Zip Dialog
Straight talk from a historian of fascism.
Many thousands of words have already been written and many more will be written by the liberal intelligentsia claiming that the 45th President of the United States is a fascist.
Among the first to make the charge after Trump’s triumph was the hyper-trendy Simon Schama, British TV historian and professor at Columbia University, who tweeted at dawn the day after the election: “This calamity for democracy will of course hearten fascists all over the world.” He then told Radio 4’s Today program that “democracy often brings fascists to power; it did in Germany in the 1930s.”
Later, he explained on BBC1’s Newsnight: “It is clear to me how we pussyfoot around the malodorous, toxic element of race, which has played an incredibly important part of this. Anti-Semitism has long been part of populism.”
The trouble is, Mr. Trump is not a fascist, let alone a Nazi. Calling him Donald Duck would be more accurate than calling him Donald Duce. As for Jews, if anything, he wants to defend them–from Muslims. It is also absurd to say that anti-Semitism is part of populism in general.
The main reason Mr. Trump is not a fascist is the most embarrassing of all, for liberals that is: He is not left-wing. When leftists call hate figures “fascists,” the leftists nearly always have more in common with fascism than their hate figures do. ...
I've previously read about this Simon Schama character that he has no real original accomplishments of his own, but is very skillful at packaging information for high-flown television entertainment in a way that makes what he is saying sound brilliant and profound.
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