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It’s Not 1934
Wanted: A name for the hypertrophied fear of Trump that’s overcome so many — maybe most — of his opponents. Do you really need examples? There was the ThinkProgress editor terrified of his plumber:
He was a perfectly nice guy and a consummate professional. But he was also a middle-aged white man with a Southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this weeks news. … I couldn’t stop thinking about whether he had voted for Trump, whether he knew my last name is Jewish … I couldn’t shake the sense of potential danger. I was rattled for some time after he left.
More recently, here’s Adam Gopnik in one of those New Yorker paragraphs so classily convoluted you don’t notice the embedded hooey:
Assaults on free speech; the imprisoning of critics and dissidents; attempts, on the Russian model, likely to begin soon, to intimidate critics of the regime with fake charges and conjured-up allegations; the intimidation and intolerance of even mild dissidence (that “Apologize!” tweet directed at members of the “Hamilton” cast who dared to politely petition Mike Pence); not to mention mass deportations or attempts at discrimination by religion—all things that the Trump and his cohorts have openly contemplated or even promised—are not part of the normal oscillations of power and policy. They are unprecedented and, history tells us, likely to be almost impossible to reverse. … [**]
The best way to be sure that 2017 is not 1934 is to act as though it were.
Of course, you don’t need these examples if you have Democratic Facebook friends. Just read their posts — alarms about journalists jailed and killed, brownshirts, ethnic cleansing, pervasive surveillance, people living in fear, exterminationist violence, the whole nein yards. They’re scared.
The thing is, they’re not poseurs — they’re sensible citizens. They are, many of them, my friends. They’re in no way ignorant. That’s why the dismissive label “Trump Derangement Syndrome” doesn’t seem an accurate description (in addition to being belittling and ineffective). If they see the seeds of authoritarianism in Trump’s “Hamilton” tweet — or more plausibly in his suggestion that he might pick and choose which reporters can attend briefings … well, sure. Those are seeds. There’ve been seeds before, of course. There were the seeds of authoritarianism in Truman bullying a press critic who panned his daughter’s singing. There were more than seeds in Roosevelt’s NRA, in Nixon’s wiretapping and J. Edgar Hoover’s longrunning COINTELPRO surveillance and harrassment of dissenters.
It’s not deranged to extrapolate from seed to tree, and to worry that the relative handful of alt-righters (50,000?) and smaller handful of anti-Semitic trolls (1,600?) might produce something very bad. You can imagine a world where Jews are attacked by their plumbers. My mother grew up in such a world (Frankfurt, Germany in 1933) and I’m here because her parents had the good sense to flee.
It’s thinking that such development — from seed to tree — is at all likely today that seems … well, wrong. Let’s call it wrong! We have strong counter-majoritarian institutions (including an independent judiciary) and a culture that supports them. The idea that Trump is going to mobilize some army of thuggish supporters to intimidate the press, the courts, the opposition party and half of his own party seems a fever dream, no less feverish because of its rational basis.
Yet those who adhere to this unnamed tendency — let’s call it ’34ism, unless you can come up with a better name *** — allow the power of their terrifying dream to overwhelm sober consideration of everything Trump does or intends to do, good or bad (on trade, taxes, regulations, immigration, etc). We’re supposed to draw up sides — condemning (and ostracizing) those who are “complicit” in Trump’s administration and welcoming those who “stand on the right side of history” — even before we know whether the authoritarian seed will grow or wither, disregarding all the other positively auspicious seeds (reform of trade, control of borders, fewer foreign miliary adventures, ending the Republican threat to Social Security and Medicare, etc.) that might flourish instead. In Slate 34ist Yascha Mounk’s head it’s practically Life During Wartime already, with brave Trump critics fired from their jobs, sleeping on the couches of their secret colleagues in the Resistance. Keep the car running.
Suggested alternative: See what happens first! Don’t let the reaction to Trump be dominated by one extremely unlikely bad possibility, at the expense of nurturing the far-more-likely good possibilities.
Coming in next post: How does 1934ism go away? Is it enough that the brownshirts don’t appear? (Spoiler: Maybe not.)
__________
**– The Hooey: Gopnik says authoritarian measures against critics “are unprecedented and, history tells us, likely to be almost impossible to reverse.” This is fatuous on both counts. 1) Even direct assaults on free speech are far from unprecedented –e.g. the Sedition Act of 1798, passed not too long after our nation’s founding, or the imprisonment of Eugene Debs for opposing World War I. 2) They also haven’t been that hard to reverse. The Sedition Act was repealed in Thomas Jefferson’s term. It’s highly doubtful that Debs could be imprisoned under current First Amendment law — the opposite of what Gopnik declares “history tells us.”
*** — Better name ideas appreciated — just put them in the comments section below, or tweet them to @kausmickey. Thanks.
Published in General
They have also been obsessing for decades over the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950’s, while remaining completely oblivious to the fact that the Hollywood of today maintains a much more extensive blacklist against conservatives. The hypocrisy of the left requires astronomical units to measure.
This is what I was going to say, but I’m glad I read all the comments and found yours, Isaac.
What mystifies me is how so many people who ostensibly read Goldberg’s book don’t recognize that the current Democrat party, led by HRC, aka Satan, is exactly what Liberal Fascism predicted. Maybe they need to read it again! From Wilson’s deep admiration for fascist government in Europe to Obama the Goner’s ACA, the thread is intact.
Trump broke the thread and that’s the cause of the hysteria coming from otherwise sensible people. This is the face of true change, the breaking of fascism’s long historical rise as the “right side of history” has imploded in their brains as would any other serious case of cognitive dissonance. They’ve been taught their whole lives, as have their progenitors, that Progressivism, Fascism, Illiberalism, BLM, and many other manifestations of fascism’s offenses against liberty, are normal. They actually don’t know what they don’t know, which I realize is trite, but it’s nonetheless true, which is why Trump emphasized that our children are being denied education in its true sense.
Trump and his entire movement differ, so must be relegated to the….create your analog to the Gulag here.
P.S. Some insist on calling it the Democratic Party. It is anything but democratic. They are the Democrats, the party of slavery. Words matter.
Why would a man run for POTUS, especially an incredibly successful man and one of 70 years in age, if he didn’t want to and think he can FIX some things that millions of people, including himself, think are very very wrong? I know as a conservative I do not trust government. The thing I would fix is too much government…I would want it to do less. Now Trump has stated with regularity he would get rid of onerous regulations, and that is in itself an important reduction in government. But really, when has anyone ever run for any government office on a slogan “I WILL DO LESS!”? Conservatives would love it, especially if the less were that part of government they don’t like, but I doubt anyone would win a national election on that platform.
What group of people in general are anti-Semitic and anti-gay. Alas, it is followers of the religion of peace. If Hillary had been elected, the mass immigration of these people would have continued. Who attacked the gay nightclub in Orlando last year…. The Left attacks Christians who don’t want to marry gays and brings in people who disproportionately want to execute gays. They’re insane.
I wrote my masters thesis at the University of Chicago comparing the Salem witch trials and the Soviet show trials. And I’m descended from a sister of one of the last people accused (John Alden, Jr).
Trumpidation.
Well, in my experience many (most?) leftists can’t hear what you actually say.
A couple of months after Obama was elected, there was a video circulating on the internet of elementary school children singing a song of praise to Obama and chanting his name. I made what I thought was a fairly mild comment of, “Not sure this is so good. In America, we have presidents, not kings.” My very liberal cousin replied, “Why can’t we stop all the hate?!”
Really?
There is nothing about democracy that makes it incompatible with slavery.
Interesting. Do you have a PDF of that thesis that you distribute? Or are the points of comparison mostly what I’d guess from a layman’s knowledge of the two episodes? (I’ve read a fair amount about both in popular histories, but more about the Soviet show trials.)
Jesus, what an incoherent, factually incorrect, paternalistic post. You want overreaching, liberty-snuffing government? Try the direction that we have been headed in for eight years. The IRS targets right wing groups. The state of Oregn fines bakers. The NPS closes public property to the public. The states of New Jersey and Rhode Island make it illegal to own ivory. The Feds actively import people who are hostile to America and ignores the southern border.
“Trump derangement syndrome” will do just fine. Mr Kaus is a good example.
What I took from Mr. Kaus’ post is very different—namely that, as the FFs would agree—government will always want to overreach. Just about all the presidents in my lifetime have pushed hard against the limits on the powers of the executive (Iran-Contra, anyone?) in ways large and small (IRS Targets Tea Party, anyone?) and while Trump may prove to be the astonishing exception, I don’t see why skepticism is not a perfectly reasonable starting position. As I mentioned, a lack of skepticism—a perfect faith—is not the mark of a good citizen. More the mark of a sheep, of which I was definitely one. (Oh….Baaaaaaahhhhhh….ma).
I find the quote from the ThinkProgress editor most baffling, assuming like most leftists he espouses that we shouldn’t make make bigoted assumptions based on limited information. Is he so lacking in self-awareness that he doesn’t see how many assumptions he is making based on the very limited information that the guy is a middle aged white guy working in a “blue collar” job (at least as he tells the story): 1) he might be a Trump supporter; 2) he might hate Jews; 3) he would extent that hatred to anyone with a “Jewish” name; 4) his hatred of Jews would lead him to violence; and 5) he might carry out this propensity for violence on this particular person with a “Jewish” name.
Her (his?) issue was with using the word Democratic when the party name is ACTUALLY Democrat. It has bothered me, as well. I try very hard not to refer to the Democrat party or any of its members as Democratic.
Let’s call them “Fascinoids.”
No need to overthink this too much-bat s**t crazy works for me. Seriously, these people have issues.
As I watched Trump taking the oath to defend the Constitution, I could only think that no president, with the possible exception of Washington, actually upheld it. Maybe Coolidge, too.
Because they are a pain in one’s hemorrhoids.
Kind of a side note on ‘why’ are the liberals and socialists so bent because in his own words Donald said this to CNN-
“In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat,”
He was kind of a ‘problem’ for most conservatives because he’s well… not a conservative. So, didn’t the Democrats basically get a ‘Democrat Lite’ and that’s cause for rioting?
And BTW- where were these liberal fanatics and their concerns when the Great and Powerful O- the self winding narcissist; was saying this:
“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
Today in the combined military there are a little over 1.4 million serving. So the ex POTUS wanted that many people funded and run by the controlling political party that is outside the military hierarchy?
And that raised no concerns? Just imagine if say, Bush had said this… the screams of ‘Hitlarism’ would have been deafening. Then… crickets.
Great point @fordpenney. I remember Obama making that statement. I gotta say, it scared me.
Sure, but all I was trying to say is that the party in opposition is the Democrat party, not the democratic party.
Did Rob know you guys were at his house drinking his liquor?
Following up on @fordpenney (comment #79), anyone who expresses fear of authoritarian tendencies in Trump will have to document for me that they also expressed fear of Obama’s authoritarian tendencies. Otherwise they’re just being a partisan jerk.
And herein lies the problem. It goes something like this:
A: I am a good, caring, progressive, well-informed, right-thinking individual;
B: I am saying things that, on paper, are crazy;
C: Therefore, whatever has provoked me to B must be truly, deeply awful.
Nobody is pretending: they actually do believe that they are resisting evil (as with GWB, who would have inflicted God knows what terrors had it not been for the ever-vigilant Left). This is why pointing out progressive ‘inconsistency’ doesn’t work: at best you hear ‘yeah… yeah… but it really is different.’ Goodness, we on the centre-right are sufficiently irked by moral equivalence that we can certainly identify the same reaction in the centre-left, even if we disagree with the logic.
It therefore follows (I think) that it would be infinitely more difficult for A above to admit his error than to go along with the other As. Given the right circumstances, fascism in America will not come with the flag and the cross but with the Ivy League imprimatur and the governmental investigation.
Though I think it lacks critical mass. Not flattering enough to enough of the population.
@zafar, I don’t think it needs critical mass in terms of sheer numbers. It needs a small, committed and influential minority with a vocal, emotional popular presence in support. This should be enough to cow most of us into acquiescence. It will certainly be predicated on ‘niceness’, perhaps moving from ‘you must not do X’ to ‘you must do X’. And, to paraphrase my last post, the action taken will certainly be to forestall or in response to some action of ‘the enemy’ (eg Catholic schools, and I’m really not joking).
Btw, Adam Gopnik wrote the most appalling article about GK Chesterton that I have ever read. He used the intellectual sleight-of-hand ‘never mind Chesterton’s critics, it’s his defenders who are wrong’, which heads-I-win tails-you-lose “argument” I found intellectually disreputable. (And this was before I knew who he, Gopnik, was).
Nick Baldock– ‘fascism in America will not come with the flag and the cross but with the Ivy League imprimatur and the governmental investigation.’
And therein is the essence of the problem, the power of those in government to use government to further their own ends and have no concern, even contempt, for the governed.
The power of politics to hold power… the essence of fascism.
I once saw a rich, entitled producer declare to the board of the American Film Institute that we needed more arts funding in this (C of C non-compliant) country. She got a standing ovation, and the then-chairwoman said, “It took incredible guts to make that statement”.
No it didn’t. To that crowd? No guts at all.
I saw Wayne La Pierre on TV addressing the NRA and referring to (our) (USA) (American) police doing their jobs as “jackbooted thugs”. Conservative website lit up with praise of LaPierre because they said it took incredible courage to say this.
No it didn’t. To that crowd? No guts at all.
See what Mickey Kaus is doing? Take a good look.
That takes guts.
You’re right. He has to put up with people like me.
Given all the marchers today, can we call them “pussyhatters”?
Nice to have you back, Mickey; it seems like a long time since I’ve seen one of your posts. And thanks for attempting to bring a little bit of sanity to the anti-Trump over-reaction. Most of us sense, for a variety of reasons, that things will not be smooth over the next four years, but, looking back, there have been many four-year political periods that have not been smooth. Everyone would be well-advised to have a bit of historical perspective and to take a deep breath.