The Potential Fascism of Donald Trump

I can almost hear — all the way here in NJ — Trump-eteer heads violently exploding all over America.

I can see the ad hominem attacks mounting — “Hedges is a fucking asshole!!” And so is Stukfuk!!!

I predict this response from that jackass Anonymous — “Vote for Trump or vote for the same.”

Therefore, I can repeat my mantra — “Sure, go ahead and vote for Donald. But, you will live to regret it.” The article below states as well as possible why I believe this.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully understand the appeal of the “fuck you” vote.  But, at the end of the day — what if it’s you and me who get fucked??

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The Revenge of the Lower Classes and the Rise of American Fascism

Donald Trump

College-educated elites, on behalf of corporations, carried out the savage neoliberal assault on the working poor. Now they are being made to pay. Their duplicity — embodied in politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — succeeded for decades. These elites, many from East Coast Ivy League schools, spoke the language of values — civility, inclusivity, a condemnation of overt racism and bigotry, a concern for the middle class — while thrusting a knife into the back of the underclass for their corporate masters. This game has ended.

There are tens of millions of Americans, especially lower-class whites, rightfully enraged at what has been done to them, their families and their communities. They have risen up to reject the neoliberal policies and political correctness imposed on them by college-educated elites from both political parties: Lower-class whites are embracing an American fascism.

These Americans want a kind of freedom — a freedom to hate. They want the freedom to use words like “n-word,” “kike,” “spic,” “chink,” “raghead” and “f*g.” They want the freedom to idealize violence and the gun culture. They want the freedom to have enemies, to physically assault Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, homosexuals and anyone who dares criticize their crypto fascism. They want the freedom to celebrate historical movements and figures that the college-educated elites condemn, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Confederacy. They want the freedom to ridicule and dismiss intellectuals, ideas, science and culture. They want the freedom to silence those who have been telling them how to behave. And they want the freedom to revel in hypermasculinity, racism, sexism and white patriarchy. These are the core sentiments of fascism. These sentiments are engendered by the collapse of the liberal state.

The Democrats are playing a very dangerous game by anointing Hillary Clinton as their presidential candidate. She epitomizes the double-dealing of the college-educated elites, those who speak the feel-your-pain language of ordinary men and women, who hold up the bible of political correctness, while selling out the poor and the working class to corporate power.

The Republicans, energized by America’s reality-star version of Il Duce, Donald Trump, have been pulling in voters, especially new voters, while the Democrats are well below the voter turnouts for 2008. In the voting Tuesday, 5.6 million votes were cast for the Democrats while 8.3 million went to the Republicans. Those numbers were virtually reversed in 2008 — 8.2 million for the Democrats and about 5 million for the Republicans.

Richard Rorty in his last book, “Achieving Our Country,” written in 1998, presciently saw where our post-industrial nation was headed.

Many writers on socio economic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

“At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly over optimistic.

“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words “n-word” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”

Fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the “losers” who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment. The sociologist Émile Durkheim warned that the disenfranchisement of a class of people from the structures of society produced a state of “anomie” — a “condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals.” Those trapped in this “anomie,” he wrote, are easy prey to propaganda and emotionally driven mass movements. Hannah Arendt, echoing Durkheim, noted that “the chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships.

In fascism the politically disempowered and disengaged, ignored and reviled by the establishment, discover a voice and a sense of empowerment.

As Arendt noted, the fascist and communist movements in Europe in the 1930s

… recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who had never before appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been ‘spoiled’ by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the control of reason. This would have been a shortcoming only if they had sincerely entered into competition with either parties; it was not if they were sure of dealing with people who had reason to be equally hostile to all parties.”

Fascism is aided and advanced by the apathy of those who are tired of being conned and lied to by a bankrupt liberal establishment, whose only reason to vote for a politician or support a political party is to elect the least worst. This, for many voters, is the best Clinton can offer.

Fascism expresses itself in familiar and comforting national and religious symbols, which is why it comes in various varieties and forms. Italian fascism, which looked back to the glory of the Roman Empire, for example, never shared the Nazis’ love of Teutonic and Nordic myths. American fascism too will reach back to traditional patriotic symbols, narratives and beliefs.

Robert Paxton wrote in “The Anatomy of Fascism”:

The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as [George] Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.

Fascism is about an inspired and seemingly strong leader who promises moral renewal, new glory and revenge. It is about the replacement of rational debate with sensual experience. This is why the lies, half-truths and fabrications by Trump have no impact on his followers. Fascists transform politics, as philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin pointed out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate aesthetic for the fascist, Benjamin said, is war.

Paxton singles out the amorphous ideology characteristic of all fascist movements.

Fascism rested not upon the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion related to romanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise denied romanticism’s exaltation of unfettered personal creativity. The fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of politics that they would experience sensually: the warmth of belonging to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power; the excitement of participating in a wave of shared feelings, and of sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill of domination.”

There is only one way left to blunt the yearning for fascism coalescing around Trump. It is to build, as fast as possible, movements or parties that declare war on corporate power, engage in sustained acts of civil disobedience and seek to reintegrate the disenfranchised — the “losers” — back into the economy and political life of the country. This movement will never come out of the Democratic Party.

If Clinton prevails in the general election, Trump may disappear, but the fascist sentiments will expand. Another Trump, perhaps more vile, will be vomited up from the bowels of the decayed political system. We are fighting for our political life. Tremendous damage has been done by corporate power and the college-educated elites to our capitalist democracy. The longer the elites, who oversaw this disemboweling of the country on behalf of corporations — who believe, as does CBS Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves, that however bad Trump would be for America he would at least be good for corporate profit — remain in charge, the worse it is going to get.

 

Author: Stucky

I'm right, you're wrong. Deal with it.

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gilberts
gilberts

Hey, Stucky, I’m taking a break from beating my wife and taunting the Pakistanis down the street. Just for giggles, I’ll take you on-no hate here.

Trump’s policies from his site:

2nd Amendment:
The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period. Enforce existing laws. No gun or mag bans. Improve Mental Health system. National Concealed Carry 50 state reciprocity.

HealthCare Re-Reform:
Completely repeal BarryCare
Permit interstate Insurance
Allow individuals to deduct healthcare expenses
Allow individuals to use HSAs.
Require price transparency from all providers
Block-grant Medicade to states.
Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug makers with cheap, safe products

US-China Trade:
Strong negotiations with China-no more freebies
Bring China to negotiating table
Protect American intellectual property
Revive manufacturing by ending China’s illegal export subsidies and lax labor and environmental standards.
Strengthen our negotiating position by lowering corporate tax rates to keep US companies here.
Bolster US military position in SEAsia to discourage PRC adventurism
Declare PRC a currency manipulator

Immigration:
A nation without borders is not a nation
A nation without laws is not a nation
A nation that does not serve its citizens is not a nation
Mexico should pay for our wall-they’ve been taking advantage of us for years. Govt-sponsored immigration crime has cost us billions. We will crack down on visas, halt currency flows, and hike fees until they pay.
Defend laws and Constitution of US-nobody is above the law.
Triple ICE agents.
National E-Verify
Mandatory return of all criminal aliens.
Detention, not Catch and Release, then send home
Defund Sanctuary Cities. No more govt money til’ compliance
Enhanced Penalties for overstaying a visa
Cooporate with local gang tast forces. ICE should support cops agains violent ganges, like MS13.
END BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP!!!!
Prioritize US Workers- getting rid of illegals creates opportunities for Americans and allows wages to rise.
Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs, saving entry level STEM jobs for US grads.
Requirement to hire US workers first.
End welfare abuse-prospective immigrants need to show they can afford to be here
Jobs program for inner city youth-end J-1 Visas and create job bank for inner city kids to get jobs
Refugee program for American kids-raise standards for refugees
Immigration Moderation-employers will have to hire from US and green card holders before going overseas.

Veterans Admin Reform:
Ensure vets get care whenver, wherever they need it.
Support the whole vet, not just physical health
Make VA great by firing corrupt and incompetent executives
Increase funding for PTSD and suicide prevention
Job training and placement for vets
Prioritize female vet issues
Hire vets to care for vets

Tax Reform:
Tax relief for Middle Class.
Simplify the tax code 4x tax brackets
Grow the economy by discouraging corporate inversions
<25k/50k tax-free
No death penalty or gift taxes
Reduce most deductions for rich
1x time corporate cash repatriation at 10% rate from abroad, then end to tax deferrals on corp earnings from abroad

I'm not naive enough to believe he'll do this, anymore than any other politician, but if he does at least some of this, it will be good. If he ends the Anchor Baby nonsense, it will be a massive victory. If he cuts the foreign hiring nonsense, he'll be doing thousands of skilled workers a big favor. Also, he sounds like the most solid 2nd A supporter I've seen in a while. I like his national reciprocity for COncealed Carry idea. Trump has a CC himself, so I imagine he knows the value of it.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Former Mexican President to Trump: ‘I’m not going to pay for that fucking wall’
Fusion

ottomatik

gilberts- nice posts, funny and informative, thanks.

flash
flash

EC , if you truly luv me , you get on the Trump Train and stop fueling Stucky’s dementia . He’s crazy enough without your help.Now lets hear it..ALL ABOARD !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6yEAjfrrIk

flash
flash

FWIW, without reading it, I down vote every Westie commie comment I see. #FeelTheSpurn

Thinker

Trump asked his supporters to raise their right hands and pledge they’d vote for him in the Florida primary.

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Thinker

Stucky, glad you saw and liked the Authoritarianism piece.

For me, this whole thing is like 2008 on steroids. Back then, I stood screaming at the screen, unable to believe the blind devotion of people who believed the “transform America” message and all the promises that were so obviously lies.

Fast forward eight years, and it’s the same thing, only worse. The lies are more blatant, the promises more ridiculous.

One thing we can learn from the past, though, is that — at some point — you need to just keep your head down and swallow your dissent. At least if you want to survive. The fanaticism is too strong, the ability for the charismatic leader to whip others into a frenzy so great that you don’t want to take the risk to call them out on it.

We are descending into dangerous times.

Hershel Pasternak
Hershel Pasternak

Be careful they dont cut your throat at the barbers for being a jerk shmucky. I used to shoot the shit down at harlem barber, I’d screw em for a shave, trim and mustache wax for a dime, and then looking sharp get dark meat down the block for a nickel, don’t tell peaches eh.

Thinker

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