Monday, August 14, 2017

Trump hesitated to condemn Nazis because he IS a Nazi



I'm still angry.

I'm so angry that I probably should not try to write. My original intention was to embed a clip from last night's John Oliver episode and let it go at that.

But the need to express myself has taken hold, so I'm going to offer my thoughts -- and if this essay seems unorganized or intemperate, apologies. Again: I'm still angry.

Ever since Trump fastened onto birtherism, we've wondered: Does he really believe in that nonsense? Or is he simply using right-wing conspiracy theories for the purposes of self-promotion?

I think the answer is clear now: Trump really is a True Believer. He is also, at heart, a fascist.

True, he finally denounced the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who assembled at Charlottesville, but he did so only when politically forced to do so. His words came far too late, backed by far too little sincerity.

Conspiracy theory is the road to fascism. Psychologically, Trump is the sort of person likeliest to embrace right-wing conspiracy theories: He's an ill-read, low-IQ blowhard who thinks that he's smarter than he actually is, and who remains perpetually resentful of those who possess greater brainpower.

I've met a lot of guys like that, although the ones I bumped into never had money. There was a time when I tried to debate that sort of person. Always a mistake. Those assimilated into the ConspiraBorg are way beyond argument.

Many years ago, I became peripherally involved with the JFK assassination research community, taking a particular interest in JFK's far-right opponents -- Guy Banister, General Walker, the Birchers and so forth. Researching that subculture brought me into confrontation with people I had read about but never hoped to meet: Illuminati-spotters, Holocaust deniers, and racists who consider "mixmaster" to be the ultimate insult.

Not only that. Some of the JFK assassination researchers -- the good ones, the liberals -- morphed into doppelgangers of JFK's far-right opponents. I will always defend the memory of Jim Garrison, yet I must also admit that some Garrison fans share certain attributes with the fans of Willis Carto and Milton William Cooper. On both left and right, there is the automatic presumption of bad faith on the part of anyone who disagrees. On both sides, one encounters a knee-jerk reliance on ad hominem argumentation, particularly of the "spook-baiting" kind.

In short: Even the "good" conspiracy theorists sometimes descend into a kind of fascism. Yet they sincerely identify themselves as anti-fascists.

On the far right, the F-word evokes mixed feelings. Although James Alex Fields, the white supremacist who used his car as a lethal weapon, has openly proclaimed his love for Hitler, most white nationalists prefer to argue that mainstream liberals and Democrats are the true fascists.

Personally, I'm sick of that doubletalk. Give me the fascist who wears the F-word on his t-shirt without shame or subterfuge. He may be evil, but at least he's honest.

Our president remains a classic doubletalker, though he is not as effective as he once was, perhaps because age and job stress keep eroding his verbal skills (which weren't very impressive to begin with). Even so, most of the country refuses to recognize Trump's fascism for what it is. The truth is simply too horrible to admit.

There's another problem. Too many people cannot get beyond this simplistic equation: Fascism = anti-Semitism. Trump praises Israel and has a Jewish son-in-law. How (many would ask) can one apply the label "fascist" to such a man?

My answer: Fascism has always been a more complex ideology than most Americans realize. Mussolini invented fascism, yet he didn't hate Jews -- at least not in the virulent way that, say, Julius Streicher did. As I keep reminding readers, Anders Brevik -- the neofascist Norwegian mass murderer -- remains an admirer of Israel. The Nazi party of 1940 and Richard Spencer's group are two different things; the new beast is not the old beast.

The current American fascist movement is split between old-schoolers -- those who retain a transcendental hatred of Jews -- and new-schoolers who consider Israel a valuable ally in the battle against Islam.

But the situation becomes ever more complex the closer one looks. Steve Bannon hates Islam and respects Alexander Dugin, yet Dugin admires the more extreme forms of jihadist Islam. For Dugin, the enemy is neither Judaism nor Islam: The true enemies are equality, tolerance, democracy, multiculturalism and progress. In a word: The Enlightenment.

Steve Bannon always insists that he loves Israel, as if that statement could bleach the F-word from his t-shirt -- but only the most foolish Jews would ally themselves themselves with a modern fascist like Bannon. The old-school anti-Semites may be relatively quiet now, but I am certain that they will one day reassert their dominance of the far right. If the supporters of Steve Bannon take full control of this country, no Jew anywhere will be safe.

Americans must understand that we have a Nazi-influenced president who also happens to have a Jewish son-in-law and a daughter who converted to Judaism. Yes, it's a bizarre situation. But it is what it is.

The Russian connection. In recent days, those pushing back on Russiagate have mounted two mutually exclusive attacks.

On one hand, we have a recent article in The Nation (I refuse to link to it) which claims -- insanely -- that the Democratic party is responsible for the leaks that deep-sixed Hillary Clinton. This piece of propaganda actually goes so far as to imply that the Guccifers (both 1 and 2!) were constructs of those hideous, scheming Democrats, especially the hideous, scheming DNC.

I need not offer a detailed counterargument. If you are the sort of person who can take that inane claim seriously, even for an instant, find yourself another blog. A long time ago, I stopped arguing with Holocaust deniers, with Jehovah's Witnessess, and with people who are convinced that the aliens built a base beneath Dulce, New Mexico. Fanatics are beyond debate; I refuse to be sealioned by some nutjob who thinks that the DNC created Guccifer 2.0.

So much for the first line of attack. The second line of attack holds that Obama was warned about Russian interference as early as 2014. Although the Politico article at the other end of that link is worth reading, rightwingers have seized upon this line of investigation to argue that Russian interference is really all the fault of those hideous, scheming Democrats. This absurd claim has already flavored some of Trump's tweets.

Needless to say, Propaganda Claim 1 and Propaganda Claim 2 cannot be reconciled. One can say that Russiagate is imaginary or one can say that Russiagate all the fault of Barack Obama. One cannot say both things at the same time.

How does the Russian connection link up with American neofascism? First and foremost, I'd point to this tweet from David Duke:
White man... your enemy isn't Russia -
#TheScaryThingIs your enemy is those telling you Russia is your enemy, believe me.
Duke adorns this sentiment with the hashtags #TeamWhite and #MAGA.

From there, you may want to proceed to a piece published just a few hours ago in the Observer: "Richard Spencer and His Kook-Right Ilk Are Agents of Russian Influence."
Our extreme right, with very few exceptions, are super-fans of the Russian president, in whom they see a strong, traditional leader who runs the world’s only white nuclear-armed great power. Their websites brim with adulation for Putin as a demigod who resists the Western social justice agenda with more than words.
This article was written by John Schindler, whom I do not trust -- although in this instance, his argument is open to independent verification.

Where next? I would suggest exploring the strange philosophical realms ruled by Alexander Dugin. Although I talk about him a lot, it would be a mistake to regard Dugin as a kind of Marvel comics supervillain. To me, he symbolizes a much larger phenomenon.

Since the 1950s, one faction of the post-war international fascist movement has had a love affair with Russia -- and after the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians have reciprocated their affection. If the previous sentence seems unfathomably strange to you -- "Didn't Hitler invade Russia? Wasn't there a really horrible siege of Leningrad?" -- I can only direct your attention to Kevin Coogan's important work Dreamer of the Day, which offers a detailed, scholarly investigation of certain little-known developments within the world of post-war fascism.

Coogan's book focuses on an influential fascist "thinker" named Francis Parker Yockey. In the 1950s, Yockey decided that Communism was a temporary affliction, and that the day would come (once the Marxist menace withered away) when Russia would prove an ideal homeland for a new "white power" movement.

Allow me to republish a section of an earlier post:
While doing some research into Robert Spencer, the neo-Nazi who pals around with Steve Bannon and Pam Geller, I found some statements which led me to suspect that Spencer has read Frances Parker Yockey's Imperium. This post-war Nazi "Bible" remains unfamiliar to most Americans.

Have I read it? Of course. I've also read Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan's remarkable biography of Yockey. Although hard to locate -- try inter-library loan -- this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand post-war fascism.

Yockey's Imperium attempts to prove that, in ancient times, the white race -- that "hardy band of adventurers" -- traveled the world, initiating every great intellectual leap made by the human race. Pyramids in Egypt, printing in China, formal logic in India, the wheel, cuneiform writing, fire: Thank Whitey. The so-called "Aryans" did all of these things and so much more.

According to Yockey, creativity is a purely Aryan "thing." Many Aryans do not understand this truth about themselves because they've been deceived by a group which Yockey calls the "culture distorters." And just who are they? Yockey usually plays it coy when it comes to identifying these people, although you may be able to hazard a guess.

If you're thinking that Yockey joined up with the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell, you're wrong. Rockwell could not tolerate Yockey's obsessive hatred of America. Surprisingly, Yockey favored Russia. That's right: An American post-war fascist sided with Russia in the middle of the Cold War -- not many years after the battle of Stalingrad!

Although Yockey had no love for communism, Marxism was, in his view, just a temporary affliction. More important, he felt, was the fact that the Russian people eschewed racial mixing, Yockeyism's great sin. They were also more chary of those pesky "culture distorters." Near the end of his life, Stalin's drift toward anti-Semitism made many American hate-mongers rethink their attitudes toward him.

Yockey worked within with the first American fascist movement of the post-WWII era: The National Renaissance Party of James Madole. (The NRP also published the works of Eustace Mullins, who later became very popular with conspiracy buffs on both the right and the left.) Yockey's greatest champion was Willis Carto, founder of Spotlight magazine -- a formative influence on the American conspiracy buff subculture.

(Intriguingly, some theorists have speculated that Carto had a hand in Yockey's mysterious death.)

For five decades, Yockeyism has been the "secret ingredient" laced into the giant pot of stew served up by America's conspiracy buff subculture. Is it any surprise to see Trump's conspiracy-addled entourage spouting riffs that sound like passages from Imperium?

Yockey's most radical ideas can be stated simply: Russia = good. Join forces with Russia. Unravel the power of those evil Wall Street culture distorters who run America.

That's pretty much the message of the Trump campaign, isn't it? Allow me to offer a tentative prediction: Before we are done with the Trump movement, we will see the boldest Trumpers endorse Imperium openly.

10 comments:

Amelie D'bunquerre said...

Do you take requests, Mr. Cannon? If you do take requests, on some Sunday would you post something about Michelangelo's David's foreskin? Imagine Bathsheba's ghost looking at that huge statue and saying, WTF?

So what if Trump's a Nazi? During his presidential campaign George McGovern compared the Nixon administration to Nazi Germany. Remember? And he implied that Nixon was like Hitler when he recommended "Inside The Mind Of Adolf Hitler". Then Reagan laid a wreath in the SS graveyard. Then G.H.W. Bush employed Nazis in his administration. You have to ask yourself: Are we safer because of Operation Paper Clip? Is it irony, a paradox, or something else, that flipped Nazis developed the space programs for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and now American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts co-habit the International Space Station?

Were you surprised during the MSNBC coverage of the 2004 Democratic National Convention when it ran commercial spots for The Nation magazine? I had never seen a commercial for The Nation anywhere before then. In more recent times, The Nation has run many full-page and back cover ads for MSNBC, featuring the news anchors, without which ads it can be argued that The Nation would have gone out of business.

I don't think Trump belatedly condemned racists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK owing to political pressure or public opinion; I think he was simply unfazed during the weekend while he was busy with golf and following the PGA Championship. Only after did he wake up to the possible market effects of his equivocation and hesitancy, and probably he realized he'd never get a lawyer to help him ever again because Roy Cohn was dead. Yet he did condemn them unambiguously, clearly and without any equivocation. Why? Probably because he only likes and supports winners. The racist, white supremacists lost the War Between the States; the Nazi master race lost to the Soviet Slavs and Asiatics and American boys bred from European peasants and serfs. Plus, he doesn't give a crap about those deplorables because he won't be running again.

The U.S. House of Representatives still displays a fasces to the right of the Speaker's chair, and the old Mercury dime, replaced with the current Roosevelt dime, had a fasces on its reverse side. Well before Mussolini, the U.S. had embraced the fascist ideals (and architecture) of the Roman republic. Of course, symbols and emblems of fascism were okay until Hitler co-opted the U.S. murderous ideology of Manifest Destiny for his attempts to fulfill the Aryan dreams for Lebensraum. Hitler didn't need to be a genius or even smart to realize that the U.S. grew into a powerful nation by acts of genocide and legalized slavery. All Hitler needed was a large military force without too many hapless schmucks like George Armstrong Custer.

I wonder how many Americans self-identify as 'white' or 'Caucasian' except when they feel it is useful or necessary, as with the national census or applying for health care insurance or treatment. Then I wonder how many of those believe in 'white supremacy' as an ideology. Finally, how many of those ideologues ever realize they are literally insane and need help?

It's not so much whether or not Trump, the president, finally condemned the insane ideologues as "thugs and criminals", but whether or not all the other elected and appointed politicians will go on record as unambiguously and unequivocally. These are the times that try Trump's loyalty oathers. You first, Jefferson 'Jeff' Sessions, but I hope you're fired.

JSL said...

@Amelie D'bunquerre,

Please comment more. Your commentary here was damn good. Delicious food for the mind.

"[the] U.S. grew into a powerful nation by acts of genocide and legalized slavery."

Dead on, that is exactly how this American federation came into being. And it was not a nation worth fighting for. Have you (or you, Joe Cannon) seen Jada Thacker's incisive account of the early United States of America in the article ' Deep History of America’s Deep State'? It's over at Consortium here: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/23/deep-history-of-americas-deep-state/

It is also worth noting that the United States still hasn't abolished slavery. The 13th Amendment was only a partial ban on slavery, not a total and absolutely abolishment of it. 'Criminals', that is, people convicted of any crime, are subject to slavery.

"Abolishes slavery, and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime."

Slavery is alive and well with the prison-industrial complex here in these United States of America. As Alan Moore once observed, the countries (federations) or nation states (unitary states) that have the word 'united' in their name are the least united of all.

Jay

Unknown said...

Shakesville writer Aphra Behn argues why The Nation magazine's article that DNC emails were leaked not hacked is Russian propaganda. http://www.shakesville.com/2017/08/why-is-nation-giving-space-to-tinfoil.html

joseph said...

Three things,
First, I suspect Joseph Cannon and I are among the very few who actually think the votes announced after the election did not reflect the votes cast. As Stalin is reputed to have said, "It isn't who votes, it's who counts the votes." Until a forensic analysis of ALL the voting machines is done, I will believe the vote was fixed.
Second, the fascists of the 1930s and the fascists of today are very much alike in their goals, the creation of a dictatorial regime with those at the top having all the power and the lion's share of the wealth. Their tactics are eerily similar: Create scapegoats, use mob mentality to cower others into silence, and use force rather than reason to achieve their goals.
Third, the notion that Trump and his allies are friends of Israel, or Jews, is ludicrous. They say they support Israel not for Jewish support (most of us have, and will, vote for Democrats) but for Christian Evangelicals. Those evangelicals support Israel only so that all Jews can go there and die in the apocalypse. We have seen the conflagration before, from 1933 to 1945 and aren't interested in seeing it again. How long the evangelicals can hold on to those beliefs is anyone's guess, but if they ever figure out it's not going to happen I suspect they will rapidly abandon Israel.

JSL said...

@Joe and @everyone,

You need to see the video at this link. http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-40929513/us-1940s-anti-nazi-film-makes-comeback

It's less than three minutes long, but holy shit it gets to the point. Share with everyone, your friends, your family, coworkers, loved ones. Especially people lured by the Far Right. This includes people who live on a diet of InfoWars, Breitbart News, Drudge, RT (Russia Today), 4chan's /pol/ (or any board or forum on 4chan), DC Whispers, and seemingly countless others.

Alex Jones is right about one thing, there is a war on for your mind. If you let him and his vile allies, they'll brainwash you and have you thinking you're a rebel. But you're not a rebel if you trust him, you'd be a rube.

"You see, we human beings are not born with prejudices. Always they are made for us. Made by someone who wants something."

Grung_e_Gene said...

Traitor Trump can no more denounce the TeaKKKi Party than he can denounce himself; They are Him.

As to Russiagate, I am flabbergasted about The Nation, I expect ratfvkcing from right-wing tool Glenn Greenwald but, the Nation? Fortunately, my subscription came up for renewal and I was able to simply decline to re-up.

Anonymous said...

I am willing to let Obama off the hook on account of his inability to be strong decisive leader, but alt_left that's a different story. IMO they were actively and purposely part of the Russians campaign to elect dump.

Amelie D'bunquerre said...

@JSL : 2:53 AM

Thanks for the kind encouragement, though I come here because of Joseph Cannon's heavy lifting (and for the waters). While he may not be a polymath, he's quite the polytasker and one of the best, probably the best for being a one-man band. I overlook many of his idees fixe (accents required there) because he's a steadfast New Deal Democrat and because it's futile to argue on the internet.

You're right about 'united' being a misleading term for most people. After its use as a rallying cry to conclude the Declaration of Independence, and after the failure of the Articles of Confederation to insure binding unity among the states, the term became a term of art as contract and corporate law in the sense that all ratifying states would be bound under the Constitution, that is 'united' as a corporate entity, in this instance, as a republic. Thus, E Pluribus Unum, meaning literally one political entity comprising many political entities. The motto was propagated to mean something else, something like 'one people with many different and diverse persons', i.e., the melting pot. As if. Also, the early 'united we stand, divided we fall' rallying cry was represented by the fasces symbolism.

It's significant that voluntary indentured servitude was never made illegal. The 19th- and early 20th-century waves of immigration brought millions of indentured servants whose passage and subsequent housing was paid for by robber barons and captains of industry, and the immigrants had to work to pay off those debts. But they were paid in company scrip, not U.S. legal tender, and "owed [their] souls to the company store": without legal tender in payment, they couldn't leave and survive.

In our time, voluntary indentured servitude takes the form of home mortgages and auto loans, along with college loans. Financial independence is effectively impossible, so a more or less reliable work force keeps the financial bubbles inflated. Some call it cynicism, some call it business. Only self-delusion and absolute denial, or manufactured consent, rendered by invisible propaganda keep us from acknowledging that most people on the planet are exploited to one degree or another, many wretchedly so.

I imagine, easily, that the decades-long debates about immigration and documentation have more to do with who gets to own voluntary indentured servants than they have to do with any individual's rights.

I'm optimistic because we now stand on the shoulders of FDR, The Beatles, and Steve Jobs. The world is a better place because of them.

margie said...

joseph, i don't always agree with you, but i do agree with you on your second and third point. As for your first point, you two are not the only ones that do not trust the results. M

prowlerzee said...

omg...are there waters? and salons? and fans?