HAVANA (AP) — Four Russian warships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, will arrive in Havana next week, Cuban officials said Thursday, citing “historically friendly relations”…
Let me remind you that Robert Paxton has now reached a point where he argues that trumpism constitutes a form of fascism in the US and that under Trump the US was fascist in a way it wasn't before and after. So the idea that his definition and understanding of fascism is an inherently very narrow one is just pointless.
Robert Paxton argued that fascism comes from a specific confluence of events in which the traditional elite relies on a radical right wing to maintain their power due to having lost legitimacy or needing power to suppress the left, forming a coalition between traditional stake holders in the state (Like capitalists, clergy, nobility, what have you. In the Russian case this would be the capitalist class who bought out the state during the shock doctrine) and right wing nationalism which tends towards a mass movement character. This movement co-opts the popularity of the movement into a suppression of "actual democracy" (Really liberal bourgeois dictatorship of course) and maintains power by balancing the powers of the coalitions.
This movement then either decays into generic "authoritarian" rule under the traditional elite, or is increasingly radicalized towards genocidal redemptive violence.
Russia of course decayed into oligarchic fascist rule by the traditional power brokers.
Robert Paxton has now reached a point where he argues that trumpism constitutes a form of fascism in the US and that under Trump the US was fascist in a way it wasn't before and after
This is an awful take. He thinks Trump was exceptionally different from prior U.S. presidents (by a way other than his rhetoric), that we voted fascism out, but that Genocide Joe is not fascist?
This is an awful take. He thinks Trump was exceptionally different from prior U.S. presidents (by a way other than his rhetoric),
Yes. He does. Which is why I think it's not useful to say that his definition of fascism is uniquely restrictive.
I have a suspicion that my interlocutor, given their focus on Francoist Spain was actually thinking of Stanley Payne who does have a very restrictive definition of fascism that specifically excludes francoism... because he is a francoist.
I'll address your other bigger point because it is actually worth addressing, I just saw this first.
Trump's incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 removes my objection to the fascist label. His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary. It is made even more plausible by comparison with a milestone on Europe's road to fascism—an openly fascist demonstration in Paris during the night of February 6, 1934.
You’re lying again.
Here’s a link to the article you cited but didn’t link because you’re such a dishonest fucking hack.
Paxton hasn’t changed his opinion AT ALL you fucking liar. He didn’t magically make his definition of fascism more broad and inclusive like you are dishonestly presenting here.
He applied his exclusive definition and pointed specifically to inciting public violence to work along side his political movement. How does that apply to Putin you dishonest hack?
In what sense at all has Paxton “reached the point” of changing his definition as defined in that book you haven’t read when finally removing his resistance to calling Trump fascist in light of specifically Jan 6th?
You’re pretending Paxton has shifted to a broad and inclusive definition of fascism and he absolutely has not you liar. If you had read anatomy of fascism then you wouldn’t have claimed what you just did.
No I don't think I have pretended that Robert Paxton sat down and decided to fully rewrite his work during the Trump years, that would have been dishonest. But that his own interpretation of what is considered fascist is broad enough to include Trump but not any previous US president, and that this constitutes a lack of rigor that he has adopted in part out of his own political opinions on Trump becoming sourer through his reign. Which is evident when you compare his first article and his second article.
I think you're just mad that I have demonstrated that I know what I'm talking about.
where he argues that trumpism constitutes a form of fascism
This is a fucking lie though. Paxton explicitly argued against equating Trumpism with fascism even in the article where he calls Trump a fascist and if you had read the book you cited and then pretended to have read you would understand why he called it an anatomy of fascism.
No it isn't. He also in the same breath where he points out that Trumpism has differences to traditional fascism point out htat Trump has differences to traditional fascism, but clarifies without making a distinction that the label is not only right but necessarily applied.
It's also of course right before he makes a specific comparison and equivalence between the fascist french veterans storming the parliament and the US protestors storming the capitol on January 6th.
Insults are not a substitute for an argument.
The incitement of public violence is explicitly makes Trump a fascist, to Paxton, and that’s entirely consistent with his book that you pretended to have read and means you were a dishonest hack to present this as though Paxton’s definition of exclusions and attributes is somehow some washy “fascism is a vibe” thing.
That’s not his definition at all, he’s all about line drawing, and he likes bright lines.
And citing books you haven’t read and then pretending to have read them and then saying “I proved I know what I’m talking about” when all you’re proving is that you haven’t read the book you pretended to have read is what makes you a fucking wanker and a hack.
I don't know how to respond to this except to say you're just not arguing with anything I've said, and in the process you've said a lot of stuff that's not true and quite obviously so?