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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.
DreadFluffyRises, that’s the question I have. About the only thing really missing (besides the fact he doesn’t really seem to be too invested in the ideology, he just wants attention) is the organized violence. Sure, there has been violence at his events, and he’s sort of encouraged it tacitly, but we don’t really yet have your paramilitary squads and the like. We don’t have the brownshirts actively working to support him violently.
Not yet.
I’m torn. I’m pretty sure he’s aware that banning Muslims from the US would violate the First Amendment, but it’s entirely possible he intends to do so anyway and thinks he can rally enough popular support to pull it off regardless of what the law says. Until this past month I would have thought that would be impossible; I still do but I’m not as certain as I had been. I mean, I’d have thought he’d suffer a collapse of support when he openly proposed a Muslim registry and couldn’t explain how that differed from Hitler registering the Jews, but he’s just kept going. He’s so far past where I thought the line of things you could get more than 1-2% of the population to openly support was that I’m no longer willing to predict what constitutes going too far.
Issue with comments: If you click “reply” in the subscription email, it’ll put the new comment directly after the comment you’re replying to rather than in chronological order.
I just don’t know.
I was alarmed back in the early summer when it appeared that people were taking him somewhat seriously, but all of my friends said, “Oh, he’s just a joke! He’ll never gain traction.”
And here we are now.
There are way too many people out there who either (a) agree with everything he says or (b) agree with only some of what he says but like “his style” (and only kinda-sorta disagree with some of his other stances…like, they might not directly advocate for them, but they’d let them happen).
There are a number of individuals who I…well, who I at least didn’t think we’re raging idiots who earnestly support Trump.
It’s been a disappointing few months.
re: Godwin-ing: That’s what my husband’s said, too.
“I know it’s cliché to compare someone to Hitler, but he’s actually acting like a Nazi.”
I wanted to ditto what davidknewton said and also add: I think the danger with Trump isn’t that he’ll reach elected office (it’s possible, but I doubt it), but that he’s moving America’s discursive center further and further to the right. Like, many (hopefully most?) people find it ridiculous to suggest that Muslim American citizens who travel abroad should be barred from coming back home, as Trump has suggested. But maybe in a few years, when a mainstream politician suggests that we should simply bar all Muslims who aren’t citizens from entering the country, it’ll feel much more palatable to the public at large.
Also worth noting that Trump’s die-hard supporters aren’t just white supremacists and neo-Nazis, but also ISIS/Daesh supporters and their ilk. Daesh, Nazis, and Trump are all united in their desire to see a stark dividing line drawn between Muslims and the western world.
This from Michael Rosen seems apt.
Fascism: I sometimes fear…
“I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.
Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you…
It doesn’t walk in saying,
“Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.”
http://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/fascism-i-sometimes-fear.html
I really didn’t think Trump would still be under serious consideration as a primary candidate in September back when the first debate happened. I figured he was just in it to look like a sufficiently serious threat as an independent that the GOP would toss him a billion dollars to shut up and go away.
I’m now in the camp that we can’t really afford to dismiss him as a joke or assume he can’t possibly win. He’s kept his streak going far longer than anyone thought possible already. I still think that as the other Republican candidates drop out, their supporters will largely rally behind people who aren’t Trump and the consensus establishment candidate will win, and if that doesn’t happen he’ll lose in the general, but he’s proven that he can’t be dismissed lightly.
Found a working URL for the picture I wanted to post:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KzYATY5apTg/UXuEm5wJdKI/AAAAAAAALbg/re9FLJyJ3dI/s1600/Mussolini.gif
Ah, but you see, the Constitution is for Americans, you know, white, able-bodied, neurotypical, middle-upper class, christian conservatives.
I mean, Muslims aren’t even people to these assholes, but some strange, foreign force. Obviously that isn’t protected by the Constitution. :/
Also, I just wanna ask, do you guys remember all those months ago when I started freaking out about Donald Trump running for president and ya’ll dismissed it?
Yeah.
YEAH.
I think maybe now I wasn’t overreacting, for some reason. ಠ_ಠ
It’s weird watching a nation-spanning hate-mob at work. And the mob is the real issue; DT, himself, would be just another right-wing opportunist if he didn’t have whatever “mojo” it is that gets him so much support.
Problem is; we’re getting close to a no-win scenario – it will be absolutely disaster if he wins… obviously. An “alfa-male” manchild stomping all over the american constitution to carry out a fascist, racist, bigoted, agenda. But if he looses, many of his followers might become violent. As in; *really* violent.
There is no good ending, here, only a lesser evil.
The whole thing is almost absurd. Like a comic book plot where hypertime something-something causes 1935-1940 Germany to resonate with the modern US. With contemporary people just sliding into the role of monsters we though long since defeated.
Well, it’s not as if the US didn’t resonate with Nazi Germany:
http://www.cracked.com/article_23252_5-awful-ways-america-influenced-hitler-without-knowing-it.html
RosaDeLava;
I agree, though I do try to see the silver lining. The reason all this wingnutty insanity is popping up is because progressive values are being accepted more and more and the regressives HATE it. The fact that the wingnuts are on the warpath is a sign that Progressivism and Liberalism is working.
I also feel that more progressive voices need to speak louder, tell people not to give in to their fears (and hand over their freedom to fascists). Getting people to be so scared witless enough to hand over the government to wingnuts is the oldest trick in the totalitarian ruler’s playbook. People need to stop falling for it.
Regardless of the upswing in wingnuttery, I know the majority is still sane. Sane people need to vote a lot more. Voter-apathy is the worst thing ever! Hopefully, in 2016, seeing that it’s a Presidential election year, sane Americans will do their darndest to hit the polls in droves.
Who knows? Trump might even be an asset to the progressives. Seeing his insanity and the general insanity of other GOPers might be a huge motivator for non-wingnuts to vote more than usual.
Non-Islamophobes need to speak out and educate the public about what real Islam is and that what “Islamists” follow is not legit Islam, but Wahhabism. Wahhabism is the enemy, not Islam. We in the West need to reach out to and embrace our Muslim citizens.
I feel bad for France. I hope they come to their senses. I’d hate to think such a progressive, secular nation would just hand over their country to fascists like that. Maybe they have voter-apathy issues as well. Maybe sane French people will work harder to take their country back from the fascists. They also need to learn about and accept their Muslim citizens.
Regardless what happens, I feel it’s just the growing pains before a new and better, more progressive world. Sometimes Gaia needs to purify herself every so often. Sometimes it takes a crisis for humanity to wake up.
It is also a great pleasure to be here and I hope to be a regular commenter. I like this website and think it’s awesome.
His comments about my native London are so demonstrably untrue that they compelled the Metropolitan Police to issue a rare public statement:
…and the Prime Minister’s office added:
…and London Mayor Boris Johnson said:
It’s worth noting that the last two identify as conservative politicians, who are as keen to distance themselves from him as are the more moderate Republican candidates.
When other conservatives think a right-winger is nuts, that means something.
I commend the fine people of London.
I think some of this is the Super PACs coming back to bite the Republicans; it’s given them an electoral advantage but severely weakened the central party’s control over the individual candidates.
For foreign readers, Super PACs are a fairly new thing in US politics. The US has election laws significantly restricting political contributions by individuals or corporations; direct contributions are limited to $2,600 to an individual candidate, with somewhat higher limits for contributions to parties or Political Action Committees, but still fairly limited. This generally meant that a lot of funding went to the central party committees and they spent it on individual candidates who looked promising.
However, in 2010 SCOTUS ruled that restricting spending on political advertisement by organizations not affiliated with a campaign violated the First Amendment. This created what are known as Super PACs, which are completely exempt from contribution restrictions but are banned from actually coordinating with the candidate. There have been quite a few accusations of violating that ban. The Republicans went in big for using it, the Democrats have spoken out against the concept but have largely said that right now it’s legal and is simply too tactically valuable to refuse to use as a matter of principle.
Anyways, this means that a small number of wealthy people may effectively fund major campaigns independently, so they don’t need support from the party committees. So there’s now a strong element of the party that tends to be backed by Super PACs and doesn’t listen to the central leadership.
It’s ironically also been providing evidence that money doesn’t seem to have as much impact on elections as we used to think; now that people don’t need broad popular support to raise a ton of money high campaign spending is suddenly much less correlated with election outcomes.
Not sure whether this counts as brainbleach, but #TrumpFacts on Twitter is good for a laugh right now.
I stopped finding Trump funny a few months ago. Now I keep thinking of that scene from The Dead Zone:
I was just reading BBC News, and I saw a list of prominent US Politicians and their reactions- Hilary Clinton says Trump’s comments are ‘prejudiced and divisive.’ Chris Christie says they are a ‘ridiculous position.’ Marcio Rubio says they are ‘offensive and outlandish.’ Even Kasich says they are ‘outrageous divisiveness.’ Ted Cruz, on the other hand, simply says they are… ‘not my policy.’ Really, Cruz? Really?
@ Wetherby
That comment from Boris Johnson is hilarious, not to mention a complete crushing of Trump’s lies! I laughed a lot. I’d rather not go anywhere there’s the slightest chance of meeting Trump…
The right has been crazy for a decade. It’s not surprising that they would want Trump.
There may be parts of London where the more modest of income cannot AFFORD to go (and live) but Trump should quit talking about other cities and countries if he can’t do it without sounding like he’s never traveled beyond the city limits of someplace like Odessa, Texas or Fargo, North Dakota. (And like he has a tv that only gets Faux News channel.)
I’ve never been a fan of the Republican party at the best of times, but this election cycle’s just been disgusting me. Their frontrunners are a borderline fascist who can’t go two days without saying one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, a creationist who can’t go two days without lying or getting something simple wrong, and a Canadian who can’t go two days without befriending someone who wants to make homosexuality a death penalty offence. It’s a race to the bottom to see who can be the biggest bigoted loudmouthed idiot, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down. And half the country still supports this party.
@Walter
Calling people “crazy” is not okay. This is very clearly outlined in the comments policy.
Cruz was ahead of Trump in a Iowa pull, which is good news, as once Trump starts losing, he will not act gracefully and that will alienate independents even further. Unfortunately for the GOP, the people most likely to vote are the … how to put this … less stable members of the party. The ones who will beat up a homeless person, or as Trump called it, “Passionate”.