If it steps like a goose....

[steepholm]

Anyone doubting whether Trump's instincts were fascistic will I hope have had those doubts satisfied by his first week in office. Terrible as the events at the airports have been, in Pollyanna mode I'm hoping that they will have given serious second thoughts to people thinking of voting for Le Pen in France. This (and worse) is what you'd be voting for: don't say there's no way you could have known.

If Le Pen is defeated - better, humiliated - it may stop the populist right in its tracks in mainland Europe. If not - well, après elle, le déluge.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's selective enough to be highly misleading. Fascists will use whatever tools are to hand to advance their aims. For a while Mussolini used the language of revolutionary socialism (against the actual Socialist party in Italy), then threw it over in favour of nationalism - though he kept the feature of a one-party state. Trump, similarly, has harnessed popular resentment against political and business elites to gain power. Both men were thin-skinned narcissists who were quite happy to encourage and/or use violence to achieve their ends and to scapegoat the vulnerable.

Actually, Mussolini parasitized socialist politics in much the way that Trump did the Republican party - using its machinery and resources for his personal ends. Much will depend now on whether the GOP (in concert with the checks and balances inherent in the constitution and courts) will have the wit and will to heave this bloated cuckoo from its nest.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

So, no, you don't.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

She doesn't recall it because it isn't true.

Mussolini started out his political career as a socialist, but he never fit it well, and soon changed his tune. Claiming that he was really a form of socialist is like today's Republicans claiming that they're really the pro-black party because their distant ancestors freed the slaves in the 1860s. Yes they did, but things have changed a bit since then, in case one hadn't noticed.

"Nazi" is actually short for "National Socialist", and, in one of his rare interviews, Hitler was asked, why "Socialist", since he was so totally opposed to Socialists tout court? His rambling answer was that "Socialists" weren't real socialists. So Nazis, or for that matter other fascists, are only socialists by Nazi redefinition of the word to mean something other than what everybody else uses it to mean.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed. The last time it was piled this high, Herakles had to divert a river.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Yes. Mussolini and Hitler really piled it high.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Just as one would expect from Socialists.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Socialists, like anyone else, can be idiots. But being an idiot doesn't make one a socialist. If it did, look to yourself.