Aspirational Fascism Quotes

“Trump, I want to say, is not a Nazi. He is, rather, an aspirational fascist who pursues crowd adulation, hyperaggressive nationalism, white triumphalism, a law-and-order regime giving unaccountable power to the police, a militarist, and a practitioner of a rhetorical style that regularly creates fake news and smears opponents to mobilize support for the Big Lies he advances. His internal targets of vilification and intimidation include Muslims, Mexicans, the media, the judiciary, independent women, the professoriate, and (at least early on) the intelligence services. The affinities across real differences between Hitler and Trump allow us to explore patterns of insistence advanced by Hitler in the early days of his movement to help illuminate the Trump phenomenon today.”
― William E. Connolly, Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism

“More enraged men have become less patient with neoliberal trade agreements; more belligerent in their critiques of feminism, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, academics, homosexuals, and the media; and more prepared to nudge the neoliberal side of the old machine consolidated in the early 1980s toward aspirational fascism.”
― William E. Connolly, Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism

“the repeated charge that CNN reports “fake news,” which started shortly after some blog sites Trump draws on had been shown to manufacture news claims out of nothing. The idea here is to cauterize public outrage by making it seem that “both sides” say the same thing about the other.”
― William E. Connolly, Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism

“Fascism twists and distorts democracy while retaining its imperative to seek a mass basis. It mobilizes and organizes the popular support it needs, and it seeks to render the lines between consent and imposition blurry. Fake news is its stock in trade, and corollary charges of fake news against evidence-based claims become its premium stock. It thus depends on mobilizing intensive mass energies to sustain itself as it weakens the media, controls intelligence, curtails the autonomy of plural associations, and either eliminates or constricts the integrity of electoral politics.”
― William E. Connolly, Aspirational Fascism: The Struggle for Multifaceted Democracy under Trumpism