Category Archives: American Fascism

Desecration of Truth

American Fascism, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

As Timothy Snyder demonstrated in his book the Road to Unfreedom,  Russia, Ukraine, Great Britain and the United States were all central to what he called  the politics of eternity.  And the key element of the politics of eternity was the desecration of truth.

This is what really interests me.  In other words, in Russia, Ukraine, Britain and the United States how truth was desecrated first by religious minds and later by political manipulators like Putin and the fascists. All of this happened, in my view because of the many years in which a statement by the Spanish painter  truth of Goya was proved—i.e. that the sleep of reason really does give birth to monsters.  And it can happen with hardly a stir of opposition, when the soil has been fertilized with unreason.

This of course, brings with it the religious element. Both in Islamic countries and Christian countries.  I had heard of Islamofascism, then from Snyder I heard about Christian fascism. Both of these were just the recent versions of something that has a long and ugly history. When reason atrophies monsters are welcomed. When reason is no longer trusted, trust is also lost in institutions such as the church, the government, courts, political parties, news, and elites. When the people see no truth, they conclude there must be no such thing as truth.

 

Such cynicism destroys confidence in all institutions and that has become dangerously common in modern society. Why has that happened? What can we do about?

These are important questions, because without solutions, people tend towards authoritarianism or even fascism.

The Politics of Eternity

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014)

Timothy Snyder’s second difficult concept in his book The Road to Unfreedom was the politics of eternity.  This was the successor to the politics of inevitability.

As Snyder said,

“The collapse of inevitability ushers in another experience of time: the politics of eternity.  Whereas inevitability promises a better future for everyone, eternity places one nation at the center of a cyclical story of victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the threats from the past.  Within inevitability, no one is responsible because we all know that the details will sort themselves out for the better; within eternity, no one is responsible because we all know that the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats. Progress gives way to doom.

 

In power, eternity politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, eternity politicians instruct their citizens to experience elation  and outrage at short intervals, drowning the future in the present. In foreign policy, eternity politicians belittle and undo the achievements of countries that might seem like models to their own citizens. Using technology to transmit political fiction, both home and abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life to spectacle and feeling.”

 

The politics of eternity follows closely behind the politics of inevitability. There are two versions of it one western the other from eastern Europe, though the lines of separation can be porous. The politics of inevitability come first. After that,

“Eternity arises from inevitability like a ghost from a corpse. The capitalist version of the politics of inevitability, the market as a substitute for policy, generates economic inequality that undermines belief in progress. As social mobility halts, inevitability gives way to eternity, and democracy gives way to oligarchy. An oligarchy spinning a tale of an innocent past, perhaps with the help of fascist ideas, offers fake protection to people with real pain. Faith that technology serves freedom opens the way to his spectacle.  As distraction replaces concentration, the future dissolves in the frustrations of the present, and eternity becomes daily life. The oligarch crosses into real politics from a world of fiction, and governs by invoking myth and manufacturing crisis. In the 2010s, one such person, Vladimir Putin escorted another, Donald Trump from fiction to power.”

 

Putin was Russia’s eternity leader and Trump was America’s version.

I don’t think it is fair to characterize Donald Trump as a fascist. Not quite anyway. He was an authoritarian who wanted to be a fascist, but he was held back, so far at least, and just barely, by the institutions of American democracy and honest government officials who thwarted his intentions in 2020 when he spelled out for the world to see that he wanted tyranny. The frightening thing is that more than 73 million Americans voted for him, after he made his intentions clear. After 4 years in power no American who paid any attention at all could honestly say they did not know the real Trump. Trump put himself front and forward at all times for all to see. He did not hide, he announced his intentions for all to hear. No one in the history of the world has been more in the public eye than Trump.

 

Yet America escaped tyranny by the thinnest of margins. It took a courageous Supreme Court packed with 3 members of Trump’s personal choosing, stalwart Republican and Democrat officials who refused to give in to his claims of a fraudulent election, solid lower courts, and a determined party of Democrats to hold Trump back from his goal—i.e. tyranny.

 

Of course, as we all know, Trump did not die. He is still hanging around. He could come back and realize his dreams of fascist power and there are many enablers, many in the Republican party, doing all they can do to bring about that result. We don’t know what will happen.

Inequality Breeds Contempt

American Fascism, Capitalism, Decline of the west, Modern History, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014)

 

I want to continue talking about Snyder’s idea of “the politics of inevitability” just a little bit more.

One of my readers pointed out that this theory that was employed by people in the west as well as the east is really a version of determinism.  And the problem with determinism is that even if  events are determined it is extremely difficult to predict the future.

 

What the Americans thought was their own inevitable dominance after that collapse of the Soviet Empire turned out to be one more dangerous illusion. The road to heaven turned out to be more complicated than that. In fact, the road to heaven turned out to be a road to unfreedom. Inevitability turned out to be a churlish illusion. As Timothy Snyder said,

 

“The American politics of inevitability, like all such stories, resisted facts. The fates of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus after 1991 showed well enough that the fall of one system did not create a blank slate on which nature generated markets and markets generated rights. Iraq in 2003 might have confirmed this lesson, had the initiators of America’s illegal war reflected upon its disastrous consequences. The financial crisis of 2008 and the deregulation of campaign contributions in the United States magnified the influence of the wealthy and reduced that of voters. As economic inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that assured basic social goods taken for granted elsewhere—education, pensions, health care, transport, parental leave, vacations—Americans could be overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future.”

 

The decline of America was set in motion. Nothing was inevitable except the crushing power of wealth.

Americans don’t believe this even though they so powerfully demonstrate it. Inequality breeds contempt. First inequality ushers in resentment, then contempt. First, the lowly feel resentment about their “betters” and then they feel contempt for themselves for failing to live up to their own ideals. They see themselves as losers. Their self-respect is curdled by envy.  It had happened earlier to African Americans enslaved for centuries until many of them lost their ability to love even themselves as shown in the novels of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. We need a writer of equal power to tell us the truth of what happened after 2008. Instead, we have too many people who don’t want to look at the truth of modern North American society and prefer the contentment of looking at comfortable myths.

Such a situation is ripe for the demagogue.  America got exactly that. It got Donald Trump to make America (and of course Americans) great again. What a wonderful illusion. All they had to do was keep out the undesirables and have faith in their new leader. He could do it. And astonishingly, millions of Americans believed him, without any evidence that he could do it. They believed it because they wanted it so much to be true.

The same thing happened in Russia. They got Putin. He promised Russians that the Soviet Empire could be revived.  He would do that in Ukraine. So far he has just brought ruin without empire.  In Russia, as in the United States, some people achieved enormous wealth while ordinary people were left to suck socks. And that created huge problems in both countries.

The Politics of Inevitability

American Fascism, Books, Capitalism, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

 

I thought I would skirt around 2 concepts that are actually very important to Timothy Snyder’s thesis in the book The Road to Unfreedom. These are the closely related concepts of “the politics of inevitability” and “the politics of eternity” as he called.  I thought I would leave both of these concepts  out of my posts, but have realized I already  included a reference to these ideas without explanation.   I also decided that just because I had difficulty understanding them, did not mean my faithful readers would find them difficult. After all most of them are much smarter than me. So I am backing up here to explain them now.

I will first try to explain the politics of inevitability. As I understand it, Snyder describes the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity as 2 steps on the road to unfreedom.

According to Snyder,

“The politics of inevitability is the idea that there are no ideas. Those in its thrall deny that ideas matter, proving only that that they are in the grip of a powerful one. The cliché of the politics of inevitability is that ‘there are no alternatives. To accept this is to deny individual responsibility for seeing history and making change. Life becomes a sleepwalk to a pre-marked grave in a pre-purchased plot.”

 

Of course, if there are no choices there is no personal freedom, for we can’t do otherwise. We only have personal responsibility if we also have freedom. How could we be responsible for something we cannot possibly avoid? That is the sense in which responsibility and freedom are conjoined.

But freedom can be lost. First comes cynicism then comes tyranny whether in the form of authoritarianism, fascism or totalitarianism. That is the end of the road to unfreedom. The other two are stops along the way. At least this is how I interpret these difficult concepts.

In the United States the politics of inevitability meant that “capitalism was unalterable and democracy inevitable.”  Things could have been very different for Russia and Ukraine had the Americans not been under the spell of this illusion. That contented state did not last long. By the 1910s people were beginning to realize that his had been a pipe dream. Nothing was inevitable or unalterable. As Snyder said, “The twentieth century was well and truly over, its lessons unlearned. A new form of politics was emerging in Russia, Europe, and America, a new unfreedom to suit a new time.

Until then,

 “Americans and Europeans were guided through the new century by a tale about “the end of history,” by what I will call the politics of inevitability, a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. In the American capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought democracy, which brought happiness. In the European version, history brought the nation, which learned from war that peace was good, and hence chose integration and prosperity.”

 

As Snyder posits: Before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 it too had a version of the politics of inevitability:

“nature permits technology, technology brings social change; social change causes revolution; revolution enacts utopia. When this turns out not to be true, the European and American politicians of inevitability were triumphant. Europeans busied themselves completing the creation of the European Union in 1992. Americas reasoned that the failure of communist story confirmed the truth of the capitalist one. Americans and Europeans kept telling themselves their tales of inevitability for a quarter century after the end of communism, and so a millennia generation without history.”

 

Americans thought they had achieved a new world order of which they were the sole superpower. The Americans believed they were the inevitable driving force of history that would push the world to the utopia of capitalism without rivals. That was an illusion—a deadly one at that. From that mistake a lot of misery for Russia and Ukraine was born.

The Rise of authoritarians and Worse

American Fascism, Books, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

I am continuing my exploration of what happened in Ukraine in 2014 and 2022. Much to my surprise, what has happened in Ukraine explains a lot about what has happened in the west. To do that, I am referring to what we have learned recently as a result of the second invasion of Ukraine be Russia and a wonderful book that I recommend to one and all, The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder a history professor from Yale University. That book written in 2018, helps us to understand what is happening there now.  And here too for that  matter.

It was shocking to some that in the 2010s America and Europe saw the rise of authoritarian political leaders and the serious decay of democracy.  Many of us never believed this was possible. How could so many countries, such as England,  the United States, and many others seem to lose faith in democracy? The Russians gave up on Europe and turned instead to Ukraine. The Brexit referendum seemed like a trip into madness, but was really another case of the people asking for and getting a wrecking ball for a leader. The Americans did the same thing.

Russian oligarchs took advantage of the vacuum of reason and good government along with the weakness of democratic institutions to pillage their county and deposit the spoils in offshore bank accounts, shell companies, and engineered dark deals of capitalism eating its young. After a brief flirtation with democracy, that basically ended soon after Boris Yeltsin  selected Vladimir Putin as the next leader,  Russia went from Communism direct to predatory capitalism of the most extreme sort.

Surprising to many, political practices that found favour in the Russian oligarchic state found fertile ground in the United States and Britain. The politics of inevitability had thought that influence would travel from the west to the east but reality turned the tables. Snyder explained it this way,

Concepts and practices moved from east to west. An example is the word “fake,” as in “fake news.”  This sounds like an American invention, and Donald Trump claimed it, as his own, but the term was used in Russia and Ukraine long before it began it’s career in the United States. As Snyder explained in his book,  “It meant creating a fictional text that posed as a piece of journalism, both to  spread confusion about a particular event and to discredit journalism as such. Eternity politicians first spread fake news themselves, then claim that all news is fake, and finally that only their spectacles are real.” [I will explain his idea of eternity politics and inevitability  politics in a subsequent post]

Again, to many this was a shocking event. Some attributed the appearance of fake news in the west as a shocking and completely unanticipated development, but that only proves how blind the political elites were in the United States.

We in the west had a lot to learn from what happened in Ukraine.

 

The Road to Unfreedom: Political Fiction

American Fascism, Books, Death of Truth, The Sleep of Reason, Trump, Trump the Saviour, Tyranny and Fascism, War in Ukraine (2014), War in Ukraine (2022)

 

Like most everyone I have become fascinated by what is happening in Ukraine.  What is particularly fascinating to me  is how much of what is happening now happened earlier in the Ukraine in 2014 and how much of this was presaged by what happened in Russia.  We did not learn our lessons in 2014 and now we are paying a hefty price.

In 2018 I read a very important book called The Road to Unfreedom by a historian from Yale University Timothy Snyder.  It described the road from freedom to unfreedom in Russia, Ukraine, Britain, and finally the United States.

 

According to Snyder,

“In the 2010s, much of what was happening was the deliberate creation of political fiction, outsized stories and medium-sized lies that commanded attention and colonized the space needed for contemplation.”

 

This was when people began to speak about the death of truth or decay of truth or living in a post-truth world. In American and the United Kingdom people were shocked to see political leaders who seemed uniquely incapable and unqualified but appealed to large segments of their society nonetheless. Reality was being shredded. As Snyder said,  It was “a time when factuality itself was put into question.” The road to unfreedom was being paved with lies.

 

Journalism during this time was attacked by demagogic leaders for their own nefarious purposes.  Donald Trump for example, did not want anyone to pursue him with claims of being a liar, so he usurped the notion of fake news that had referred to internet lies that crushed the truth. As we will see, this is direct from the fascist playbook.  Call out others for your own faults. That can create the illusion of innocence. Hitler did it. Putin did it.  So did Trump. Trump did that while lifting himself  into an office for which he was uniquely unsuited, but his followers did not care.  His followers wanted a wrecking ball and they got one and were entirely satisfied. Truth was  as irrelevant as morality.

Russia has already completed its road to fascism while America and Europe seem not that far behind. As Snyder said,

“What has already happened in Russia, is what might happen in America and Europe, the stabilization of massive inequality, the displacement of policy by propaganda, the shift from the politics of inevitability to the politics of eternity. Russian leaders could invite Europeans and Americans to eternity because Russia got their first. They understood American and European weaknesses, which they had first seen and exploited at home.”

 

The times were ripe for authoritarian or even worse. The times were ripe for fascism.

 

Surrounded by Fearful Sycophants

American Fascism, Moral Humility, Trump, Truth Seeking, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

Did you see the cringe worthy (and binge worthy) scene where Putin lined up his advisors at a long table (always at a very long table to keep the riff raff away from the god) and asked them for their opinions about the war against Ukraine? When one of those advisors was insufficiently obeisant, Putin mocked him and made him retract his slight disagreement and replace it with absolute obedience.  Of course, the only advice Putin wanted was to be told how smart he was. And that is the problem that dictators have.  They cannot accept that they might be wrong. They have no moral humility.

 

Trump was the same way, when he demanded his “advisors” fawn over him.  The only advice he needed from them was to say how great he was. I wouldn’t call Trump a dictator, but he sure was an authoritarian. And authoritarians—by definition—tolerate no dissent. None. And that is their Achilles heel. And that is Putin’s Achilles heel. And that is the Achilles heel of many Republicans, because they too have given up on democracy. They have become authoritarians. They want to decide what we should do. That is made clear by their brazen attempts to rig the upcoming elections in the US. A real believer in democracy would not do that. And to the extent the Democratic Party in the US has also tried to rig elections, they are not believers in democracy either.

 

Republicans in the US have lavished their praise on Putin. Trump called Putin “savvy” and a “genius.” Putin was his kind of strong man. A man who tolerated no obstacles to his relentless will.  Now many of us are starting to realize that Putin is no genius. Trump was wrong about that. The problem with Russia is precisely that “it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent.” That is how Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described him. That is what authoritarians do. It is part of their DNA and that is why it is so unwise of conservatives to bow before Putin.

 

Why is the American right wing so enamoured of brutal dictators? It is not just Donald Trump either.  This love affair began before the rise of Trump. Part of this comes from the love of strongmen. Paul Krugman described this in the following manner:

“Some of this dictator-love reflected the belief that Putin was a champion of anti-wokeness — someone who wouldn’t accuse you of being a racist, who denounced cancel culture and “gay propaganda.”

 

Many American conservatives despise what they call cancel culture, even though they are keen practitioners of it. Many of them also see acquiescence to acknowledging LBGTQ rights as an abomination ushered in by the devil. Many believe that it is weak and feminine to cede any rights to them. In fact, conservative attitudes are a product of toxic masculinity which they can’t give up. Putin is their hero. As Krugman said,

 

“Sarah Palin declared that he wrestled bears while President Barack Obama wore “mom jeans” — and the apparent toughness of Putin’s people. Just last year Senator Ted Cruz contrasted footage of a shaven-headed Russian soldier with a U.S. Army recruiting ad to mock our “woke, emasculated” military.”

 

That was one of the reasons Trump trusted Russian intelligence more than America’s. They were tough. Of course, many Republicans just plain prefer authoritarian rule. They lust for it. And there was no bigger fan that Trump. As Krugman said,

 

“Just a few days ago Trump, who has dialed back his praise for Putin, chose instead to express admiration for North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Kim’s generals and aides, he noted, “cowered” when the dictator spoke, adding that “I want my people to act like that.”

 

Trump actually said that. But we must remember that what Trump admires is not strength, nor is it smart. First, by now it seems that the Russian army is not as powerful as we thought. They have a huge advantage in fire power, but are not translating that into huge gains on the ground. They might still get them, but not yet.

 

But the real problem for Putin is that he is surrounded by sycophants. Trembling yes men are never a reliable source of advice. No smart business man wants that. And that is what Russia has for political and military leadership. They have all learned to toe the line. None of them seems capable of independent thought. Even though Trump is impressed with meek obeisance it is not a ladder to success. It is a slide to oblivion. That means Putin has to make the important decisions on his own.

 

Krugman put it this way:

“The invaders were also clearly shocked by Ukraine’s resistance — both by its resolve and by its competence. Realistic intelligence assessments might have warned Russia that this might happen; but would you want to have been the official standing up and saying, “Mr. President, I’m afraid we may be underestimating the Ukrainians”?

 

We actually saw an example of such cringing meekness to the great leader when the lone advisor who did not automatically tell Putin what Putin wanted to hear, was immediately humiliated by the grand leader. Putin publicly made  him retract his doubts.

 

For example, Putin thought that his $630 billion war chest would protect the country from western sanctions. He did not believe that the western leaders had the guts to impose them. That was not an entirely unreasonable presumption, but it turned out to be wrong.  Now they have learned that  cutting off Russian from the world’s banking system was brutally effective. As Krugman said,

 

“It shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Putin’s $630 billion in foreign exchange reserves would become largely unusable if the world’s democracies cut off Russia’s access to the world banking system. It also shouldn’t have required deep analysis to realize that Russia’s economy is deeply dependent on imports of capital goods and other essential industrial inputs.

 

But again, would you have wanted to be the diplomat telling Putin that the West isn’t as decadent as he thinks, the banker telling him that his vaunted “war chest” will be useless in a crisis, the economist telling him that Russia needs imports?”

 

Democracies are incredibly inefficient but they have one incredible advantage over autocracies.  The leader doesn’t have to do it all on his own. As Krugman concluded:

 

“The point is that the case for an open society — a society that allows dissent and criticism — goes beyond truth and morality. Open societies are also, by and large, more effective than closed-off autocracies. That is, while you might imagine that there are big advantages to rule by a strongman who can simply tell people what to do, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. Nobody can tell the strongman that he’s wrong or urge him to think twice before making a disastrous decision.

 

Which brings me back to America’s erstwhile Putin admirers. I’d like to think that they’ll take Russia’s Ukraine debacle as an object lesson and rethink their own hostility to democracy. OK, I don’t really expect that to happen. But we can always hope.”

 

I am not saying the Ukrainians will defeat the Russian bear. After all the Russians have massive military  advantages and are led by a leader with no moral hesitations. I am just saying there are also some significant advantages enjoyed by democracies. And they might make a difference.

 

Tucker Carlson also likes Putin

American Fascism, Polarization, War in Ukraine (2022)

I actually don’t care that Donald Trump likes Putin. After seeing him on television every day for more than 4 years that is hardly surprising. The same goes for Tucker Carlson. I don’t care because both of them are entirely corrupt.  They are irredeemable.  Even that does not matter. What does matter is that 55 million Americans voted for Trump and many of those continue to believe in him.  Many of them also believe in Tucker Carlson a Fox News Channel commentator.

 

Tucker Carlson is the most watched American conservative in the US. More than 3 million viewers watch him every night according to recent numbers. Trump and Carlson are the two most revered conservatives in America and that is important.  How can so many people in America have faith in them? It seems completely improbable, but it’s true. As a result, what Tucker Carlson says is significant.

This is what Tucker Carlson said about Putin just before the Russian invasion of Poland that he had ordered:

” Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years?

 Is he teaching my children to embrace racial discrimination? Is he making fentanyl? Is he trying to snuff out Christianity? Does he eat dogs? These are fair questions, and the answer to all of them is no.

Vladimir Putin didn’t do any of that. So why does permanent Washington hate him so much?”

 

Carlson is really saying he likes Putin more than American liberals or Democrats.  That is  how polarized that country is. Many prefer a brutal Russian dictator, a modern Hitler, to Democrats!

First of all, the statements Carlson made are definitely odd. Was Carlson suggesting there is no reason to challenge or even dislike a brutal dictator, who uses his resources to disinform the public around the world, who orders the murder of dissenters, who has stolen perhaps from his people the largest fortune in the world, who has led an invasion of Crimea, and Ukraine (now twice).

Moreover, is Tucker really saying there is no good reason to challenge Putin? After all he is a brutal dictator who uses his extensive resources to disinform the world, who orders the assassination of dissenters, while in power has amassed perhaps the largest fortune in the world, who has led an invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, now for the second time. Is not sufficient to discredit Putin? What more does Tucker want to denounce Putin? What more must Putin do to be worse than the Democrats?

 

Added to that,  it seems strange—very strange—to think that Putin is not evil just because he has not done anything bad personally and directly to you. Is that really the standard?  Do the lives of millions of people whom Putin  has harmed not count in this moral calculus? Is it all about Tucker Carlson? Well, actually it is just about Tucker Carlson. At least that is all that counts to Tucker Carlson. And that is exactly the attitude of the fascist. No one else matters. Harms to anyone else can be ignored. To the fascist, it is only about the fascists and his fellow travellers.

Jon Stewart said this in an interview with the New York Times, about  the right-wing in  America: “They view Putin as a defender of Western civilization. They view him as an ideological brother.” And of course, the implication is clear—i.e. western civilization to the fascists means white people. To many in the American right Russia have the right look—i.e. Christian, unfriendly to gays and lesbians, and white. Just like them in other words. That is why Jon Stewart said, “I think for years, it’s been pretty clear that they would much rather do a deal with Putin than Pelosi.”

 Those in the American right-wing movement who follow Trump and Carlson prefer to root for Putin  over Biden. It is now a little more comprehensible, but no less dastardly.  And no less shameful.

 

 

Why does the American right love Putin?

American Fascism, racism, War in Ukraine (2022)

 

You may have noticed something astonishing recently—the love that some American conservatives have for bullies and tyrants. What is that all about?

A poll that came out right after the Russians invaded Ukraine showed that 1 in 4 Republicans blamed Joe Biden and not Putin for the war. Because their  statements  are so appealing to them, the Russians are using statements by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson on their televisions with Russian subtitles.  Trump and Carlson are producing Russian propaganda! The Russians have already used actual statements by Trump and Carlson as part of their propaganda machinery. That is how enthralled some American right-wingers are with Putin. He is their kind of strongman. They envy him! I know not all conservatives can be tarred with the same brush. Many of them have spoken out loudly against Putin, but when the two most influential conservatives in America agree on their approval of Putin we must take notice!

Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist  who lost all confidence with that party after it elected Donald Trump said Trump had “a fetish for autocracy”.  Tucker Carlson seems to share those views.

 Former Trump has consistently acted like a tin-pot dictator and no one should be surprised. While he was president, he frequently made it clear that he admired dictators such Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jinping of China, Rodrigo Roa Duterte of the Philippines, and Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Trump admires strongmen.  He admires bullies and that is the mark of an authoritarian or even a fascist. While he was president, he also tried to twist the arms of Ukrainian political leaders by withholding aid payments to that country in order to dig up dirt on his political rival (at the time) Joe Biden. He also used the Department of Justice as his personal law firm against all protocols, and has done much else to make it clear to anyone who pays attention that he is an authoritarian at heart.

Then after Russia invaded Ukraine on flimsy justifications that Russia was there to save Ukrainians from a neofascist government, Donald Trump, like a true New York real estate mogul, told the world what he really thought of Putin. He said,

“Putin’s smart.  I mean he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that is pretty smart. Listen, he’s taking over a country; really  a vast, vast location and a great piece of land with a lot of people and just walking right in.”

 

In other words, Trump was jealous of the great real estate deal Putin made by invading Ukraine. Never mind the 44 million Ukrainians who had their government taken away from them. This is the bizarro world of Trumplandia. As the journalist Julia Ioffe said about Putin and his cronies: “They take a little bit of truth and spin it into a cotton candy ball of lies.”

Bill Maher said as early as 2018, “We thought Russia would become more like us, but we have become more like the Russians.”

What really concerns me, about this issue is the 55 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, though his popularity seems to be waning, he is a still a force to be reckoned with. So is Carlson.

Reporter Lulu Garcia-Navrro of the New York Times said, this,

 “There was just a poll. out showing that Putin was more popular among Republicans than any senior Democratic leader, including the American president.”

 

Bill Maher and others have for some time been commenting on the attraction of the American right to Putin.  In the case of Trump this was near man crush. It is really surprising what has happened. A sea change has occurred. The Republican party used to be so anti-Russia that they were nearly rabid on the subject. Ronald Reagan became Saint Ronald by defeating the Ruskies economically and calling on Mr. Gorbachev to “bring down that wall.” It didn’t happen but Reagan became a hero on the right.  George Bush attacked the evil empire and the axis of evil. Yet for some reason the Republicans have flipped on Russia. Why is that?

Anne Coulter in June 2017 said: “In 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European.”  What was she getting at there? I think she was getting at appearance. Matt Drudge in 2013 said “Putin is the leader of the free world.” The free world? White Supremacist, David Duke in 2004 called Russia “the key to white survival.”  There is a big hint there.

All of us have noticed how the world has become a lot more diverse. London used to be completely white. When I was in London in 2017 I was struck by what a a wonderful diverse city it was. I was pleasantly surprised by this. But some people don’t like diversity. We must acknowledge that. Some people think the white people are being replaced.  They are being displaced from their positions of dominance. And that scares a lot of people.  I have talked to people like that.

Russia has resisted diversity. They don’t want diversity and make no bones about it. Gays and lesbians also have a difficult time there. Putin has made it clear that they are not welcome in Russia. He does this openly. But not only Putin, many of the Russian people are  like this.   They are attracted to what Yale Historian Timothy Snyder has called “Christian fascism of Putin” that does not tolerate diversity. To them holy Russia has no room for diversity.  They don’t want gays, lesbians, or blacks.

As Maher said, “Republicans don’t see Russian meddling in our election as bad thing. They see it as white people helping white people. To the people who are afraid of a diverse world, Russia is their savior country. ”

That is exactly what fascism is all about.  Keep the inferiors out so we can dominate the country. This attraction of American conservatives to Putin and his cohorts betrays their allegiance to fascism. Like the Nazis before them, they want white supremacy. Actually, I think it goes beyond white supremacy but that is a big part of what some of them like about Putin. In future post I will say what I mean.

 

Christian Tribal Power

American Fascism, Evangelical Christianity, Politics & Religion, religion, True Believer, Trump the Saviour

 

I am still trying to make sense of all those prayers and Christian symbols I saw at the Capitol the day of the insurrection. What do they mean and what do they tell us about the matrimony of politics and religion?

Paul D. Miller, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, made these  claims in an email to Thomas Edsall of the New York Times:

“Christian nationalism is the pursuit of tribal power, not the common good; it is identity politics for right-wing (mostly white) Christians; it is the attempt to ‘own and operate the American brand,’ as someone else wrote; it is an attitude of entitlement among Christians that we have a presumptive right to define what America is. I oppose identity politics of all kinds, including the identity politics of my tribe.”

 

According to Benjamin Lynerd, a professor of Political Science at Christopher Newport University and the author of Republican Theology: The Civil Religion of American Evangelicals,” Christian Nationalism involves

“the tragedy of evangelical politics, a tragedy that the unrestrained loyalty to President Trump lays bare, but which stretches well beyond this moment in American history,” when “political theology serves merely as cover for the more pragmatic agenda of social empowerment.”

 

Professor Lynerd asserts, that there is a difference,

“between searching out the implications of the Christian gospel for politics and leveraging this gospel to advance the social position of American Christians. When evangelicals disguise the latter in the robes of the former, not only do they engage in dishonesty, but they also give fuel to the cynical view that there really is no difference — that the theological is nothing more than a cloak for the political.”

 

When theology is used to cloak a grab for political power the religion is far from pure. Then it has jumped into the fray and got soiled by it.

As Robert Jones said in an email to Edsall:

“While many media outlets focused on decoding the myriad white supremacist signs and symbols, they too easily screened out the other most prominent displays: the numerous crosses, Bibles, and signs and flags with Christian symbols, such as the Jesus 2020 flag that was modeled on the Trump campaign flag.”

 

Jones also said, those religious symbols used on Capitol hill by the insurrectionists:

“reveal an unsettling reality that has been with us throughout our history: The power of White supremacy in America has always been its ability to flourish within and be baptized by white Christianity.”

Like I said before, the deep connections between anti-black racism in the United States are deeply disturbing. No mild words of religious comfort can gloss them over. The same is true of the religious trappings of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Samuel Perry in his email to Edsall said that when white Americans are asked about taking the country back they mean that the Christian character of the country should be restored, and by that they mean “they want to take the country back to the days when they (white, native-born, conservatives) were in power.” But if you asked blacks the same question they would mean, a return to a ““civil religion” where there was a sacred obligation to be a “just” nation, characterized by fairness, equality, and liberty.

That mixture of religion and white supremacist politics is incredibly toxic and dangerous. That is what Trump tried to bring about and in that battle his greatest allies were Evangelical Christians. To the extent that this is true, the Evangelicals have been besmirched with their leader’s slime. By leader of course, I mean Donald Trump, not Jesus Christ. This is my conclusion: Those Evangelical Christians that followed Trump to the bitter end, gave up on Jesus a long time ago, in favour of their own bully in the White House. Trump became their Savior supplanting the one on the cross.