reflectivepundit

Should We Fear Trump’s Fascist Rhetoric--or Not?

 

By Brigitte L. Nacos

One hundred years ago, in November 1923, Adolf Hitler marched with several thousand of the Nazi Party’s storm troopers to the center of Munich to forcefully take over the local and state governments as first step to win power in Berlin. The Munich Putsch failed but 21 persons were killed in the violent clash between Nazis and police and Reichswehr soldiers. Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to four years in prison. Behind bars, he wrote his manifesto “Mein Kampf.” After serving only nine months, he was released and resumed his role as undisputed leader of the Nazi Party. A decade later, in 1933, Hitler became German Chancellor and soon thereafter replaced the democratizing governmental system with a dictatorship of terror.

After losing the 2020 election, then President Donald Trump incited thousands of his supporters, among them violent far-right extremists, to march on January 6, 2021 to the U.S. Capitol and prevent the Congress to certify the Electoral College vote in favor of Joe Biden. In the violent clash between Trump supporters and Capitol Hill police four persons died. An injured police officer died later. Belatedly, this year, Trump was indicted on four criminal counts for his illegal efforts to stay in power. As president and more so thereafter the presumptive Republican nominee for next year’s presidential election has been outspoken about his views, such as on his disdain for democratic pluralism and his desire to violently persecute opponents.  

Recently, while rereading Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” my inevitable comparisons between Hitler’s and Trump’s rhetoric heightened my anxieties over a possible, if not likely, second Trump presidency. Hitler as the leader of a new minor party and Trump as sitting president failed pulling off their respective coup d’etats. But after those failures both became more ruthless in their written and spoken words.   

The rhetorical similarities between the two men’s rhetoric are striking and plentiful. In the following, I compare a few citations from Hitler’s manifesto that predicted his fascist ideology with Trump’s increasingly threatening rhetoric following the failed insurrection and during the current pre-primary phase of the 2024 presidential campaign.

To begin with, Hitler and Trump cast themselves as leaders with superior qualities. Trump has called himself not just smart but “a very stable genius.” He has often mentioned his uncle, a physicist at MIT, to emphasize the extraordinary gene pool in his family. Hitler wrote, “Human progress and human cultures are not founded by the multitude. They are exclusively the work of personal genius and personal efficiency.” He, of course, was the genius with the right to hold all power.

The two men share the claim that their rise to power was predestined and guided by the will of God. Hitler wrote, “I believe today my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator. In standing guard against the Jew I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.” He also claimed that the German people’s mission under his leadership was “designed…by the Creator.”  Hitler’s acolytes echoed their idols assertion. Trump, too, has spoken of being “The Chosen One.” Brad Pascale who managed his 2020 campaign, lauded Trump by tweeting, “Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation and only God could allow me to help.” And Trump’s current social media platform is full of tweets by his supporters and retweets by Trump that depict the former president as God-like.  

Hitler condemned democracy as a creature of Marxists and insisted that “the question of legality is only of secondary importance,” in case of an existential threat “when the employment of all possible resources” is justified. He wrote of the necessity to “destroy the parliamentary institution from within” and to “wipe out” the existing state which he called “the Jewish state.”

Similarly, the once again presidential candidate Trump has condemned not only the existing legal system but called for the “termination of the Constitution” and other “rules and regulations.” Recently, he said in a campaign speech, “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” he said, “They’ll do anything…to illegally, to destroy America…”

The Lesson of January 6: Violent Threats Can Lead to Violence

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Nearly 50 years ago, Hannah Arendt wrote in “On Violence” that “the practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.”

Drawing on a historical perspective and applying the lessons of the past to post-WWII politics Arendt’s conclusions hold true for today’s chaotic and frightening state of political affairs at home and abroad.

Take this week’s infighting in one of our two major political parties caused by Jim Jordan’s candidacy for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

News reports, comments, and analyses focused on Jordan’s fellow GOP members who voted against him and why. Lost in this exercise was that only about 10 percent—a very thin minority—refused to fall in line with the massive majority of MAGA Republicans who cast their votes in favor of the most radical far-right member of the House.

200 in the first and 199 Republicans in the second round voted for the one member of the Republican conference who was the closest ally of Donald Trump in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. To this day, he has refused to admit that Joe Biden won the election. Instead, he was and is pushing for the impeachment of the sitting president without impeachable facts.

To put it differently, about 90 percent of House Republicans voted for a January 6 insurrectionist to become Speaker of the House. No wonder that Donald Trump, the architect of the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021, endorsed Jim Jordan enthusiastically as Speaker of the House.

Like Trump, Jordan is a rhetorical bully. And aggressive rhetoric leads to aggressive and often violent actions.

Before and during the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, then Vice President Mike Pence received death threats. “Hang Mike Pence!” the insurrectionists screamed again and again.

This week, the pro-Jordan camp in the House and in the MAGA media made great efforts to steamroll their candidate into the speaker's office by publicly identifying and bullying Republicans who voted against Jordan. As a result, anti-Jordan Republicans became the targets of serious threats—including death threats.

As CNN reported

Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa said in a statement that she has “received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls” after flipping her speaker vote from Jordan on Tuesday to House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger on Wednesday. New York Rep. Nick LaLota, meanwhile, shared in a social media post a message he received that told him to “go f**k yourself and die.”

The plotted insurrection and coup of January 6 failed. But as Arendt concluded, “If goals [fought for violently] are not achieved rapidly, the results will not be merely defeat but the introduction of the practice of violence into the whole body politic.”

This week’s threats against anti-Jordan Republicans as well as Donald Trump’s regular attack rhetoric against anyone not loyal to him and his cult are disconcerting signs of the violent nature of MAGA/GOP politics.

All of this does not bode well for next year’s presidential and congressional campaigns and elections.

The Rules of War and the Israel-Hamas Conflict

By Brigitte L. Nacos

There are wars of choice and wars of necessity. Israel's military response to the deadly attacks against Israel a week ago was a war of necessity that justified actions to prevent further military intrusions in Israel’s South by Hamas and deter Hezbollah in the North from following the horrendous Hamas example.

The Hamas terrorists violated international law of war and human rights conventions that prohibit the targeting and killing of civilians or actions that likely will harm civilians.

Michael Walzer introduced the concept of “supreme emergency” in his thoughts about war. His argument is that in very rare cases, when a nation faces an existential threat, the targeting of civilians or disregarding the likely killing or injuring of civilian victims may be the only response to an existential threat. But when the supreme emergency does no longer exist, the rules of war must be followed again.

The initial Israeli bombardments directed against Hamas leaders and facilities that also killed Gazan civilians was justified under the supreme emergency doctrine.

But massive ground, air, and sea actions against Hamas do not fit into Walzer’s supreme emergency concept because at this point Israel is not threatened in an existential way. The implementation of the announced military actions would result in more civilian victims and thus be a violation of international conventions.

If Hezbollah enters the war, this would be an existential threat against Israel, a supreme emergency.

Israeli decision-makers should also consider the changing reactions in international traditional media coverage and social media content that might well affect public opinion and government policies abroad.

While the press in the West focused in the first hours and days after the surprise attack on October 7 exclusively on the brutality of the terrorist intruders and Israeli victims, their families, and all Israelis, more recently the suffering of civilians in Gaza dominated breaking news and commentaries. If massive air, sea, and ground actions cause "collateral damages," this will result in more images of Gazan victims in on- and offline media.

To be sure, Israel wants to destroy Hamas and its military capacity.

But to neutralize the leading strata of the organization and destroy its arsenal of weapons can only be achieved, when the whereabouts of Hamas leaders and their arms are known.

In that case, weaponized rockets and/or special forces can be deployed and perhaps even rescue hostages.

Religious Supremacists: The Terrorist Threat Against Israel—and Beyond

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Mourning the unspeakable murder spree by Hamas in Southern Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the that “Hamas is worse than ISIS.” When ISIS videotaped the decapitation or burning of hostages at the heights of its so-called Caliphate, some commentators said that “ISIS is worse than Al-Qaeda.”

Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas. They all are violent extremists, terrorists, who deliberately target civilians for political ends.

Hamas, the revitalized ISIS and Al-Qaeda networks, and similar entities use political grievances of the people in whose names their claim to commit violence to further their religious ideology and related political goals.

While their political objectives differ according to their origin, they all are religious zealots.

Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden drew his religious extremism from the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS was formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Hamas was a creation of the Egyptian Brotherhood. Unlike those three Sunni organizations, Hezbollah in Lebanon, a huge Shiite entity, was from the outset sponsored by Iran’s government that also supports Hamas.

Both Hamas and Hezbollah have one common objective: the destruction of the Jewish state.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS have far more ambitious and utopian goals, namely, the violent spread of their religion around the globe. As the self-proclaimed Caliph of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi told his terrorist fold, “Next step Constantinople, then Rome.”

The ISIS flags and Al-Qaeda texts found in possessions of Hamas terrorists after the massacre in Southern Israel revealed the shared inhumanity of all these religious supremacists.  

And there is another common denominator: Contrary to secular violent extremists who make great efforts to survive their own terrorist attacks, religious terrorists are not merely willing but eager to die and become martyrs. They die to kill.

Add to this the fact that Hamas is not the usual non-state terrorist outfit. Its military arm resembles a well-equipped guerrilla force that uses civilian Palestinians and hostages as human shields. If Israel decides in favor of moving a ground force into Gaza, IDF soldiers will have to fight a difficult urban war.  

And then there is the threat in the North of Israel: Hezbollah. Its military wing is far more powerful than Hamas, controls the South of Lebanon, has a huge number of missiles, and other sophisticated equipment.

While I am writing this post, I see this Yahoo headline on the screen: “Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza is ‘imminent,’ officials say.”

When this happens, one can only hope that this war ends soon and before it escalates.

 

 

GOP Nominates “David Duke Without Baggage” to Be House Speaker

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Nothing is surprising, when it comes to the Republican Party since most of the GOP establishment and membership bent their knees before Dear Leader Trump and the rest left because the party has left them.

When Steve Scalise, one of the founders of the super-conservative Freedom Caucus, and Jim Jordan, one of the most aggressive far-right performance artists in congress emerged as only competitors for  House Speaker, it was more depressing than surprising.

On Wednesday, the Republican conference picked Scalise to be Speaker. He still needs a majority in the full chamber to win the office. Jordan wasn't a better choice and that not only because he was endorsed by Donald Trump.

Years ago, Scalise characterized himself as “David Duke without baggage.” Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, was then and remains a well-known racist and anti-Semite. Not exactly the model for someone who might win a top position in one of America’s two major parties—unless that party is the vehicle for driving Trump again into the White House.

While Trump was president, former fringe White supremacist/neo-Nazi groups made their way into the political mainstream. The 2017 “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a major public effort to bring the so-called Alt-Right under one umbrella of extremists. “Jews will not replace us,” was the battle cry of the marchers who also singled out Black counter-protesters for vocal and physical attacks.

But that was merely a prelude.

Violent neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups and individuals were among the violent insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. Like those characters, Scalise still does not admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

Whether Scalise becomes the House Speaker or not, his nomination by the GOP conference is a disastrous decision--especially at a time, when Israel is under attack and violent incidents against Jewish Americans are on the rise.

His ascent to the House Speaker would be even more so.