Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University.
She knows a dictator when she sees one, and she explains what fascism is, with specific historical and contemporary examples, in the excellent question and answer video, above.
Ms. Ben-Ghiat also has a really good substack/blog.
Here is a bit from a recent post:
...Trump has worked hard for a decade now to encourage moral collapse among Americans. In 2016, two months after he boasted, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump raised the issue of changing collective behavior to favor violence and cruelty. "Part of the problem...is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore," he said when security guards treated protesters at a campaign rally too politely for his tastes.
The strongman’s goal is always to make his collaborators descend to his level, and Trump realized that “giving permission” to Republicans to be their worse selves was key to his domestication of the party. He made Republican elites complicit in his criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and then shocked them into submission on Jan. 6 by targeting them for physical harm...
Her stuff is very well worth a follow and I will get it, and a number of other new blogs/sources up on the crawl soon - it's just a bit of a pain these days as I have to dig into the creaky old blogger code to do it.
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8 comments:
The Trump coup d'etat, has been decades in the making, since the Kent State massacre. Kent State showed the USA's ugliness by an ill trained militia opening fire on students, murdering 4.
The USA has never come to grips with the event and it has been swept under the carpet.
The Republicans used Kent State as a primer to destroy democratic government in the country, simply para military groups could butcher people and not have any retribution.
9-11 was the next opportunity to further unify the country, with draconian laws mimicking fascist rule and those wanting to overthrow democracy waited for the right man and then long came Trump.
A reality TV star and a pretend self mad millionaire, Trump became the poster boy for president and was duly elected after a blundering Hillary Clinton, fumbled her way to losing the election.
The dithering Biden failed to expedite the criminal proceedings against Trump and his criminal cohort and now he has come back with a vengeance.
Even now the Democrats are blundering their way to a complete constitutional fiasco.
Compare with Canada, where a discredited Canadian Prime Minister in just 40 days, galvanized the public over Trumps idiotic claims and to do what no other Prime minister has done, almost unified the country in a patriotic fervor, which has sent shock waves around the world.
The moral of the story is that Fascism can be defeated by a well orchestrated assault via a democratic process, with sound laws and institutions. Unfortunately the USA has not and never has had sound laws or sound institutions and now the opposition is being lead by those ill equipped to understand what is happening, thus woefully unprepared to fight what is happening.
The Democratic party, by their sheer incompetence has allowed the brutality of Fascism to flourish and history will look at the the US Democratic party as a "Ship of fools", lost in a sea of exceptionalism.
This is very concerning.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/20/greenpeace-ordered-to-pay-660-million-over-dakota-access-protests.html
Trying to explain Trump and Trumpism is a fool's errand..
My opinion, people in north America became lazy, entitled, became fat self absorbed cellphone screen watching clones..
The masses forgot how to think, maybe they never could think..
A little covid, higher prices and self induced stress and the masses willingly handed everything over to a bad lying snake oil selling conman named Trump...
We aren't much better here in Canada.....The people, the boo hoo I hate Trudeau and the Libs cuz life isn't perfect have now suddenly...
"They've seen the light".....no, the people of Canada saw the darkness of Trump and only now wish to keep what we have and thus they flock back to the center and Carney wins...
Don't get me wrong, that's the best outcome...
The masses, the dumb Canadian masses a few short months ago would have voted for a Trump clone..
Describing or explaining Trumpism is a fool's errand...Here's the quick version..
50% of all people are stupid
Cheers
Worth watching....
DANGER: Trump DOJ Hiding Data From Judge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT0EE0uLmsE
The "Firehose of Falsehood", in other words, flood the zone with shit.
Can't say they swept Kent State under the rug. However the shootings at Jackson state were. For Kent State there are anniversary remembrance services. Jackson State not so much. Jackson State, had police shooting and killing 14 students, them. when the students went to hospitals some refused to admit them. They were black and racism was still front and centre in Missip.
What always struck me about Kent State shootings was the police had trained those rifles on white students. Only 3% of Kent State students were black.
Kent State was the beginning of the American government's killing of their young, specifically white young. Government police, etc had always engaged in the killing of students and children who were people of colour.
What the killings at Kent State told white Americans, you will not be exempt from reprisals if you attack the power structure of this country.
The anti war (Vietnam) movement had taken on a life of its own. The movement was also made up largely of white Americans. Black Americans were involved in civil rights issues at the time. There was some cross over, but people had their priorities.
Was 20 when Kent State flashed across the t.v. screens and magazines. Am now 75 and I can still bring forward the scenes on t.v. and the famous picture of the dead student and the 14 yr. old girl screaming for help.
Fifty years later we have the American president signing an executive order destroying the federal Education Dept. One of the things the dept does is fund food programs in schools who have a high rate of poverty. They also provide funding to school boards to pay for the education of disabled students. Now why would some one do that? go back and have a look at many of the changes in American rights, society, wealth distribution. Students were a large part of the unrest in the U.S.A. They entered the military, law schools, legal professions, medical schools. Child of colour were finishing high school, entering university, etc. With that came their ideas. It all started with children being able to have a better education for a better life later and acquiring wealth and power. Not all have been happy with that.
We have seen Trump fire a number of senior people of colour in government, focus of removing non whites from the country, removing DEI, removing articles, pictures, history on government websites. Its all to erase the history of people of colour and females. It will look like they never made a contribution to society. To ensure education returns to the world of the wealthy only and thus power, trump is following his plan.
It is no mistake that trump is attacking Ukraine in an attempt to destroy it. trump grew up in a time when Ukrainians were subjected to some very nasty racism.
In the 1950s I can recall people changing their last names to English versions. it was more difficult to get ahead if they had Ukrainian, Polish, etc.last names.
Do like that line, thank you.
Trump's America.
BREAKING: Trump Admin Sent INNOCENT People to El Salvador Prison
Tim Miller at The Bulwark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZXS-BerWz0
It wasn't the police, but the National Guard and why there was never any criminal convictions.
From Wiki: "The Kent State shootings (also known as the Kent State massacre or May 4 massacre were the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus. The shootings took place on May 4, 1970, during a rally opposing the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces as well as protesting the National Guard presence on campus and the draft. Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. Students Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Miller, 20, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, died on the scene, while William Schroeder, 19, was pronounced dead at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna shortly afterward."
Kent State set in motion the American policy of dumbing down education, which over time has lead to the situation today.
Most Americans are woefully uneducated and with now the moce to "charter/religious schools" and rote education, the general population is getting more and more myopic with their general knowledge of the world.
I have seen on line that a recent poll discovered over 60% of Americans do know know what tariffs are and over 50% can't place Canada on a map.
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