Another day, another Jewish liberal elitist writes a piece on Trump with either the word “fascist”, “Weimar” or “Holocaust” somewhere in it.
Yawn.
Today we have Adam Gopnik writing in The New Yorker (“Being Honest About Trump”):
[T]he Weimar Republic gets a very bad rap for how it ended and insufficient credit for how much creative ferment and intelligent thought it contained. The notion that it was above all, or unusually, decadent was a creation of its enemies, who defined the creative energies of cosmopolitanism in that way.
Yes, to say that Weimar descended into a notable level of libertinism, attack on tradition, and disproportionate Jewish influence (aka “cosmopolitanism”) is a fiction, created by cosmopolitan’s “enemies.”
All republics are fragile; the German one, like the Third French Republic it paralleled, did not commit suicide—it was killed, by many murderers, not least by those who thought they could contain an authoritarian thirsting for power. And, second, that the United States has been the ultimate home of so many cosmopolitan citizens rejected by Europe. People expelled by hate from Europe wanted desperately to get to the American Midwest, to cities like Chicago—and, no doubt, to Cleveland, where the Republican Party holds its Convention next week.
Translation: Jews, a diasporic people, always need host countries to migrate/exile to. And we must make sure that is always the case.
Cosmopolitanism is not a tribal trait; it is a virtue, as much as courage or honesty or compassion.
On the contrary, I would say that cosmopolitanism is a tribal trait. It is a ‘virtue’ only in, for example, the fantasy worldview of E.U. elites who imagine all the peoples of the world living together, holding hands, and drinking a Coke.
We then get more literary aspirations from an emotionally-charged liberal (when it comes to the subject of Trump):
We walk out of the beautiful museum and find ourselves back in a uniquely frightening moment in American life…
I really must think of a suitable name or phrase for this phenomenon, which I recently posted about here and here.
A candidate for President who is the announced enemy of the openness that America has traditionally stood for and that drew persecuted émigrés like Moholy-Nagy to America as to a golden land, a candidate who embraces the mottos and rhetoric of the pro-fascist groups of that same wretched time, has taken over one of our most venerable political parties, and he seems still in the ascendancy. His language remains not merely sloppy or incendiary but openly hostile to the simplest standards of truth and decency that have governed American politics…
Pro-fascist.
As I have written before, to call him a fascist of some variety is simply to use a historical label that fits. The arguments about whether he meets every point in some static fascism matrix show a misunderstanding of what that ideology involves. It is the essence of fascism to have no single fixed form—an attenuated form of nationalism in its basic nature, it naturally takes on the colors and practices of each nation it infects. In Italy, it is bombastic and neoclassical in form; in Spain, Catholic and religious; in Germany, violent and romantic. It took forms still crazier and more feverishly sinister, if one can imagine, in Romania, whereas under Oswald Mosley, in England, its manner was predictably paternalistic and aristocratic. It is no surprise that the American face of fascism would take on the forms of celebrity television and the casino greeter’s come-on, since that is as much our symbolic scene as nostalgic re-creations of Roman splendors once were Italy’s.
Well, not much subtlety there (requiring any literary analysis.)
What all forms of fascism have in common is the glorification of the nation, and the exaggeration of its humiliations, with violence promised to its enemies, at home and abroad; the worship of power wherever it appears and whoever holds it; contempt for the rule of law and for reason; unashamed employment of repeated lies as a rhetorical strategy; and a promise of vengeance for those who feel themselves disempowered by history.
I’m confused: Is he talking about BLM here?
It promises to turn back time and take no prisoners. That it can appeal to those who do not understand its consequences is doubtless true. But the first job of those who do understand is to state what those consequences invariably are. Those who think that the underlying institutions of American government are immunized against it fail to understand history. In every historical situation where a leader of Trump’s kind comes to power, normal safeguards collapse. Ours are older and therefore stronger? Watching the rapid collapse of the Republican Party is not an encouraging rehearsal. Donald Trump has a chance to seize power.
Trump has a chance not to win the Presidency, but to “seize power”.
These people are unhinged.
The extent to which Der Trumpenfuhrer lives in their collective heads, rent-free, is a delicious thing to witness though.
