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NY Times, May 28 2016
Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — The comparison was inflammatory, to say the least. Former
Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts equated Donald J. Trump’s
immigration plan with Kristallnacht, the night of horror in 1938 when
rampaging Nazis smashed Jewish homes and businesses in Germany and
killed scores of Jews.
But if it was a provocative analogy, it was not a lonely one. Mr.
Trump’s campaign has engendered impassioned debate about the nature of
his appeal and warnings from critics on the left and the right about the
potential rise of fascism in the United States. More strident opponents
have likened Mr. Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
To supporters, such comparisons are deeply unfair smear tactics used to
tar conservatives and scare voters. For a bipartisan establishment whose
foundation has been shaken by Mr. Trump’s ascendance, these backers say,
it is easier to delegitimize his support than to acknowledge widespread
popular anger at the failure of both parties to confront the nation’s
challenges.
But the discussion comes as questions are surfacing around the globe
about a revival of fascism, generally defined as a governmental system
that asserts complete power and emphasizes aggressive nationalism and
often racism. In places like Russia and Turkey, leaders like Vladimir V.
Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan employ strongman tactics. In Austria, a
nationalist candidate came within three-tenths of a percentage point of
becoming the first far-right head of state elected in Europe since World
War II.
In Hungary, an authoritarian government has clamped down on the news
media and erected razor wire fences to keep out migrants. There are
worries that Poland may follow suit. Traditional parties in France,
Germany, Greece and elsewhere have been challenged by nationalist
movements amid an economic crisis and waves of migrants. In Israel,
fascism analogies by a former prime minister and a top general have
again inflamed the long-running debate about the occupation of
Palestinian territories.
“The crash of 2008 showed how globalization creates losers as well as
winners,” said Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on
Foreign Relations. “In many countries, middle-class wages are stagnant
and politics has become a battle over a shrinking pie. Populists have
replaced contests between left and right with a struggle between
cosmopolitan elites and angry nativists.”
That dislocation may not lead to a repeat of Europe in the 1930s, but it
has fueled a debate about global political trends. There is a tendency
at times to try to fit current movements into understandable constructs
— some refer to terrorist groups in the Middle East as Islamofascists —
but scholars say there is a spectrum that includes right-wing
nationalism, illiberal democracy and populist autocracy.
“On a world level, the situation that affects many countries is economic
stagnation and the arrival of immigrants,” said Robert O. Paxton, a
professor emeritus at Columbia University and one of the most prominent
scholars of fascism. “That’s a one-two punch that democratic governments
are having enormous trouble in meeting.”
Mr. Trump dismisses the labels used by those like Mr. Weld, a longtime
Republican now mounting a quixotic campaign for vice president as a
Libertarian. “I don’t talk about his alcoholism,” Mr. Trump said through
a spokeswoman, “so why would he talk about my foolishly perceived
fascism? There is nobody less of a fascist than Donald Trump.” (Mr.
Weld, who in the 1990s reportedly appeared in public a few times having
had too much to drink, declined to respond: “I’ll let that ride.”)
Americans are used to the idea that other countries may be vulnerable to
such movements, but while figures like Father Charles Coughlin, the
demagogic radio broadcaster, enjoyed wide followings in the 1930s,
neither major party has ever nominated anyone quite like Mr. Trump.
“This could be one of those moments that’s quite dangerous and we’ll
look back and wonder why we treated it as ho-hum at a time when we could
have stopped it,” said Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Brookings
Institution known for hawkish internationalism.
Mr. Kagan sounded the alarm this month with a Washington Post op-ed
article, “This Is How Fascism Comes to America,” that gained wide
attention. “I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from conservative
Republicans,” he said. “There are a lot of people who agree with this.”
Fascist comparisons are not new in American politics. A Google search of
“Barack Obama and Nazi” or “George W. Bush and Nazi” produces many
images of the last two presidents as swastika-waving fascists. But with
Mr. Trump, such comparisons have gone beyond the fringe and entered
mainstream conversation both in the United States and abroad.
President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico criticized Mr. Trump’s plans to
build a wall on the border and to bar Muslims from entering the United
States. “That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived,”
he said. The actor George Clooney called Mr. Trump “a xenophobic
fascist.” Louis C. K., the comic, said, “The guy is Hitler.” Eva
Schloss, the 87-year-old stepsister of Anne Frank, said Trump “is acting
like another Hitler by inciting racism.” It got to the point that his
wife, Melania Trump, was prompted to say, “He’s not Hitler.”
Mr. Trump has provided plenty of ammunition for critics. He was slow to
denounce the white supremacist David Duke and talked approvingly of
beating up protesters. He has praised Mr. Putin and promised to be
friends. He would not condemn supporters who launched anti-Semitic
blasts at journalists. At one point, Mr. Trump retweeted a Mussolini
quote: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”
Asked by Chuck Todd on the NBC program “Meet the Press” about the
retweet, Mr. Trump brushed off the quote’s origin. “I know who said it,”
he said. “But what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or
somebody else?”
“Do you want to be associated with a fascist?” Mr. Todd asked.
“No,” Mr. Trump answered, “I want to be associated with interesting
quotes.” He added: “And certainly, hey, it got your attention, didn’t it?”
Mr. Trump’s allies dismiss the criticism as politically motivated and
historically suspect. The former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has
said he would consider being Mr. Trump’s running mate, said in an
interview that he was “deeply offended” by what he called “utterly
ignorant” comparisons.
“Trump does not have a political structure in the sense that the
fascists did,” said Mr. Gingrich, a onetime college professor who earned
his doctorate in modern European history. “He doesn’t have the sort of
ideology that they did. He has nobody who resembles the brownshirts.
This is all just garbage.”
Beyond Hitler and Mussolini, fascism can be hard to define. Since World
War II, only fringe figures have overtly identified themselves that way.
In modern political discourse, the word is used as an epithet. And even
Hitler and Mussolini were elastic in their political philosophies as
they came to power; Mussolini started out as a leftist.
Mr. Paxton, the fascism scholar, said he saw similarities and
differences in Mr. Trump. His message about an America in decline and
his us-against-them pronouncements about immigrants and outsiders echo
Europe in the 1930s, Mr. Paxton said. On the other hand, he said, Mr.
Trump has hardly created uniformed, violent youth groups. Moreover,
fascists believe in strong state control, not
get-government-off-your-back individualism and deregulation.
Others caution against comparisons. “I read Kagan’s piece, of course,”
said Volker Perthes, the director of the German Institute for
International and Security Affairs, in Berlin. “All the phenomena he
describes are raising concerns, but I would still not call Trump or his
campaign fascist. Maybe with German and European history in mind, we are
a bit more cautious than others in using the label ‘fascism.’”
Mr. Perthes said real fascism requires two more elements — an outright
rejection of democracy and a harsher definition of order. Jobbik, the
ultraright party in Hungary, would fall into this category, he said, but
Norbert Hofer, the far-right candidate who narrowly lost the Austrian
presidential vote, and Mr. Trump would not.
Charles Grant, the director of the Center for European Reform, in
London, distinguished between far-right nationalist parties like Marine
Le Pen’s National Front in France and actual fascism.
“Historically, it means the demonization of minorities within a society
to the extent that they feel insecure,” he said. “It means encouraging
the use of violence against critics. It means a bellicose foreign policy
that may lead to war, to excite a nationalist feeling. It takes
xenophobia to extremes. And it is contemptuous of a rules-based liberal
order.”
The debate about terminology may ignore the seriousness of the
conditions that gave rise to Mr. Trump and his European counterparts.
The New York real estate developer has tapped into a deep discontent in
a country where many feel left behind while Wall Street banks get
bailouts, newcomers take jobs, terrorists threaten innocents and China
rises economically at America’s expense.
“It seems to me in developed and semideveloped countries there is
emerging a new kind of politics for which maybe the best taxonomic
category would be right-wing populist nationalism,” said Stanley Payne,
a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We are
seeing a new kind of phenomenon which is different from what you had” in
the 20th century.
Roger Eatwell, a professor at the University of Bath, in England, calls
it “illiberal democracy,” a form of government that keeps the trappings
of democracy without the reality.
“Elections are seen as important to legitimizing regimes,” he said, but
instead of imposing one-party rule, as in the past, today’s
authoritarians “use a variety of devices to control and/or manipulate
the media, intimidate opponents” and so on.
Either way, it has found pockets of support on both sides of the
Atlantic. Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst in Moscow, said
neo-fascism in liberal societies in the West stems from crisis or
dysfunction while in illiberal countries like Russia and Turkey it
reflects an attempt to fill the void left by the failure of Western
notions to catch on.
The problem, she added, is that “the Western political leadership at the
moment is too weak to fight the tide.”
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