"Fascism Is the Banal Dream of Tiny Men and Deserves Its Place in the Sewage of History"

"Self-described socialists have made many mistakes. Some of these have been brutally tragic and ruthlessly genocidal. Authoritarian socialists like Stalin committed mass atrocities that serve as a chilling reminder of the horrors that can be inflicted by those mouthing well meaning platitudes.. But the ethical core of socialism remains inspiring because, in sharp contrast to fascism, it makes far greater demands of us. Socialists want a world where, even if everyone won't be happy, ordinary human misery will replace unnecessary suffering. This is a goal that is so ethically demanding we've yet to fully build a society that realizes it. Despite all the bombast about heroism and power, in the end fascism resonates because it appeals to our lowest instincts. It is so tempting to imagine one's self a dispossessed racial aristocrat, in part because that makes it so much easier to push aside all ethical demands that get in the way of our greed and lust for power. Fascists strive impotently for a bigness the shrunken aspirations of their soul can never reach."

Matt McManus at Current Affairs explains "Why Fascists Always Come for the Socialists First."

"Little Trumps"

"Our national crisis will not be correctly perceived, let alone solved, until we recognize that the root of the problem lies in that supposed repository of virtue, the American people. The prestige media's rote expeditions to rural diners in Iowa to discover the Real America are wearing distinctly thin at this juncture, because what lies at the core of Trump's support is a not-insignificant fraction of would-be totalitarians who possess the same mentality as those who lynched Black people in the Jim Crow South, mobbed Jews during Kristallnacht and beheaded professors during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution."

Mike Lofgren at Salon warns of an "America slid[ing] into totalitarianism."

"But They Disliked Democracy and Taxes and Regulation Far More"

"The aura of evil around the Nazis can make everything associated with them seem exotic and remote. It may be hard for us to imagine how respectable business leaders could enthusiastically support Hitler's election campaign. But their motives were mundane and familiar: pragmatism with a dash of ideological conviction."

Benjamin Hett at The New Republic argues that "[n]early a century later, many of our business leaders are blithely repeating the experiences of their German predecessors."

"The Label Now Seems Not Just Acceptable but Necessary"

"Like Hitler, among the first political leaders to master radio, Trump mastered electronic media like Twitter and won the support of America's largest television chain, Fox News. Like the fascist leaders Trump understood the deep disaffection of parts of society for traditional leaders and institutions, and he knew how to exploit a widespread fear of national division and decline. Like Hitler and Mussolini he knew how to pose as the only effective bulwark against an advancing Left, all the more fearful because it took on cultural forms unfamiliar to provincial rural America—feminism, Black Power, gay rights."

In a 2021 Newsweek article, Robert O. Paxton calls Donald Trump a fascist.

As does Will Saletan in The Bulwark.

And at The Bulwark, Gabriel Schoenfeld writes, "After all, it is Trump himself—and figures close to him—who for years now have been stoking the flames of discord in fascist-lite mode."

"What He Has Tapped into Is What the Founders Most Feared"

"This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called 'fascism.' Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. 'National socialism' was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.
"To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today."

Robert Kagan in a 2016 Washington Post article defines the threat from Donald Trump.

"Before 1945, the Analogical Reservoir Was More Abundantly Stocked"

"Even in the most obscure local papers, there were constant references to an extremely diverse array of historical figures from the classical era to the 20th century: Pharaoh Thutmose III, Alexander the Great, King Herod, Emperor Caligula, Attila the Hun, Richard III, Henry VIII, Guy Fawkes, Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Boulanger, and Benito Mussolini."

Gavirel Rosenfeld at The Atlantic explores "How Americans Described Evil Before Hitler."

"I'm Talking About His Rhetoric, Not His Actions"

"I think as far as his rhetorical strategy goes, it's very fascist. He's certainly not calling to impose equality. It certainly doesn't have any hints of communism or anything like that. He explicitly targets minority out-groups in calling them rape threats with regularity, which has the psychological effect of creating an association between immigrants and crime.
"He regularly lies. He creates this connection between himself and his supporters with that technique of lying. Because it's this kind of 'Us against them,' rather than truth or falsity. He's harsh, but he's harshly patriarchal. He's very much the strongman. His values are social Darwinism. You don't find that in communist authoritarianism. You find him talking about winners and losers, and it's all about winning, and he's the biggest winner. He does hit all the classic fascist tropes, I have to say."

Isaac Chotiner at Slate interviews Jason Stanley, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

"Echoes Some of the Broader, More Malign Attempts at Historical Falsification Abroad at Present"

"So if the Nazis were so obviously anti-socialist, and believed so ardently in the virtues of private property and entrepreneurship, and if socialists were among the earliest and hardest hit victims of the Nazi party prior to the Second World War, why is Hitler being proclaimed by some as a socialist?"

Matthew Fitzpatrick and A. Dirk Moses at Australia's ABC explain the conundrum.

"But in the End, People Find in Nietzsche's Work What They Went into It Already Believing"

"People often say that the Nazis loved Nietzsche, which is true. What's less known is that Nietzsche's sister, who was in charge of his estate after he died, was a Nazi sympathizer who shamefully rearranged his remaining notes to produce a final book, The Will to Power, that embraced Nazi ideology. It won her the favor of Hitler, but it was a terrible disservice to her brother’s legacy.
"Nietzsche regularly denounced anti-Semitism and even had a falling-out with his friend Richard Wagner, the proto-fascist composer, on account of Wagner's rabid anti-Semitism. Nietzsche also condemned the 'blood and soil' politics of Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman who unified Germany in 1871, for cementing his power by stoking nationalist resentments and appealing to racial purity."

At Vox, Sean Illing explains "what the alt-right gets right and wrong about their favorite philosopher."

"Lego Renderings of Crematoria and Barracks"

"This week, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland, announced on its website that it has acquired Libera's concentration camp creations. The museum said it purchased the artwork on Dec. 30 from a Norwegian art collector for 55,000 euros, or approximately $71,800. The museum described the pieces as 'one of the most important works of contemporary Polish art.'"

A 2012 Los Angeles Times article by David Ng discusses the most controversial Lego set of all time.

Light & Noir

"The threat of Nazism catalyzed the wealthiest Jews of Los Angeles to political action. Beginning in March 1934 and continuing through the end of World War II, the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee convened every Friday to hear reports from informants on escalating Nazi activity in the city and to deliberate on their response.
"It took Lewis six long months to secure the funding. In doing so, he bridged a social chasm between the city's Jewish community and an unlikely political partner, the city's veterans, and transformed those former soldiers into 'Hollywood's spies.'"

The LA Weekly runs an excerpt of Laura B. Rosenzweig's Hollywood Spies: The Undercover Surveillance of Nazis in Los Angeles.

"We Should Not Help Them"

"In a related but more general sense, it is precisely the aim of fascistic groups to shift the basis of civic dialog, space and politics from law to violence. To put it another way, they are trying to shift the basis of society and power from law, voting, equality to force, violence and the domination of the most powerful. And in this case we mean power as expressed by the superior ability to wield violence. Once we've moved from one to the other, fascists have to a significant degree already won. The Nazis and white supremacists are literally trying to create a 'both sides' situation."

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo asks, "Should We Be Punching Nazis?"

"They Said in Effect: Political Violence Is a Line We Won't Cross"

"After Olympia, Rothermere and the Daily Mail also withdrew open support and the rest of the British press effectively boycotted Mosley, reporting only the continued violence that broke out at subsequent rallies but not details of his speeches. Newspapers that had previously been sympathetic—often catering to a public taste for appeasement of Hitler—changed their tune. British Blackshirts were branded as thugs.
"That also made attending Mosley’s meetings much less comfortable for MPs and government ministers. It was only after this shift in the way fascists were treated in the press and in political discourse that the realities of the Nazi threat finally penetrated the British public, helping them to coalesce behind the war when it broke out in 1939."

Katherine Pickering Antonova at The Washington Post explains "[h]ow the British defeated homegrown fascism."

The Proto-Alt Right

"In the years before the outbreak of World War II, people of German ancestry living abroad were encouraged to form citizens groups to both extol 'German virtues,' around the world, and to lobby for causes helpful to Nazi Party goals."

Alan Taylor at The Atlantic provides photos of the German American Bund of the 1930s.

"A Self-Obsessed 'Clown' with a Strangely 'Scattershot, Impulsive Style'"

"He peppered his speeches with coarse phrases and put-downs of hecklers. Even as he fomented chaos by playing to crowds' fears and resentments, he offered himself as the visionary leader who could restore law and order."

Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times reviews Volker Ullrich's Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.

"We Engaged Him for Our Ends"

"Ullrich has strong feelings about the way Hitler came to power in January 1933, enthroned by a 'sinister plot' of stupid elite politicians just at the moment when the Nazis were at last losing strength. It didn't have to happen. He constantly reminds his readers that Hitler didn't reach the chancellorship by his own efforts, but was put there by supercilious idiots who assumed they could manage this vulgarian.

Neal Ascherson in the London Review of Books reviews Volker Ullrich's Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.

"The Heartbreak Is What Lingers Longest"

"The title comes from Albert Camus. Men learned in Spain, the French novelist wrote sadly, that 'one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, and that there are times when courage is not rewarded.'"

Bob Drogin in the Los Angeles Times reviews Adam Hochschild's Spain Is in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939.

Spot Pop Melts in the Air

The New York Times publishes obits for car salesman Cal Worthington, soundman Ray Dolby, journalist Lansing Lamont, academic Marshall Berman, and Hitler bodyguard Rochus Misch.

And the San Francisco Chronicle reports the death of the Professor of Pop, Andrew Goodwin.

"Nazis Were All but Invisible in American Movies at the Time When Depicting Their Savagery Might Have Done the Most Good"

"In the end it was Jack Warner who brought the rest of Hollywood on board. By using the techniques of 'March of Time,' he was able to blend melodrama, agitprop and a remedial history lesson into the Warners production 'Confessions of a Nazi Spy.' The film made it through the censor boards and onto American screens in the spring of 1939, only a few months before the outbreak of war in Europe. By then, as Doherty pointedly notes, even the most optimistic of Hollywood’s businessmen had concluded that Nazi Germany was no longer a viable outlet for American movies, and was unlikely to be so again for the foreseeable future."

Dave Kehr in The New York Times reviews Thomas Doherty's Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939.

"Approaches 1"

"I was entering into the online world pretty deeply in the eighties, and I was offended by how glibly these comparisons came up—almost invariably inappropriately. My feeling was that the more people got into this habit, the less likely that people remembered the historical context of all this. And as you know, one of the injunctions of Holocaust historians is that we must never forget, we have to remember. And I just thought, Well, I’m going to do a little experiment and see if I could make people remember."

Dan Amira at New York talks with Mike Godwin about the eponymous internet law.