Nice job of drawing a lot of threads together, John. I guess an obvious thing to note about prof. Robin's position is that it seems to assume that the American right has already bottomed out and has finished its effort to demolish the constitutional/even nominal democratic state. If that's the argument, it should be demonstrated, not assumed.
Personally, I'm quite comfortable using fascism as a general term of convenience which doesn't require anything like exact institutional correspondence with historical fascism. Even Mussolini's original "fasci di combattimento" weren't particularly "fascist" compared with genocidal Nazism. There are as many "fascisms" since the original Italian version as there are "democracies" (the US and Denmark are both democracies, but there are innumerable social, cultural and institutional differences that define them) although, to my knowledge, none apart from Italian fascism actually labelled itself as such.
0.) I, as before, go back to Eco's masterful "Ur-Fascism, or Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Brownshirt". Trumpism fits that description nigh-perfectly, except for the actual absence, pacem Thiel and other Silicon Valley types, of an _ideological_ commitment to The Modern coëxisting with toxic nostalgia. In this, Trumpism is closer to simple paleoconservatism, which in turn is distinct from fascism by its at-least-claimed abhorrence of military adventure. …though I'll believe that when I see it, noting again that when Trump was asked on the 2016 campaign trail what he'd do if other countries didn't _want_ to agree to trade terms disadvantageous to them, his response was a simple 'We‘ll _make_ them.'. Given his rhetoric of violence from his head-bumping prescription to the police to his suggestion of 'Second Amendment solutions' in case Sec. Clinton won in 2016 to his desire to bomb Iran to his speech of 2021-01-06 I can't see him _not_ preferring military solution whenever possible. (Shorter: 'Brute likes brute force.'.)
More generally, as I think you imply, those of us unsympathetic with American conservatism may have an easier time not seeing a contradiction between Trumpism being fascistic and it representing a recrudescence of more traditional, American, reaction. I can't cite the chapter, but I've just heard a bit of Daniel Okrent's "Last Call" in which he mentions a fairly powerful Republican in the 1920s who thought the greatest enemy of America! to be those seeking any expansion of the franchise, or of actual voting by those possessed of it, or any political influence by non-elites generally. (Loud, orchestrated, assent can be different to formative influence.)
1.) As perhaps was your very point, the power of sub-majorities in our system and others makes Fascism's supposed requirement for majoritarianism irrelevant. Maybe Trumpism can never get the (say) 30% 40% 20% fanaticism/{qualified acceptance}/{pained acquiescence} I think the Nazis had, but why would he need it? Similarly, why need masses of disgruntled, organised, veterans when 25% of our population could kill the rest of us not in the Armed Forces tomorrow morning if they really felt like it? There's a reason They love automatic rifles, and its not just their engineered status as a 'cultural weapon'.
Cooper/Wyman's category of the local gentry, or family-dominated businesses, has me thinking of another under-discussed category: what I've called the "buccaneering capitalist," a figure that's been pivotal to both Brexit in the U.K. and Trumpism in the U.S.
So in the U.K. you see someone like James Dyson, the vacuums guy, being highly supportive of Brexit (and later moving factories to Singapore, natch) whereas conventional British businesses being, "this is a terrible idea."
That's a very clean example. But the U.S. has several piquant examples also. The business history of the U.S. since the 1970s or so is of individual executives becoming more highly constrained -- less likely to be able to do whatever the heck they want -- and instead being asked to lead focused, disciplined companies that defer to the stock markets' whims. Everywhere, of course, except for Silicon Valley.
In Silicon Valley-inflected companies, the idea is to avoid being bureaucratic, hierarchical companies. No unions -- they just interfere with brilliant engineers. (See Tom Wolfe's Bob Noyce profile for greater historical color.) And the key figure is the visionary founder, who keeps things from becoming too process-oriented. Hence all the stories of Steve Jobs imperiously demanding, like, the bevel on the iPhone be a quarter-inch smaller or whatever.
The practical expression of this trend was to create "dual-class" companies, where founders' stocks -- and votes -- counted for more than other shareholders'. In its most extreme form, it's something like Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg is dictator-for-life.
Unsurprisingly, probably, the key figureheads of these sort of firms -- Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Andreessen, etc. -- are the most loudly against liberal and leftist political trends these days. Even someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who bankrolls pro-immigration and other causes, seems torn.
This sort of trend might turn: with the blowups of Travis Kalanick and Adam Neumann, we may see financiers demand more institutional constraints on their god-emperor founders. As the joke goes with crypto, we're really seeing a lot of techie types re-discovering why governance is good.
I'm convinced Trump represents what RG Swing called "pre-fascism," the pratfalling, hey-just-joking warm-up act that desensitizes the public to fascist ideas and normalizes saying fascist stuff out loud, paving the way for the real fascists to obtain power.
Humor, and the introduction of ideas under the cover of Unseriousness, has always been essential to making far-right ideas palatable. Trump as farce, the next one for real.
If the response to fascism is a Popular Front, what is the correct response to Ceasarism? I always thought the fascism debate on the left was often a proxy debate for: should we or should we not be part of a Popular Front? Not that the left has much power compared to the French left of 1934.
Nice job of drawing a lot of threads together, John. I guess an obvious thing to note about prof. Robin's position is that it seems to assume that the American right has already bottomed out and has finished its effort to demolish the constitutional/even nominal democratic state. If that's the argument, it should be demonstrated, not assumed.
Personally, I'm quite comfortable using fascism as a general term of convenience which doesn't require anything like exact institutional correspondence with historical fascism. Even Mussolini's original "fasci di combattimento" weren't particularly "fascist" compared with genocidal Nazism. There are as many "fascisms" since the original Italian version as there are "democracies" (the US and Denmark are both democracies, but there are innumerable social, cultural and institutional differences that define them) although, to my knowledge, none apart from Italian fascism actually labelled itself as such.
0.) I, as before, go back to Eco's masterful "Ur-Fascism, or Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Brownshirt". Trumpism fits that description nigh-perfectly, except for the actual absence, pacem Thiel and other Silicon Valley types, of an _ideological_ commitment to The Modern coëxisting with toxic nostalgia. In this, Trumpism is closer to simple paleoconservatism, which in turn is distinct from fascism by its at-least-claimed abhorrence of military adventure. …though I'll believe that when I see it, noting again that when Trump was asked on the 2016 campaign trail what he'd do if other countries didn't _want_ to agree to trade terms disadvantageous to them, his response was a simple 'We‘ll _make_ them.'. Given his rhetoric of violence from his head-bumping prescription to the police to his suggestion of 'Second Amendment solutions' in case Sec. Clinton won in 2016 to his desire to bomb Iran to his speech of 2021-01-06 I can't see him _not_ preferring military solution whenever possible. (Shorter: 'Brute likes brute force.'.)
More generally, as I think you imply, those of us unsympathetic with American conservatism may have an easier time not seeing a contradiction between Trumpism being fascistic and it representing a recrudescence of more traditional, American, reaction. I can't cite the chapter, but I've just heard a bit of Daniel Okrent's "Last Call" in which he mentions a fairly powerful Republican in the 1920s who thought the greatest enemy of America! to be those seeking any expansion of the franchise, or of actual voting by those possessed of it, or any political influence by non-elites generally. (Loud, orchestrated, assent can be different to formative influence.)
1.) As perhaps was your very point, the power of sub-majorities in our system and others makes Fascism's supposed requirement for majoritarianism irrelevant. Maybe Trumpism can never get the (say) 30% 40% 20% fanaticism/{qualified acceptance}/{pained acquiescence} I think the Nazis had, but why would he need it? Similarly, why need masses of disgruntled, organised, veterans when 25% of our population could kill the rest of us not in the Armed Forces tomorrow morning if they really felt like it? There's a reason They love automatic rifles, and its not just their engineered status as a 'cultural weapon'.
Cooper/Wyman's category of the local gentry, or family-dominated businesses, has me thinking of another under-discussed category: what I've called the "buccaneering capitalist," a figure that's been pivotal to both Brexit in the U.K. and Trumpism in the U.S.
So in the U.K. you see someone like James Dyson, the vacuums guy, being highly supportive of Brexit (and later moving factories to Singapore, natch) whereas conventional British businesses being, "this is a terrible idea."
That's a very clean example. But the U.S. has several piquant examples also. The business history of the U.S. since the 1970s or so is of individual executives becoming more highly constrained -- less likely to be able to do whatever the heck they want -- and instead being asked to lead focused, disciplined companies that defer to the stock markets' whims. Everywhere, of course, except for Silicon Valley.
In Silicon Valley-inflected companies, the idea is to avoid being bureaucratic, hierarchical companies. No unions -- they just interfere with brilliant engineers. (See Tom Wolfe's Bob Noyce profile for greater historical color.) And the key figure is the visionary founder, who keeps things from becoming too process-oriented. Hence all the stories of Steve Jobs imperiously demanding, like, the bevel on the iPhone be a quarter-inch smaller or whatever.
The practical expression of this trend was to create "dual-class" companies, where founders' stocks -- and votes -- counted for more than other shareholders'. In its most extreme form, it's something like Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg is dictator-for-life.
Unsurprisingly, probably, the key figureheads of these sort of firms -- Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Andreessen, etc. -- are the most loudly against liberal and leftist political trends these days. Even someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who bankrolls pro-immigration and other causes, seems torn.
This sort of trend might turn: with the blowups of Travis Kalanick and Adam Neumann, we may see financiers demand more institutional constraints on their god-emperor founders. As the joke goes with crypto, we're really seeing a lot of techie types re-discovering why governance is good.
I'm convinced Trump represents what RG Swing called "pre-fascism," the pratfalling, hey-just-joking warm-up act that desensitizes the public to fascist ideas and normalizes saying fascist stuff out loud, paving the way for the real fascists to obtain power.
Humor, and the introduction of ideas under the cover of Unseriousness, has always been essential to making far-right ideas palatable. Trump as farce, the next one for real.
If the response to fascism is a Popular Front, what is the correct response to Ceasarism? I always thought the fascism debate on the left was often a proxy debate for: should we or should we not be part of a Popular Front? Not that the left has much power compared to the French left of 1934.