Trump and Ur-Fascism
Trump-style populism has made a strategy out of substituting superficial charm and emotional appears to fear of the Other for policy, education and experience/ For traditional liberals and Democrats in particular, this seems to give rise to the temptation to treat political dysfunctionality as a particular feature of Trump’s personality disorder. Trump in this sense is understood as particularly toxic and obnoxious agent of evil whose removal would likely solve the greater part of the problem.
Another view would be that Trump is a supremely ordinary individual finding himself in the midst of exceptionally favorable conditions, where the very old and very tried and true methods of political manipulation he depends on for his appeal both appeal to and are a neat fit with his narcissistic personality and his colossal privilege means that he need only utilize the politics of fear to win the presidency without having the least idea how even to implement his own nefarious agenda effectively. The importance in that respect of appreciating the difference between the two to our understanding the nature of power would hopefully be obvious, more or less.
To assume Trump’s psychology was a determining factor in his rise to power then is to give the Democrats a free pass in losing the election — not to mention helping to enable Presidential Overlord Trump’s patent desire to cultivate a cult of personality around himself. In the same sense, to assume that Stalin’s psychology was a sole determining factor in his rise to infamy suppresses the role of Leninist ideology in producing favorable conditions for the sociopathic personality of Stalin to manipulate in his own favor. This seems to account for the fact that many Leninists embrace the concept of a ‘degenerated workers’ state’ under Stalin, which relives them of the terrible burden of having to consider the possibility of flaws in their guiding assumptions.
The fact is that Trump’s shameless and opportunistic substitution of scare mongering and scapegoating for policy speaks directly to questions regarding the historical foundations of authoritarianism and fascism, which not only explains the rush on Orwell’s 1984 post election but extends far beyond issues of personality and governing style — abhorrent and dangerous as Trump’s is. Not only does this approach invite comparison with the archetype of racist nationalism and totalitarianism, National Socialism, but it also invite comparison with the policies of Trump’s predecessors.[1] As Noam Chomsky has argued , ‘If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.’[2]
In fact, not a small part of the critique of historical and contemporary state terrorisms arises out of an analysis of elements of authoritarianism and fascism that transcend the historical specificity of the prewar period. To this end Umberto Eco describes an Ur-Fascism or Eternal Fascism, an archetype consisting of features that, he argues, are enough to connect different fascisms insofar as they ‘allow fascism to coagulate’ around them. In order, the features Eco lists are: 1) cult of tradition; 2) rejection of modernism; 3) the cult of action for action’s sake; 4) disagreement as treason (‘with us or against us’); 5) fear of difference; 6) the appeal to a frustrated middle class; 7) obsession with a plot; 8) enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak; 9) permanent warfare; 10) popular elitism (‘contempt for the weak’); 11) death cult (‘everybody is educated to become a hero’), 12) machismo; 13) selective populism; and finally, 14) Orwellian Newspeak. ‘Even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned,’ Eco wrote, ‘behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives.’[3]
While Eco might have found these drives unfathomable, research since the 1970s) into authoritarian psychology under conditions of moral panic affords us deeper insights into the mechanics and dynamics of his Ur-Fascism. Of interest in this respect is the work of historian Norman Cohn, who in researching the European Witch Hunts attributes the witch stereotype to ‘elements of diverse origin . . . some of these derived from a specific fantasy which can be traced back to Antiquity.’[4] Research into moral panics in sociology and moral disengagement in social psychology provide means to pursue this line of research further.[5] In fact, Cohn’s ‘ancient fantasy,’ what we might describe these days as a propaganda trope or motif, serves perfectly as a metaphor for moral panic narratives. The basis of his ‘ancient fantasy’ was that ‘there existed, somewhere in the midst of the great society, another society, small and clandestine, which not only threatened the existence of the great society but was also addicted to practices which were felt to be wholly abominable, in the literal sense of anti-human.’[6] In multiple ways, this archetype embodies many or even all of the traits Eco lists as elements of the archetypal fascism.
Moral panic is based on the concept of ‘the production of deviance’ — deviance being a completely subjective concept based on who has the power to define the term and impose it on public discourse, as opposed to one that of necessity bears any resemblance to characteristics of anyone so labelled.[7] In this sense, the production of deviance as a concept reflects the observation attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche that ‘All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.’[8] In speaking directly to this process of deviance (and truth) production, many of Eco’s features of Ur-Fascism are clearly distinguishable in Trumpist rhetoric. On the Fox News Network for example, Judge Janine Pirro advises ‘liberals’ that ‘The election is over, ‘it’s time to take sides,’ and that ‘You’re either with us or against us . . . that is: With the United States or against the United States.’[9] Similar rhetoric has appeared recently from Trumpists Sarah Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.[10] All are examples of the identification of disagreement with treason (#4)
Another characteristic feature of the production of deviance and moral panics is the obsession with a plot (#7). Trump’s own foreign policy rhetoric around Islamic terrorism speaks of ‘making America safe again’ in the face of a new threat to the US that follows along in the same vein after it having ‘defeated Fascism, Nazism, and Communism.’[11] The Islamic terrorist peril reflects at the same time a ‘hateful ideology of Radical Islam’ responsible for the ‘oppression of women, gays, children, and nonbelievers,’ whose moral weakness is set against the seeming fact that ‘ISIS has spread across the Middle East, and into the West’ and Trump’s own speculation that ‘the situation is likely worse than the public knows.’[12] The existential peril of the day, on the one hand beleaguered by weakness to be consistent with purported western values, is at the same moment too strong to be contained (#8).
The connection of new perils with old, in addition to being a form of what Stuart Hall calls ‘convergence,’ or ‘the linking by labeling of the specific issue to other problems,’ is indicative of the conspiracy theories that have formed the locus of moral panic around terrorism.[13] It is worth noting that the communist peril was also cast as both weak and strong, weak in the courage of its convictions even as it defeated Nazism and strong as an expansionist threat that needed to be contained even as it was crawling away from the eastern front after the conclusion of the war. Invoking varying historical and existential threats would appear to reflect a preoccupation. In the face of this Schroedinger’s Peril, embodying internally contradictory characteristics at the same moment, Trump posits a macho bellicosity (#12) using the language of fitness: ‘
Anyone who cannot name our enemy, is not fit to lead this country . . . anyone who cannot condemn the hatred, oppression and violence of Radical Islam lacks the moral clarity to serve as our President.[14]
Bellicose machismo in this instance is cast as moral clarity, the irony of perpetuating hatred while advocating violence and oppression in the name of opposing them not insignificant — an interesting interpretation of actually existing moral clarity also. In this way Trump renders himself cause and cure of the problem of terrorism through binary Othering of the terrorist peril, an approach that also appeals to popular fear of difference (#5) — fears built atop the implicit juxtaposition of the western ‘way of life’ and ‘Islam’ as if religious pluralism was not a characteristic feature of an open society.[15]Antisemitism is popularly accepted as a racism though anti-islamism is not; to the extent that Trump is able to successfully graft the morally-disengaged attitudes typical of antisemitism as a mentality rooted in feudal and pre-enlightenment concepts onto Islamophobia, he might also be said in that sense to embody a rejection of modernism (#2). Trump further encourages fear of difference by combining fears of terrorism with fears of immigration; in the name of doing something about terrorism, he promises to temporarily suspend immigration from countries he considers dangerous, including those “that have a history of exporting terrorism,” and carry out “extreme vetting.”[16] In addition to his promise to expel all undocumented immigrants, Trump proposes a ban on Muslim immigration full stop.[17]
In a broad sense this reflects the cult of action for action’s sake (#3), especially insofar as the pretense that summary discrimination against and persecution of Muslims writ large for the actions of terrorists amounts to ‘doing something’ — as opposed to responding in exactly the way terrorists aim for in carrying out such actions and reproducing the conditions that produce Islamic terrorism in the first place. Lisa Stampnitzky notes that the definitions of terrorism and terrorist that have become predominant in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States treat ‘terrorist’ as an identity rather than a strategy — a process that in treating perpetrators of terrorism as inherently and absolutely evil, also denies to them any rationality by which their actions might be studied, understood and treated at the casual level. This process, she adds, also provides the US political establishment with a pretext to avoid reflecting on its own role on producing non-state terrorism, and thus also a pretext for permanent warfare (#9) — especially to the extent that it helps muddy the waters where the role of the United States is concerned between reflecting and directing the problem.[18] One might assume that trying to clarify the issue would be the work of people trying to exonerate themselves, and vice versa. To the extent that such attitudes, in positing the violence of the state and the opportunity to kill and die for the greater good, ‘encourage everybody to become a hero,’ Trumpism also invokes the hero/death binary of militarism (#11). Trump’s pick for national security advisor is Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who has advised Trump previously that the United States is in a ‘world war’ with Islam.[19]
In his appeals to reactionary populism Trump is noted for breaking with established conservative tradition, though this does not prevent him from embracing contradictory positions when it suits him — as his rhetoric against the Schroedinger’s Enemy demonstrates. While modelling himself an anti-establishment maverick in contradistinction to Hilary Clinton, Trump invokes the cult of tradition (#1) in defending discrimination against gay marriage.[20] Similarly, and more significantly, he combines, in response to the economic problems created by the gutting of manufacturing and related industries amidst the emergence of neoliberal globalization, appeals to a frustrated middle class (#6) and popular elitism (#10). Trump’s contempt for the weak associated with his popular elitism manifests as anti-immigrant xenophobia and islamophobia, both of which in this instance serving as convenient vehicles for moral panicking and scapegoating. In displaying little apparent interest in the welfare of Muslims and illegal immigrants, Trump’s populism appears highly selective (#13) — limited in fact to whites and those able to claim whiteness.[21]
In his final campaign video, the now President-elect blasts a ‘failed and corrupt political establishment,’ noting not altogether incorrectly that ‘the establishment has trillions of dollars at stage in this election.’[22] With the ear of the frustrated middle class (#6) in mind, Trump denounces ‘those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests they partner with,’ who ‘don’t have your good in mind,’ his comments interspersed with clips of the G20 summit and, cynically enough, pictures of Wall Street. Trump repeatedly refers to ‘the political establishment’ who are variously ‘trying to stop’ him’ (further obsession with a plot, #7) are ‘responsible for the economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry,’ and have ‘brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs.’[23] Trump appeals to anti-establishment populism in tapping into anti-Clinton sentiment; his willingness to push his own barrow as a member of the same establishment of class privilege however tells us something of how selective that populism actually is.
The fact that Trump’s selective populism does resonate with a particular cross-section of the population, in addition to raising the issue of the function of his invocation of Ur-Fascism in this context, raises a further question as to why it, rather than liberalism, carries greater appeal for many. Trump’s anti-globalism rhetoric gives us some insight into the former question; in his pure and simple invectives against establishment politics and vested interests, we find little in particular here that the average anti-globalisation activist would object to. Indeed, much of his imagery recalls that of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this respect Trump’s rhetoric recalls what Jefferson anticipated fearfully as a ‘a corrupt alliance between business and government’ — one characterized by ‘the mass of toiling producers battling their exploiters in commerce, finance and other speculative enterprises dependent on the resources and favours of government.’[24]
The latter question might be at least partly accounted for by the mentality demonstrated by liberal columnist Matthew Rosza, writing for Salon. In formulating a critique of Trump’s campaign advertisement, Rosza focuses not on his patent hypocrisy in targeting the elitism of the Clinton camp while neglecting to mention his own, but its anti-semitic overtones.[25] Rosza points out that the ad ‘depicts Trump as a populist outsider determined to free Americans from the corrupt insiders ruining this country,’ but that in focusing on Jewish Americans in the corrupt alliance it ‘evokes the stereotype that Jews are corrupt and secretive and aspire to control the world, a longstanding prejudice that has fueled anti-Semitic persecutions including pogroms in Europe to the Holocaust.’[26] In and of itself, this is a fair criticism. Trump, as Rosza points out, made previous references to anti-semitic tropes during his campaign and hired Steve Bannon of Breitbart.com, a white supremacist internet portal, as a senior campaign advisor. At the same time, Rosza’s critique to address the effects on the US economy of corporate globalization and neoliberalism, which for the past two to three decades have pursued in the name of continued growth ‘socialism for the rich’ in the form of subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare combined with austerity measures for the mass of the population and deep cuts to social services, healthcare and education, on the other.[27]
In appealing to such a particularly populist cause as opposition to NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the same moment that he invokes Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump constructs a racialised concept of the American Way of Life defined in opposition to Muslims and immigrants that amounts to a form of economic nationalism with a tangible socialistic tenor. Such socialistic economic nationalism in turn combines with a harshly xenophobic and racist Americanism that identifies the class interests of the American corporate elite with the national interest of the United States.[28] On this basis of this combination, Trump and his acolytes are able to bring the white American working class into a corporate, economically nationalist ideology with populist and socialistic tilts against ‘the establishment.’ ‘corruption’ and ‘special interests’ — one that, with the addition of xenophobia and Islamophobia, even manages to incorporate elements of moral panic, a strategy not without precedent.[29] Such parallels with National Socialism are arguably more significant than anti-semitic propaganda tropes in campaign advertising.
It is clear from Trump’s campaigning style that he is not one for clear statements of policy; indeed, much of his rhetoric and conduct appears to be predicated on the need to distract attention away from lack of such. A comparison of various elements of Trumpist populism against the characteristics of archetypal fascism as outlined by Umberto Eco, and a comparison of both of those against the concept of deviance production associated with moral panics — in this instance expressed in Cohn’s ‘ancient fantasy’ — cannot yield perfect results. Nevertheless, the fact that elements of each are apparent and that they appear in a form that can be systematized in turn in terms of moral panic indicates that Trumpist nationalism and populism contains classic elements of political authoritarianism, up to and including the scapegoating facets of moral panics. Though limitations of space preclude it here, further analysis incorporating the victim playing, victim blaming and with-us-or-against-us dynamics indicative of moral disengagement could yield further immediate insights pertaining to the role of these as mechanisms of persecution and scapegoating. In the meantime, it is apparent enough that, for all his pretensions to draining the swamp, Trump is rather the latest incarnation of its oldest and most pernicious elements — and in some sense even the gatekeeper.[30]
Bibliography
Bandura, Albert, ‘Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency,’ Journal of Moral Education, 31:2, 2002, 101–119.
Carey, Alex. Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia, Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995.
Chomsky, Noam, ‘If the Nuremberg Laws Were Applied…’, Speech delivered around 1990, Noam Chomsky archive, via https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/, accessed 30 December 2016.
Cohen, Stanley, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers, 3rd ed, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Edwards, David, ‘CNN host calls out Donald Trump: ‘What’s traditional about being married three times?,’ Raw Story, 29 June 2016, via https://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/cnn-host-calls-out-donald-trump-whats-traditional-about-being-married-three-times/, accessed 31 December 2016.
Hall, Stuart, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke & Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law & Order, London; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013,
Harris, Cheryl, ‘Whiteness as Property,’ Harvard Law Review, Vol. 106, №8, (1993): 1707.
Harvey, David, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.
Husbands, Christopher T, “Crises of national identity as the ‘new moral panics’: Political agenda‐setting about definitions of nationhood,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 20, no. 2 (1994): 191–206.
Kelley, Robert Lloyd, The Transatlantic Persuasion; the Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone, New York: Knopf, 1969, 137.
Moons, Michelle, ‘Palin To #NeverTrump: ‘You’re Either With Us Or You’re Against Us’,’ Breitbart.com, 1 Jul 2016, via http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/07/01/palin-nevertrump-youre-either-us-youre-us/
Morgan, George and Scott Poynting, Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West, Routledge, 2016
Griffiths, Brent, ‘Newt Gingrich puts House leadership on notice: You are either with us or against us,’ Politico.com, 10 October 2016, via http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/newt-gingrich-threatens-house-leadership-229553, accessed 31 December 2016.
Rosenberg, Matthew And Maggie Haberman, ‘Michael Flynn, Anti-Islamist Ex-General, Offered Security Post, Trump Aide Says,’ New York Times, 17 November, 2016, via http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/michael-flynn-national-security-adviser-donald-trump.html, accessed 3 January 2017.
Rosza, Matthew, ‘WATCH: Donald Trump’s last campaign ad is a fitting end to an anti-Semitic campaign,’ Salon.com, Nov 7 2016, http://www.salon.com/2016/11/07/watch-donald-trumps-last-campaign-ad-is-a-fitting-end-to-an-anti-semitic-campaign/, accessed 23 December 2016.
Stampnitzky, Lisa. Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented ‘Terrorism,’ Cambridge University Press, 2013
Team Trump, ‘Donald Trump’s Argument For America,’ Youtube, 6 Nov 2016, via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8, accessed 4 January 2017.
‘Full text: Donald Trump’s speech on fighting terrorism,’ Politico, 15 August 2016, via http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-terrorism-speech-227025, accessed 1 January 2017.
‘Where Donald Trump stands on terrorism.’ CBS News, 19 September 2016, via http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-donald-trump-stands-on-terrorism/, accessed 1 January 2017.
Originally posted at https://medium.com/@ben.debney/trump-and-ur-fascism-1669a9830b30, Apr 25, 2017
[1]Umberto Eco, ‘Ur Fascism,’ The New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, via http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/, accessed 29 December 2016.
[2] Noam Chomsky, ‘If the Nuremberg Laws Were Applied…’, Speech delivered around 1990, Noam Chomsky archive, via https://chomsky.info/1990____-2/, accessed 30 December 2016.
[3] Umberto Eco, ‘Ur Fascism,’ ibid.
[4] Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, London; Paladin, 1976, ix. For further reading on the sociology and social psychology of persecution, see: Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, CITE; Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, CITE; Maurice Brinton, The Irrational in Politics, CITE;
[5] Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London; Routledge, 2002; Albert Bandura, ‘Moral Disengagement In The Perpetration Of Inhumanities,’ Personality and Social Psychology Review 3, 1999, 193–209.
[6] Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, ibid.
[7] Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, op cit, CITE
[8] Paul E. Glenn, The Politics of Truth: Power in Nietzsche’s Epistemology, Political Research Quarterly Vol. 57, №4, Dec., 2004, pp. 575–583.
[9] Tom Franklin, ‘Judge Jeanine To Liberals: ‘The Election Is Over — YOU’RE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US!’,’ 27 December 2016, via http://americanlookout.com/judge-jeanine-to-liberals-the-election-is-over-youre-either-with-us-or-against-us-video/, accessed 31 December 2016.
[10] Michelle Moons, ‘Palin To #NeverTrump: ‘You’re Either With Us Or You’re Against Us’,’ Breitbart.com, 1 Jul 2016, via http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/07/01/palin-nevertrump-youre-either-us-youre-us/; Brent Griffiths, ‘Newt Gingrich puts House leadership on notice: You are either with us or against us,’ Politico.com, 10 October 2016, via http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/newt-gingrich-threatens-house-leadership-229553, accessed 31 December 2016.
[11] ‘Full text: Donald Trump’s speech on fighting terrorism,’ Politico, 15 August 2016, via http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-terrorism-speech-227025, accessed 1 January 2017.
[12] ‘Donald Trump’s speech,’ Politico, ibid.
[13] See for example Feldman, Jay, Manufacturing Hysteria: a History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, Pantheon, 2011; Rothe, Dawn, and Stephen L. Muzzatti. “Enemies everywhere: Terrorism, moral panic, and US civil society.” Critical Criminology 12, no. 3 (2004): 327–350; tuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke & Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law & Order, London; Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 220.
[14] ‘Donald Trump’s speech,’ Politico, op cit.
[15] Morgan, George, Scott Poynting, Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West. London, Routledge, 2016.
[16] ‘Donald Trump’s speech,’ Politico, op cit; ‘Where Donald Trump stands on terrorism.’ CBS News, 19 September 2016, via http://www.cbsnews.com/news/where-donald-trump-stands-on-terrorism/, accessed 1 January 2017.
[17] Ali Vitali, ‘In His Words: Donald Trump on the Muslim Ban, Deportations,’ op. cit.
[18] Lisa Stampnitzky, Disciplining Terror: How Experts Invented ‘Terrorism,’ Cambridge University Press, 2013.
[19] Matthew Rosenberg And Maggie Haberman, ‘Michael Flynn, Anti-Islamist Ex-General, Offered Security Post, Trump Aide Says,’ New York Times, 17 November, 2016, via http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/michael-flynn-national-security-adviser-donald-trump.html, accessed 3 January 2017.
[20] David Edwards, ‘CNN host calls out Donald Trump: ‘What’s traditional about being married three times?,’ Raw Story, 29 June 2016, via https://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/cnn-host-calls-out-donald-trump-whats-traditional-about-being-married-three-times/, accessed 31 December 2016.
[21] Cheryl Harris, ‘Whiteness as Property,’ Harvard Law Review, Vol. 106, №8, 1993, 1741.
[22] Team Trump, ‘Donald Trump’s Argument For America,’ Youtube, 6 Nov 2016, via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8, accessed 4 January 2017.
[23] Team Trump, ‘Donald Trump’s Argument For America,’ ibid.
[24] Kelley, Robert Lloyd, The Transatlantic Persuasion; the Liberal-Democratic Mind in the Age of Gladstone, New York: Knopf, 1969, 137. For more on the particulars, see Thom Hartmann, Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights, Rodale: New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
[25] Matthew Rosza, ‘WATCH: Donald Trump’s last campaign ad is a fitting end to an anti-Semitic campaign,’ Salon.com, Nov 7 2016, http://www.salon.com/2016/11/07/watch-donald-trumps-last-campaign-ad-is-a-fitting-end-to-an-anti-semitic-campaign/, accessed 23 December 2016.
[26] Rosza, Salon.com, op cit.
[27] David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.
[28] For more on this see Carey, Alex, Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia. Edited by Andrew Lohrey. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995.
[29] Husbands, Christopher T, “Crises of national identity as the ‘new moral panics’: Political agenda‐setting about definitions of nationhood,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 20, no. 2 (1994): 191–206
[30] I have argued elsewhere that his campaign is a manifestation of ‘death rattle’ politics. See http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/09/death-rattle-politics/
