Two articles...six days apart

[GMDino]

Over in the Comics and meme thread this post got me (and others) wondering how something could change in the two articles in less than a week.

So here are the articles:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/donald_trump_is_a_moderate_republican_that_s_why_he_s_winning.html

Quote:When it’s time to vote, Republicans usually choose an “establishment” candidate to lead their party: George H.W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012.


Part of that is the strength of the people who raise money and push for specific policies, but part of it is the strength of establishment picks.
These candidates fit a profile. They stand at the center of their parties with ties to the three “legs” of the modern GOP: social conservatives, national security conservatives, and anti-tax conservatives. They’re not always strong with every group, but they are—or they become—acceptable through the course of the primary. They may not hold moderate positions, but they sound moderate and appeal to ordinary American voters.

That candidate, or a version of that candidate, exists in the 2016 Republican primary. It’s Jeb Bush, it’s Sen. Marco Rubio, it’s Gov. John Kasich—it’s even Gov. Chris Christie. But they aren’t the leaders of the race. They aren’t even close. The leader is Donald Trump, a real estate mogul turned reality TV star turned nativist agitator.

On the surface, Trump is the antithesis of a traditional Republican nominee. It’s why I’ve been deeply skeptical of his chances. But look beyond Trump’s affect—his brash, “carnival barker” approach to politics—and it’s clear that, ideologically, he is the only candidate who fully fits the profile of the typical Republican nominee. Trump stands at the center of the GOP. He is the median Republican.

Now, I know the argument against Trump’s odds in the Republican primary. Even in our era of weak parties, elites have tremendous influence, and they don’t choose people like Trump, who stand largely outside the party system.

At the same time, voters matter, too. And while they usually ratify the establishment pick, they can also go off path, which is what we’ve seen with Trump.

We’re six months into his candidacy, and he still leads. Not by a little, and not by a bit, but by a lot. In the Huffington Post average of national Republican presidential polling, Trump leads with 32 percent support. His next closest competitor, Ben Carson, holds just 18.5 percent of GOP primary voters. And while it’s true Trump hit turbulance after the presidential debates, he’s recovered in the weeks since. Donald Trump is still on top.

This is true in almost every state where pollsters are talking to Republican voters. Trump leads with 31 percent support in New Jersey, 27 percent in South Carolina, 27 percent in Florida, 26 percent in heavily-polled New Hampshire, 23 percent in Ohio and Pennsylvania, 22 percent in Texas, and 20 percent in California. Where he doesn’t lead—Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina—Carson holds the command. You can chalk some of this to media, lack of attention, and a paucity of polls. But not all of it. Consistently, across different regions of the country, Republicans are telling the people who ask that they want Trump for their party’s nomination.

Trump holds beliefs and positions that appeal to each part of the Republican Party.

If Trump were a sideshow like Newt Gingrich or Herman Cain, or a factional candidate like Carson or Mike Huckabee, this wouldn’t be true. But he isn’t. More than any other candidate in this race, Trump holds beliefs and positions that appeal to each part of the Republican Party.

On national security and defense, he’s a measured hawk. He won’t invade for the sake of invading—he opposed the Iraq war, as he’ll remind you—but he’ll take the fight to the enemy, when necessary. “When you’re weak and ineffective, bad stuff does happen. And that’s what we’re seeing,” Trump said in a recent speech. His promise? To “bomb the shit” out of ISIS and capture its oil fields. All of this is in line with Republican voters—in a recent Reuters poll, 36 percent said he was best equipped to handle terrorism.

On taxes, he’s in the Republican mainstream. His tax cuts would slash rates across the board, with the largest gains for the wealthiest Americans. It goes beyond Bush’s plan, in particular, to offer a lower rate for individuals and corporations. Rhetoric aside—he routinely hits hedge fund managers for paying low taxes—Trump is in line with supply-side and anti-tax conservatives who want less revenue for government programs. That said, Trump rejects cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Retirement programs—the bulk of the benefits that touch actual Republican voters—are sacrosanct. And this as well puts him in the center of the GOP as it exists.

Trump has the most trouble on social conservatism. He won’t oppose same-sex marriage—he almost certainly supports it—and until his run for president, he was pro-choice. Now, he says he’s “pro-life with exceptions” for rape, incest, and the health of the mother, which puts him out of step with anti-abortion activists but in line with a substantial minority of Republicans.

And then there’s immigration. It cuts across every other issue in the Republican Party, touching national security, the economy, and the fabric of our national culture. GOP elites, going back to Ronald Reagan, have supported more permissive immigration laws; George W. Bush tried to pass comprehensive reform, Sen. John McCain supported it, and most recently, Rubio tried to craft a bill. But substantial numbers of Republican voters have always opposed immigration, and in the last five years, it’s become a driving force in conservative politics. To win the nomination, for instance, Mitt Romney had to renounce “amnesty” and position himself against any immigration reform.
Trump’s core message is on immigration. It’s the reason he’s running. He wants to close the borders to “illegals” and deport most of the 11 million unauthorized migrants to the country. “They have to go,” as he often says. If Republican elites are to the left of their voters on immigration, Trump is simpatico with the base. And it shows in polls—49 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say that Trump can best handle immigration. Fifty-five percent agree with his statement that Mexico sends people that bring “crime” and “rapists,” and 77 percent disagree with Bush’s statement that unauthorized immigration is an “act of love.”
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You can see Trump’s position as the median Republican in the composition of his supporters. Twenty percent call themselves “moderate” or “liberal,” 65 percent say they’re “conservative,” and just 13 percent call themselves “very conservative.” Age wise, about half are between 45 and 64, while 34 percent are over 65. And in terms of income, his support trends toward working- and middle-class Republicans. These are GOP voters. They are the mainstream.

Yes, Trump is unacceptable to a large share of Republican voters. Yes, he has high unfavorables. But his beliefs—and especially those on immigration—draw Republicans from all sides of the party. Let’s put it this way: If Trump were more polished, if he looked and sounded more like Rubio and Bush, we would see him, correctly, as a mainstream candidate for president. Set aside his affect, and Trump sits at the center of the GOP, and that is why he’s winning.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/donald_trump_is_a_fascist_it_is_the_political_label_that_best_describes.html

Quote:In trying to explain Donald Trump, I looked to George Wallace, who played a similar role in American politics through the 1960s. But there were other options. Elements of Trump are present in the “Know-Nothing” movement of the 1840s, the radio demogogues of the 1930s, and the “second” Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. There was also the F-word—fascism.


At the time, this seemed like a category error. For as much as I saw (and still see) an authoritarian streak in Trump’s rhetoric and demeanor, fascist seemed premature. Not the least because there’s always been an authoritarian streak in American politics, from the Alien and Sedition Acts to Jim Crow.

In the past week, however, “Donald Trump as fascist” has gone from hyperbolic to mainstream. After endorsing extreme measures in the aftermath of the Paris attacks—from registering Muslim Americans to closing mosques—assorted writers, observers, and political operatives began using fascist to describe Trump’s approach. “Forced federal registration of U.S. citizens, based on religious identity, is fascism. Period. Nothing else to call it,” tweeted Jeb Bush adviser John Noonan. “I just don’t agree with that kind of thing,” declared alleged presidential candidate Jim Gilmore. “I’ve said it’s fascist talk.” “I’m still not sure it’s 100 percent clear that Donald Trump really understands that he’s a neo-fascist,” wrote Michael Tomasky for the Daily Beast.a on San Bernardino Shooting

As apparently mainstream as this is, however, there’s still a question: What, specifically, makes Trump a fascist? After all, America has had racist politicians and internment policies for disparaged minorities. And while they were awful, they weren’t necessarily fascist. Which is to say that, before changing our rhetoric, we should define our terms.

Part of the problem of talking about fascism, at least in American political culture, is that there’s nothing close to a common definition. Sometimes, it’s used as a synonym for Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy. Most often, it’s a political insult, usually directed from the left to the right, but often in the reverse too, always in service of narrow partisan points.

This is too bad because fascist and fascism are terms that actually mean something apart from contemporary political combat and the particulars of early- to mid–20th-century Europe. And while that meaning is fuzzy, contested, and contingent, there are elements that scholars can agree on.

One of the most-read takes on fascism comes from Italian philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco in an essay for the New York Review of Books titled “Ur-Fascism.” Eco emphasizes the extent to which fascism is ad hoc and opportunistic. It’s “philosophically out of joint,” he writes, with features that “cannot be organized into a system” since “many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanacticism.”

With that said, it is true that there are fascist movements, and it’s also true that when you strip their cultural clothing—the German paganism in Nazism, for example—there are common properties. Not every fascist movement shows all of them, but—Eco writes—“it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it." Eco identifies 14, but for this column, I want to focus on seven.

They are: A cult of “action for action’s sake,” where “thinking is a form of emasculation”; an intolerance of “analytical criticism,” where disagreement is condemned; a profound “fear of difference,” where leaders appeal against “intruders”; appeals to individual and social frustration and specifically a “frustrated middle class” suffering from “feelings of political humiliation and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups”; a nationalist identity set against internal and external enemies (an “obsession with a plot”); a feeling of humiliation by the “ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies”; a “popular elitism” where “every citizen belongs to the best people of the world” and underscored by contempt for the weak; and a celebration of aggressive (and often violent) masculinity.

Trump isn’t an ideologue; he’s an opportunist.

Now, let’s look at Trump. His campaign revolves around one theme: That the United States is weak, that it loses, and that it needs leadership to become “great again.” “We don’t have victories anymore,” he said in his announcement speech. “When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us. … When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity.” He continued: “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems,” and “Our enemies are getting stronger and stronger by the way, and we as a country are getting weaker.”

This includes unauthorized immigrants, and now refugees, whom he attacks as a menace to ordinary Americans. The former, according to Trump, take jobs and threaten American safety—“They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”—while the latter are a “Trojan horse.” But Trump promises action. He will cut new deals and make foreign competitors subordinate. He will deport immigrants and build a wall on the border, financed by Mexico. He will bring “spectacular” economic growth. And Trump isn’t an ideologue; he’s an opportunist who borrows freely from both parties.

How does he build favor with Republican voters? He shows bravado and “strength,” disparaging weak opponents. He indulges racist rhetoric and encourages violence against protesters. He speaks directly to the petite bourgeoisie in American life: managers, public employees, small-business owners. People squeezed on all ends and desperate for economic and cultural security against capitalist instability and rapid demographic shifts, as represented by President Obama. Elect him, Trump says, and he’ll restore your security and American greatness. “You’re going to say to your children, and you’re going to say to anybody else, that we were part of a movement to take back our country. … And we will make America great again.”
[url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/donald_trump_is_a_fascist_it_is_the_political_label_that_best_describes.html#lf_comment=419562025]
Alone and disconnected, this rhetoric isn’t necessarily fascist. Some of it, in fact, is even anodyne. But together and in the person of Donald Trump, it’s clear: The rhetoric of fascism is here. And increasingly, the policies are too. The only thing left is the violence.
In the Europe of the 1920s and ’30s, fascist parties organized armed gangs to intimidate political opponents. Despite assaults at Trump events, that still seems unlikely. But as we’ve seen with the rise of Trump, the wall between routine and unthinkable is much thinner than we’d like to think.

[Dill]

(06-19-2017, 04:25 PM)GMDino Wrote: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/11/donald_trump_is_a_fascist_it_is_the_political_label_that_best_describes.html

Both articles are a pretty good description of Trump politics.

I should add that the second article is based on Umberto Eco's 1995 essay on "Ur-Fascism," which is worth reading in itself. http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

"Ur-fascism" is what Eco terms those features of fascism that, in combination, distinguish all fascisms from other kinds of authoritarian/totalitarian rule; and he lists 14 such features, though all not necessarily found in every fascism. Ur-fascism is not identified with any specific fascist regime; it is the set of recurring features that make it recognizable as such.

To pique people's interest, I quote 5-7 below.


5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only
privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the U.S., a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.