FASCISM PART II

Cartoon by Carlson 2017; from article by Matt Rothschild in The Cap Times 8/14/18

Propaganda, lies, conspiracy theories, fear and hate – these are some of the tools a fascist politician has at his disposal.  One of the favorites in the fascist playbook is to engage in a loud anticorruption campaign.  “Drain the Swamp,” is not new.   Hitler set out to make democracy and corruption as synonymous as Jews and Bolsheviks and ironically did so by creating one of the most corrupt governments in history.  Hitler’s Mein Kampf sets it out for all to read: “[T]he aim of propaganda is to replace reasoned argument in the public sphere with irrational fears and passions.”  (Stanley 55)  Stanley jumps from Hitler to Steve Bannon, quoting Bannon’s comment: “We got elected on Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Build a Wall  . . This was pure anger. Anger and fear is what gets people to the polls.”  (Stanley 55)

Photo from Wikipedia

We’ve all watched as repeated lies have turned into perceived truths by millions of American citizens (e.g., Stop the Steal).  Stanley describes the use of repeated lies as a way to destroy the “information space.  A fascist leader can replace truth with power, ultimately lying without consequences.” (Stanley 57)  Reality disappears and “fake news” takes over the public square. 

So why are we humans susceptible to the fascist leader’s tactics?  Stanley sees the pull of fascist politics as “powerful.”  “It simplifies existence,” he writes, and “gives us an object, a ‘them’ whose supposed laziness highlights our own virtue and discipline, encourages us to identify with a forceful leader who helps us make sense of the world, whose bluntness regarding the ‘undeserving’ people in the world is refreshing.  If democracy looks like a successful business, if the CEO is tough-talking and cares little for democratic institutions, even denigrates them, so much the better. Fascist politics preys on the human frailty that makes our own suffering seem bearable if we know that those we look down upon are being made to suffer more.”  (Stanley, 183)

Another way a fascist politician succeed is by moving the goalposts of “normal.”  How many times have we worried that the horrors we hear on TV and read in the papers have become the “new normal.”  Over time, we’ve become desensitized to the awful things that we have heard in the public square and disturbing and even horrifying policies and government actions we have witnessed over the past four years.  The transition from democracy to fascism is a slow drip of normalizing the once unthinkable. 

Stanley raises his grandmother’s experience in Nazi Germany as an example of this.  In 1936, Stanley’s grandfather was arrested and taken to a concentration camp.  In her 1957 memoir, The Unforgotten (which is unfortunately out of print), Ilse Stanley explains that her husband was arrested because he was a “criminal” with two court fines for traffic violations. (Stanley 112)  Ilse began a clandestine mission, disguised as a Nazi social worker, to rescue hundreds of Jewish prisoners from the concentration camp, Sachensanhausen.  She would tell her Jewish friends in Berlin what was happening behind the barbed wire fence and that they should immediately leave Germany.   But these Jews didn’t believe they were in danger.  “She recounts,” writes Stanley, “the disparity between the extremes she witnessed in the concentration camp and the denials of the seriousness of the situation, its normalization, by the Jewish community of Berlin.” (Stanley 189) 

Ilse Stanley

What the Jews experienced in Germany and what we Americans experienced (and are experiencing) during the Trump era is a type of normalization that transforms “the morally extraordinary into the ordinary.  It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been.” (190)

I want to thank Jason Stanley for allowing me to better understand how fascist politicians can co-opt an entire society.  It is a frightening reality that we must guard against. 

In his most recent article – Movie at the Ellipse: A Study in Fascist Propaganda, published on February 4th in Just Security, Stanley argues all the theory came together on January 6.  Analyzing a video shown at the Trump rally outside the White House, which was followed by the shocking attack on the United States Congress, Stanley unveils Trump fascist propaganda.  This dethroned leader is using fascist tactics to retain power and keep his millions of adoring followers from slipping out of his iron grasp. 

Here’s the video from the rally, but please read Stanley’s analysis. It makes it understandable and terrifying:

I post this blog just a few minutes before the United States Senate is to begin their second trial of impeachment of Donald Trump.

After you view the video and read the piece, post comments on the blog.  Want to hear what you think.