Some Big Lies die hard…particularly if the mainstream media is committed to keeping them alive. The “Trump is a fascist” smear was one of the first out of the box when the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance”/Democrats/news media) reacted to being foiled in the glorious post-Obama re-making of America they had assumed was assured by setting out to cancel the verdict of the electoral system and sabotage a legally elected President of the United States. (Nah, nothing undemocratic about that!) The claim that Trump and his supporters are crypto-fascists has been nonsensical from the start (as President, Donald Trump eliminated many kinds of government control over individual liberties, and opposed others), and the absurdity has exploded as the Biden Administration and the Democratic Congress have embraced so many markers of totalitarianism, like legally favored groups, censorship by a captured media, political show trials, politically manipulated science and a “truth agency” (which, fortunately, never got off the ground. Then we have the attempted government intimidation of political opposition, lock-step partisan indoctrination in the universities and public schools, official disinformation (“Recession? What recession?”), the effort to punish judges for opinions that go against the party, demonizing the opposing party and, most notably, the targeting of political opponents for prosecution and imprisonment. Tonight, the President of the United States will give a national address accusing the opposing party of being a threat to democracy.
In light of all this (and more) I find it stunning that 1) any academic could write a column like “Biden called Trumpism ‘semi-fascism.’ The term makes sense, historically.” and not fear that he would be laughed at in the street; 2) any respectable publication would print it, and 3) more than a confederacy of dunces would find it persuasive. This is Trump Derangement on the hoof, mad projection, and such biased scholarship that it makes my teeth hurt. Here’s a sample of what Federico Finchelstein, a history professor from the New School (never heard of it, which is encouraging: the Post obviously couldn’t find a professor, even a history professor, from a major university who would endorse Biden’s “semi-fascist” rhetoric). “Fascists defended a divine, messianic and charismatic form of leadership supported by big lies and propaganda. They had an extreme, xenophobic conception of what they deemed the enemy, regarding it as an existential threat to the nation and to its people that had to be first persecuted and then deported or eliminated. Fascism aimed to create a new and epochal world order through the militarization of politics,” he writes. Sounds like Obama’s Democratic Party to me…you? Then he continues,
Against this backdrop, Donald Trump represents a new type of global autocratic ruler who is legally elected, but also embraces elements that fascist figures like Perón felt were too controversial: totalitarian lies, racism and illegal means such as coups to destroy democracy from within. Trump might best be considered a “wannabe fascist.” By that I mean he is a populist who aspires to return to a form of fascism. His rule was not full-fledged fascism because it did not descend into dictatorship. But it could have been, if his attempts to retain power after the 2020 election had been successful.
Indeed, well before Jan. 6, 2021, Trump had already established key pillars of fascism: militarization of politics, xenophobia, totalitarian propaganda techniques and demonstrable falsehoods, and the demonization of his antagonists.Trumpism was only missing dictatorship. And then the insurrection happened, as Trump supporters attempted to overturn the 2020 election results because he lost.
It’s hard not to laugh out loud at this. Seriously? Who “militarized politics”? Were the George Floyd rioters coast to coast, allowed to terrorize whole communities Trump supporters, or core Democratic Party constituents? What xenophobia…oh, that’s right: enforcing immigration laws is “xenophobic.” I forgot. Sorry. Almost the entire media and popular culture apparatus attacked (and continues to attack) Trump and Republicans daily in service of the other party: Trump and Republicans couldn’t employ “totalitarian propaganda” techniques if they wanted to. (Progressives obviously want to.) Demonstrable falsehoods? Demonization of his antagonist? Amazing! This is beyond gaslighting. It’s beyond the lightless void of a black hole calling the kettle black. And, naturally, we get the “insurrection” lie, which all by itself is signature significance for a historian so biased that he can’t be taken seriously.
And yet, and yet…so far, the eleven comments this drivel has attracted from Post readers include nothing but agreement. Here’s my favorite:
Semi Fascism is a very good analogy.It is an easy argument to win.No we are not at the gas chambers, brown shirts in the streets and the destruction of the Capitol building being blamed on communists.We have Kyle Rittenhouse shooting people down in the streets during civil unrest.We have racist attacks in synagogues by member of the MAGA party in the Philadelphia area that gunned down Jews praying.We have Buffalo manifesto targeting black people based on skin color and gunning them down in a grocery store– Charlottesville Torch light parades with all white men shouting Jew will not replace us.– THE MAGA flags flying over the Stars and Stripes.– The Confederate flag of traitors flown in the Capitol Building during a failed self Coup instigated by the Former President of the USA.WE have Fox news as a major Propaganda outlet pushing the Big Lie.Look Fascism is an after the fact thing, once the power of the state has been captured..BUT not before the powerful tools of the Constitution have been destroyed.“Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. “
I have walked Dachau Germany. I saw from the center of the camp, the steeple of the town church.As the ash from the crematoria rained down on the local townsfolks, Gypsies, political opponents, homosexuals, mentally challenged, Jews and Roma and regular people burnt after being gassed and murdered – those church folk fed the guards, housed the guards and supported the Fascists in charge.GOP is dead as a National party that can help all Americans. Fascist are not going to win here in the USA if good people stand up to the dangerous GOP.“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”Call out every MAGA supporter as a semi-Fascist now, before we call them full Fledged Fascists once they command the military with total control.Vote Str8 d- Back the Blue – Fund the police – Fund the FBI – Joe Biden is doing a great JOB! Blue Wave – 2022
Ethics Alarms 
Jack,
The New School For Social Research is a college in Manhattan. I work there two days a week and I can tell you it is a bastion of woke-ism. Just about any class you can take weaves “social justice” through the most mundane of subjects.
A few years ago the school was going to close down a cafeteria. The protests started immediately in front of the university center, along with calls for the president of the college to resign. The cafeteria was invaded and taken over. I took a walk over to the UC to see what was going on by the cafeteria and saw a large banner with these words on it:
UNDER NO MANAGEMENT
FULL COMMUNISM IN EFFECT.
EVERYTHING FREE.
ALL PROPERTY COMMUNAL.
Meanwhile, they were keeping it open with donations.
Jack wrote, “And they say that Trump supporters are scary…”
Well they are scary, they publicly disagree with Democrats and that really scares Democrats because the Democrats might not get their way, what could be scarier than that.
Even if this were true, would this not be payback for the “Russians®™ Stole the 2016 Election” propaganda campaign?
How can payback possibly be unethical?
Kyle Rittenhouse was engaging in civil unrest?
I was under the impression who shot those who were attacking him.
What would have been wrong with a coup, considering the Russian®™ Collusion disinformation campaign?
Russia®™ Stole the 2016 Election was the Big Lie.
Back in 2016, my longtime Usenet ally, Christopher Charles Morton, wrote about how the Democrats were behaving like the 1919 German ultrarightwing.
He was more right than he could have realized back then, for who could have imagined the use of Justice Department resources to push the Russian®™ Collusion Big Lie.
Why would an insurrection have been wrong?
I think some people in this nation better think about what this nation would be like if everyone who was even vaguely conservative was to disappear. That’s essentially what you’re wishing when you want to declare everyone who disagrees with you to be a criminal. What would this nation be if every Republican and everybody who was even vaguely conservative was to disappear overnight?
Well, first of all it’s generally not a good thing if a nation sees half of its population vanish overnight generally. Let’s think about what the impact would be if that particular half was to vanish. Well, first of all you would pretty much gut the workforces of the food and energy producing areas of this country. The vast majority of farms would go unintended and the oil fields and power plants would grind to a halt. However, it really wouldn’t matter, because even if there were anyone to grow and harvest food or produce energy, there would be almost no truck drivers to bring it to where it needed to be. Yep, this nation’s truck yards would sit idle. The nation’s military and emergency services would pretty much disappear. There would be no one to keep order or respond to emergencies. More than half of engineering professionals and a good chunk of healthcare professionals would also disappear. Small business would be out of business. Big business would have a problem since both the workforce and management would be heavily impacted. The South and the Midwest would be effectively depopulated outside the major cities, and you would wonder to see how empty the West Coast and the Northeast would become outside the major cities.
Overnight, this nation will become a nation of democratic politicians, lawyers with no one to represent, teachers with few people to teach, celebrities with no one to entertain, influencers with no one to influence, and moochers. Is that a good thing? Maybe you think it is, after all, there is no such thing as a smart conservative or a decent conservative, because if someone or at all smart or at all decent, he wouldn’t be a conservative. But I guess it doesn’t matter, conservative values like the rule of law, separation of powers, hard work, freedom of speech, and so on are so 2016.
Perhaps a nationwide strike protesting the fascist label is warranted.
However, the next night it would all descend into anarchy as all those people started to starve. How much food do we think is actually in our supermarkets if the trucks stop delivering multiple times every day.
Were such an event to happen, I imagine we would be lucky if our population didn’t quickly plummet to less than were here at the time of the actual Revolution.
No one will starve immediately especially most Americans who are carrying more pounds than they need – including me. When the fuel trucks stop delivering fuel or when insufficient numbers of employees are generating electricity and the air conditioning shuts down and the Teslas cannot be charged, or ticket sales on Broadway and movie theaters plummet maybe then those willfully blinded by the totalitarian Biden regime will wake up.
Biden’s demagoguery must come with a cost that the average Biden voter can feel. If conservatives cannot tolerate a bit of discomfort in the short run they should simply fold and join the other side. There is no such thing as a fair weather principle.