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.  

Hate Is A Complete And Total Surrender Of Personal Power

 By ScottCDunn

https://medium.com/swlh/hate-is-a-complete-and-total-surrender-of-personal-power-8621a1d61a73

There was a time in my much younger life when I hated one or more persons. I think at one point, it was a sort of searing, visceral hate. There were things that I dreamed about doing to the other person, but could never bring myself to do him or her. I couldn’t do those things because I kept thinking through what would happen to me.

I’d be embarrassed. I’d feel bad for the other person. I’d go to jail. I’d be ostracised by everyone who knew me. I’d regret it for the rest of my life.

Yet, those things that I thought of, that I fantasized about, they were obsessions. They took up space in my brain, time in my day and life away from me. Hate made me tired, so tired. And my hate required other people to change. But at that time in my life, I was not willing to change. My unwillingness to change made me tired. I ran in circles in my brain, trying to enjoy the hate and make the other person change more to my liking at the same time.

All along the way, people I knew and who knew me could see that I was suffering and they kept telling me the same things:

“You can’t change people.”

“Those people are never going to change.”

“You are filled with resentment. Resentment is like drinking poison, waiting for the other person to die.”

But no one ever told me that hate is a surrender of personal power to someone else. I had to figure that one out for myself. I had known this intuitively for a long, long time, yet had never articulated it. Now I see that I live in a culture that is filled with hate, with mass shootings being a major symptom of that hate, and I know what hate means to me now.

When I look at racism, I see people who hate other people for the color of their skin. That skin color is never, ever, going to change. There is no therapy, no cure, no magic available to change the color of the skin. Yet, day after day, I see headlines for mass shootings, hate crimes, threats, and protests against people of color. For the racists, I have to wonder, why hate people with brown skin when you know that the color of their skin is never going to change?

Then there are the Trump haters. I understand their pain, their sense of urgency, and their motivation. But Trump is never going to change. His job is not to make you happy. He is only interested in making his base happy, and if you’re not in that set, forget it. Move on. Focus on something that makes you happy.

I don’t actually hate Trump myself. I know the trap of hate well. The problem I have with hating Trump is that I don’t actually know who Trump is as a person. I’ve read reports of Trump visiting people in a hospital and they said he was warm and friendly, even personable in private. That is in complete contrast to the reports I read of his rallies. So I really don’t know who Trump is. And if I don’t know him, then it’s reasonable for me not to hate him.

And not hating Trump != supporting Trump. I don’t support his policies, and I don’t support him as president. But I don’t hate him. I don’t have enough knowledge about him to hate him, nor do I have the time or patience to hate him. I’m not sure, but perhaps I’m apathetic about him. I don’t really care what he does.

What matters then, is what I choose to do in response to the people in my life who may be irritating, high maintenance, or that lack the skills or capacity to do better.

When I hate someone, the focus is on them, not me. When I hate someone, since the focus is on them, that means the object of my hate is required to change in order for me to be happy. If they changed more to my liking, would my hate decrease or stop? Would I stop hating someone who changed in response to my hate? I don’t think so.

There is a region in the brain called the amygdala. That is the part of the brain that is responsible for identifying associations between objects in our environment and pain and pleasure. Most people have trained themselves to see someone like Trump and respond with pain, anxiety or displeasure, even hate. Hate is a learned behavior. Babies are not born with hate. Even racists learned to hate from someone, and they train themselves, their amygdala, to feel hate when they see someone with a skin color different from their own.

There was a time in my life when I hated mustard on my food. Instead of spending my time obsessing on how I hated mustard, I stopped putting it on my food. I did something else. I changed. The mustard was agnostic, so to speak. Mustard doesn’t have to change for me. Whether or not it has any consciousness is debatable, but for sure, I can say that it’s not the job of mustard to make me happy. The mustard didn’t change, I did. Much later in life, I developed a taste for mustard, but either way, I made the change. I exercised my own power.

When we hate something or someone, we are giving up our power. When we hate someone, we surrender our personal power completely and totally. That is because, when we hate someone, we are not considering our part in the hate. We may not have considered the possibility that hate is a choice.

When we hate someone, we are completely focused on the other person, our hate is dependent on the other person changing, in order for us to be happy. And I can tell you from personal experience, it is not possible to be happy and hateful at the same time. Try it sometime. You will find that hate and happiness cannot exist in the same room at the same time.

I have seen firsthand, the power of hate and how it disabled me. I guess then, that hate is a disability. Hate is a disability to love. Hate is a disability to do anything about my circumstances. Consider this in the context of racism. A white person hates a black person. A white person goes to public gatherings to express his hate for black people. Is the white person making anyone’s life any better by expressing his hate? He’s not working to make money, he’s not being of service to anyone, even the god that he purports to love. Hate doesn’t satisfy any human need that I can think of.

Therefore, hate as a verb is a complete and total surrender of personal power. Hate satisfies no human needs, it displaces one from a state of peace, it displaces self-awareness, and it’s addictive. Addiction is the pathological pursuit of reward. The reward in hate is the endorphins released when one is engaged in hateful behavior. Shouting epithets, marauding in groups or packs around the target of hate, protesting, writing hateful things, posting hateful pictures, memes, violence, and threats of violence, they all cause the brain to release endorphins. Those endorphins get us high, like the runner’s high.

When people start recovery from addiction, the first step is to admit complete and total powerlessness over the addiction. Most people who hate are loathed to admit powerlessness. Hate assumes the power to make other people change when that power doesn’t actually exist. The only purpose of hate then is to feel those endorphins, to feel the rage, to displace oneself from one’s own pain, and one’s own power.

So I avoid hate. I notice when the temptation to hate presents itself and I do something else. I write. I use the phone. I interrupt the thought pattern and think about something else. I think about what I could do differently. I think about the other as a person, with feelings like I have feelings. I think about the other person with needs like I have needs. I make the other person human. I assume that it’s not the job of the other person to make me happy. And I figure out how to make myself happy without any help from the other person. Those are habits, and I have done those habits for so long, that I don’t actually hate anyone now. Hate is not a part of my life anymore.

When I really want to grow, I figure out a way to be of service to the person that caused pain, irritation or inconvenience, however briefly. This doesn’t mean that I have to support the other person for their counterproductive behavior. I can be of service to that person in a very general sense by promoting peace. By meditating, by writing, by considering the other person as someone with unmet needs, without hate. Or maybe I can find a way to help that other person with his or her own pain. People who hate are usually in pain. People who cause pain to other people are usually in pain, retelling, recreating their own painful experience and imposing their fate upon another.

But whatever I do, I don’t take what others do personally, and I make it my job to find my own happiness. I make it my job to love others exactly as they are. I make it my job to be the change I want to see.

I do not surrender my power to hate. I retain my power to love, for love is the antidote to hate.

QUESTION:  What do YOU ALL think about the above essay? Too rosy or right on the button?

The fall of democracy and the rule of law fall to authoritarianism: An example

A number of things reassure some Americans that democracy and the rule of law will not fall to some form of authoritarianism or autocracy. They see little to modest cause for concern. Reassurances come from things like a long democratic history, ethics rules and laws, democratic norms and institutions, e.g., courts, a free press and a vigorous political opposition. 

However, recent poll data indicates that most Americans are now seriously concerned. NPR commented yesterday: “One year after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Americans are deeply pessimistic about the future of democracy. A new NPR/Ipsos poll finds that 64% of Americans believe U.S. democracy is ‘in crisis and at risk of failing.’ Overall, 70% of poll respondents agree that the country is in crisis and at risk of failing.” 

A striking thing about those concerns is that they are mostly partisan. Republicans generally believe that Democrats are hell bent on establishing a brutal, atheist, socialist or communist tyranny. Democrats generally fear Republican authoritarianism and right wing autocracy. One question that raises, is the threat from each side about equal? Is there equivalence, more or less?

Some (most?) experts agree and are now warning of an imminent, serious threat to American democracy. At least one expert now sees the US as an anocracy, neither democracy nor autocracy. Most experts appear to see right wing autocratic tyranny as the main threat, not socialist or communist tyranny. 

The example of Hungary and the rise of radical right authoritarianism

The New York Times writes:

After years of complacency and wishful thinking, Brussels is finally trying to rein in the country’s pugnacious leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

After long indulging him, leaders in the European Union now widely consider Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary an existential threat to a bloc that holds itself up as a model of human rights and the rule of law.

Mr. Orban has spent the past decade steadily building his “illiberal state,” as he proudly calls Hungary, with the help of lavish E.U. funding. Even as his project widened fissures in the bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004, his fellow national leaders mostly looked the other way, committed to staying out of one another’s affairs.

But now Mr. Orban’s defiance and intransigence has had an important, if unintended, effect: serving as a catalyst for an often-sluggish European Union system to act to safeguard the democratic principles that are the foundation of the bloc.

Early this year, the European Court of Justice will issue a landmark decision on whether the union has the authority to make its funds to member states conditional on meeting the bloc’s core values. Doing so would allow Brussels to deny billions of euros to countries that violate those values.

The bloc has consistently worked on political consensus among national leaders. But Mr. Orban has pushed Brussels toward a threshold it had long avoided: making membership subject to financial punishments, not merely political ones.

The new frontier could help solve an old problem — what to do about bad actors in its ranks — while creating new ones. Not least, it could invite the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, to exercise a new level of interference in the affairs of member states.

How Mr. Orban has forced the European Union to such a juncture, and why it seemed helpless to stop him for so long, says much about the bloc’s founding assumptions and why it has stumbled in the face of populist and nationalist challenges.  

Mr. Orban’s party adopted the new Constitution and a new media law that curbed press freedom. It overhauled the country’s justice system, removed the head of its Supreme Court and created an office to oversee the courts led by the wife of a prominent member of the governing party, Fidesz. Election laws were changed to favor the party. 

Does any of that sound familiar, e.g., changing election laws to favor the party?

The NYT article points out that EU leaders did not confront Orban about the rule of law, corruption or authoritarianism. EU leaders, being politicians, did not want to confront him because he won an election. That is what politicians respected. Their professed core democratic values were subjugated to their core political values. That gave Orban the political room he needed to usurp democracy in Hungary without significant EU opposition.

One can ask, in what way is this relevant to US politics? The NYT article comments that on Monday, the ex-president endorsed Orban for re-election. Trump even pledged his “complete support.” On the other hand, Orban was an early supporter of Trump. He endorsing him in the summer of 2016 and again in 2020. Tellingly, Orban commented about Trump: “probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but that’s OK.”

A little bit controversial? Maybe that is how right wing authoritarians see themselves. Just a little bit controversial, nothing more. Maybe that is how left wing extremists see themselves too.

Recently Fox News, the flagship propaganda arm of the Republican Party, broadcast from Hungary and lavished praise on Orban for doing such a good job. While in Hungary, the self-professed professional liar, Tucker Carlson, commented on the differences between Biden and Orban: 

“Because the lessons are so obvious, and such a clear refutation to the policies we currently have, and the people who instituted those policies, Hungary and its government have been ruthlessly attacked and unfairly attacked: 'It's authoritarian, they're fascists…' There are many lies being told right now, that may be the greatest of all. .... The elite [Democrats and Biden] has turned against its own people, and that's not healthy. Simply put, the leadership of the country hates the American people. .... He [Orban] is defending democracy against the unaccountable billionaires, the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and certain western governments. He is fighting for democracy against those forces which would like to bury it.”

So there you have it. One of the top Republican Party propagandists calls Democrats and Biden authoritarian fascists who want to bury democracy. No wonder most Republicans see a deadly threat from Democrats. Carlson and most Republicans see Orban and themselves as fighting for democracy against billionaires and other bad groups and people. By analogy with Republican thinking, EU political leaders must also be authoritarian fascists for criticizing Orban.

Questions: 

1. Is the threat to American democracy and the rule of law about the same from Democrats and Republicans?

2. Is Hungary now authoritarian, or even fascist?

Fascism: a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy, often tinged with racial or ethnic bigotry and hostility to a free press