Fascism
-
“Us” could refer to Germany, given the magazine, but note the European flag that the two bowing men are standing on—with the corpse of Ukraine laid out face down between them. If the corpse is hyperbole, the betrayal and its geopolitical consequences are very real, ↩︎
-
Fischer was a politician in the Greens who served as Germany’s popular foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. ↩︎
📽️ Am watching “So Ends Our Night,” dir. John Cromwell (United Artists, 1941), a “story of people without passports” based on Erich Maria Remarque’s 1939 novel Flotsam.
A great line early on spoken by an Austrian police officer sending two stateless Germans across the border to Czechoslovakia in 1937:
You refugees! It’s not like handling a first-class criminal. You’re detracting from the dignity of my profession.
The title of this cover from a prominent German news weekly borrows from a famous Ronald Reagan quote: “Axis of Evil” (Die Achse der Bösen). Only this time a Republican president is casting the United States on the side of evil. The remaining text points to the “danger of war in Europe” and asks “what Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine means for us."1 The cover also mentions a statement by Joschka Fischer in an interview: “Germany needs conscription again."2
POSTSCRIPT: See comments for connection to 1939
As our government ramps up its war on its own people, not to mention the free world, I am finding it really difficult to focus.😱
This Italian fascist poster prefigures the disgusting rhetoric of Putin and Trump: “On them rests the blame!” by Gino Boccasile, ca. 1942–45.
Via David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University, https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4bp0064p.
“Stamp ‘em out! Buy U.S. stamps and bonds.” Poster by Thomas A. Byrne. WPA War Services of La., circa 1941–43.
Via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98518290/.
📽️ Watched “Il conformista” [The Conformist], dir. Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy, 1970). The first half stitches together vignettes to make the character who joined the secret police. Then we see him on a job in interwar France. The denouement comes after Mussolini’s dismissal is announced on the radio.
📽️ Watched “‘Pimpernel’ Smith,” dir. Leslie Howard (British National Films, 1941), which imagines The Scarlet Pimpernel set in Germany in 1939.
📽️ Watched an antifascist drama set in the time before the United States was at war with Germany, “Watch on the Rhine,” dir. Herman Shumlin (USA, 1943). Despite the title, it takes place around the U.S. capitol, except for an initial border crossing from Mexico and a train to Washington.
I don’t know how the Republican party comes back from their fascism, however long the affair lasts, without some thorough housecleaning and a major rebrand.
What’s the U.S. version of “banana republic”? “Orange republic”?
The fighting spirit and actions announced here are a breath of fresh air: “Congressional Democrats on Trump Admin. Closing USAID HQ”.
📽️ I rewatched “Amsterdam,” dir. David Russell (New Regency, 2022) because machinations in and around the current administration give the story fresh relevance. Set in 1933, with flashbacks to the World War and postwar, there is cruelty, but also defiance, friendship, love, music, and dance.
Shit is Getting Conspiratorially Dark
“Senior U.S. Official to Exit After Rift With Musk Allies Over Payment System” (Wasington Post) https://archive.ph/omS67
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide.… The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies…
This Musk business is getting increasingly dark. Democrats and Republicans should fight this, except there aren’t any Republicans in government anymore.
Finished reading Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020). Highly recommended. Good antidote to feelings of confusion and helplessness in these troubled times.📚
Valuing loyalty over expertise and allowing violence to become an end in itself can result in a deprofessionalized and demoralized military, especially if misguided wars end in defeat.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), concl.
Democratic heads of state often see their departures from office as an opportunity to build on their leadership legacy. The authoritarian regards the end of being adulated by followers and controlling everything and everyone as an existential threat.
– Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen (Norton, 2020), chap. 10.
Poster: Cartoon of the German and Italian dictators trying to cobble together what was left of their obscene project in 1945.
Source: Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2015646607.
“Proposed Legislation Threatens a Backslide on U.S. Democracy” by Samantha Karlin, newlinesmag.com…, January 16, 2025.
Lede: “A new House bill purports to counter terror financing, but it reads a lot like the ‘foreign agent’ laws used to quash dissent in Russia and Hungary.”