Has democracy ended in the U.S.?

[Dill]

(07-02-2018, 12:48 PM)Bengalzona Wrote: And that is also what I was saying in my earlier post. Because a person uses a similar tactic or approach that Nazis once used, that doesn't make them a Nazi. There is not enough correlating evidence to support the sweepingly general statement. However, it is accurate to say they used the same tactic or approach as the Nazis. That is not saying that they ARE Nazis, only that they used a similar tactic or approach (and don't we all do that at some point or another?).  

If someone tells me they are a vegetarian and I reply that Hitler used to be a vegetarian, I didn't just call them like Hitler. And no sane person would take it that way in common conversation. Similarly, if I say we now have one-party rule similar to the way the Soviets used to have one-party rule, that is just stating a correlation.

LOL Be careful B-zona, There are rightists who see the origin of environmentalism in Nazism. It would not surprise me if some connected vegetarianism to Nazism as well. Depends on how much you hate the "ism".

That's why I think it is better to use the term "authoritarian" when speaking of Trump in public forums. He clearly is that. Most Americans don't really know much about Nazism or Fascism, except they remember something about Jews and ovens, and then a big war.  One can reel off a list of the nascent Nazi party's issues--the focus on borders and "immigrants," the merging of church and state, and hatred of religious groups supposed unassimilable, and of liberals, feminists and "socialists," not to mention the free press--and find affinities or outright support with Trumpism. That is hair raising for political scientists and historians, but the similarities or affinities to contemporary authoritarianism may not be clear to non-specialists--and threatening to many who agree with parts of that platform.

It is easy to deflect Hitler comparisons because Trump hasn't killed millions of people and that's what Hitler stands for--not a very specific regime of anti-liberal policies. It is less easy to explain away the authoritarianism. And if people don't know what counts as that, it can be explained with less chance of deflection. And people should do that, rather than assent to the normalization of Trumpism, by which I include his vulgar and uncivil behavior.

Also, I think we should be looking for features of the Trump movement that are specifically American, and may have no precedent at all in what has traditionally been called "fascism."   Even the most ideological and partisan Americans who repeat party talking points they can't themselves explain or defend still insist they speak and think for themselves. They don't bind to political organizations as directly and completely as Nazis/fascists did, don't go for uniforms to confirm identity and conformity--though they can still be mobilized into a movement orchestrated from the top down by anger, erosion of civil and political norms, and daily fogging/disputation of fact. We should be careful of applying old familiar labels to what might be a wholly new form of authoritarian politics.  In 1919 Nazis, who had invented a new political ideology, didn't have a unique name for it yet, and so attached "national" to the familiar "socialist."   If we say "fascist" to soon then we may be looking for old stuff that isn't there and missing the new stuff.

NB just re-edited the 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraph