Martin Wolf has this to say in today's FT:
Are we witnessing the return of fascism? Is Donald Trump, to take the most important contemporary example, a fascist? Is France's Marine Le Pen? Or Hungary's Viktor Orbán? The answer depends on what one means by “fascism”. But what we are now seeing is not just authoritarianism. It is authoritarianism with fascistic characteristics.
The article is worth reading if you can get behind the pay wall.
It is notable for including UKIP in the definition of parties of concern to Martin Wolf.
What is also telling is his conclusion, which I think it is fair to quote it in full given the significance of this issue:
The fascism of Germany or Italy of the 1920s and 1930s does not now exist, except perhaps in Russia. But the same could be said of other traditions. Conservatism is not what it was a century ago, as is true of liberalism and socialism. The ideas and concrete proposals of political traditions alter with society, the economy and technology. That is no surprise. But these traditions still have a common core of attitudes to history, politics and society. This is also true of fascism. History does not repeat itself. But it rhymes. It is rhyming now. Do not be complacent. It is dangerous to take a ride on fascism.
Martin Wolf is right. It is dangerous to take a ride on fascism. But that is very obviously what he thinks the world is doing, and so do I.
I also applaud the FT for having the courage to address this issue. We need voices in the mainstream media who are willing to call out fascism. There is far too much of it about. It is far too tolerated. It is profoundly dangerous. It is time that we recognised all these things.
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It seems we have conveniently forgotten that Hitler was initially voted into the leadership position from which he seized an absolute and deadly grip on power. This can, and will, happen again if we remain complacent about the potential for an extremely serious threat posed by the authoritarian manipulation of our democracy. It takes several decades to remove a dictator after they manage to establish comprehensive control of the media, police, secret service, and military services. This slow creep towards dictatorship is already firmly in-train in several countries with nieve populist support for narcissistic so-called ‘strong men’, like Trump, obsessed with power. It starts with manipulation of the media, just as we have right now in the UK; the fight-back is urgently needed ASAP! Thank you Richard for your contribution to exposing the horrifically alarming truth.
And using a proportional representation system to boot.
This certainly seems to give the fascists in Europe (Sweden, Germany, Portugal with Chega) a bark in politics which is much bigger than the dog. Also for those persuaded by arguments that countries should be run for the benefit of the legal residents of that country, they have a voting outlet for their feelings which results in parliamentary representation.
The voting for the Reichstag was proportional. But the Reichstag didn’t elect the chancellor, that was the role of the president. It is rare for such arrangements to exist in European politics anymore. Most presidents are not elected and most presidents do not choose the leader of parliament.
Most emperors are elected. Which is the argument monarchists always make. Yet all tyrants were monarchs.
You basically need around 30-35% of actual voters, which may be as low as 25% of the total electorate, to secure power, and then you can do what you like with existing institutions – … and as Trump has promised for day one if elected.
Turnout in US federal elections, notwithstanding gerrymandering, was 66% in 2020, but 49% in the 2018 mid terms – and these were the highest figures since 1900..
Most US federal elections have turnouts below 50%.
Securing the largest minority voting for a real nutjob, with solid campaign funding, might not be so difficult with these turnouts.
Blair won the UK 2005 GE with 35.2% of the popular vote – not that he is/was seen as a nutjob..
If you are fortunate enough to have an Article 48, as in Weimar, you can over-ride all sorts of constitutional safeguards.
Looking at Tory reductions of civil liberties in recent years, plus the illegal proroguing of Parliament, then the British constitution does not really seem to provide much protection …
Democracy is really pretty fragile…
Let’s not forget the intentional undermining of the BBC…..a right-wing strategy employed by the Tufton Street influencers that inhabit the revolving doors of the right-wing media and the corridors of Tory Govt.
From various sources, the warning signs of fascism:
❌Powerful and continuing nationalism
❌Disdain for human rights
❌Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
❌Supremacy of the military
❌Rampant sexism
❌Controlled mass media
❌Obsession with national security
❌Religion and government intertwined
❌Corporate power protected
❌Labor [sic] power suppressed
❌Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
❌Obsession with crime & punishment
❌Rampant cronyism & corruption
❌Fraudulent elections
Thanks
I use an analogy instead. It is somewhat subjective, but helps me understand the difference between fascism and authoritarianism:
Imagine a country as a marriage certificate. It might start as clean white paper with crisp black ink, but the yellowing of the paper and the fading of the ink making reading hard represent increasing authoritarianism (not fascism yet). Spots of dark mould on the paper – easily ignored by all the square centimetres of paper that are unaffected by it – render the writing illegible: localised fascism. One day you wake up to find a name on the certificate is unreadable, either because the yellowing has become so extreme the whole certificate is illegible or because the mould has suddenly affected a critical area and the certificate is now useless (or worse – perhaps you’re legally married but your spouse isn’t!).
We often accept authoritarianism (eg you can’t be anonymous online because we need to catch paedophiles and terrorists) because other options aren’t mentioned.
We don’t realise how bad some areas are until we have evidence, eg a black man being suffocated to death by racist cops while a crowd desperately tries to remonstrate with them.
This shouldn’t replace Dr Lawrence Britt’s 14 Defining Characteristics of Fascism – Umberto Eco also listed 14 Features of Fascism – and not all their boxes need be ticked. I just find my crude analogy an easier place to start.
Ian’s (Tresman) list prompted me to review various definitions of fascism. It reminded me of the linkage between the signs of fascism poster and non-availability of the poster at the NYC Holocaust museum. Whilst looking, here is a definition I’d not known (from Roosevelt) – not any more encouraging!
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
Very good
Trying to understand how the world sleep-walked into WW1 used to be a major intellectual question, now much less discussed because those it affected are now dead.
Increasingly it feels like, here we are again.
I think that this is a very important point. My passionate anti fascist beliefs were formed about aged 14, at school in the mid 60’s. Our English teacher, a gem of a woman, was a Polish Jew who had fled the nazi’s just before WW2. Alongside our conventional English classes she showed us footage of the Holocaust, pictures on my young mind still there more than half a century later. She taught us too about the fact that fascism creeps up on you along the lines mentioned ealier by Ian Tressman. I can’t remember much about calculus, French, or Greek, but the dangers of fascism and those images of jackbooted nazis marching through cities and piles of bodies in the camps have never ever left me.
But I am now 74, and my second hand memories will be gone in a while, and then who will carry on that ingrained (but protective) fear ? My very political children and grandchildren are aware, but not in the impassioned way that makes them want to be demonstrating on the streets like my generation.
That is the worry…
The kids that are passionate enough about their causes are on the street, literally risking their liberty, but they are protesting against fossil fuels and lack of action against climate change. We should recognize that, and support them.
Fascism happens because instead of checking out the details of things they treat voting about the same as deciding on what brand of porridge oats they’re going to buy in the supermarket. Point this out to a Starmer supporter, for example, when nobody really knows what Starmer stands for after so many broken pledges and u-turns and they go ape shit!
It comes to something when the FT is the leader on this of all the MSM. Our ‘elected dictatorship’ constitution seems to have few safeguards and few legitimate and effective ways to resist the creeping tentacles of crypto fascism – as in Ian Tresman’s list.
The series on the rise of the Nazis on BBC4 fascinaintg but why should it have to be left to Gary Lineker to draw the parallels?
The Guardian had a piece on Trump by Robert Reich last year.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/17/trump-republican-party-fascism
I see you were writing about fascism back in 2011 – “fascism is waiting to march”. Perhaps Leonard Cohen (who my wife thinks should have got the Nobel and not that other guy) instead of writing (in hope, I believe) that democracy is coming to the USA would consider it more likely that with the state of the GOP and a former President lashing out at judges, it was Fascism that was coming to the USA. And the UK.
We seem to have no politicians of note in the 2 major parties who are aware of the risk, or at least none that will speak out. It’s now mainstream acceptable to be racist in government, whatever your ethnicity, as several commentators of colour have argued (see Hardeep Matharu in Byline Times for example), along with many of the other indicators of fascism, such as victim blaming, flag shagging, law breaking, favouring corporate and wealthy interests over ordinary citizens.
Look at the record of the new Tory DC who’s just replaced another extremist on the right – these 2 make Thatcher, Tebbit and co seem like the golden age of one-nation Conservatism.
When Party machines decide who will be a candidate and those machines have been captured by extremists and authoritarians it’s inevitable we get the wrong sort of politicians.
Meant to link an amusing but worrying commentary on Gulliss
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24216233.jonathan-gulliss-promotion-shows-just-finished-tories/?ref=eb&nid=1898&block=article_block_a&u=2cdfcb5bf4a9d0550760a37ce3ab4475&date=270324
I think we can use Noam Chomsky at this time:
“As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome”
The clear and present danger from external sources influencing the disengaged has never been more serious, it is up to us, ‘the engaged’, to do the hard yards and challenge those that pedal lies and falsehoods.