Trump is an American Fascist. We Created Him.

Trump is not Putin's agent, but rather a home-grown American Fascist. A wake-up call for people like me who have read too much into the whole Putin-Trump bromance. I encourage everyone to take a few minutes and read this article through. In particular, take a little time and consider the methods Trump might use to get his way after being elected. A lack of imagination is part of what got us here. That, and complacency.

Masha Gessen wrote:

Trump is not a foreign agent. This gets me to the second common trope: that Trump is like Putin. Yes, he is. As Timothy Snyder has pointed out, Trump seems to want to be Putin: “Putin is the real world version of the person Trump pretends to be on television.” That may well flatter Putin. More to the point, Putin is on record as hating Hillary Clinton and blaming her for much of what ails Russia, so there is little reason to doubt that he would prefer to see Trump win the election. But that tells us nothing about his actual ability to influence the election or Trump himself. Trump is also like Mussolini and Hitler. All of them are fascist demagogues who emerged from their own cultures and catered to them. In fact, Trump is less like Putin, whose charisma is largely a function of the post to which he was accidentally appointed, than he is Mussolini or Hitler.

That's a great read. The section about imagination especially resonates.

One reason that the rest of the world is watching affairs in the USA with such trepidation is that for many history has made it all too easy to imagine the rise of tyranny, whether you're in Asia, Europe or Africa. We've all seen it and it looks a lot like what we're seeing over there. It's stunning that Russians didn't imagine it happening though, of all nations they should have been the most aware.

To claim Trump is an agent of Putin is ignorant, but his rise will benefit Putin, so I do believe that Russian agencies will do what they can to make it happen. Doesn't mean Trump is a a 'Siberian candidate.'

I'm also wondering if we are far enough away from WWII that many of the folks (the Great European Exiles as the article puts it) that escaped here to the US aren't around anymore, so the vanguard that typically took up arms against any type of facism isn't as large as it used to be.

I think an example closer to home is that California could not imagine that marriage equality would get repealed, and so they got complacent and then Prop 8 passed.

I also wonder how many folks couldn't imagine Zika making it's way stateside.

Something that's always seemed odd to me is the way that fascism in 20th C. Europe supported fascist regimes across boundaries. I mean, I get that they all were against internationalist communism, but beyond that, I struggle to see how you can have national friendships when your ideological core is about an ethno-cultural ingroup being better than all others.

wordsmythe wrote:

Something that's always seemed odd to me is the way that fascism in 20th C. Europe supported fascist regimes across boundaries. I mean, I get that they all were against internationalist communism, but beyond that, I struggle to see how you can have national friendships when your ideological core is about an ethno-cultural ingroup being better than all others.

The ideas about 'blood and soil'? Some other bunch of fascists might be a different ethno-cultural ingroup, but if

1) they're on the mythological soil of their own ethno-cultural ingroup, and not on yours;

and

2) they're not an ethno-cultural group you need to demonize to tell your own ugly fascist myths

two fascists can get along? That they can even point to each other as proof that there is an ideological alternative to not just international communism, but even to liberal democracies?

If the Axis had won WW2 I imagine that Japan and Germany would have been able to stay in good report with one another, they were quite far away and there areas of interest were very separate from one another.

I am far less sure that Germany and Italy wouldn't have come into conflict with one another.

I can see "we can get along, like neighbors who nod at each other if they're both outside at the same time." Doesn't it seem weird to be friendlier than that, though?

"We must band together to prevent all of these so-called 'progressive' nations from spreading propaganda that encourages all the things we hate together!"

ETA: Random game-related thing: think about things like emancipation in Civ having an effect on all nations. "You people make us look bad and breed discontent in our citizens with your ways, so we must stop that foreign influence."