An expert explains fascism: Is it relevant or not?

Jason Stanley (philosophy professor at Yale) is an expert on propaganda (book review here) and authoritarianism. In this 10 minute video, he explains how he sees the main traits and tactics that fascism relies on to deceive people and rise to power in democratic nations.

Question: Is Stanley's description of the traits and tactics of fascism close, moderately close or not close to the traits and tactics the modern American Republican Party is using today?

An old propaganda a tool rises again: Lying about and revising history

American pro-Trump thug traitors at the 

1/6 coup attempt

Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings. Whoever reflects on these matters can only be surprised by how little attention has been paid, in our tradition of philosophical and political thought, to their significance, on the one hand for the nature of action and, on the other, for the nature of our ability to deny in thought and word whatever happens to be the case. This active, aggressive capability is clearly different from our passive susceptibility to falling prey to error, illusion, the distortions of memory, and to whatever else can be blamed on the failings of our sensual and mental apparatus. -- Hannah Arendt, Lying in Politics essay, 1971

“When political representatives or entire governments arrogate to themselves the right to lie, they take power from the public that would not have been given up voluntarily. .... But such cases [that justify lying] are so rare that they hardly exist for practical purposes. .... The consequences of spreading deception, alienation and lack of trust could not have been documented for us more concretely than they have in the past decades. We have had a very vivid illustration of how lies undermine our political system. .... Those in government and other positions of trust should be held to the highest standards. Their lies are not ennobled by their positions; quite the contrary. .... only those deceptive practices which can be openly debated and consented to in advance are justifiable in a democracy.” -- Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 1999

The New York Times writes:

In Russia, an organization dedicated to remembering Soviet-era abuses faces state-ordered liquidation as the Kremlin imposes a sanitized national history in its place.

In Hungary, the government has ejected or assumed control of educational and cultural institutions, using them to manufacture a xenophobic national heritage aligned with its ethnonationalist politics.

In China, the ruling Communist Party is openly wielding schoolbooks, films, television shows and social media to write a new version of Chinese history better suited to the party’s needs.

And in the United States, Donald J. Trump and his allies continue to push a false retelling of the 2020 election, in which Democrats stole the vote and the Jan. 6 riot to disrupt President Biden’s certification was largely peaceful or staged by Mr. Trump’s opponents.  

In some places, the goals are sweeping: to re-engineer a society, starting at its most basic understanding of its collective heritage. Emphasizing the importance of that process, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has repeated a 19th century Confucian scholar’s saying: “To destroy a country, you must first eradicate its history.”  

Since the Arab Spring and “color revolution” uprisings of a decade ago, dictators have shifted emphasis from blunt-force repression (although this still happens, too) to subtler methods like manipulating information or sowing division, aimed at preventing dissent over suppressing it.

 

A Russian gulag that operated 1935-1957 is

being erased from Russian history

The NYT article goes on to note that history is rewritten all the time by scholars who update their assumptions or in view of on new data. But on the other hand activists and politicians are rewriting and reframing history to suit their own agendas. A “wave of brazenly false or misleading historical revision” could be “threatening an already-weakened sense of a shared, accepted narrative about the world.” Polarized societies appear to be more receptive to identity-affirming lies. 

That appears to be exacerbated by loss of faith in truth-reliant institutions and arbiters of truth such as scholars and experts. Scholars believe the rise of false revisionist histories reflects rising nationalism and demagogues and tyrants growing savvier, while some elected leaders become more illiberal and authoritarian.

State newspapers have been replaced with state-aligned sources and social media bots to create a false sense that the official narrative is not imposed from on high but emerging organically. Authoritarian demagogues have learned how to astroturf and gaslight via social media.

From what I can tell, revisionist history is mostly a propaganda tool in service to authoritarianism and in opposition to democracy. In one case, the 1619 Project, was a controversial and flawed attempt to revise US history to see it through the prism of racism and slavery. 1619 arguably was a pro-democracy historical revision. At least, its authors intended it to be pro-democracy. Not surprisingly, 1619 prompted a conservative backlash called the 1776 Project (officially, the 1776 Commission)[1], which was pro-authoritarian and more flawed than 1619. 

Footnote: 

1. Wikipedia writes: “The 1776 Commission, also nicknamed the 1776 Project, was an advisory committee established in September 2020 by then–U.S. President Donald Trump to support what he called “patriotic education.” The commission, which included no historians specializing in United States history, released The 1776 Report on January 18, 2021, two days before the end of Trump's term. Historians overwhelmingly criticized the report, saying it was “filled with errors and partisan politics.” The commission was terminated by President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021.”

Rifle assembly practice: Russia trains its children in warfare, 

first aid and martial arts in preparation for . . . . ? 

War against truth and democracy? 

Biden's speech on the 1/6 coup attempt

Biden’s speech was remarkably pointed in criticizing Trump for the 1/6 coup attempt and the lies that preceded and followed it. His criticism of the Republican Party was more muted the but criticism was still clear. To at least some significant extent, the president has finally woken up. Biden says he will not allow anyone to place a dagger at the throat of democracy. The speech was billed intended to “speak to the truth of what happened, not the lies that some have spread since.”

The speech focused on tree big Trump and Republican lies, the first being the lie that Trump won the 2020 election. Biden was blunt in blaming Trump for inciting the attack. The second was the lie that the election results cannot be trusted, citing all the lawsuits that failed to show any flaws in the election. Third, he called arguments and beliefs that the people at the 1/6 coup were patriots lies. 

His speech also expressed concern about preventing election subversion at the hands of political partisans in future elections.

Whether this will make any significant difference or not remains to be seen. If one scans through this 1 hour 23 minute Frontline documentary that aired a few days ago, it seems that neither the extremists at the coup attempt nor the average rank and file insurrectionists are open to even listening to truth, much less being persuaded by it. Most of them, but not the cynics or woke opportunists, truly see themselves as patriots fighting for democracy, not against it. Those minds appear to be intractably closed. The cognitive dissonance and self-deflation of truth is probably too much for most of those people to handle and accept. I do not know how Democratic Party attempts to protect democracy will play out. I cannot to predict. My hope is that this speech and what follows is not too little or too late.

Some thoughts on current political issues & events

In the last month or so, something has significantly changed. Warnings about the possible fall of democracy and the rule of law are flooding out now. And the rhetoric from the radical right is becoming more blunt and sometimes actually honest. There are some signs that maybe, just maybe, Biden and the dems are waking up and starting to see the threat. Whether they are able to do anything about it is an open question. The reason -- Joe Machin, Kyrsten Sinema and the Republican Party.

A year or so, this appeared here with some regularity because it got to the point:

A commenter here put it another way yesterday: “America went wrong when it put individuals above the society. When ‘equal rights’ was changed to ‘identical rights’ the die was cast.” 

That seems to be true. Have we screwed the pooch by putting individuals above society? That is what nearly all libertarians and Republicans claim they want.   

An article in Salon, Ted Cruz says GOP will impeach Biden if it retakes Congress — whether it’s “justified or not”, makes the fascist intentions of the GOP clear:

“If we take the House, which I said is overwhelmingly likely, then I think we will see serious investigations of the Biden administration,” Cruz said. He predicted that Republicans may also impeach the president “whether it's justified or not.”

“They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him,” Cruz said, referring to Democrats. “One of the real disadvantages of doing that, and it is something you and I talked about at great length, the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.”

The Republican leadership’s intent cannot be much clearer. How many Republicans in congress really feel that way isn't clear, but if it comes to a vote, they will vote to impeach Biden or lose their jobs.

An interesting article at Common Dreams (solid left bias, high fact accuracy, high credibility) focuses on the filibuster:

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday laid bare his reasoning for vehemently defending the use of the legislative filibuster, ....

Schumer promised to “advance systemic democracy reforms” to end Republicans' attempts to “delegitimize our election process,” which McConnell claimed was a sign of “genuine radicalism.”

“It appears that the majority leader is hell-bent on trying to break the Senate, and the argument is that somehow state legislatures are busily at work trying to make it more difficult for people to vote,” McConnell said, suggesting that legislatures in 19 states have not passed at least 34 restrictive voting laws in the past year, as the Brennan Center for Justice has reported at length. 

[Sean Eldridge, founder and president of a pro-democracy group tweeted:] “If 51 votes is good enough for a lifetime confirmation to the highest court in our land, it should be enough to protect our freedom to vote.”

It seems reasonable to argue that if the Senate filibuster no longer applies to federal court judge nominations, it ought not to apply to legislation either. That would arguably be closer real democracy, but for the fact of the electoral college and the inherent Constitutional power advantage that favors small population rural states.  

Obviously, the consequences could be severe the next time Republicans gain full control of the White House and congress. Senate Republicans could easily get rid of the filibuster then, freeing them to do whatever they wanted to the extent they thought they could get away with it. That could be pretty far if elections have been subverted making it impossible for Dems to ever get back in power. So, we’re in a rock and hard place situation. The Dems might as well try to get completely or partly get rid of the filibuster, because if they don't do it now, the Republicans probably will when they are back in power. 

Don’t forget McConnell’s mendacity about Supreme Court justices in an election year being bad. It was bad only when the president was a Democrat, but good when a Republican was president. McConnell’s whining now about preserving the filibuster isn't worth spit. The Senate is broken now and it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

The UK-based Economist (least biased, high fact accuracy, high credibility) comments on the mess in the US, citing the 1/6 coup attempt as just one reason for serious concern:

Americans are anxious about the stability of their democracy. Roughly 40% of the politically active say that members of the other tribe are evil; 60% believe they are a threat to the country. More than 80% think the system needs “major changes” or “complete reform”. Jeremiads from pundits about the decay of political life no longer seem to match the gravity of the threat. Some scholars have gone so far as to warn of the risk of civil war.

Extreme partisanship and the Republican refusal to accept the results of the election are indeed a dangerous combination. Yet easily lost in the daily diet of outrage is a fundamental truth about two-party politics: Democrats and Republicans need each other for the system to function. Renewal therefore must flow through the Republican Party. That will be hard—but not as hard as the catastrophists say.  

The threats to the system are real. The greatest is that in several key states the administration of voting has been dragged into the partisan arena. .... The mid-term elections in November and the general election of 2024 will take place under this shadow. Republicans are poised to win control of one or both chambers of Congress. Mr Trump could legitimately retake the White House in 2024. .... If Democrats win, Republicans could well exploit the election machinery now infected by partisanship to try to block them from taking office. If Republicans win, Democrats could believe that disputed races have been stolen. Many would conclude that voter suppression had tipped the balance, and also note how often victors in the popular vote fail to win office. The loser’s concession, central to the transfer of power, might be withheld for a second time. Contempt for electoral legitimacy would become a bipartisan, and disastrous, conviction.  

Crucially, this person [Trump] will be in charge of a party that still contains a large number of decent, patriotic voters who have been manipulated by a cynical group of leaders and propagandists into believing that, in saying the election was stolen, they are defending democracy. To presume that these people can be permanently treated as dupes would be a mistake.

The Economist argues that as long as Trump is a presence, “renewal is impossible,” but since that means just one person is the problem, once that person is gone, the Republican Party can move back toward democracy. That is one possibility.

The Economist’s argument cites Republican election rigging as a cause for concern. That is its key weakness. Maybe the duped people won't stay duped permanently. But if they stay duped long enough for Trump and the GOP to make it impossible for the Democrats to ever get back in power, their wokeness might not make any significant difference.