Chapter 1
Summary by James R. Martin, Ph.D., CMA
Professor Emeritus, University of South Florida
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Chapter 1: Liberalism in Crisis: What is Fascism and Where Does it Come from? by Geoff Eley
Fascism gained more interest from historians and other scholars in the early 2000s. The racialization of western European politics fueled by the growing migrancy in the 1990s provided the impetus, and left-wing opponents used the antiNazi and antiracist language to criticize the movement. The term fascist/Islamist also began to be used for the militant Islamist politics of Al Qaeda, and the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The advocates of the War on Terror viewed radical Islamic behavior as similar to Nazi hatred for the Jews. Fascism had become a free-floating derogatory term on both the left and the right, e.g., liberal fascism, Islamo-fascism. In the U.S., the Tea Party movement moved the Republican Party further to the right, and mass shootings exposed additional far-right ideology and affiliations. Along with these developments, the right's nightmare of an invasion of refugees, asylum-seekers, migrants, and others provided further support for a militantly racialized nationalism. A surge in hate crimes, verbal abuse, physical assaults, trolling, arson, bombings, murder, and intimidation shaped the prevailing sociopolitical climate.
Fascism in the Global Interwar
By 2016 the term fascism was used by Democrats who were worried about the new Trump presidency. However, the term fascism was only rarely used as a carefully informed argument or conceptual claim. It was a vague descriptive term equating fascism to dictatorship, authoritarianism, or tyranny with core symptoms of extreme nationalism, political intolerance, attacks on constitutional democracy, propaganda, and erosion of democracy's safeguards. Some have argued that we need a properly comparative and historical perspective contrasting the era of classical fascism (1922-1939) with the present period. Another approach is to use Max Weber's three forms of rule including the charismatic, the patrimonial, and the bureaucratic. For Trump, his administration was like a household with very little distinction between the public and his own private interest. It included arbitrary personalistic excess, patronage, nepotism, and shallowness of the governing competence available to his administration. Trump had no ideology or cause for his followers to commit to when he left office.
The circumstances in the 1918-1922 period are very different from those of today and this makes it difficult to compare the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler with our measure of fascism today. What is needed is to make the appropriate distinctions that separate fascists from others on the right and justify using the term along with the contexts that provides fascists with popularity and a credible claim on power. We need to isolate the characteristics of fascism and separate those that do not depend on the circumstances of a specific time and place.
Fascism Then, Fascism Now
Fascism began in many different places including East Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. They had similar political dynamics, ideological outlooks, and practices although there were multiple forms, and strategies. Fascism had no principles comparable to liberalism or conservatism or previously formed political ideologies. Fascism needs to be defined by its politics to be usable across different times and places, e.g., its' hatreds and negativities, its' practices, its' activist preference for violence over civility, and argument over debate. In 1918 fascism became an extreme political remedy with authoritarian rule, militarized activism, and enforced conformity with a radical-nationalist, imperialist, and racialist creed. It was a new fascist ensemble of coercive forms of rule, guns rather than words, and assaulting and killing one's opponents rather than debating them.
A Portable Definition
Fascism (either left-wing or right-wing) can be recognized by the following characteristics:
1. Fascists want to silence and even murder their opponents rather than argue with them.
2. Fascists prefer an authoritarian state over democracy.
3. Fascists promote an aggressive exclusionary idea of nationalism over a pluralism that values and prioritizes difference.
Can we detect any of these characteristics in the current environment? Critical readings of Trump's rhetoric from Twitter and Fox News phone-ins show explicitly fascist or neo-Nazi tropes, ideas, and a vocabulary of anti-politics from the twentieth-century German history. Trump also aligned himself with a far-right constituency including Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller who style themselves consciously as fascist. Trump's 2017 public statement that there were "very fine people on both sides" following the physical violence between white supremacist and antiracist in Chartottesville Virginia provides another example. Trump's statement was seen as a white nationalist endorsement. Trump's endorsement of violence on January 6, 2021 provides another example (see Trump's Seven Part Plan to overturn the 2020 election in the related summaries below). Based on the idea that fascism requires a mobilized politics of antidemocratic political violence aimed at dismantling the democratic frameworks of institutions, procedures and laws, Trumpism comes threatingly close.
A Warning for the Present
In this section Eley describes the events and crises that led to the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s. These included a paralysis of governance, nonaccountable banking and finance, economic protectionalism, and a generalized climate of social fear. More radical solutions appeared to be needed.
The Fascism-Producing Crisis
What is distinctive about the current crisis and the politics it motivates? First, after 2010 there has been an escalated weakening of democratic practices in the state including inside the legislature and in the relations with the presidency, Senate/Congress, and Supreme Court. There have also been increased attacks on voting rights, voting access, and the conduct of elections. Many view government as only a burden involving corruption, incompetence, and nonaccountability controlled by conspiracies of elites. In addition we have deindustrialization, neoliberal globalization, the global environmental catastrophe, particularly climate change, and worsening international instability. The increasing effects of environmental deterioration will include more competition among nations for basic resources and mass refugee populations will flee endemic shortages. These effects will lead to stronger appeals to nativism and protectionist barriers, and continue to drive the authoritarian and violent inclinations of government. These effects are also driven further by Trump's white nationalism, shameless racist dog whistling and sloganeering, e.g., America First, MAGA, etc. In addition, deindustralization and the resulting elimination of earlier well-paid, long-term, secure and somewhat rewarding jobs helps explain the appeal of Trumpism.
Conclusion
In 2016, the Trump administration had no overall plan other than the general goals of radical deregulation, drastically reducing the civil state, revising the tax laws, dismantling Obamacare, packing the judiciary, overturning Roe v. Wade, and assaulting public goods. However, as the administration continued, Trump's authoritarianism, and personal despotism emerged to reveal maximizing executive power as the evolving plan driven by ideologies from people like Steven Miller and Betsy De Vos.
The crisis that developed included the following elements: The Trump presidency and Senate both vacated the space of governing with no cross-branch good-faith conversation or policymaking exchange or collaboration. The Trump administration was united only by indifference to the established rules and practices. Political paralysis and incoherence during COVID-19 undermined public confidence in the government's competence and reliability. The Black Lives Matter movement, and George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis confronted the Trump administration for solutions. Trump deployed troops on the streets, assaulted citizens, kidnapped protesters, and used an array of counter-insurgency weapons and techniques. Trump's rhetoric consistently escalated the tensions by demonizing protesters as criminals, and threatening to mobilize the U.S. military to suppress demonstrations. Far-right militias and para-military groups (e.g., Proud Boys, Oath Keepers) produced a significant counter-mobilization. Although confrontational escalations and executive measures to preserve public order are not unusual, a U.S. president's behavior including inciting the staging of armed protests against lawfully issued state-level law-and-order measures, race-bating demagogy, and white nationalist rabble-rousing came closer than ever to a fascist breach. These events were followed by the January 6, 2021 far-right fascist consummation: an insurrection that invaded the U.S. Congress with deadly intentions.
Today the anxiety about borders, foreigners, illegal migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and other interlopers drives right-wing movements. As the global ecological catastrophe continues to worsen, the geopolitical rivalries will escalate. Current fascist facilitators include a far-reaching collapse of publicness, civility, a pluralist generosity in a common culture, and a normative set of practices that are reliably democratic. All of these collapses together call for a different set of authoritarian political interventions than before.
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Related summaries:
Anonymous. 2019. A Warning: A Senior Trump Administration Official. Twelve: Hachette Book Group. (Summary).
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Policies of a Second Trump Presidency.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Shepard Fairey Political Posters.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Summary of Trump's Seven Part Plan to Overturn the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Summary of what Trump is and what he is not.
Martin, J. R. Not dated. Why I vote for Democrats.
Oser, J. 1963. The Evolution of Economic Thought. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. (Summary).
Stanley, J. 2018. How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Random House. (Summary).
Unger, C. 2018. House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia. Dutton. (Note).