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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.
Here is a great post about his fascism in case no one else saw it.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2015/11/donald-trump-may-not-be-fascist-but-he.html
long but well worth the read
The interesting thing about the Boris quote is he’s the nearest we’ve got to a right wing buffoon, and even he is laughing at Trump.
At least, if he wrote it himself. And if he did – I like him a hell of a lot better than I did before.
@ tricyclist
Yeah, and they’ve both got notorious hair. Boris however is a genuinely smart guy. He’s also a lot more of an internationalist than Trump; check out some of his books.
Funnily enough Boris was born in New York.
This poll, if correct, is a bit disconcerting.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/08/muslims-us-islam-islamophobia-data-polls
It beggars belief that anyone but an insignificant minority could consider Trump a plausible candidate; but we are talking about a country where Creationists aren’t laughed at by everybody. Some worrying possibilities as to how this might transpire. One keeps thinking that he’ll soon be yesterday’s news as people start concentrating on the rational candidates, then you realise there aren’t any.
Case in point: Billionaires throwing gazillions into GOP campaigns and Obama still getting a second-term, regardless.
Oh, he certainly wrote it himself. He’s been a professional journalist for the better part of three decades (full time before turning to politics) and still has a regular newspaper column. He also has an extremely distinctive writing style, so I doubt very much that he gets an underling to do it.
It’s a measure of how surprisingly popular he is that an instinctively left-wing city like London (which normally favours Labour Party mayors and MPs) not merely elected him mayor but re-elected him four years later.
With regard to him being a buffoon, he’s a lot cleverer than he usually lets on. He’s conspicuously cleverer than David Cameron, for instance, which I suspect generates a fair amount of tension. But, like George W. Bush before him, he’s realised that pretending to be a buffoon is a great way of wrong-footing your opposition and making them misunderestimate you.
@PinkiSyddyKitty
I agree with your point, but could we refrain from using words such as ‘nuts’ and ‘insane’ to describe these people. As people here say a lot (never before said it myself!) ‘asshole is not a mental illness.’ Equating insanity with bad morals and sanity with good morals stigmatises those with true mental illnesses.
As to what you say, I agree! Its actually, to me, quite exciting to see that progressive forces are clearly working, and people against social justice are becoming less and less powerful in terms of what they can do to stem the tide.
It shows that despite a lot of hate going around, the world is becoming a more and more progressive, tolerant place- it feels like sexists and racists and all that lot are panicking because they know they’re not going to stop the people who are the real forces of progress in the world- and that’s really quite exciting!
Off topic, but worth noting that Reggie Yates’s program, Extreme UK, is covering the men’s rights movement next week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06s5h18
I like Reggie Yates’s programs (he has covered Russia and South Africa before). He is such a nice guy and is so genuinely upset by the horrible people he meets. His program on race in Russia is very hard viewing though.
Even the leader of UKIP thought Trump has gone too far.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35037553
Scroll to the bottom of the article for the relevant quote.
What people seem to not get is that left vs. right isn’t really about big government vs. small government. Fascism usually follows a pattern of supporting a government controlled economy with a goal of benefiting the bourgeoisie. For instance, if you were unemployed and poor in Nazi Germany you had a choice of being sent to a labor camp or working long hours in a factory for very low wages. A big part of the economic policy centered around invading other countries and taking their resources and there was never any intention of helping poor people or increasing economic equality.
It’s true that fascists are not conservatives. They tend to dislike laissez faire economic policies and they prefer more of a gnostic dualist theology over traditional religion (and it’s arguable that parts of evangelicalism are more gnostic now). But they’re still on the right because they’re against pretty much everything the left stands for.
@PearTree
I love Reggie Yates. He was a big part of CBBC when I was growing up and you’re right, he is a genuinely nice guy. Part of me takes an irrational concern that the show will adopt a Cassie Jay type stance and only show the clips where the MRAs sound almost reasonable. But the blurb on that page has already mentioned their online harassment against women, mentioned that Reggie talks to said women, and I highly doubt the Beeb will show any form of misogyny in a tolerant light. The clips also, look promising that the documentary will be a good, honest one.
I think then, that the programme might let the men speak for themselves and then we’ll all see what they really are. MRAs are, after all, incredibly good at making themselves look bad – just by speaking their true thoughts.
Also holy shit:
I wonder what Roosh will say about this.
As an Australian watching news on America and its politics from half a world away, Donald Trump terrifies me. I am very glad that we got rid of Tony Abbott as our prime minister, before the two could meet and plan our countries’ mutual implosions. Tony Abbott was pretty terrible at relating to women also.
Considering migration to New Zealand. Who wants in?
To be optimistic, I’d say fascist political movements are a sign of the death throes of white supremacy and patriarchy in a culture. GamerGate is an example of a fascist movement that even has its own quasi-paramilitary force.
Well, yes and no. It’s a backlash against progressivism demonstrating a severe cultural divide. So whether it ends up being the last backlash of a movement doomed to cultural irrelevance or the first manifestation of a movement heading for cultural dominance — whether we’re talking black hundreds or black shirts — depends on whether it succeeds or not, which we can’t really predict except in retrospect.
Can someone locate my eyes? I think they may’ve popped so hard that they launched into orbit.
Do they have your terrifying spiders? Cuz I’m never stepping foot on Australia, way too arachnophobic for that!
On topic — hell, even my conservative relatives are no longer surprised that Trump opening his mouth means stupid shit is being said, so I can only hope that the majority of republicans feel the same way.
Katz — my brief knowledge of world history says that retrograde views really only manage to take hold following serious crisis. Germany after WWI was a shit place to be, way shittier than we make the US out to be now (I say this looking at a 1-1.5k vet estimate and 20% credit APR, so yes, I’m aware shit sucks, but it’s a stable sort of suckage). Other than that it’s been things like the Black Death… basically, I don’t think America is currently shitty enough for retrograde asswipes to convince sufficient people that their retrograde views would return things to a better state.
Well, that and I really don’t want to predict how it will play out if we are gonna take that path. Maybe then I’d be willing to risk huntsman spiders.
I’d follow Slavoj Zizek and say that much of social progressivism and environmentalism right now is supported by people who tend to be more upper middle class (even myself, I’m not exactly rich but I’m working on an advanced degree in a STEM field). That means progressive politicians can have more of a capitalist orientation by default even if they support a strong welfare state on paper. Then the right wing populists know how to make themselves attractive to petit bourgeois folks.
Let’s just hope civil rights and the environment can survive the next 50-100 years.
I don’t think Donald Trump would win in a general election now. I do think it’s possible with an October surprise though. Kind of like how Reagan got elected.
I still don’t think he’ll get the nomination though. Like I’ve said in other threads, the Republicans who answer the phone and take a national poll are not the same Republicans who will be motivated to vote/caucus in early primary states. Ted Cruz (not that he’s much better) is polling ahead of Trump in Iowa. Ultimately, the type of party activists who actually primary and caucus vote will take electability into account.
There’s also the possibility of a delegate rebellion at the convention if Trump did win the popular vote in the primaries. Presidential primaries aren’t binding. It’s the delegates who nominate the candidate. They just typically fall in line with the will of state voters.
Should be an interesting and scary 2016.
I don’t believe he’ll win the nomination, but he’s been exceeding what I’d believe possible for a while now. Delegate rebellion is somewhat possible; as I recall from last time the delegates from states are bound to support the chosen candidate in the first round of voting but there’s enough delegates who don’t represent states that he’d need a pretty clean sweep of the states to win in the first round if they oppose him.
I don’t think he’s electable. It’s just disturbing that he’s gotten this far.
Our cat is orange all over, yells a lot, and is quite unreasonable. He also manipulates women. His much older and wiser sister is the head cat in our house (appointed by Mom and Dad), and I’ve told the orange kitty that if he keeps up his behavior he’ll never get to be head cat, even if he’s the only cat. That’s how we nip fascism in the bud in our house. I recommend it.
(And to be fair to the orange kitty, he’s very cute and means no harm. And his family before us was a large Palestinian family, so he is completely down with Muslims.)
@pinkisyddikitty
I like your worldview. Welcome!
@Laughing Witch
You’re back! I hope that things are looking up.
Whoops! I’m so sorry. I have to be more careful not to use euphemisms for mental illness to describe over-the-top people. My bad. Ironic since I myself have ADHD and emotional issues.
And I agree with you on all counts.
I think the Iowa caucus usually has a moderating effect on Republican candidates (at least hopefully).
Oh, for sure; Donald’s not going to win and the whole thing will blow over for the moment at some point. The danger isn’t Trump literally becoming the next Hitler (especially since he doesn’t actually believe fascist ideology anyway). The danger is him normalizing this kind of discourse for the people who really do believe it.
All the more reason for reasonable people to emphasize to the world how ridiculous stuff like Trump and others spew is.