I went to college in a very liberal place (Oberlin), and it was during a time of surging radicalism (Vietnam War) and some folks in that environment got a little too comfortable throwing around the F-word, by which I mean “fascist,” about everyone to the right of them. I thought then, and I still think now, that calling someone a “fascist” is a serious matter, not to be done lightly.
I haven’t yet called Donald Trump a fascist, although it’s harder and harder to restrain myself, given his (and the entire Republican establishment, especially featuring the formerly sane and reasonable Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer) tendency to call almost every Democrat a “socialist” in a way that strips the word of any useful meaning and is plain demagogical name-calling to scare voters.
I’ve spent some time and done some reading trying to figure out the lines (there really aren’t any clear ones) between the American right-wing, Republicans in general, Donald Trump in particular, and the characteristics that would justify dropping the F-word (fascist) on them. I’ve probably been too careful. Trump doesn’t deserve such caution and restraint, but I’m reluctant to stoop to his level.
I benefited this morning by reading the thoughts of writer Masha Gessen, a deep thinker and clear communicator, born in the Soviet Union with a mother who was a committed socialist. Gessen now lives partly in Russia and partly in the United States and writes often for the New Yorker. Gessen’s 2017 book about totalitarianism won the National Book Award.
Vox’s Sean Illing interviewed Gessen, mostly about the Trump moment, for a great piece that the headline said was about “American politics after the death of ‘truth.’” Illing wanted to talk about Trump because, he said, Gessen’s book, “more than any other Trump book I’ve read, focuses on ‘the corruption of language’ and the subsequent loss of a collective space for what we typically think of as politics.”
Gessen used the “f” word (fascism) only briefly at the top but I wanted to pass along a few of Gessen’s efforts to locate the Trump moment in the context of totalitarianism, drawing on the work of the great Hannah Arendt, who writes brilliantly about Hitler and about the Soviet Union. A few excerpts:
[image_credit]Wikimedia Commons/Bengt Oberger[/image_credit][image_caption]Masha Gessen[/image_caption]
“Now, that doesn’t necessarily create the preconditions for totalitarianism, but I actually think that the complete elimination of politics is what authoritarianism is. Under authoritarianism, everybody goes home, has their private lives, cooks dinner, bakes bread, and the authoritarian individual or group accumulates money and power out of sight. So politics disappears entirely, public space disappears entirely. It’s like lockdown forever.
“But totalitarianism is the opposite. The private space disappears and everything becomes political, but everything becomes political on the terms of the ruling ideology. So the authoritarian leader wants people to go home and tend to their lives. The totalitarian leader wants them out in the public square, demonstrating their support for him.
“This is why there’s no doubt in my mind that Trump is a totalitarian-style leader. If he could, he would have the whole country at a Trump rally 24/7.”
Sean Illing: “You write in the book that the longer Trumpism lasts, the harder it will be to undo the damage he’s done to our political language. Is the real damage already done? What would it even mean to recover or reinvent political language?”
Gessen: I don’t think that it’s impossible, at this point, to recover. I spent most of my life writing about and living in a country where language had really been damaged to what I think might be the point of total disrepair. We’re not nearly that far along. A lot of people are thinking through how to write and talk about this era in ways that are better than we have talked about politics in the pre-Trump era. And there’s some incredible writing and talking that the Trump era has produced, so I think we still have a lot of potential if we get to reverse this in November. …
“Language determines what’s thinkable, right? I mean, it’s very hard to think a thought that you don’t have a word for — it’s impossible, in fact.
“But there’s a huge difference between that limitation, which is just part of the human condition, and being in an encapsulated, ideological world that is divorced from the reality you can experience. And when Arendt writes about totalitarian ideology, she makes a very important point that any ideology can be totalitarian. And she writes that its key characteristic is that it’s entirely encapsulated; it’s impervious to any input from outside reality. So I think the problem with Fox News, or living inside the Fox News bubble, is not just the language and the framing, but it’s that the language and the framing actually do not apply to your daily reality.
“I was talking to somebody the other day whose entire family has had Covid, and yet they don’t believe in Covid. And that is, like, a perfect example of totalitarian ideology. Even if they had said that it wasn’t that bad and not a lot of people are getting it, or something that acknowledged their personal experience — that would be one thing. But they literally do not think that the thing exists. They think that it’s a conspiracy.”
Illing: “That’s wild. Is that sort of reality-denying ideology the precondition for actual totalitarianism?”
Gessen: “Well, you had all these great German thinkers who survived fascism in the 1930s and ’40s, and they came to the U.S. in the ’50s and ’60s and basically said the preconditions for fascism or totalitarianism were already in place here. But even suggesting that seemed outlandish at the time. You can’t use words like ‘fascism’ without getting dismissed.
“But look, there are really important distinctions between the country that I spent most of my life writing about [Russia]and this one. And the distinctions may not be what’s important right now. Maybe what’s important right now are the similarities, and I don’t know that Donald Trump has the intellectual or organizational capacity to create state terror. I do believe he has a totalitarian ideology and he has been able to pull a huge number of people into his encapsulated world.
“I guess the question is, how much state terror is necessary to create a totalitarian society?”
Four years and Dems still haven’t figured it out. Still blaming Trump for policies that Republicans disagree with. R’s don’t care about Trump! Rip him all you want. The result will be the same. Biden is not fooling anyone including D’s that he’ll cave to a number of socialist plans. Forget Trump and replace him with Joe Blow. The result will be the same. R’s “Trump” is their sacrifice to D’s inability to comprehend the policy differences for which they vote. Four years of attacking Trump has taught D’s nothing and the proof that is what they call “Trump’s cult following”. Yet another meaningless attack on the wrong idea. R’s don’t care what you call them as long as their policies prevail. Like cussing out the judge gets a crook a shrug and an answer like, “next case”. Chewing out the judge has absolutely nothing to do with the result and is just ignored. Trumpism to R’s is just name calling, ignored as impertinent detail. R’s are also content with D’s keeping busy with trashing voters who disagree with them rather, than suggest compromising policy. Trumpism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, fascism or whatever, just describes Trump. The sacrifice for which republican “activists” cheer at rallys, has little to do with the policies for which R’s vote. The sacrifice the senate has so fiercly defended for no other reason than, there is no one else. There is no ego as impenetrable this one. There is a cult of sorts that is amazed that if this sacrificial egg cracks, it shows no evidence. But then, who cares? As long as D’s lose.
Excellent and most thoughtful column. This column is about as deep into the weeds of philosophy as I’ve read in a very long time. If ever in a popular news/opinion publication. I’ve read Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and a number of her other works, including her essays and lectures on Immanuel Kant. Her life experience in fleeing Nazi Germany and then France after 1940 to escape the horror of Auschwitz lead her to explore and try to comprehend the “banality of evil” which she observed in one of the authors and masterminds of the final solution: Adolph Eichman. Watching Eichman at his 1961 trial in Israel, Arendt concluded he had simply stopped thinking. He was finally incapable of thinking and deciding for himself that what he was involved was profoundly wrong, immoral, evil.
Masha Gessen has identified an interesting dichotomy: authoritarianism/private space versus totalitarianism/public space. But she doesn’t explain how such dichotomy might exist simultaneously at the same time in large countries like the US, Russian or China. That is to say, she doesn’t provide any useful means or basis for distinguishing how authoritarianism is any different from totalitarianism or, for that matter, fascism. I probably need to read more of Gessen’s work to get a better comprehension. All I know is we’re at a bad and very precarious place in our political life and it’s going to take heroic and courageous effort to turn us around from where we seem to be going.
Subscribe to The New Yorker if you want to read and work through and with the brilliant insights of Masha Gessen, Russia’s real gift to the United States! She is precise in her language, as philosophers tend to be, and her distinctions are fruitful to our discussions.
Or buy her books!
She does not equate either authoritarianism or totalitarianism exclusively with fascism. She’s more precise than that and she definitely recognizes (how could a Russian not so recognize?) that there exist totalitarianisms of the left, as well. She contrasts freedom of thought with living inside a totalitarian “bubble” where no reality exists, just the version of the world proposed by the ideologue at the top.
She also has pointed to the three stages of authoritarian takeover of a democracy: the attempt to take over (Trump’s administration’s systematic attacks on our system of laws); the “breakthrough” to takeover (she defines that as a manipulated Trump “win” in November’s election and its consequences); and the consolidation stage, where a second-term Trump effectively demolishes the Constitution and all our democratic norms to assure his–and perhaps his family’s–continued domination of the country.
One of the seven steps Gessen identifies elsewhere about how to see an autocrat coming: Believe what he says, no matter how crazy it seems. The autocrat/budding totalitarian means to do what he says (for example, Trump really does intend to invalidate hundreds of thousands or millions of legally-cast presidential election ballots and push the decision to the stacked Supreme Court, rather than let voters decide who our president will be. Trump said “Get rid of the ballots. . and there will be a continuation” of [his] presidency; he means what he says).
The United States is at a terrifying moment, where our whole system is at risk from Trump’s sustained attack on it. We need lots of voices like Masha Gessen’s to help us understand and counter it.
Authoritarians don’t need to have much of an ideology beyond “law and order” and subservience to state power (if the anointed leader of your faction commands it). Totalitarians are authoritarians with a universalist political ideology, one that frequently requires a follower to disclaim reality. (Think Orwell’s “1984”.) Obviously, both must (by definition) oppose liberal democracy.
Where are Trump and his disciples? They’re on the spectrum for both concepts. Where or how exactly, I’ll happily leave to the philosophers. The central motivating concept/concern of Trumpism is the perceived “decline” of the HerrenVolk, here the white working class, which of course are defined as “America”. (The non-white working class does not much figure into the equation, and the poor have no one to blame but themselves, naturally.) Trump wants to be president of the American people as they were in 1940. In 2020, not so much. To believe they are “restoring” the predominance of white nationalism in America (and worldwide, for that matter), Trump and his followers will jettison democracy and the Constitution without a moment’s pause, as can now be readily seen. If Trump and his courtiers manifestly have failed by every other “policy” metric (Covid-19, for example), that’s totally subordinate, and virtually irrelevant to a Trump disciple.
There’s really not much more to Trumpism, and it’s why Dear Leader doesn’t really even mention “policy” anymore. Literally. That the whole rancid circus ends up being all about creating irreversible division and tearing apart what is actually a pluralist nation is ironic, but way over the heads of those (whites) screaming “MAGA! MAGA!” to the grinning demonic demagogue.
So on the one hand, there is Trump the totalitarian fascist. On the other hand, there are national Dems, whose preferred trade policy, as example, would effectively negate national sovereignty and citizenship, ie Democracy, with corporate authoritarianism.
America puts more American citizens in jail than Russia or China puts’ their citizens in jail. In fact, no other nation is even close to America in that regard. Poor Americans white and black are regularly beaten down by this police state. What about “State Terror”, eternal foreign wars, total domestic surveillance and the long-time, bipartisan militarization of the police?
There is a broader definition of fascism that is not the brutal, ugly and stupid kind Liberals Masha Gessen fixate on. That is the coming together of corporations and the State in the furtherance of empire. With the revolving door between K Street lobbying, Congress and Wall Street, there is no questioning that or attempting to stop it, or the full force of State Terror will rain down upon you, no matter who is in power.
We Americans are encouraged to live our private lives, quietly, without questioning. We have been authoritarian for a long time. It is only recently that that has tipped into a kind of totalitarianism. But don’t assume if we just go back to authoritarianism, all will be better.
It’s easy to state what you don’t like; harder to present a practicable alternative.
What are you recommending that is different from anarchy? As I used to ask my students, support your answer.
Have you or any of your students ever read any actual Anarchic theory, from Bakunin, Kropotkin or Proudhon? Murray Bookchin? Daniel Guerin? Then you would know, at the core of true anarchic theory is democracy, the rule of the people, by the people, for the people. It is antagonistic to authoritarianism of all kinds. That is why it is demonized and denounced by Communists and Capitalists with equal fury.
My practicable alternative would have a lot to do with favoring people over corporations and banks; the soil, water and pollinators over profit; and the actual ownership of America by Americans, that every one would be the owner of their own labor and production, such that there would be no more “wage slavery”, but that every worker would have a stake in the business where they labor. Big businesses, particularly in “essential” “foundational” services would be broken up and many replacements facilitated, such as ten or twenty farms where one giant industrial agribusiness/land baron reigned. That would be the gist of it, the details being a bit much for commentary in these pages.
No, since i was teaching Psychology, not Political Science or Economics.
But i did take courses in revolutionary economics back in the sixties so I have read Bakunin, Kropotkin et al.
They considered themselves anarchists; I’d consider them communist/socialists (real ones).
‘Anarchy’ is defined as “Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy.” (Wikipedia).
The classical anarchists like B&K wanted a radically revised socialsgtructure, not the complete elimination of one.
Marx hated Bakunin with a singular passion and effectively exiled Bakunin from the movement, as Bakunin was happy to mock Marx and his followers authoritarianism. It would be vaguely accurate to call B and Kropotkin communists, though they rejected in every way the elitist authoritarianism inherent to Marxist theory. Proudhon on the other hand was more capitalist than communist, but he was firmly and cleary on the side of working people.
The Wikipedia def is overly simplistic and not particularly accurate. Anarchism is a very broad theory covering a great deal of territory. Some anarchists reject hierarchy of any kind. Others recognize that “no rule” does not mean no leadership. But most anarchists will say, every person matters, every person should own the production of their own labor, and capitalism is just as coercive and authoritarian as communism.
Trump is a Fascist. If you dismiss THAT observation or those who make it you may well promoting your own oppression. I think the reluctance to recognize Fascism is tied to personal comfort levels. The realization that we have a Fascist in the White House supported by an increasingly Fascist Republican Party pushes a lot of people out of their comfort zones. I’m sure Ms. Gessen would agree that a widespread desire to maintain one’s sense or level of emotional comfort played a significant role in the rise of Fascist/Totalitarianism in Italy and Germany. The tendency to avoid discomfiting awareness can be a powerful facilitator of denial.
We have to be careful with European scholars who’ve spent their lives studying European Fascists because an American Fascist will not conform perfectly to that model. I remember a bunch of political scientist assuring us in 2015 and 2016 that Trump was no Fascists, those assurances were all based on comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini. I think history will record that our nations intellectuals were afflicted with a weird academic form of myopia that obscured the obvious.
The remaining question is whether or not an open recognition of Trump’s Fascism, and it’s attendant warnings would have made a difference in 2016? Had the nations scholars and intellectuals raised the alarm would that have changed the outcome? I doubt it.
The problem is Trump didn’t come out of nowhere and capture the Republican Party. The myopia that afflicted the nation’s academics in 2016 had set in long before Trump appeared as a candidate. If we were to have avoided our first Fascist president Democrats like Biden, Clinton, and even Obama would have had to recognize the threat as it began to emerge during the Nixon presidency. Guys like Eric would have had to see Tom Emmer for who he really was and would be if he ever got the power he spent a lifetime trying to acquire. Instead, those who were in the best position to alter the course of history papered over the threat and kept adjusting their comfort zones to accommodate increasingly totalitarian discourse, and politics. Thus, when John McCain brought Sarah Palin on his ticket it was just another day in politics rather than a descent into madness. And so it goes.
All I can say now is if you haven’t got the memo you better wake up and smell the coffee. We have group of people running the government that don’t believe in democracy, don’t believe in negotiating the limits of their power, and don’t believe in governments that share power. I would expect these guys to do whatever it takes to keep Trump in office no matter what they say today. Fascists gotta be Fascists. They don’t believe in elections, or constitutions, or civil rights and they have a history of starting disastrous wars that they end up losing because it never occurs to them that they can lose. So we better be planning on how we’re going to confront this and shut it down.
Trump is a Fascist. If you dismiss THAT observation or those who make it you may well promoting your own oppression. I think the reluctance to recognize Fascism is tied to personal comfort levels. The realization that we have a Fascist in the White House supported by an increasingly Fascist Republican Party pushes a lot of people out of their comfort zones. I’m sure Ms. Gessen would agree that a widespread desire to maintain one’s sense or level of emotional comfort played a significant role in the rise of Fascist/Totalitarianism in Italy and Germany. The tendency to avoid discomfiting awareness can be a powerful facilitator of denial.
We have to be careful with European scholars who’ve spent their lives studying European Fascists because an American Fascist will not conform perfectly to that model. I remember a bunch of political scientist assuring us in 2015 and 2016 that Trump was no Fascists, those assurances were all based on comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini. I think history will record that our nations intellectuals were afflicted with a weird academic form of myopia that obscured the obvious.
The remaining question is whether or not an open recognition of Trump’s Fascism, and it’s attendant warnings would have made a difference in 2016? Had the nations scholars and intellectuals raised the alarm would that have changed the outcome? I doubt it.
The problem is Trump didn’t come out of nowhere and capture the Republican Party. The myopia that afflicted the nation’s academics in 2016 had set in long before Trump appeared as a candidate. If we were to have avoided our first Fascist president Democrats like Biden, Clinton, and even Obama would have had to recognize the threat as it began to emerge during the Nixon presidency. Guys like Eric would have had to see Tom Emmer for who he really was and would be if he ever got the power he spent a lifetime trying to acquire. Instead, those who were in the best position to alter the course of history papered over the threat and kept adjusting their comfort zones to accommodate increasingly totalitarian discourse, and politics. Thus, when John McCain brought Sarah Palin on his ticket it was just another day in politics rather than a descent into madness. And so it goes.
All I can say now is if you haven’t got the memo you better wake up and smell the coffee. We have group of people running the government that don’t believe in democracy, don’t believe in negotiating the limits of their power, and don’t believe in governments that share power. I would expect these guys to do whatever it takes to keep Trump in office no matter what they say today. Fascists gotta be Fascists. They don’t believe in elections, or constitutions, or civil rights and they have a history of starting disastrous wars that they end up losing because it never occurs to them that they can lose. So we better be planning on how we’re going to confront this and shut it down.
Sorry about the double post, I thought there was glitch occurring in the moderation process.
For sure, I wouldn’t seek to gainsay Ms. Gessen or Professor Arendt, but I consider authoritarianism and totalitarianism to be qualitatively different things, not one the extension of the other. Authoritarianism is the exercise of political prerogatives by concentrated power. Fascism is one species of authoritarianism. As democracy even in theory cannot be perfect, there is always an authoritarian element. So it is a tendency, and earns the term when it becomes sufficiently pronounced. The Republican party has been an authoritarian party since at least the mid-70’s. Until very recently I’ve not called it fascist, but with the recent realizations of the tacit flow of authoritarian power down to local law enforcement and its civilian proxies, I now am comfortable doing so.
In my taxonomy, authoritarianism does not shade into totalitarianism: those exerting power stand outside its influence and so that power is not total. Rather, totalitarianism is the endpoint of capitalism, where the consciousness of all lived life ultimately has been reconstituted into a single commodified form (Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”).
Academic and pointless, but once Trump is re-installed, it will make for fascinating conversation to pass the long boxcar trip.