In need of a new lexicon
"Fascism" doesn't work today.
When launching History As It Happens in early 2021, one of my aims was to address the widespread ignorance and confusion concerning basic political and philosophical concepts. In American political discourse, such as it is, terms such as socialism and fascism are thrown around like salt and pepper on stew. I can recall when right-wingers called Barack Obama both a socialist and a fascist. That’s quite a trick!
With this educational mission in mind, one of the first episodes I produced was Understanding Fascism with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat who has cultivated a large social media following by warning us of the dangers of creeping authoritarianism in the U.S. and abroad. My view today is the same as it was in February 2021 when I interviewed her: Donald Trump is not a fascist, let alone a Nazi. MAGA Republicans are not fascists and any fascist movement in the United States exists on the extreme margins of political life. The number of avowedly fascist politicians who hold elected office in this country at any level of government is close to zero.
Anyone who thought the fascism debate would die down during the Biden presidency must be disappointed by now. Donald Trump’s persistent presence in electoral politics and the legal system – the probability that he will be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee once more despite or because of his alleged lawbreaking – provides the ammunition for historians like Timothy Snyder or commentators like Rachel Maddow to keep sounding the fascism alarm. For an excellent dismantling of Maddow’s tendentious history lessons, read this piece in Dissent by Norman Lichtenstein. To understand how Snyder abuses the history of the 1930s, listen to my interview with Cathal Nolan (Dec. 2022).
Most people can see that there is indeed a crisis of global dimensions afflicting liberal democracy (although it can be easy to overstate the magnitude of the crisis, too). There is little consensus on a diagnosis. Is our problem American Fascism? Is Putin a fascist? How should we label Orban, Xi, Erdogan, the ayatollahs in Iran (Islamo-fascism?!?), the Taliban, Hamas, Israel’s far right, Kim in North Korea, the junta in Myanmar, or any autocrat or wannabe dictator who is trying to hollow out (or destroy) liberal democracy?
In Tuesday’s episode, historian Roger Griffin of Oxford Brookes University, an accomplished scholar of fascism and political movements, ranges far and wide as he makes sense of today’s chaos. Simply put, fascism is too specific – too narrow – a term to encapsulate the authoritarian, anti-liberal, anti-democratic regimes and movements of our time – this retrenchment from openness and tolerance of the other. To start, fascism is a revolutionary ideology. Its adherents seek to overturn the existing political and cultural orders. Is Viktor Orban a revolutionary? He seems quite happy winning Hungary’s democratic elections while redefining along ethnic and racial lines what it means to be a real Hungarian, as Griffin explains in our discussion.
Sure, the MAGA mob on Jan. 6, 2021, looked like it was trying to pull off a fascist-style coup, but Donald Trump has no systematic, coherent ideology. Trump is not trying to create a “new America” based on a historic national myth. Rather, he is promising to return his followers to some nebulous state when “America was great.”
As Griffin put it: “Trump is mentally incapable of serious engagement with any sort of political ideology. He literally can’t be asked, as we say in English. It is very clear from his so-called style of government that he’s absolutely uninterested in the detail, in the paperwork, in the implications… in ideological coherence, in anything, really,” said Griffin. “He’s just improvising. He’s bluffing. He’s a con-man” who communicates in a way that on a psychological level deeply connects with his supporters.
An author of many books on fascism, Griffin has coined a new term to define the shared characteristics of today’s strongmen: incurvation. When a nation curves in on itself, it rejects the tenets of liberalism, such as tolerance of migrants, the legitimacy of one’s political opponents, the authority and expertise of international bodies like the U.N. or E.U., and artistic and academic freedom. Incurvation is not a political ideology. Most people may never use it in a sentence. Listen to our conversation to see if you find Griffin’s idea convincing.
Why Skokie matters
The recent turmoil over free expression and antisemitism (real or perceived) on college campuses got me thinking about Skokie, Illinois again. When it comes to the issue of free speech, Skokie is never far from my mind. I watched a documentary about what happened in 1977 in the Chicago suburb in either high school or college. It left a lasting impression. Indeed, the Skokie controversy may have been the single most important case in influencing my absolutist position on free speech. It’s the one I bring up when I inevitably find myself arguing with someone who doesn’t understand what free means in free speech.
In Thursday’s episode, Nico Perrino of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) talks about Skokie’s enduring importance at a time of increasing hostility to free expression across the American political spectrum. Some of this hostility is understandable, given what happened when white supremacists marched in Charlottesville in 2017 and what is alleged to be happening today on college campuses.
At a congressional hearing in December, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik grilled university presidents about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates their policies on student conduct and harassment. Stefanik painted a false image of pro-Hamas partisans marauding around campuses threatening to kill Jews. While there may have been isolated instances of such vulgarity, most campus demonstrations involved students protesting Israel’s destruction of Gaza by holding large rallies or marches. Chants and slogans like “free Palestine,” “river to the sea,” or “intifada” are, in the eyes of some people, antisemitic and/or threatening. Some demonstrators may be antisemitic. Some may (or may not) call for violence: the First Intifada of 1987 was largely peaceful; the Second Intifada that began in 2000 was a violent uprising. Intifada is not genocide.
Point is, free expression – whether protected by the First Amendment or university policy – means the freedom to state unpopular, offensive ideas. But educational institutions are moving in the wrong direction. My colleague at The Washington Times Sean Salai filed this report on the dismal state of campus speech codes.
In 1977, the National Socialist Party of America wanted to hold a rally in Skokie because it was home to thousands of Holocaust survivors. Cruel? Yes. Illegal? No. The ACLU correctly argued that the U.S. Constitution protects unpopular speech, no matter how offensive it may be to the potential audience. Nothing has changed since 1977 to undermine the fundamental correctness of this position.
“Very few are the people who understand that free speech needs to be applied to their enemies as well as to themselves,” said Perrino. “People have a natural instinct to censor, to shut up the people they disagree with. But one of the ways that civilization came into existence is through free speech, is through mediating our differences through words, not violence.”
What’s next?
I’ve got a lot on my plate these days – but that’s a good thing. You should be excited, too. Sean Wilentz will return to the podcast to discuss the case against Trump. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Feb. 8 concerning state-level efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot based on Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Also coming up in February, Holocaust historian Christian Goeschel will discuss the powerful, Oscar-nominated film “The Zone of Interest,” about the Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolph Hoess.
I’m also working on a two-episode series marking the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Plus, it’s the 60th anniversary of “Dr. Strangelove,” a film that grows more timely with age.