Here are the links for the two pieces whose titles and substance I criticize in today’s “podcast”/audio:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/why-we-cant-stop-arguing-about-whether-trump-is-a-fascist
https://www.amazon.com/Did-Happen-Here-Perspectives-Fascism/dp/1324074396
Even now the habit persists…If Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump and Trumpism passed the “F-word” test from his vicious nativist 2015 campaign announcement through the 2021 Capitol Riot, he has tested even higher on the F-scale ever since he left office, during which time he has called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Trump is now openly channeling Hitler and otherwise revealing his fascist essence by: saying that nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country;” promising to undertake a giant immigrant round-up, detention and deportation program; promising to rid the country of Marxist “vermin;” promising violent “retribution” against his political enemies; intimidating witnesses, prosecutors, and judges who dare to try to uphold the rule of law against him; threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act on the day of his inauguration; claiming that he will end urban crime in one day with the US military; announcing his desire to be a “dictator for one day;” portraying himself as a messianic figure who can save and redeem a once great nation ruined by “the left;” posing as a victim of “radical left” persecution; calling his incarcerated January 6 putschist thugs “political hostages” and “unbelievable patriots” and and promising to pardon them (and more – this is just the short list).
Three weeks ago, Trump told one of his hate rallies in Ohio that nonwhite immigrants are “not people” and said that the nation would descend into mass violence if he is not re-elected: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”
Trump continues with the Big Hitlerian Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, an openly preposterous multiply/legally disproven claim that goes unchallenged by anyone who wants to stay afloat in a post-republican Republi-fascist Party that has bowed completely before its orange-hued Dear Leader. And this time, unlike in 2016, Herr Donald has a vast Republikan policy network on board. Led by the Heritage Foundation, this right-wing army of ideologues and wonks has worked up Project 2025, a massive and ambitious program for the Christian white nationalist/neofascist takeover and makeover of American government and society. Their project includes filling the executive branch from top to bottom with functionaries whose primary qualification for “serving” is loyalty to the Master in the Orange, I mean White House.
Meanwhile out across the country, Republi-fascists are in charge of half the states and are wreaking revanchist havoc both inside and outside of government. They have undertaken a literal physical-military nullificationist challenge to the federal government on the southern Texas border. They harass and intimidate teachers, school boards, librarians, public health workers, election officials, election workers, voters. A recent report from Religion Dispatches details the lethal threat posed to voting rights, fair elections and social justice activism and public assembly by far-right white nationalist and Trumpist militias that are collaborating with county boards of supervisors and sheriffs. They stand ready to be activated for political violence by their tangerine-tinted Fuhrer, who is currently running well ahead of the hapless Weimar Democrat Joe Biden in the handful of contested states that absurdly determine presidential outcomes under the archaic slaveowners’ Electoral College. A spate of county resolutions seeking formal legal recognition of these darkly revanchist paramilitary bodies “are part of a larger far-right plan to take control of county governments and put them on a war footing—as guerillas when Democrats are in control, and as pro-state paramilitaries when MAGA Republicans are in charge.”
This above, in italics, is from an essay I’m writing, an essay I started to work up after getting this audio down on my phone and up here at Substack. I hope to publish this essay later this week.
High Prince fascism-denier Samuel Moyn, The Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence and history professor at Yale University.
The May 2016 Adam Gopnik essay I reference in this audio: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/going-there-with-donald-trump
Two Idiotic Titles