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In July, The Huffington Post puckishly announced that it would put its coverage of Republican presidential wannabe Donald Trump in its “entertainment” section, because, for all the noise he was making, they considered his campaign little more than a “sideshow.”
Yesterday, in the wake of Trump’s alarming call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” Arianna Huffington reversed that decision, declaring that she was “no longer entertained” by Trump’s campaign, which has “morphed into … an ugly and dangerous force in American politics.”
Huffington is not the only one who’s taking the threat of Trump more seriously these days, and for good reason. I find myself wondering, quite seriously: is this how Fascism in the US will begin?
And I don’t think I’m Godwinning myself here. While Trump isn’t a true fascist ideologue, I don’t think, there are definitely fascistic elements to his campaign, and to his popular appeal; it’s not for nothing that the neo-Nazis I sometimes write about on this blog are almost to a man big Trump fans. Indeed, the rather frighteningly popular Daily Stormer — a site that gets far more traffic than any manosphere blog — responded to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration thusly:
Islam – 0/5 would not allow.
Get all of these monkeys the hell out of our country – now!
Heil Donald Trump – THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR.
While all this is a little bit outside the purview of this blog, I thought I would share some of what I’ve been reading about Trump and his relationship to the “f word” and open up a discussion on the subject. Because this guy isn’t going away any time soon.
In Slate, Jamelle Bouie, drawing from a classic Umberto Eco essay on the essence of fascism, argues that the f-word “is the political label that best describes what the GOP front-runner has become.”
Donald Trump May Not Be a Fascist, But He is Leading Us Merrily Down That Path
In a long and thoughtful post examining the fascistic elements of Trump’s campaign, investigative journalist and long-time right-wing watcher David Neiwert argues that
Donald Trump may not be a fascist, but his vicious brand of right-wing populism is not just empowering the latent fascist elements in America, he is leading a whole nation of followers merrily down a path that leads directly to fascism.
This is an absolutely essential read, filled with links that help to put Trump’s campaign in a broader perspective.
It’s not just Trump: Islamophobia in America is spiraling out of control
In a long and chilling post on Vox, Max Fischer chronicles the recent spread of Islamophobia in the US, arguing that
Trump is just the tip of an iceberg that runs much deeper than many Americans would like to believe. America’s climate of anti-Muslim hatred and fear, a form of bigotry known as Islamophobia, is rampaging out of control. And it has very real and legitimately scary implications for the millions of Americans who follow Islam.
95,000 Words, Many of Them Ominous, From Donald Trump’s Tongue
Two New York Times writers, with the help of several academics, analyse a week’s worth of public utterances from Trump to understand the patterns in his demagoguery.
Donald Trump is the Gamergate of Republican politics
An interesting comparison from the Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg.
18 Real Things Donald Trump Has Actually Said About Women
To return to the main theme of this blog, a little collection of some of Trump’s more misogynistic quotes.
Discuss.
Trump is dangerous. As a frenchmen, I can’t say he is the worse politic men out there, but he is one of the bozo who is dangerously close both to nuclear weapons, to another war, and to the end of human right as a concept.
And sorry if I used a clownist insult.
The Neiwert piece is excellent. I used to read Orcinus regularly back in the early Bush years (I drifted away over time) and his understanding of the history of right wing extremism and fascist movements is deep.
I can’t believe that the right wing is letting this opportunity to call something Unconstitutional pass them by. Because everything he is proposing about muslims is just that.
Oh hey, I love that Umberto Eco piece.
I just love Eco generally, in fact.
My sister said that she would happily vote for Trump if he is ‘willing to do what it takes’ – meaning kill civilians who have anything to do with DAESH. I think she just found her candidate, and I just found a reason to keep holiday visits SHORT. I cannot believe that I’m related to her!
@Ohlmann: My condolences on the recent elections in your country. My young lady is French and she’s despondent about it.
I was about to pen a fantastic commentary on the dangers of writing Trump off as a joke who’ll never actually be selected; because of his effect on the tone of the campaign as a whole and the shifting of the debate, then I noticed someone in The Guardian had already done that….
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/08/donald-trump-bans-muslims-us-comment-bigotry-racism-isis
My version would have had fewer ads
@EJ : yes, the result is frightening, as is the left-wing policy after the 13th november.
It’s really the same thing as Trump : lite fascism that seduce people. I do hope France won’t become the new 1939 Germany. Nor America for that matter. I guess the good news for the USA is that the democrat aren’t completely destroyed by their politic yet.
I meant the left-wing party policy. Which is, for thoses who didn’t heard of it, saying shit like “coud we please suspend human right ?” to try to dogwhistle the far right people.
Absolutely terrifying story, but at least the notifications of stories on the new site is working now.
Not much of a positive I agree, but frankly after reading that ^ I’ll take what I can get…
Honestly, once Trump began calling for monitoring a Semitic minority as a threat to national security I became completely comfortable with outright calling him a Nazi. I mean, he’s not calling for their extermination, but Hitler took a while to work up to that and Trump hasn’t been elected yet.
From the nine years I’ve spent in America, I’ve seen that Americans (particularly conservatives) exaggerate the slightest things – describing health care as socialism/communism, the merest hint of gun control as how the Nazis got started, and so on.
Which leaves no room to move when something happens that IS how the Nazis got started! Even though there’s no way that this laughably obvious wig with an idiot hanging off it will win the election, his presence has been an absolute gift to the racist population, and awoken an even more frightening side of America than ever before. From their point of view, he’s saying what other politicians are afraid to – while in reality, other politicians don’t say what he says because it’s (a) wrong, and (b) stupid.
Has anyone read this article?
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2015/12/donald-trump-just-called-complete-shutdown-muslim-immigration
In light of the awful things that Trump said against women, I find it all the more appalling that one of his arguments favoring the shutdown of Muslim immigration is harm against women.
Trump is a perfect example of why I vote: I know I only count as one person, but abstaining out of apathy or feeling like ‘one vote won’t do anything’ adds up the more people give in to that kind of thinking, and I don’t want to have someone like Trump in charge. That and if one doesn’t vote they have no right to complain if everything goes to hell in a hand basket, if they wanted differently then maybe they should have voted, that would indicate they at least *tried*.
Wow, the comment thing really changed here.
Any one else completely stop getting email updates when the Mammoth plods on? I had to resub.
That being said, The Donald needs to stop. It wasn’t funny when it started and it def isn’t funny now. Just racist, sexist and scary as all hell.
I think he’s fascist, but less Hitler and more Mussolini.
http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s–RzhpXr-7–/qsbjwxtckur3wfdwyqeb.gif
And I say that not JUST because “Il Douche” is a perfect nickname for him.
[Well foofies– why won’t that image inline?]
What’s more frightening to me than Trump’s rhetoric and expressed opinions is the number of people who seem to think that they’re correct.
It reminds me of the way the right talks about gun control. “If you take away the guns from the good guys then only bad guys will have guns”. Trump and his supporters seemed so invested in dichotomous thinking that everyone who overlaps with an a priori “bad guy” must be a bad guy too.
How many times can we repost that Mitchell and Webb “Are we the baddies?” clip and have it still be relevant?
@Johanna Roberts
I had to resub too.
ETA:
I can’t subscribe to comments anymore. When I post a comment with “subscribe to comments” checked I get an e-mail asking for confirmation. When I hit “confirm” I get an error message and nothing happens.
If Im not mistaken, someone mentioned a while back that several countries (The US among them) are going through a “phase” (I don’t remember the exact words, but I guess this term would be appropriate) in which conservatism becomes more popular. (And this is a bit unrelated, but they didn’t mention my country, and I’d like to add that Brazil is going through something similar).
The extreme right-wing movments seem to be gaining traction lately, and I’d wager it’s an attempt to push back social change (especially since this is being discussed more openly and by all sorts of people), and Trump’s campaign not being treated as a joke is, I think, a reflection of this phenomenon.
I think it shows that social changes are happening in a measurable way, which is great, but depending on the reaction of the populace, we can expect some regression…
I’m not sure if I’m making any sense, but that’s ok, since I’ll be hanging out in moderation for a while!
It’s worth noting that the libertarians seem to be skeptical of Trump; with his neo-mercantilism and super-restrictive border policy, why wouldn’t they?
Even putting aside the aspects that are usually referred to when discussing fascism, Trump’s idea of improving the American economy does appear dangerously close to the economic ideals that Mussolini said defined fascism.
Republicans turning on the free market, whoda thunk it?
Dark Enlightenment types seem to adore him. Especially after his speech to that group of Jewish Republicans. Folks on /pol/ think he’s their Fuhrer.
Lisa C,
Right wingers love to do that. They don’t care about women but will invoke feminism to justify Islamophobia. They don’t care about black movies but will invoke racism to sell the idea that abortion is something white people are doing as a black genocide. They only care about the oppression of one group when they can use it justify oppressing another.
It sickens me.
See this front page of Philadelphia Daily News today:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/08/the-philadelphia-daily-news-front-page-goes-there-on-donald-trump/
Does anyone know if Trump actually believes he could ban Muslims from the US, or if he’s just bullshitting to gain votes?
The worst part about Trump is he probably personally believes less than half of what he’s saying, but he’s so wound up in the idea of his personal power that he’d say anything to anyone with no filter just to reinforce it. When he loses Iowa, he’s going to go full brownshirt, I can feel it.
It’s getting scary, and it’s not just America.
I am from Canada, and our last election, the old prime minister who was defeated ran his campaign based on Islamophobia. Glad we voted it out, but he knew he could use that to drum out a few votes… and the damage is done, Islamophobia is rampant in Canadian politics now. Analysts say that if the election happened after the Paris attacks, the old guy probably would have been re-elected.
In Europe, the far-right is rising, and they just won an election in France.
I have a feeling we are going to head to a large war soon.