Category Archives: Authoritarianism

Little Siberia: The Bulgarian Gulag

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Concentration Camps, History

 

This smoke stack was not, as far as I know, part of a concentration camp. but when I saw it I wondered about it.

On the CBC radio show Ideas, Nahlah Ayed also interviewed Krasmina Butseva, a visual artist, researcher and a senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, London.  She was another member of the team working on The Neighbours as a response to the Bulgarian Gulag. She explained what happened when the installation was first staged for the first time in Sofia, Bulgaria.  Most of the people who visited it spent the most time in the kitchen. That really felt like home to them.

The Bulgarian gulag functioned between 1945 and 1962, primarily. But it was never completely closed.

The Bulgarian gulag was modelled on the Soviet gulag. It’s the same kind of principle. People are sent to a forced labor camp without a trial, without a sentence. They were sent indefinitely in other words. Bulgaria became known after 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, as “little Siberia.”

 

And the living conditions were excruciating. There was forced labor, there were hardships, there was disease, starvation. And of course, in some cases death. Not systemic murder as in Nazi Germany but many perished in the horrid conditions of the Bulgarian camps.

 

It’s a very painful experience. Bulgaria is a country of about 7 million people, 110,000 square kilometers. There were about 40 forced labor camp complexes in Bulgaria, so about 80 individual sites. I was shocked by the number.

Krasmina Butseva explained that forced labour occurred entirely without trials. Once Bulgaria was absorbed into the Soviet Block the country was quickly Stalinized and that meant extra-judicial internment and severe repression. Authoritarians always see courts and law as an unnecessary restraint. Usually, it meant no specific sentence. They were imprisoned at the pleasure of the regime until shadowy officials decided the prisoner could be released usually without explanation. Absolute power never has to explain.

The first question of course, is who were these people who were sent to the Gulags of Bulgaria? According to Butseva, the inmates were “enemies. Perceived enemies, alleged enemies. But there are many different categories.”  In most cases the victims were part of the left in Bulgaria. Political dissidents on the non-Communist left. You might have thought a communist regime would pick on the right, but that is not how it worked.  They imprisoned more on the left. That shows me what I always thought, the communist were more fascists than socialists.

Others victims included social democrats, anarchists, members of the agrarian party. Often Trotskyites, and in time other Communists who fell out favor with the party. The regime protected their own so long as they remained loyal to those in control of the party. Again, as we are learning in North American political leaders with an authoritarian bent value nothing more than loyalty. Next, some of the victims who were “invited to stay” included peasants who lived on the land and became “enemies” if they no longer supported those in control. Their defiance made them “enemies.” If they refused to give up their farms to the collective, they became enemies. Rebels could not be tolerated.

Non-conformists were also enemies. These were people who defied social norms and included men who let their hair grow long, listened to western music, liked dancing. Young girls often wore miniskirts and included those who wore hair styles the party elite did not favor. They were seen as political opponents. Then there were ethnic “enemies” like Muslims and Roma people.

Butseva explained that the last wave of Muslim and Roma were sent to the gulag between 1984 and 1987 when communist Bulgaria interned about 500 Muslim men to the camp for forced labour. They used many camps but the one used the most was called Belene Island located in the Danube River. Unfortunately, I never got to see it. The organizers did not think tourists would be interested in former concentration camps, or more likely, the current government did not want to talk about the camps.

One thing surprised me. This is what Lilia Topouzova said about it:

 

“When you visit the site of the former camp, this beautiful island, Belene Island, on the Danube between Bulgaria and Romania, I mean, it’s a striking place. It’s a beautiful, beautiful place. And the sound of it is beautiful as well.”

 

I love beautiful islands, but I this one I did not get to see, or even hear about.

The communist government of Bulgaria used camp internment to get rid of opponents when they were not able to use traditional judicial means because they could not charge them with ordinary crimes. For example, if they could not find sufficient evidence to charge them in the criminal system, they could intern them without the inconvenience of a trial. If people did nothing wrong, the regime could use that process to punish or control them anyway. That’s how autocracies work. And around the world it seems government are turning in that direction. Not good.

Some people are bored with history. I think its important to learn about things like concentration camps, even though they were unpleasant and we were on a holiday, but I hope if we learn more we won’t make such mistakes again.

Bulgaria’s Gulag

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism, Concentration Camps

 

“Gulag” was a word used to describe the brutal concentration camps of Soviet Russia.

I listened to a fascinating CBC Ideas Podcast entitled “Voices of a Silenced history: Inside Bulgaria’s Gulag,” on a topic dear to my heart. The topic was the efforts of those in power to try to drive history to ignore what they don’t like and twist the truth to paint themselves in a better light.  This is a common occurrence. Currently this is what the American conservative movement is doing vigorously, thanks to the endorsements of the president of that country, who has many truths about himself that he wants to keep hidden.

 

Lilia Topouzova is a documentary filmmaker and a historian at the University of Toronto whose work is focused on the afterlives of political violence and the relationship between remembering and forgetting. As it happens, CBC Ideas aired this story just before we were travelling to Bulgaria. My ears perked up when I heard that.

 

Topouzova felt she was the perfect person to tell this story, since she was born and raised in Bulgaria. This is how she introduced herself:

 

“In order to get anyone to tell you a story, you need to encounter the person. You need to see the person. So when you’re making a film in Eastern Europe, or when you’re conducting research as a scholar in Eastern Europe, you need to be able to A, drink, B, smoke, and C, eat a lot.

And so, you know, maybe as a younger person, I was good at all these three things. But more than anything, I think it’s about also letting people know who you are.”

 

Lilia Topouzova has some amazing standards. She said that she never records anything with people until she has spent at least a year with them. She was also very sensitive to people who had experienced trauma, and many of the people she interviewed had definitely experienced trauma.

 

For 2 decades Topouzova has been studying things the Bulgarian establishment wants to keep in the dark.  They do not want any light shone upon them, much like many American conservatives do not want to hear anything about racism in their perfect country, nor exploitation of labour, and much like many Canadians don’t want to hear anything about what happened in Canada’s Residential Schools, at least no more than they have already heard, which is too much. Power does not like to hear anything that might besmirch its reputation. That is why to them ignorance is sacred in the words of James Baldwin.

 

Topouzova has been studying something I never heard of before, the Bulgarian Gulag, which according to Nahlah Ayed, the CBC host of Ideas, is “a history that has been deliberately silenced.”

After the communists from Russia took over the government of Bulgaria in 1944 they began to eliminate their political opponents as best they could. That is what authoritarians like to do, as we are now finding out. They started that right after their coup d’état in 1944. The new Bulgarian government implemented a policy of terror and intimidation across the country. In fact, the mass purge organized by Bulgarian authorities was the most brutal among all USSR satellite countries. By autumn that year, between 20,000-40,000 people were murdered or imprisoned without any trial. They were, among others, members of local authorities, notables, teachers, Orthodox priests and traders.

 

Officials at all levels were expelled with justifications ranging from retribution for past offences and the “fight against fascism”. Again, sadly, this now sounds very familiar to us even in North America. Some of the officials associated with the previous government were arrested as early as September 9 1944. As we have learned recently, authoritarians or ‘wanne’ be authoritarians, like to impose revenge on their enemies. In Bulgaria, many of them were deported to the USSR where they could be dealt with expeditiously.  About 130 “show trials” as we have come to call them, were held from December 1944 to June 1945. They were called “People’s Tribunals” to make them sound innocuous. Many of the so-called “judges” had no legal education or experience. About 10,000 people were accused, including members of the ruling Bulgarian dynasty, royal councillors, most of the cabinet ministers of the 1941 government, members of parliament, officers, policemen, city mayors, businessmen, lawyers, judges, journalists, and so on. About 2,700 of them were sentenced to death, more than 1,200 to life imprisonment and about 1,600 to long-term imprisonment.

 

 

Concentration Camps

Authoritarianism, Concentration Camps, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Some people think concentration camps were confined to the Nazis. These are people who are bored with history.

Many historians, including Hannah Arendt believed that concentration camps were invented by the British during the Second Boer War in South African. Of course, the British did not have the systematic machinery of murder which Nazis did, but they had concentration camps, and maybe even invented them.  Some people, like me, think the camps were a logical extension of colonial rule, because of the powerful  belief in white supremacy by most European countries.

From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand camps, that we would call concentration camps. Adolf Hitler came to power by legal and democratic means.  In 1932 he ran for the presidency but was defeated by the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg. Yet he had gained a lot of popularity.  In 1932 the Nazis became the largest party in the German Reichstag, but did not have the absolute majority. Traditionally the leader of the party who held the most seats in the Reichstag was appointed Chancellor, but the President von Hindenburg was reluctant at first to appoint Hitler. After negotiations in 1933 von Hindenburg acquiesced and appointed Hitler Chancellor. Hitler was still not an absolute dictator at that time.

 

When the German Reichstag was set on fire later in 1933, Hitler blamed the communists without any evidence to that effect and as a result convinced von Hindenburg to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree which severely curtailed the liberties of and rights of Germans and thereafter Hitler used the fire as a pretext to eliminate his enemies (political opponents). in effect he said, only he could save Germany. Sound familiar?

Then he argued that he should be given even greater powers to curtail his opposition  and proposed the Enabling Act of 1933 which gave the German government the power to override individual rights and also vested the Chancellor (Hitler) with emergency powers to pass and enforce laws, without parliamentary oversight, much like Donald Trump has been doing in the United States since his 2nd election in 2024. After that law was passed, Hitler had de facto dictatorial powers and almost immediately ordered the construction of the first of German’s concentration camps at Dachau for communists and other political opponents. After von Hindenburg’s death Hitler merged the chancellery with the presidency into what he liked to be called, the Führer (“leader”). That completed his rise to absolute power.

At first the camps were run by the Sturmabteilung, the original Nazi paramilitary organization.  Later they were run by the SS.  At first most prisoners were members of the Communist Party of Germany, but as time went on the Nazis collected others as prisoners, including “habitual criminals,” “asocials,” and of course, Jews.

 

Himmler, one of Hitler’s lieutenants, called for a war against the “organized elements of sub-humanity” that included communists, socialists, Jews, Freemasons, and criminals. Hitler secured his appointment as Chief of German Police in 1936.

 

Bulgaria, an ally of Germany in the World War II built and operated its own concentration camps and labor camps, mainly for political opponents, though some Roma were also imprisoned. As well when Germany requested Bulgaria send its imprisoned Jews to Germany they complied with that request. These camps, such as Ribaritsa, were established by the government to intern individuals considered “politically dangerous.”

Romanian Revolution

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism

This building reminded me of the transition from communism to “original democracy.”

 

The Revolution in Romania did not happen all at once.  It really started in the city of Brasov where we had spent 2 days. At first it represented a revolt against Nicolae Ceaușescu’s economic policies. On the morning of November 15, 1987, a local elections day, workers at a local truck manufacturing plant in Brasov led to about 20,000 workers refusing to work and marching  toward the communist party headquarters.  There, what had been claims for wages turned into shouts for “Down with Ceaușescu!”, “Down with Communism!” They even chanted anthems of the 1848 Revolution that not everyone had forgotten about. For example, “Down with the Dictatorship” and “We want bread.” These were brave actions in the face of communist dictatorship.

 

Ceaușescu had started to curb food and energy consumption for the good of the country and to reduce workers’ wages. None of these measures were popular of course with working people. 61% of people in labor participated in industry in Brasov. The economic decline of factories in eastern Europe in the mid-1980s hit Brasov particularly hard and led to the collapse of the consumer market. It started when Ceaușescu decided he had to divert payments intended for food production to paying the country’s debts. The state began to ration food stuffs.

 

The protesting workers from Brasov were joined by ordinary people from the city, and the combined mob sacked the communist headquarters building and city hall “throwing into the square portraits of Ceaușescu, and food from the well-stocked canteen.” In a time of drastic food shortages, protesters were particularly angered to find buildings that had been prepared for official festivities with food in abundance in order to celebrate the local communist election victory, which of course was a foregone conclusion. So the protesters celebrated with a massive bonfire of party records and propaganda burned for hours in the city square.

By dusk, Securitate forces and the military surrounded the city center and disbanded the revolt by force. Though no one was killed, some 300 protesters were arrested. Sounds a bit like cities in the US doesn’t it? Meanwhile protesters were being detained and tortured by state “investigators.” The communist party decided to downplay the rebellion as “isolated cases of hooliganism, rather than rebellion so the sentences were relatively light.

 

Though the Brașov Rebellion did not directly lead to revolution, it dealt a serious blow to the Ceaușescu regime, and its confidence in the pliability of the trade unions. Historian Dennis Deletant referred to the incident as demonstrating “Ceaușescu’s inability to heed the warning signs of increasing labor unrest, plunging blindly forward with the same [economic] measures, seemingly indifferent to their consequences.”

 

The Brașov Rebellion showed there was growing discontent among workers against the Ceaușescu regime, even though he believed the people loved him and he could do anything he wanted and get away with it. It was a precursor to the popular uprisings that would bring down the regime and Communism in Romania only two years later, after the fall of the Soviet Empire.

 

 

In 1989 when the massive power of the Soviet Communist party began to crumble  thanks to the actions of Mikhail Gorbachev, anti-government demonstrations in Romania arose in December of 1989.  These were heady times. It seemed like a whole new world order was being ushered in.  Around the world people like me, were excited about the burst for freedom behind the Iron Curtain . A communist regime that seemed invincible, as autocratic regimes always seem, at least until they are not, was losing its grip on power. What would happen next?

 

Things were so bad in the country that many people had to resort to begging in the streets for food.  Sort of like people do in cities of the west today. Amazingly, Ceaușescu thought the people still loved him. That was how out of touch he was. The people hated him. Ceaușescu was told to give up power but he resisted, until finally the people resisted and turned on him and his wife and the Communist regime which had been so powerful people thought it would last forever.  But dictatorships never last forever. Eventually they fall. And when they do it is usually with a crash.

 

In Romania hundreds of Romanians were shot and killed or injured.  When it was revealed that Ceaușescu was responsible, massive unrest spread through the country. When the demonstrations reached Bucharest, it became known as the Romanian Revolution. And that is what it was. In fact, it was the only overthrow of a communist regime in the course of the revolutions of 1989.

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital in a helicopter, but were soon captured after the armed forces turned on them. When the military turns on its autocratic leaders that usually spells the end of the regime. And it did exactly that in Romania. Ceaușescu was very quickly tried and convicted of economic sabotage and, amazingly, genocide. His wife was included in the trial as well. As a result, both were sentenced to death and they were immediately executed by a firing squad on December 25, 1989. The regime was toast.

The dictator  had absolute power until he had no power. The life of dictators can end abruptly.  Until their power evaporates, they are feared and obeyed. After that they are revealed as little men. No longer giant autocrats.

According to Vio, our guide for this part of our trip.  Ceaușescu had interfered in everything in the life of the people and as a result ruined the country and paid a heavy price in the end. He paid with his life.

Soon, Romania would have “original democracy.” It is far from perfect, but better than communism and outright autocracy.,

 

Romania: From World War II to Communism

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Authoritarianism

 

This building has been called Ceaușescu’s office. Nicolae Ceaușescu was the Communist leader of Romania for many years.

 

Romania started out in 1941 as an ally of Nazi Germany when it declared war on the Soviet Union. They did not care so much about England or the United States, or lord knows, Canada.  Russia was their traditional enemy and their King was a member of a great German family. As a result, taking sides with Germany against Russia made a lot of sense to Romanians.

 

However, things change, particularly in European international politics. After the defeat of Germany at Stalingrad, Romanian leaders felt the winds of change. In Romania, on August 23 1944, with the Soviet Red Army on the march, Romania’s King Mihai forcibly removed Romania’s Marshal Ion Antonescu from power when he refused to sign an armistice with the Allies of World II. As a result, Romania brazenly switched sides.

 

Of course, you might wonder what good did it do Romania to switch sides, for Russia, its erstwhile new ally, invaded and took over Romania as soon as the war was over. Romania became part of the Soviet empire.  And, Vio, our faithful Romania guide and interpreter on this trip mocked how the Russians since then painted the Romanians as eternal friends of Russia, which, of course was total nonsense. But nothing prevails more relentlessly in international affairs than nonsense.

 

Less than 3 years after Russia’s takeover of Romania, its monarch, King Mihai was forced to abdicate and vacate the castle. The People’s Republic of Romania—a state of “popular democracy“—was proclaimed.  It of course was no democracy at all. It was a communist dictatorship. The newly established communist regime, was led by the Romanian Workers’ Party which quickly consolidated its power through a Stalinist-type policy aimed at suppressing any political opposition and transforming the economic and social structures of the old bourgeois regime into a typical communist regime that bore little resemblance to Marx’s dreams of a workers’ communist paradise.

 

In 1965 the communist leader of Romania died and after a brief struggle Nicolae Ceaușescu emerged as the head of government.  Like so many autocrats, Hitler, Orban, and others included, Ceaușescu turned into an autocrat after enjoying the power which he later did not want to give up.  As we have seen recently with Donald Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil, it is difficult for some democratically elected leaders to give up their power. It is intoxicating and addictive.

 

In the early 1960s, the Romanian government began to assert some small degree of independence from Soviet Russian domination. I don’t mean to minimize this. It took courage to resist the Soviet Communist foreign policies. Romania did not abandon its repressive internal policies which it of course called “revolutionary conquests” much like Donald Trump calls his slide into autocracy “greater freedom.” Such camouflaging maneuvers are common with every autocratic regime.

 

Upon achieving power, Ceaușescu eased restrictions on the press and actually condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that effectively quelled the Prague Spring and his popularity rose spectacularly.  That popularity however was very brief.

 

Soon the communist regime of Romania became totalitarian and was even considered for a while the most repressive in the Eastern bloc. His secret police, the Securitate, was responsible for mass surveillance and severe repression with human rights abuses being prominently featured in the activities of the regime. He controlled the press absolutely.  It is things like this in history that should give all of us pause when we see attempts to control the press as Donald Trump has done flamboyantly in the US without much opposition. These are not innocent maneuvers. They are at the heart of a dangerous path to autocracy and all of us who cherish freedom must be alert to them and oppose them with firmness and vigor. I am constantly amazed at how cavalier Americans have been about such encroachments onto fundamental rights and freedoms. Such actions by Trump, acquiesced to by his Republican cronies, are dangerous.

 

For a while Ceaușescu was very popular for his efforts to remain independent of Russian foreign policy. But like all good autocrats from Hitler to Trump he grew increasingly authoritarian. That is what authoritarians do. His insistence on his monstrous People’s Palace shown in this photograph is just one example. He foisted it on the people whether they wanted it or not, because he wanted it. Like so many authoritarians, he also liked the grandiose, and insisted on building this People’s Palace, the second largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon in Washington even though Romania could really not afford it and no one wanted it.

 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Communist regime of Romania collapsed with startling rapidity. He thought his people loved him. He was wrong. Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were the victims of a series of anti-communist uprisings in Eastern Europe in that inspiring year. After a very quick trial they were found guilty and both shot.

 

This was not really a good start for what the new regime called “original democracy.”

Conclave: An Explosive Ending          

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Movies, Populism, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

For those of you who have not seen the film Conclave and expect to, perhaps you should consider reading this post after you have seen.  The scene is quite shocking.

 

In the film  Brother Tedesco is the favorite of the conservative Cardinals who believed that the most recent Pope was much too liberal. They believe the Pope risked shaking the Church to its foundation. It would be shook to its foundation if any one of a number of candidates for the Papacy were elected.

 

The actual voting procedure in the film is quite interesting. At the exact moment that Brother Thomas Lawrence is delivering a vote in his own favor, because he seems to be the only candidate that might be able to stop Tedesco, like a bolt of lightning from God, there is an explosion and part of the ceiling of the huge hall collapses onto him and injuring him. It appears a terrorist suicide detonated a bomb that killed himself and also killed 52 people. Hundreds lie injured. There were also reports of attacks in Louvain and Munich. Perhaps it was a bolt of lightning from the God or the devil?

Brother Tedesco is quick to rise with a shaking finger:

 

“Here at last we see the result of the doctrine of relativism so beloved by our liberal brothers! A relativism that sees all faiths and passing fancies accorded equal weight. So that now, when we look around us, we see we see the homeland of the Holy Roman Catholic church dotted with mosques and minarets of the prophet Mohammed.”

 

Brother  Bellini says Brother Tedesco  should be ashamed. Father Tedesco replies,

“we should all be ashamed. We tolerate Islam in our land, but they revile us in theirs. We nourish them in our homeland. But they exterminate us. How long will we persist in this weakness.? They are literally at our walls right now. What we need now is a leader who understands that we are facing a true religious war…We need a leader who will put a stop to the drift that has gone on almost ceaselessly for the past 50 years. How long will we persist in this weakness? We need a leader who fights these animals,”

 

as he points to the crumbled ceiling.  Like so many political leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump, he tries to take advantage of an emergency to grab absolute power for himself. Demagogic leaders love to take advantage of emergencies.

Sometimes, when people are fearful it is difficult to resist the authoritarian leader. Fear is a very poor guide for human conduct.

 

 

 

The Mythic Past

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Political Violence, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

Invariably, fascist political leaders justify their ideas by destroying the common view of history and replacing it with a mythic past to which they aspire to return. Some thinkers have said this is the predominant trait of fascism. Fascists use propaganda to change the perception of them and disarm their opponents by promoting anti-intellectualism or anti-reason in order to insulate their false myths from reasoned attack.

 

As a result, they often attack the educational system to ensure that only their rosy view of history is taught and challenges are discredited. For example, although not yet fascists, this is what American conservatives have been doing in the US by making sure that their children only hear comfortable stories which won’t challenge them. They don’t want their children to be challenged. They want their children to preach the party line that Americans have always been good and their children need never feel bad about their history.  Again, the Nazis were masters of such techniques.

As Jason Stanley said in his book How Fascism Works, ,

“Eventually with these techniques and racist politics create a state of unreality, in which conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned debate.

As the common understanding of reality crumbles, fascist politics makes room for dangerous and false beliefs to take root. First, fascist ideology seeks to naturalize group difference thereby giving the appearance of natural, scientific support for a hierarchy of human worth. When social rankings and division solidify, fear fills in for a understanding between groups. Any progress for a minority stokes feelings of victimhood among the dominant population.”

 

I have seen this happening many times in the US and Canada. Dominant groups like Christians, or heterosexuals, or whites see any progress for minorities as taking away from their rights and privileges. They begin to see themselves as the beleaguered group, even though they are the dominant group. They feel unmoored by the perceived disappearance of their privilege. It is very disturbing to see privileges slip away. It seems not only unfair, but unreasonable. So long for a time they thought it was better. A time when their beloved country was great.

But we must remember that the mythic past is just that—a myth. It is unreal. We must hang on to reality. It is our only way to ensure that we get out of this mess.

When we are in the grip of such myths we ourselves, “us”, as lawful citizens, as the  good guys and “them” as criminals who are threatening the society we love. Stanley put it this way:

“As fear of “them” grows, “we” come to represent everything virtuous. “We” live in the rural heartland, where pure values and traditions of the nation still miraculously exist despite the major  threat of cosmopolitan from the nation’s cities, alongside hordes of minorities who live there, emboldened by  liberal tolerance. “We” are hardworking, and have earned our pride of place by struggle and merit. “They” are lazy, surviving off the goods we produce by exploiting the generosity of welfare systems, or employing corrupt institutions, such as labour unions, meant to separate honest, hardworking citizens from their pay. “We” are the maker; “they” are the takers.”

 

These of course are myths. History is replete with them. Many countries have harboured them. Fascist Italy. Nazi Germany. America, Canada and many others. We have them. We must not give in to them. We must recognize their holes. Their big holes that weak leaders try to fill with bombast and lies. It happened in the 1930s. It is happening again today.

Let me comment briefly on the election for an American president tomorrow. I will feel the same unease tomorrow I feel today no matter who wins the election. Such feelings won’t disappear in a day. The myths are too engrained. They are deep. Millions of people in America and Canada and elsewhere believe those myths and are drawn to them. They must be challenged by an awakened electorate that is on its guard. Or we will suffer a heavy price. We can still do it, but will we do it? Only time will tell.

 

Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Populism, Trump, Tyranny and Fascism

 

I have always been a bit reluctant to call Donald Trump a fascist.  But now something happened that is tilting me to go all out.

As reported on CNN and reported as well by the New York Times, John Kelly Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff recently said,

“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that.  So certainly, he falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

As White House Chief of staff in the Trump administration in which he served as a loyal lieutenant to now come out and warn us that Trump is a fascist is a game changer.  He worked with Trump for a long time. He is not bleeding-heart liberal. To say his former boss is a fascist a very powerful statement.

Kelly is no bleeding-heart liberal. He is a former American General who served as Secretary of Homeland Security before taking the position as White House Chief of Staff in the Trump administration for about a year and a half. And he says Trump is a fascist. How can we not take that seriously?

There is even more. Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper said this to CNN, “Clearly, he has a predilection for leaders he perceives to be strong. And that’s just how he breaks the world down. He breaks things down between strong and weak.”  That is precisely, the essential element of fascism, in my view.  Fascism is the political philosophy of the bully.  And Donald Trump is clearly the quintessential bully.

Jacob Heilbrunn the Editor of The National Interest said, this, “he fantasizes the strong man. And that’s the blue print. Crush the media. Eviscerate the independent judiciary and establish his own rule over the country.”

Trump himself, said, “as president you have extreme power.” In his own words, he makes it clear that he has a deep fascination with power and in fact, worships power.  And his own lawyers have persuaded the US Supreme court to adopt this view of presidential power.  No one should assume he won’t abuse that extreme power.  His words have made it clear that he intends to go after his enemies this time around, if he is elected president. Esper said we should take Trump’s words seriously when he says he will use the military against private American citizens. And, as his Defense Secretary, Esper knew Trump well.

Trump has said the country is being pressed by “leftist lunatics…who, if necessary, should be handled by the national guard…or the military.”

According to Kelly, Donald Trump also said, “Hitler did some good things too.” That might be literally true—after all no one is purely evil just as no one is perfectly good—but politically it is dynamite to say so without proper exceptions. How can America Jews vote for Trump? How can we avoid inferring that Donald Trump is a fascist?

Now I am convinced that none of this will make any difference to Trump’s support, except perhaps to inflate it.  His supporters don’t take anything from liberal chatter except that they are out to get Trump and every time they mention such things his support just rises. The more liberals yell, the more Trumpsters are joyful.  Liberal squealing is the music they want to hear. As CNN commentator and Republican strategist Erin Perrine said, “Everybody has already seen this before from Donald Trump or stories about Donald Trump and it hasn’t moved the voters.”  She said Kamala Harris should not waste her time trying to drumbeat opposition to Trump. She should instead push her positive optimistic story instead. Others think it will remind Democrats why they must show up to vote.  We will have to wait for election results. Let me say, I am not optimistic about that.  I fear that deep racial unease and hatred in the US will rise to the surface and hand political victory to Trump. I hope I am wrong. Thank goodness I am wrong so often.