Trump is a fascist. Of course that scares me. But it scares me even more because I don't think that Labour will do anything to stop the threat of fascism growing in the UK.
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Trump scares me rigid. I can't see any other way to state my opinion about the man. He is a fascist, we know he is, and to me that is deeply frightening.
It frightens me for the people of the USA.
It worries me that the people of the USA are even considering voting a fascist into office with all the consequences that follow, including the end of the rule of law, the oppression of minorities, violence against immigrants, the oppression of a political opponents, the abuse of women because he is deeply misogynist and is denying them the right to choose, the oppression of trade unions almost certainly, the promotion of wealth and the suppression of the majority of people in the country whose interests he will not serve, and on and on and on.
He is a danger.
But the danger doesn't only extend to the boundaries of the USA. Because where the USA goes, I'm afraid to say the UK goes too.
We've already heard Labour ministers saying, of course they will deal with Trump if he is elected. It's up to the people of America to choose which president they want. But when that president then sets out to establish fascism in America, I believe it will be the duty of the government of the UK to stand up and say, “No, this is not acceptable; we have learned the lessons from history; you cannot do that and we will not cooperate.” Do I expect that from Labour? No, not at all.
I'm sure they will just say that's the American way, and they can decide.
But, as I said, where the US goes, the UK follows. And, Labour has shown no interest in human rights already. If they were going to do so, they've had ample opportunity to already set out their stall.
They could have announced their intention to reverse the draconian powers introduced by the last Tory government that involved the suppression of all forms of demonstrations which involved the creation of noise, but they haven't.
They could have changed the ridiculous rules on the sentencing of people who oppose the action of companies that accelerate climate change, but they haven't.
They could have done a great deal to make it clear that they were on the side of the right to free speech, but nothing has been delivered.
So, Labour are not on the side of freedom when it comes to this issue. Labour are quite willing to maintain the powers that were put in place by some very far-right members of the last Tory administrations. And why does this scare me rigid?
I remember a time when in 2016 I took my two sons to Dachau in Germany. Dachau was the first of the concentration camps created by the Nazis very soon after they took over power in Germany in 1933. My elder son read the information boards in the first building that we went into, and within minutes of our arrival there, he came up to me and said, “Dad, you'd have been in here”, and I suspect he was right because if you recall at that time I was working quite a lot for trade unions and also having some influence on the thinking of Jeremy Corbyn and the left of the Labour Party. I would have been seen as the type of person who a fascist government considered to be a threat to all that it wanted to do.
Nazis did not inter Jews, first of all. They interred priests, and trade union leaders, and socialists, and intellectuals, and those they thought to be troublemakers. They did try to suppress those who created and promoted ideas that opposed what fascists wanted to do.
I think it fair to say that I have been opposed to fascism all my life. I think quite explicitly, since about 2005, I have been aware of the threat of fascism to what I do. Way back then, John Christensen and I - we effectively co-founded the functioning element of the Tax Justice Network - identified that the biggest threat to our work was the rise of fascism.
And, as a consequence, yes, I do feel threatened by fascism.
I do feel very personally threatened by Trump. He does scare me rigid.
But so too does Labour's attitude scare me rigid. Because I have no confidence in Trump and that if fascism was to rise in this country, Labour would do anything about it.
And I believe that their incompetence is making it possible for that to happen because these people don't care enough about the well-being of the people in this country to ensure that the far-right will be kept in its box here.
It was in the 1930s, but will it be nearly a century later? I don't know. And for everyone who has stood out against the crowd when it comes to fascism, that creates a real threat.
We do need to be scared rigid by Trump.
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The U.S. Holocaust Museum has a sign:
EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM
❌Powerful and continuing nationalism
❌Disdain for human rights
❌Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
❌Rampant sexism
❌Controlled mass media
❌Obsession with national security
❌Religion and government intertwined
❌Corporate power protected
❌Labor power suppressed
❌Disdain for intellectual and the arts
❌Obsession with crime and punishment
❌Rampant cronyism and corruption
Or course we see none of these in the USA and UK
I agree with much of what you say in terms of the “mechanics” and what Trump is. However, I have a sense that we have “our faces pressed too hard to the glass separating us from the display”.
Last night during a political discussion – I could have removed Trump and the USA and replaced it with Gaius Julius Ceasar and Rome (in terms of the discussions in Rome ref Ceasar before he crossed the Rubicon). Point: the “fight” is over control of the USA between one bunch of ultra-rich quasi-fascists and another bunch of ultra-rich who are a bit softer, with the US electroate being manipulated by both, via a media under the total control of the ultra-rich. The (roman) senate thought it could go after Ceasar – leaglly – leading to civil war 1. Legally they were probably right, politically it was a bad move. You can see the same play in the USA and the same “is this wise politically – does it strengthen rather than weaken Trump” could have been/should have been, considered (these comments do not apply to the rape case – which was driven by an individual).
The idea that “the American people” decide anything is laughable – given the nature of & ownership of the US media. Whoever gets elected, the rich will be fine, some less happy than others. As for the non-rich – they will have to swallow it & do what their richer betters tell them. UK? poodles do what they are told.
I share your views on Trump and Labour.
We also have the spectacled of an increasingly openly fascist Conservative Party.
Fascism has long been the blind spot in our democracy you are right about that.
They are political monopolists and go hand in hand with the monopolists that are the Neo-liberals.
So your/our fears are justified.
Trump is a facist without doubt and our government is clearly weak and displays many very disturbing traits. But one thing that I find deeply concerning is the fact that the US has approximately 12,000 heavily armed service personnel stationed in our country!
“The West” has always been fascist, it is not something new. What you feel now, is the realisation that policies that have always been there, might actually be applied to you now. Your son was spot on – scary isn’t it!
USA/UK/France had no political differences with Nazi Germany ( Royal family, Labours Mosely and the Black shirts, Daily Mail) nor do they appear to have any political differences with Israel, now(self defense!!). Assange was imprisoned for nearly 10 years for exposing what the USA was and UK Govt. is imprisoning protesters now for pointing out where the UK is on climate change and Palestine. Trump is just the latest, grotesque version of western fascism( read democracy for that).
I don’t think it can be defeated at the ballot box, which is the scariest thing of all.
Your claim is absurd and just wrong
The west has not always been fascist and it is stupid to claim it has been
I have close relatives in the US. They will be voting for Trump. They think the only way the Republic can survive is if he wins. I am dismayed, speechless and cannot understand the thinking with all that has happened since they voted for him in 2016.
But the adoration of Trump is certainly a cult and I think some people are highly susceptible to being ensnared – having heard former cult members on the radio explain what happened to them and how difficult it was to break free. And I know my relatives have fallen prey to shysters many years in the past not long after they moved there in the 70’s.
Trump and his supporters seem to love being called fascist – just proves to his supporters that ‘the system’ is out to get him.
But they cant stand being ridiculed. Remember the National Front NF = No Fun campaign decades ago.
We all should be afraid. Labour showing no inclnation to scrap the draconian ‘security’ laws – (can be arrested for being ‘annoying’ or ‘noisy’) under which we already have poltiical prisoners .
And Trump’s Heritage Foundation -funded Project 2025 – is all in plain sight – setting up a dictatorship
I’d agree and argue too that there have always been strong fascist undercurrents in England, and America. I think these forces are very considerably underestimated.
Though they have not always dominated public life, they are still there, waiting for the opportunity to re-establish their primacy.
These trends have been closely tied in with the English class structure, which survives, and American industrial oligarchs. That the UK has enjoyed a liberal democracy since WW2, and the USA some kind of quasi democracy since the Civil War, does not mean these interests are not there or have gone away.
Immigration, and stigmatising minorities, has always been very high up the agenda of the far right, as a divide and rule lever, and to reinforce fascistic tribalism.
Today, the issue is almost the raison d’etre of this whole political grouping and is used and manipulated by right wing populists to establish and maintain power, across the whole of Europe and industrialised nations.
That is certainly proto-fascism, if not fully developed, and both current Tory leadership candidates are seemingly enthralled by how they can use ‘othering’ as a means to power.
The British ruling elite, whether aristocrat in ancestry, or originating in the right wing militaristic public school niche, have an assumed but innate superiority, and divine right to rule, and have always taken on social Darwinism. That has fascist principles and tendencies. The Empire was built and sustained on these principles.
Their praetorian guard is now known as the technocracy, and includes banksters, but a subservient administrative class has always supported the upper class, as did the East India Company provide the bulwark for much of the Empire. Remember the BoE executive’s recent comment that there were no problems of inequality in the UK ?.
Orwell identified and wrote both essays and novels on these authoritarian trends.
We ignore the warnings of these authors at our peril.
We know the majority of UK MSM is still owned by right wing interests, and pursues them relentlessly.
The strict pyramidal social and economic class structures of feudalism, still evident in rural Scotland amongst large estate owners, are highly authoritarian in principle, and the 21stC rise of neo-feudalism, with a few oligarchs increasingly dominating American politics and economic life is reflected here too. That this can or may lead to more recognisable fascism, is a moot point. We shall see, shortly.
Even during the liberal 60s, Powell, pure establishment Tory, was a fascist, but garnered very considerable support.
In England, fascists tend to speak with RP accents. Most reassuring. Not all are of Yaxley Lennon football hooligan origins.
Neither the Ridleys nor Mitfords ever spoke with Geordie accents.
Man of the people, Nigel Farage, was a known fascist at Dulwich College.. and continues the model.
The closeness with which the English aristocracy and upper class linked with Hitler in the 1930s was far greater than history records, with hundreds, if not thousands, of them in the Munich social set, right through to 1939, so years after Dachau was opened just a few miles to the north of that city, was siphoning off the socialists, union organisers, ‘bleeding hearts and artists’.
Unity Mitford was a raging jackbooter and personal friend, if not lover, of Hitler.
Arendt distinguished between pure fascism being totalitarian as opposed to merely authoritarian, and defined this as the state telling you what and how to think, and what you cannot think, then enforcing conformity, so there were no alternatives possible.
The last few years in the UK have seen a major attack on civil liberties by conservative WM governments, and deliberate suppression of the freedom of speech, especially regarding environmental protests and anti-Israeli government – with anti-semitism being redefined accordingly. Anti Netanyahu is now Anti-semite.
People are in jail as a result, and the pioneering decisions of Judge Hehir in jailing JSO protestors etc., reinforce the view that people really are being told what they can and cannot think, or demonstrate peacefully to express their views. Even a ‘noisy’ demo is now prohibited and “there is no right to civil disobedience” according to Nu-Labour.
The recent news that the GMC are punishing doctors who protest by removing their registration to practice after civil protest, is exactly how the hegemony of ‘right thinking’ gets established, and enforced. This removal of civil liberties really is the thin end of an authoritarian wedge..
There is much to agree with this in this argument
Just as to claim that we have always been fascist is wrong
Yes, that case was overstated.
Yet all the component parts for the rapid emergence of fascism are there, just not quite knitted together as a dominant force.
I don’t think Trump, if he gets in, as an egoist and narcissist, will bother too much about the political philosophy of racial and class superiority as he has absolute certainty in his rectitude. His stormtroopers will just get on with the oppression.
However, I think there have always been powerful underlying fascistic tendencies, especially in the UK, and these originated fully with Townsend’s vicious hatred of the poor, which then led to the emergence of Social Darwinism.
This fed eugenics, which was heavily adopted by the Americans, more than in the UK I think, given the levels of support the Nazis had from US eugenicists in the 20s and 30s.
And there you have it .. the thread of fascism linking the USA and Nazism.
There was/is also a grouping on the intellectual left who felt/feel they were/are superior and hence it was destined that their cohort of the intelligentsia were the natural ruling elite. It cuts both ways.
Social Darwinism underpins much current conservative thinking and has never been suppressed, nor fully debunked, as the interest groups who presently hold these views are still prominent – and undeniably very right wing.
A full debunking is long overdue.
The only person who wrote extensively against it was the libertarian socialist Peter Kropotkin, who wrote Mutual Aid, and even Marxist influenced Darwinists like Stephen Jay Gould were highly sceptical over his view on co-operation rather than competition being the driver for evolution, and hence “survival of the fittest” required mutuality.
Mutual aid absolutely underpins socialism, just as social Darwinism is the bedrock of conservatism.
If there is a continuum from liberal … authoritarian … totalitarian then we are undoubtedly heading rightwards at present.
Dunno how slippery that slope is. But I’d class SKS as an authoritarian.
Thanks
“ The British ruling elite, whether aristocrat in ancestry, or originating in the right wing militaristic public school niche”. A major problem with the UK’s power structures is that it drawn from a very narrow base – graduates of public schools and/or Oxbridge.
The Sutton Trust report from 2019 spelled it out. However independently minded individuals think they are it is difficult to escape from your history and I suggest that the experience of public school followed by Oxbridge gives a narrow and privileged path to power where you don’t mix much on equal terms with the 93% who don’t go to public schools.
65% of senior judges attended public schools – toffs sentencing the plebs.
44% of newspaper columnists same – toffs interpreting world events for us plebs.
And so on. https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Elitist-Britain-2019-Summary-Report.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
@ Geejay and John
I’d say that all this confirms Gramsci’s thoughts on hegemony.
Of course, his lesser and more nuanced process of ‘passive revolution’ has more extended the power of the social Darwinist and former upper class elite through the slow process of small reinforcements of the establishment elite’s power, and then patience in using periodic opportunities to neutralise adversarial groups’ influence and power.
Thatcher’s deregulation was a huge positive for the owners and managers of capital, and Blair’s background made him a willing disciple.
Capturing Nu-Labour has been another box ticked in sustaining the status of this right wing elite, even if this has mostly been achieved quietly.
The volume of the squawking over the removal of VAT reliefs on private school fees has surprised me somewhat, as it is a pretty minor measure really, but I think its down to mild panic but an awfie lot more resentment that there is any threat to the privileges of private education.
The BBC have certainly fed this debate, as they have with Farage’s agenda, but I’d say that is down to Cameron’s successful programme of placing conservatives at editorial level – another box ticked for ‘passive revolution’.
As the war generation, and their social contract, diminished in the 70s, so we saw the slow rise of the far right. The fascist-sympathising elite, of course, had never been touched by anything, as the deference to class rule was untouched, IMO thanks to the institution of monarchy. While this country has rejected fascism, several times, those in power have flirted with aspects of it as they enjoyed the privileges and opportunities power brought them. Blair springs to mind with his trajectory from centre to right, as wealth accrued. I don’t think the majority in the UK are anything but socialist or social democrat, but successive governments have done their worst to change that. Starmer & Co are just another authoritarian bunch in a country with no means (outside of PR) to change direction. Profoundly depressing.
Interesting the Enabler-In-Chief, Mitch McConnell, just went on record saying Trump is a ‘mistake,’ and that Trump has ‘destroyed our (Republican) Party.’ I mean, who ever thought Mitch McConnell and President Obama would end up singing from the same hymn sheet? Pity McConnell’s epiphany didn’t come roughly 16 years ago.
Genuine question; if elected, will Trump allow the following election in another 4 years ? I know that these things can be held , but extensively influenced by MSM or state restrictions on campaigning ( such as in Russia) but in the end, will he allow another election? Would he get away with cancelling one? Would there be significant resistance from within the US state? Or from the population? Would other non-Trumpist US conservatives distance themselves from outright fascism, unlike the German Christian Democrats in the ‘ 30s ?
Would all military and police leaders move in complete alliance with Trump’s wishes, as they did with Hitlers? Or are they not as totally “sewn-up” as we might fear?
Will Mexico and Canada just accept the situation, along with all the political refugees?
The thought of a Trump victory is horrifying. But it’s still all to play for (as long as we stay out of jail).
Trump also seriously damages your health, according to a Lancet Commission Report – https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/health-Trump-era