘is’ — as in ‘is X a true Y’ (‘Is Hilary a true liberal?’), replacing this formulation with the approach, ‘How far does the word ‘X’ apply to ‘Y’?)
In any case, I’ll read your essay and think about it. Thank you for your replies.
doug1943: The bit below the link is copied from the link. Should have made that clear, sorry. I think there are some other rants in there as well. Appreciate your comments and will consider your arguments as well. You make some good ones.
The most succinct discussion of Maistre of which I am aware is in Isaiah Berlin’s “Freedom and its Betrayal: Six Enemies of Human Liberty” as well as “The Crooked Timber of Humanity” and “Against the Current.” Interestingly, Stendhal’s protagonist in “The Red and the Black,” Julien, who is a devotee of Napoleon, makes a couple of references to how he admired Maistre.
doug1943: Here we go again with the bashing of public schools: “Our very very wonderful public schools turn out a population of whom 40% don’t know against whom the US fought in WWII…”
At some point in our school system, our truly wonderful public school system (said without sarcasm), the history of WWII is taught. Are the kids in the private and religious schools better informed?
I am sick of this crap where someone, some company does a survey and finds young folks lacking knowledge of historical events and immediately the schools are blamed. The public schools are blamed not the private or religious schools. Kids are addicted to the electronic gizmos. Blame the schools. Kids don’t know who the vice president is. Blame the schools. Kids don’t know what the electoral college is. Blame the schools. Schools are failure factories, they say.
Its easy to create a survey with an agenda. Go out and interview enough people until you find a few that say what you want them to say and then use them. Make sure to ask them detailed questions that most people can’t remember.
As a child I know I was taught about the presidents, the states, the state capitals, the Constitution, US history from colonization to the year I was in school, but I don’t remember those specific names and details today. I probably didn’t remember them weeks or months later after I learned them.
As a child, one of my grade school teachers had us memorize all the state capitals and all the names of the presidents at that time, but I don’t remember many of them at 71.
Yes, World War II is taught in the public schools. Just type in “What grades in high school teach World War II” and you will end up with more than 16-million hits in less than 1 second.
Most if not all public school teachers use state approved textbooks that cover World War II. In addition, teachers have a host of films they can use to help teach World War II. One book that teachers in grade school, middle school and high school use is “The Diary of Anne Frank” that leads to discussions and assignments about World War II and the Holocaust. I even recommended this book to my English students.
The one factor teachers can’t control is the memory of each child.
Anyone who knows what short-term memory is and how memories are deleted or transferred to our long term memory while we sleep, knows that it doesn’t matter what a teacher teaches in class. What counts is what the children remembers as the years go by, and if there is no reason to recite what was learned or use, it we usually lose that memory as if fades and disconnects from the network of linked memories in our heads.
Scholastic even offers a World War II Teaching Resources guide for PreK through 12.
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/collections/teaching-content/world-war-ii-teaching-resources/
I taught for thirty years. I taught English and even in English we had stories in our state approved literature textbook about World War II and other wars.
It’s safe to say and highly accurate to state that by the time a child finished 12th grade, they have learned a lot about not only World War II but world history and U.S. history.
But we can’t control what these children remember, and that is what these surveys test, what a person retains in their long term memory.
Mending Wall
Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors
Fact Checking Trump’s Inaugural Address. There’s too much info here to copy and paste but Trump is stripped naked and his misinformation, manipulation, and lies are revealed repeatedly.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jan/20/donald-trumps-inaugural-address-fact-checked/
FactCheck.org
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/01/president-trumps-inaugural-address/
Fact Check and Full Transcript from NPR
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/19/498293478/fact-check-trump-and-clinton-s-final-presidential-debate?gclid=CjwKEAiAqozEBRDJrPem0fPKtX0SJAD5sAyHldU1czG5e2TVY4DuyQlLL11Ipmr0aMZVck504PB_ixoCXdvw_wcB
Politicifact is also tacking Trump’s 102 campaign promises
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/
This is the short list of fact checkers. There are others from PBS, Vanity Fair, Washington Post and others beyond the 1st page of a Google search.
In fact, there are so may media sources fact-checking Trump, it might take days to read them all and by the end of the week, there would be more fact checking of Trump’s daily twitter rants and endless lies.
Who trust what media site the most? The BBC is #1; NPR is #2; PBS is #3
I don’t count The Economist even though it’s ranked equal to the BBC, and The Wall Street Journal looks like its trusted more than the BBC and the others, so I don’t understand why it is listed below them.
http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-most-and-least-trusted-news-outlets-in-america-2014-10
I suggest we start a slogan contest &mash; the rules are that every slogan has to end with the words “America First”. For example:
Make Your MAGA Hats In America First❢
Make WHSN* Junk Jewelry In America First❢
Improve Healthcare In America First ❢
Clean Up the Water in America First❢
Go …
White House Shopping Network
Just so I use terms correctly, can someone answer a question for me? Canada deports undocumented immigrants far more aggressively than does the United States; other than a small number of genuine political refugees, Canada only allows in immigrants who won’t be net drains on their social services.
Question: is Canada a fascist nation?
One policy does not an ideology make. It’s a collection of ideas, actions, and intentions.
John, I too dissent from liberal orthodoxy on this one. I think this is one concession we should grant the Trump-voters: the border should be a real border. Embedded in the idea of citizenship is the idea that citizens count more than non-citizens. Citizenship implies a prejudice in favor of citizens. Democrats, in their high-minded aversion to all prejudice, have eroded this idea and that’s created high-anxiety among downwardly mobile Americans. If we allay this anxiety, I think people will start accepting the idea of national health care and other social programs.
John: Actually almost every nation on the planet deports undocumented immigrants far more aggressively than the United States. Sometimes, as in Burma, these ‘immigrants’ have been there for generations. Sometimes, as in Mexico, or South Africa (where they risk being lynched) they are culturally far closer to the nation they’re trying to get into than Latin Americans are to the US.
The difference is this: the ruling classes of these nations have not lost a sense of, nor are they ashamed by, their national identity.
In the United States, and in its European parent, they are in the process of losing it. So they are ashamed of defending it. Now in the long run this is a good thing, in my opinion. How wonderful it would (will?) be to live in a world where the whole species shares in the prosperity of an advanced industrial economy, and also shares a liberal, democratic culture. We would leave nationalism and tribalism behind and see the nation-state go the way of monarchy.
But In the short run, where we live now, too much mixing of the peoples leads to bloodshed. Anyone who doubts this should visit the Balkans, the Central European Bloodlands, Sri Lanka, Syria, Burma, almost any African country where one state is ‘shared’ by more than one tribe.
But nice people cannot bear too much reality.
“Indeed, Trump’s entire speech was a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland crazy quilt of words that meant the exactly opposite of what was expressed. It was an angry rant, reflecting the personality traits of an insecure bully: narcissistic, thin-skinned, revengeful, and impulsive, lacking empathy or humility.”
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.
Through the Looking Glass
Lewis Carroll
1871
I would suggest the ‘scornful’ moniker Humpty Trumpty. SomeDam Poet might be able to rift on Humpty Trumpty sat on his great wall . . . great fall . . . King’s horses*sses . . . king’s men . . .
riff.
Humpty Trumpty created the rift.
Let’s then hear what Mussolini, daddy of Fascism says, and see if it’s indeed only Trump who promotes Fascist ideas.
First, he can’t shut up about emphasizing national unity
In the Fascist regime the unity of classes, the political, social and coral unity of the Italian people is realized within the state, and only within the Fascist state.
Then comes emphasizing hard work as the greatest virtue, the purpose of life, and prescribing it as the road to power
A nation exists inasmuch as it is a people. A people rise inasmuch as they are numerous, hard working and well regulated. Power is the outcome of this threefold principle.
In fact, this is how he summarized Fascism in one sentence
We are against the easy life.
It follows that Fascism wants men of action
Fascism wants man to be active and to engage in action with all his energies; it wants him to be manfully aware of the difficulties besetting him and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle in which it behooves a man to win for himself a really worthy place, first of all by fitting himself (physically, morally, intellectually) to become the implement required for winning it.
Then comes the dismissal of democracy
The war was revolutionary, in the sense that with streams of blood it did away with the century of Democracy, the century of number, the century of majorities and of quantities.
He points out, not incorrectly at all, that democracy works against national unity
Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number; but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation.
Then comes the dangers of pacifism
Fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it. All other tests are substitutes which never place a man face to face with himself before the alternative of life or death. Therefore all doctrines which postulate peace at all costs are incompatible with Fascism.
from which follows the dismissal of international organizations promoting cooperation of nations
Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism, even if accepted as useful in meeting special political situations — are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations.
then comes the description of what makes a nation lead others
Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical. An imperial nation, that is to say a nation a which directly or indirectly is a leader of others, can exist without the need of conquering a single square mile of territory. Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e. in the tendency of nations to expand – a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence. Peoples who rise or rearise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples.
All this wisdom from
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm
Good stuff. Mussolini is Donald’s model, not Hitler. But I doubt Donald knows how it all ended for Benito.
This is not the only depiction of the fascist nature of Trump. For the Trump supporters; I recall the throngs of people shouting heil Hitler. THEY THOUGHT that he was their savior
I stood in front of the Brandenburg gate and saw the horrific pictures of the devastation caused in WWII to Germany.
When climate change really hits and the oceans rise forcing millions to migrate inward, with all the division in the U. S. and all the guns available, a replica of what is happening in Syria seems inevitable. People think it can’t happen.
The Germany of Goethe, Beethoven and all the peace loving intellectuals of Germany would I think never have believed it either.
I really liked to read you blog about topics in education. The bombardment of political rhetoric is very unpleasant. I writing to my congressperson, to the White House, letters to the editor, etc. but perhaps it is best for my anxiety level to avoid the excitement generated by the current blog.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Helen,
I am worried for the future of our nation. That’s not political rhetoric. We have never had a president with the temperament of a petulant five year old.
To Helen Schulman:
It is always better to be informative than to be gullible.
I found that my northern Vietnamese in my elementary years were funny in all communist stories. Fifteen years later, I faced to those funny stories. Today, another thirty five years later, I am 65 and tell you about communist strategy in dictatorial control of their people. Would you think that it is too unpleasant to your mind?
My spouse and my lawyer friend do not believe in my stories about communist cruelty. If I am a male and have a mean to fight back, I would prefer to die to fight for my freedom, but I would NOT escape in a wooden boat with 99% chance to be drowned in ocean.
Again, any immigrant who comes to Canada, USA or other better land and abuses people’s kindness, is NOT political immigrant, but rather OPPORTUNISTIC immigrant.
All immigrants need to work for their education and career, and NOT DEMAND an easy HANDOUT. WE ALL NEED TO WORK AND TO CONTRIBUTE to build a better society with respect for humanity. Back2basic
I am sorry that I miss the word “5th grade classmates” after Northern Vietnamese. Back2basic
Of course, reality is complex and dynamic enough that there is always apparently SOME evidence for any proposition about it. There are very unpleasant Trump supporters, just as there are some very unpleasant people on the Left
But I would urge people following this thread to look at some disconfirming evidence (the kind serious people should positively seek out) for your belief that half the American people are like Nazis at the Sportspalast. Just read this, please: http://www.steynonline.com/7408/notes-on-a-phenomenon
To doug1943:
It is NO funny to elect IMMATURE leadership. This is not an entertainment. This will be a serious hardship for Public Education and the lives of all commoners.
Economy, security and dignity of a country and its people CANNOT be taken lightly. There should not be any flip-flop in all bits and parts of talks to be seen as clever impromptu speech.
Thanks for the link, but not recommend to waste time to read it. Back2basic