Fascism versus Nazism — Both are bad; one is worse

Fascism versus Nazism

Both are bad; one is worse

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

September 21st, 2024

www.zeppscommentaries.online

David Runciman has an article in today’s Guardian that is well worth reading: Is Donald Trump a Fascist? It’s a well written article and gives a balanced and considered analysis of where Trump stands and what he might do under a second term.

There is, however, one problem with Runciman’s analysis: like many politically-oriented writers, he conflates fascism, a fairly common form of government, with its more vicious and rarer offspring: Nazism.

Nazism is a horrific form of government, It meets Runciman’s analysis of why such regimes are rare: “Calling a 21st-century politician a fascist is so damning – so much worse than any other label – because actual fascist regimes are very rare. One reason for that is none of them ever lasted. They were catastrophic failures – catastrophes not only for their friends and enemies but for the wider world – undone by their own appetite for relentless crisis and confrontation.”

True Nazi regimes are short lived, but extremely vicious, usually leading to mass death through wars and systematic exterminations.

Fascism and Nazism aren’t the same thing. Much of Europe has had fascist regimes at one point or another; Franco in Spain, the early days of Mussolini in Italy, Putin in Russia, Salazar in Portugal. Nearly every central and south American country has been under fascism at one point or another, and many still are. Examples are rife in Asia, as well: Modi in India, Suharto in Indonesia, Shah Pahlavi in Iran, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Marcos in the Philippines, Chiang Kai-Shek in China, and so on.

I’m deliberately excluding authoritarian regimes that are either military juntas or religious theocracies. They are their own breed of political creatures, and while they share many characteristics with fascism, neither Trump nor the GOP are on a path that leads to either of those types.

Granted, fascist regimes don’t hesitate to use the military or religion to their ends. Both are valuable instruments of social control, after all.

Back in 2003 Lawrence Britt published The Fourteen Signs of Fascism. Trump and his MAGA movement check every box. Indeed, the right wing of the GOP have done so dating back to the early days of the John Birch Society and McCarthyism

A good bumper sticker definition of fascism is that it is the merging of corporate and/or aristocratic power with the power of the state. Church and the military are subordinate, but nonetheless vital.

So fascist regimes are actually all too common, and some might last for decades. Unlike Nazi regimes.

Like monarchies, theocracies, and military rule, fascist regimes are born with the seeds of their own destruction. They are authoritarian, and thus demand unquestioning obedience from the population. They offer relatively little in return: a promise of stability and a sense of glory, with lots of god- and flag-waving. But authoritarianism is power, and power inevitably corrupts. Most such governments rapidly become kleptocracies. with functionaries standing in front of every door with their palms out, and the justice system designed to protect them becoming more and more capricious and cruel.

No free person with a sane mind wants to live under a fascist regime. Or any authoritarian regime, for that matter. George Washington framed the role of government power perfectly when he said, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master.” Democracy works because it puts government on a leash.

Yes, a GOP triumph in November would almost certainly bring about a fascist regime with Trump as an ever-more unreliable figurehead. It would be run by the congregation of plutocrats and other power brokers in their panoply of think tanks, corporate empires and suborned media outlets that I refer to as the National Association of Zealots and Ideologues. But while it would be nasty and corrupt, it wouldn’t be the immediate horrorshow that Runciman has in mind when he uses the word “fascist.” My “association” isn’t a true conspiracy; it’s merely a large group of aligned but often competing interests with similar aims. The cohesion stems from marriages of convenience, and once the country is spread out on the table before them, the knives will come out.

Yes, it will be a mess, and unless you happen to be a billionaire or a nimble functionary, you will suffer.

For a true Nazi regime, you need one final element: a Strongman. Trump, for all his personal power and viciousness, has never really been suited to that role, no matter how big his ego. He’s never had the skills needed to assure the fealty and loyalty of people around him, or the discipline and steadfastness to control people under him. And now, he’s a demented shadow of himself.

However, you do need a Leader for a true nightmare regime: a Hitler, a Stalin, a Putin. It’s the element that blends power and control with paranoia and capriciousness.

There may be any number of people in Trump’s ranks willing to audition for the role of strongman, and no doubt dozens who would have the requisite cleverness and savagery to emerge as a truly fearsome leader.

But they would be competing with others both at their level and facing resistance from others in more subordinate levels. And if Trump is still inconveniently alive, they have to keep it totally out of the public eye. (A Trump administration will bring back the grand old Political Science sport of Kremlin Watching).

But a fascist regime, especially one that is fairly rudderless as this one would be, does contain in its brutality and weakness the seeds for a Hitler, and an elevated chance for the rise of such. A GOP win in six weeks would put us all on the cusp of that, at our own expense.

Trump isn’t the real threat: the money and power backing him is the real threat.


David Runciman’s article can be found here.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/21/is-donald-trump-a-fascist

Trumpanazi – American descent into Nazism continues

April 13th 2019

The Premier League of Britain has a problem with some of its fans. Granted, footies have never been a particularly sedate lot, sometimes preferring to discuss the friendly rivalry between clubs with clubs, or chains, or shivs.

There have always been racist and bigoted assholes in their ranks, who delight in throwing bananas at black players, or shouting some of the particularly lurid racial abuse that is the hallmark of British hooligans.

But in recent times, the nature and frequency of these attacks has sharply increased. WestHam United is in the process of banning fans who videoed themselves singing racist ditties about the Jewish players on that night’s match rival, Tottenham. Two days earlier, Chelsea supporters sang anti Moslem chants about a player in Slavia Prague, and attacked one of their own fans who objected to the vile chants. And on the same night, Arsenal fans screamed anti-Islamic abuse at players on the other club, in a match in the Emirates. Those fans were lucky; most Islamic countries have notoriously little patience for slurs against Allah or his followers. Public whipping is the local equivalent of community service.

Of course, it isn’t just soccer. The number of such incidents has been on the rise throughout Europe and in North America. In Québec, a player, Jonathan Diaby, a 24-year-old defenseman for Marquis de Jonquière of the Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey, and his family who were watching him play were subjected to such intense racial abuse from the filth in the stands that he was pulled from the game and he and his family escorted from the stadium for their own safety.

And unfortunately, it’s not just sports where this is happening.

Nazism—and let’s stop pretending it’s anything other than Nazism—has been on the rise, and emboldened by political power in many parts of Europe and the United States, Nazis come out from under their rocks in force. This is how they behave when they think they can get away with it.

It’s a phenomenon that puts us all at risk. Yes, even if you are a member of the so-called ‘master race’, male, and Christian. It’s not a political philosophy, not that such are especially coherent or good at attending to the interests of their own followers. It’s a mental illness, and an ethical vacuum using hate as a substitute for faith and strength. It eventually destroys everything in its path.

Hitler famously executed 12 million people, including six million Jews, between 1936 and 1945. No matter what the Nazis say, that happened. And among the six million he killed who were not Jewish, many were white, ‘pureblood’ Germans, who happened to be communist, socialist, atheist, liberal, intellectual, or just not approving of Nazism’s murderous tactics. And of course, the actual fighting killed even more of the very people who supported Hitler, beginning with the Brownshirts. Nazis killed many people, and resulted in many more being dead.

So if you’re sitting there watching Faux News, smug in the certain knowledge that Trump and his ilk will only target groups you hate, read some history. He’ll get you killed, too, one way or another. If you don’t flunk some unseen test for ideological purity, you’ll die in the fighting, or in the starvation after Trump and his kind have destroyed the country and the economy. You are as much at risk as any Hispanic immigrant, or Moslem, or African American. Your death may just be later, rather than sooner.

Hitler was able to con the German people—his followers—into believing he was acting on their behalf. The war nearly destroyed them, but even without the war, he would have gotten around to putting them in work camps and then death camps after he used up all the groups he hated and needed to feed bodies to the endless maw of his nationalistic ego. The millions who died because of him are nothing compared to the hundreds of millions he envisioned killing.

Trump—and there really is little difference between Trump and Hitler at this point—doesn’t even pretend to be addressing the needs of his followers. His “tax reform” was a vicious cheat that targeted the lower middle class, the source of much of his following. He proposes to make massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and to dismantle what remains of Obamacare. Probably about three quarters of the people who voted for him will be hurt by those proposals. Many will be killed.

But Trump doesn’t care. They served their purpose. They voted for him once. Like Hitler, that one election is all he needs. Once he consolidated power, Hitler’s only use for ‘the common man’ was that of cannon fodder.

Trump is trying to stage a coup against the United States now. He purged the department of Homeland Security last week, leaving the reptilian spawn of Goebbels, Stephen Miller in effective control of an organization capable of jailing millions. The bitch who threw children in cages wasn’t vicious enough for Trump, you see. He is defying Congress on its request for his taxes—a demand Congress unequivocally has a right to issue. He is using his lapdog Barr to try to bury the Mueller report, and its doubtlessly damning contents.

He tried to threaten ‘sanctuary’ cities with sending them what he considers to be animals and subhumans—immigrants. To the credit of the American people, most of those cities said they would welcome Trump’s castoffs. And his goosestepping followers won’t even stop to consider the mad logic behind protecting America from immigrants by sending immigrants to major American cities. Bigotry and hatred don’t run on logic.

He’s attacking a member of Congress for her Islamic faith. He tweeted twice a falsehood that she was dismissive of the attacks on 9/11. Never mind that Trump rejoiced in the attacks, claiming that it left him with the tallest building in New York City. (It’s a truism that when Trump attacks someone, he almost always ends up describing his own behavior). Equating someone with 9/11 for no other reason than that they are Moslem is exactly the same as claiming that Jews like to drink the blood of Christian babies, or that African Americans live only to rape white girls.

They are blood libels, these threats and smears. It’s the sort of thing you expect to hear from Nazi filth.

And it’s what we now hear from the President of the United States.

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