U.S. Politics

[Keyblade]

12 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Good post Crispy.

I want to post this too as I think it's relevant to what you're saying.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

It's a real city v country divide.

One part I strongly disagree with though Chris, is about the black people being shot. Trump has come out and strongly gone against black lives matter. I can't see how a black voter would look at Trump and think anything would get better in that respect under him.

He is also strongly in favour of bringing back Stop and Frisk which will most definitely make the police more racist.

[StefanAVFC]

Just now, Keyblade said:

He is also strongly in favour of bringing back Stop and Frisk which will most definitely make the police more racist.

Yep.

@tonyh29 I'm specifically talking about how I can't black voters voting for a man who denies black lives matter and advocates stop and frisk.

Stats, facts and details haven't matter in the election since the start (obviously they should have but feelings are more important it seems)

[Awol]

23 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

Who do you mean by 'they'?

The New Yorker.

[DCJonah]

19 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Can I be the first to point out that Mooney beat you to that one

 

saw this some while back , usual caveat about accuracy  of course

Just one example of how Trump probably can't make an already shit situation that much worse. 

 

[tomsky_11]

21 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Can I be the first to point out that Mooney beat you to that one

 

saw this some while back , usual caveat about accuracy  of course

Or, if you are black you are 2.8 times more likely to die an arrest related death.

[StefanAVFC]

https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.imaqof8gw

Quote

It seems we’re entering another of those stupid seasons humans impose on themselves at fairly regular intervals. I am sketching out here opinions based on information, they may prove right, or may prove wrong, and they’re intended just to challenge and be part of a wider dialogue.

My background is archaeology, so also history and anthropology. It leads me to look at big historical patterns. My theory is that most peoples’ perspective of history is limited to the experience communicated by their parents and grandparents, so 50–100 years. To go beyond that you have to read, study, and learn to untangle the propaganda that is inevitable in all telling of history. In a nutshell, at university I would fail a paper if I didn’t compare at least two, if not three opposing views on a topic. Taking one telling of events as gospel doesn’t wash in the comparative analytical method of research that forms the core of British academia. (I can’t speak for other systems, but they’re definitely not all alike in this way).

So zooming out, we humans have a habit of going into phases of mass destruction, generally self imposed to some extent or another. This handy list shows all the wars over time. Wars are actually the norm for humans, but every now and then something big comes along. I am interested in the Black Death, which devastated Europe. The opening of Boccaccio’s Decameron describes Florence in the grips of the Plague. It is as beyond imagination as the Somme, Hiroshima, or the Holocaust. I mean, you quite literally can’t put yourself there and imagine what it was like. For those in the midst of the Plague it must have felt like the end of the world.

But a defining feature of humans is their resilience. To us now it seems obvious that we survived the Plague, but to people at the time it must have seemed incredible that their society continued afterwards. Indeed, many takes on the effects of the Black Death are that it had a positive impact in the long term. Well summed up here: “By targeting frail people of all ages, and killing them by the hundreds of thousands within an extremely short period of time, the Black Death might have represented a strong force of natural selection and removed the weakest individuals on a very broad scale within Europe,“ …In addition, the Black Death significantly changed the social structure of some European regions. Tragic depopulation created the shortage of working people. This shortage caused wages to rise. Products prices fell too. Consequently, standards of living increased. For instance, people started to consume more food of higher quality.”

But for the people living through it, as with the World Wars, Soviet Famines, Holocaust, it must have felt inconceivable that humans could rise up from it. The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.

Then after the War to end all Wars, we went and had another one. Again, for a historian it was quite predictable. Lead people to feel they have lost control of their country and destiny, people look for scapegoats, a charismatic leader captures the popular mood, and singles out that scapegoat. He talks in rhetoric that has no detail, and drums up anger and hatred. Soon the masses start to move as one, without any logic driving their actions, and the whole becomes unstoppable.

That was Hitler, but it was also Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Mugabe, and so many more. Mugabe is a very good case in point. He whipped up national anger and hatred towards the land owning white minority (who happened to know how to run farms), and seized their land to redistribute to the people, in a great populist move which in the end unravelled the economy and farming industry and left the people in possession of land, but starving. See also the famines created by the Soviet Union, and the one caused by the Chinese Communists last century in which 20–40 million people died. It seems inconceivable that people could create a situation in which tens of millions of people die without reason, but we do it again and again.

But at the time people don’t realise they’re embarking on a route that will lead to a destruction period. They think they’re right, they’re cheered on by jeering angry mobs, their critics are mocked. This cycle, the one we saw for example from the Treaty of Versaille, to the rise of Hitler, to the Second World War, appears to be happening again. But as with before, most people cannot see it because:

1. They are only looking at the present, not the past or future

2. They are only looking immediately around them, not at how events connect globally

3. Most people don’t read, think, challenge, or hear opposing views

Trump is doing this in America. Those of us with some oversight from history can see it happening. Read this brilliant, long essay in the New York magazine to understand how Plato described all this, and it is happening just as he predicted. Trump says he will Make America Great Again, when in fact America is currently great, according to pretty well any statistics. He is using passion, anger, and rhetoric in the same way all his predecessors did — a charismatic narcissist who feeds on the crowd to become ever stronger, creating a cult around himself. You can blame society, politicians, the media, for America getting to the point that it’s ready for Trump, but the bigger historical picture is that history generally plays out the same way each time someone like him becomes the boss.

On a wider stage, zoom out some more, Russia is a dictatorship with a charismatic leader using fear and passion to establish a cult around himself. Turkey is now there too. Hungary, Poland, Slovakia are heading that way, and across Europe more Trumps and Putins are waiting in the wings, in fact funded by Putin, waiting for the popular tide to turn their way.

We should be asking ourselves what our Archduke Ferdinand moment will be. How will an apparently small event trigger another period of massive destruction. We see Brexit, Trump, Putin in isolation. The world does not work that way — all things are connected and affecting each other. I have pro-Brexit friends who say ‘oh, you’re going to blame that on Brexit too??’ But they don’t realise that actually, yes, historians will trace neat lines from apparently unrelated events back to major political and social shifts like Brexit.

Brexit — a group of angry people winning a fight — easily inspires other groups of angry people to start a similar fight, empowered with the idea that they may win. That alone can trigger chain reactions. A nuclear explosion is not caused by one atom splitting, but by the impact of the first atom that splits causing multiple other atoms near it to split, and they in turn causing multiple atoms to split. The exponential increase in atoms splitting, and their combined energy is the bomb. That is how World War One started and, ironically how World War Two ended.

An example of how Brexit could lead to a nuclear war could be this:

Brexit in the UK causes Italy or France to have a similar referendum. Le Pen wins an election in France. Europe now has a fractured EU. The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before. The EU is also a major force in suppressing Putin’s military ambitions. European sanctions on Russia really hit the economy, and helped temper Russia’s attacks on Ukraine (there is a reason bad guys always want a weaker European Union). Trump wins in the US. Trump becomes isolationist, which weakens NATO. He has already said he would not automatically honour NATO commitments in the face of a Russian attack on the Baltics.

With a fractured EU, and weakened NATO, Putin, facing an ongoing economic and social crisis in Russia, needs another foreign distraction around which to rally his people. He funds far right anti-EU activists in Latvia, who then create a reason for an uprising of the Russian Latvians in the East of the country (the EU border with Russia). Russia sends ‘peace keeping forces’ and ‘aid lorries’ into Latvia, as it did in Georgia, and in Ukraine. He annexes Eastern Latvia as he did Eastern Ukraine (Crimea has the same population as Latvia, by the way).

A divided Europe, with the leaders of France, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and others now pro-Russia, anti-EU, and funded by Putin, overrule calls for sanctions or a military response. NATO is slow to respond: Trump does not want America to be involved, and a large part of Europe is indifferent or blocking any action. Russia, seeing no real resistance to their actions, move further into Latvia, and then into Eastern Estonia and Lithuania. The Baltic States declare war on Russia and start to retaliate, as they have now been invaded so have no choice. Half of Europe sides with them, a few countries remain neutral, and a few side with Russia. Where does Turkey stand on this? How does ISIS respond to a new war in Europe? Who uses a nuclear weapon first?

This is just one Arch Duke Ferdinand scenario. The number of possible scenarios are infinite due to the massive complexity of the many moving parts. And of course many of them lead to nothing happening. But based on history we are due another period of destruction, and based on history all the indicators are that we are entering one.

It will come in ways we can’t see coming, and will spin out of control so fast people won’t be able to stop it. Historians will look back and make sense of it all and wonder how we could all have been so naïve. How could I sit in a nice café in London, writing this, without wanting to run away. How could people read it and make sarcastic and dismissive comments about how pro-Remain people should stop whining, and how we shouldn’t blame everything on Brexit. Others will read this and sneer at me for saying America is in great shape, that Trump is a possible future Hitler (and yes, Godwin’s Law. But my comparison is to another narcissistic, charismatic leader fanning flames of hatred until things spiral out of control). It’s easy to jump to conclusions that oppose pessimistic predictions based on the weight of history and learning. Trump won against the other Republicans in debates by countering their claims by calling them names and dismissing them. It’s an easy route but the wrong one.

Ignoring and mocking the experts , as people are doing around Brexit and Trump’s campaign, is no different to ignoring a doctor who tells you to stop smoking, and then finding later you’ve developed incurable cancer. A little thing leads to an unstoppable destruction that could have been prevented if you’d listened and thought a bit. But people smoke, and people die from it. That is the way of the human.

So I feel it’s all inevitable. I don’t know what it will be, but we are entering a bad phase. It will be unpleasant for those living through it, maybe even will unravel into being hellish and beyond imagination. Humans will come out the other side, recover, and move on. The human race will be fine, changed, maybe better. But for those at the sharp end — for the thousands of Turkish teachers who just got fired, for the Turkish journalists and lawyers in prison, for the Russian dissidents in gulags, for people lying wounded in French hospitals after terrorist attacks, for those yet to fall, this will be their Somme.

What can we do? Well, again, looking back, probably not much. The liberal intellectuals are always in the minority. See Clay Shirky’s Twitter Storm on this point. The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights. They don’t fight dirty. They are terrible at appealing to the populace. They are less violent, so end up in prisons, camps, and graves. We need to beware not to become divided (see: Labour party), we need to avoid getting lost in arguing through facts and logic, and counter the populist messages of passion and anger with our own similar messages. We need to understand and use social media. We need to harness a different fear. Fear of another World War nearly stopped World War 2, but didn’t. We need to avoid our own echo chambers. Trump and Putin supporters don’t read the Guardian, so writing there is just reassuring our friends. We need to find a way to bridge from our closed groups to other closed groups, try to cross the ever widening social divides.

(Perhaps I’m just writing this so I can be remembered by history as one of the people who saw it coming.)

Really interesting, well-written piece.

[meme]

Quote

In March I explained in-depth how Donald Trump had already won the Presidency by implementing almost every strategy found in 'The Art of War' during the Republican Primaries. You can see that post here: http://imgur.com/gallery/HO5TT

Needless to say I was right. Hillary had no plan against Trump. She used the same attacks against Trump that his Republican rivals did: he's a bigot, a racist, a blah blah blah. That didn't work in the primaries and it didn't work in the general election. As I stated back in March there is no political strategy to beat Trump. He's not playing by political rules, that's the whole point. I did see two paths to beating him, and neither was about Hillary: The first strategy was Bernie winning the Democratic Primaries. He had the swag, the charisma, the cuddly Grandpa mentality. His appeal was the same as that of Biden: Go-lucky, real, passionate. Unfortunately he was running against the Clinton Machine/DNC and he got churned out like a hunk of beef. The second strategy was Bernie, yes THAT Bernie, again. He should have been the VP even though Hillary leans center way more than progressive. Her inability to negotiate was her undoing. It's not just about the Bernie voters that refused to vote Hillary, it was about their enthusiasm. Like it or not they were a ground-game unlike anything anyone's ever seen. The ridiculous amount of donations, the millions of phone calls, the millions of doors knocked. Their passion was most needed against Trump. Yes, Bernie campaigned for Hillary during the general election, but it was no longer the same. Bernie used to be their guy, their champion that could fight against the 1%, for $15 minimum wage, free healthcare, and free tuition. He couldn't do that while campaigning for Hillary without being on the ballot because everyone knew she didn't really care about any of that. So what was Hillary left with? No passion, no drive, no enthusiasm, no Bernie, no Presidency. She was too proud, and that, ladies and gents, is what Trump exposed to perfection. Yes folks, Trump is a master strategist, and he knew Hillary's weakness was her stoic character. During the campaign you often heard Hillary mention that the Republicans have been attacking her for 30 years and never found anything to hurt her. She wore that as a badge of honor, she thought that made her stronger. But, as Trump had done in the Republican Primaries, he took the quality his opponents covet most and he turned it on its head. Crooked Hillary. Hillary Rotten Clinton. Drain the Swamp. Lock her up. Much like Picasso's abstract paintings, Trump's brush strokes made little sense to most people. Yes, she's a political power house, yes she's a stalwart in her convictions. But that also makes her stiff in her beliefs. The world is ever-changing, how can someone maintain their convictions for 30+ years unless they're crooked and a cheat? How can they maintain power with the elites unless their entire cesspool of a swamp was also polluted? Lock her up. Trump took her stoicism and grounded it into a pulp. His first attack on Hillary during the general election was that "If she wasn't playing the woman card she wouldn't even get 5% of the vote." BOOM, head shot. How did Hillary respond? "If fighting for women's rights and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal. Me. IN!" This played perfectly into Trump's hand. He knew she'd be defiant in being a woman and take that attack personally. He used her soundbites to wedge a gap between men and women voters. The male vote wasn't 2:1 for Trump because they were misogynists, it was because Hillary's words excluded their existence. Remember 'The Art of War'? It's all about divide and conquer. When did Hillary ever talk about men's issues? Never. While Hillary thought she was being stoic in protecting the woman card, Trump was actually playing the man card. I could go on and on, but truth be told I haven't slept yet and I've written too much as is. If you're interested in reading more I'll post again tomorrow. There's plenty to talk about. How Trump had more Hispanic voters than any Republican in history, how Trump had more LGBT voters than any Republican in history (even though his VP is the biggest anti-LGBT in politics), or how Trump ended up with 48% of the woman vote even after those Access Hollywood tapes. Regardless of how you feel about the election, it truly was a masterful performance by Donald Trump. One that will go down in history as not only the most shocking victory, but I would dare say the most expertly perfected victory in US political history.

Not really an article, but still rather interesting.

From https://imgur.com/gallery/SxpJC

[StefanAVFC]

By the way "things can't get any worse under Trump" is a total false dichotomy.

As the article above states, America is 'great' now going by statistics. We've told told that stats lie and people are fed up of experts. Gingrich commented that 'you can have your stats (that show crime rate down) and it's more important that people FEEL less safe'.

Yet that infographic on that page relies on stats.

It quite simply can't be had both ways. 

[DCJonah]

11 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

By the way "things can't get any worse under Trump" is a total false dichotomy.

As the article above states, America is 'great' now going by statistics. We've told told that stats lie and people are fed up of experts. Gingrich commented that 'you can have your stats (that show crime rate down) and it's more important that people FEEL less safe'.

Yet that infographic on that page relies on stats.

It quite simply can't be had both ways. 

There may be stats that are positive but America is a terrible country in so many ways. And terrible things have happened under Obama and happened under Hilary's husband. 

I am concerned about Trump as president but I don't think some aspects of that country can realistically get much worse than they are. 

[sheepyvillian]

Let the book burning begin .

[tonyh29]

14 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before.

is this the point where we decide the Balkans and Ukraine are conflicts and not war ?

[tonyh29]

25 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.imaqof8gw

Really interesting, well-written piece.

it was interesting but I think we differ on our opinions of well written  .. to use one of my favourite quotes it started badly, it tailed off a little in the middle and the less said about the end the better — but apart from that it was excellent

[StefanAVFC]

19 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

There may be stats that are positive but America is a terrible country in so many ways. And terrible things have happened under Obama and happened under Hilary's husband. 

I am concerned about Trump as president but I don't think some aspects of that country can realistically get much worse than they are. 

Did you exclude the 8 years of Bush there on purpose or? What terrible things happened under Obama? I'm genuinely interested, i ask out of ignorance.

Edited November 9, 2016 by StefanAVFC

[StefanAVFC]

16 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

There may be stats that are positive but America is a terrible country in so many ways. 

Again that's 'I feel like things are bad' even when stats show otherwise.

It's the very basis of the Trump campaign. 

When things get even worse, or at the very best, don't improve under Trump, who will they blame? Obama? Clinton?

Edited November 9, 2016 by StefanAVFC

[blandy]

6 hours ago, snowychap said:

Surely, if a sufficient amount of the Trump vote is the result of a sense of disenfrachisement, people wanting 'change' and people being frustrated at how their current leaders have behaved (not what you've posted but a theme that seems to have run through comments about why the vote has gone his way, in part) then won't this just make things worse and merely make those people even more angry?

Perhaps we ought to fear less the Trump of 20th January and immediately after and more the Trump that might come later.

If, immediately, he does none of the more extreme things that he has spoken about and relies purely upon implementing protectionist economic policies and hoping that this brings prosperity somehow then a year or two down the line it's quite possible that there are going to be even more problems.

Absoblinkinlutely.

It's nailed on, IMO.

[LakotaDakota]

I bet this will be fun on Friday

[StefanAVFC]

12 minutes ago, blandy said:

Absoblinkinlutely.

It's nailed on, IMO.

What's the measure on 'Making America Great Again'-ness for these people? If he makes things worse, who do these demographics protest against then? Who do they blame?

He has the white house, a republican house of reps and a republican senate.

He has no excuses if he doesn't Make America Great Again.

Edited November 9, 2016 by StefanAVFC

[TheStagMan]

36 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

The EU, for all its many awful faults, has prevented a war in Europe for longer than ever before.

NATO says Hello. 

 

I hate this argument. The EU has existed since the Maastricht treaty in 1993. 33 years ago. And for the first 10-15 years was in its infancy. The EU has NOT prevented war in Europe for longer than ever before, it was NATO and the UN and a collective fear of the USSR that kept Europeans from fighting each other since the end of World War 2 (48 years until the fledgling EU was born).

Prior to this, the EEC (created in 1957 by the treaty of Rome) was a trading block, not a peacekeeping force, not a political union, and was very very different from the EU of today. It had no role in preventing wars. What it did do was bring the belligerent countries of the past closer through trade. That may have had a place in making them more amenable to each other, but it was NATO, the UN and the cold war that really kept Europe together. 

 

Apologies for going off topic. 

Edited November 9, 2016 by TheStagMan

[blandy]

5 hours ago, BOF said:

...it is also true that there is an element of the electorate that he has spent most or all of his campaign telling (the less well off) that their problem lies with the various kind of immigrant.  That your job, your lack of a job, your pay cheque are all being affected by 'others' and that he'll sort that out if he gets in.  That resonated with the right wing and it resonated with the hate-filled (same thing?), while no doubt creating some hate along the way that didn't exist previously.

It's analogous to Brexit in the sense that there were 2 (maybe 3) kinds of Brexiter.  The ones who genuinely voted for it because they believed that getting their sovereignty back would be good for the country, and then there were the closet racists who are now much less closetted.  The 3rd being the ones who protest voted against Cameron purely for shits and giggles because he was unpopular (pyrrhic victory).

I think you're slightly understating the sheer ugliness of what a Trump win represents in the population and overstating the element who were merely 'shaking up the establishment'.  Both of those elements do exist but IMO the hate-filled former has been grossly underestimated (again...).  And it's becoming a worldwide trend.  Next up France & Germany ...

Fair comment. I disagree on the proportions. I think the loony tunes are but a small part of it and that the TV and media has made it seem more than it is. So I believe the shaking up the establishment is absolutely the biggest part and the racists and bigots and madmen are a tiny part, though still too many.

There's also the thing about how closely people follow all the stuff that's been going on and the way the media is not fair and balanced in much of the U.S. If you don't follow it closely, get media coverage that doesn't explain or challenge claims and lies and so on, but actively pushes the agenda of one or other of the candidates, then it may well influence the way people vote.

Trump's been clever in that he's used the language of people he wants to vote for him - he's deliberately spoken not like a politician, carefully avoiding saying something, anything, in case it could be quoted at some later interview, but he's chosen to just spout stuff out, with no regard for the consequences, and using short words that are easily understood. He's taken the accepted, ingrained, politician speak and totally reversed it. It had to happen, and it'll happen here too. [edit] just seen @meme has posted an image of some article on the previous page which says this in more detail and better [/edit]/

He might get hoist by his own petard down the line, but for now, he got what he wanted. That's all the mattered to him.

[snowychap]

This was from Monday's Grauniad:

Quote

Are Farage and Trump really fascists?

There are echoes of the 1930s in much of today’s political discourse, as hatred and prejudice become mainstream, but we should be careful about comparisons with the past

Have we gone back to the 1930s? Could we see the return of fascism? After all, hatred and prejudice, which many people thought had been marginalised in western democracies by the defeat of fascism in 1945, decolonisation and the American civil rights movement now seem to be part of the mainstream.

Furthermore, democratic institutions appear threatened. The rightwing UK press depicts judges as enemies of the people, while Nigel Farage warns of riots if Brexit is not implemented. Donald Trump might not accept the US election result, and admires Vladimir Putin’s semi-authoritarian regime.

It’s easy to see parallels with the 1920s and 1930s: economic crisis, chronic unemployment, poverty wages for many workers, the decline of middle-class wealth. If Trump becomes president and keeps his promise to deport millions, parallels with Nazi Germany will inevitably be made.

The march of far-right parties appears irresistible. Perhaps their success in Hungary and Austria, or even France, could be seen as a reversion to type, for authoritarian regimes were present there before 1945. But now the far right is advancing in the UK and US too – once seen as protected from extremism by their “democratic cultures”. There are clear parallels between the modern far right and fascism – authoritarianism, charismatic leadership, nationalism, racism, protectionism, anti-liberalism …

Yet whatever the similarities, we should think twice before interpreting the present as a re-enactment of the past.

For one thing, fascism is notoriously hard to define. Decades of research have not enabled academics to agree on a definition. The problem is that fascism – like socialism or any other political movement – was diverse and meant different things to different people. Even if we confine our attention to those Italians who described themselves as Fascists between 1919 and 1945, we find an enormous range of views on what fascism was. Some thought that the state should be supreme, others that the party should rule. Some advocated government intervention in the economy; others wanted capitalists to be left to get on with the job. Fascists did not agree what fascism was, so it’s not surprising that scholars don’t either.

The problem is even greater if we include nazism within the category of fascism. The German regime learned from Italian fascism in many ways. Yet many Nazis were contemptuous of Italians as poor soldiers, who had betrayed Germany by joining the Allies in the first world war. The Nazis were reluctant to call themselves fascists, because doing so implied that they were imitators.

There were important differences between the regimes. True, racism was never absent from Italian fascism, especially towards Slavs, and in its imperialist war in modern-day Ethiopia. Yet before 1938 there was no equivalent in Italy of the Nazis’ extreme antisemitism and drive for a biologically pure race. If we impose the category of fascism on nazism, we risk obscuring the importance of this antisemitic racism.

The contemporary far right is equally diverse. Parties have different attitudes to Europe for instance, and some are more anti-democratic than others. All we can say is that some aspects of the modern far right are like some elements of fascism.

Some modern far-right movements were designed to rehabilitate fascism – that was true of the French Front National in the 1970s, and the Italian Social Movement (MSI) in the 1990s, but one never knows where such efforts will lead. While the FN has in some ways become more extreme, for instance on European immigration, the MSI was eventually absorbed into the mainstream right.

If we simply see these movements as reinventions of fascism, then we risk obscuring what is specific to our own times. Italian fascists saw socialists as their chief enemies, while for the Nazis it was “Judeo-Bolshevism”. These days, the labour movement is in retreat, and the subculture that sustained it has largely gone. Disillusioned working-class voters in Europe and America provide a more important fund of support for the modern far right than they ever did for fascism or nazism, notwithstanding the often underestimated support of middle-class voters for the contemporary far right.

Another major difference is that whereas fascism and nazism came to power by combining paramilitarism on the streets with electoral victories, the modern far right relies on the latter alone. Indeed, it rarely opposes democracy in principle and actually takes advantage of the discriminatory potential of democracy itself – those who do not conform to the characteristics and wishes of the “majority” – judges or Muslims – are enemies of “the people”.

Ultimately, perhaps, it matters less than we might think whether Trump or any other figure is “fascist” in some academic sense. The real question is moral – do we see their policies as morally acceptable? And if history teaches anything, it is that people who called themselves neither fascist or Nazi were capable of complicity in repugnant acts.