Fascism
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I can’t remember where I got this phrase, but the link is now dead or hidden behind the AHA paywall (November 26, 2014). ↩︎
If the Supreme Court’s rulings are clearly at odds with our history, our constitution, and American jurisprudence, are they even binding? Can’t the other two branches of government check the rogue one? Are there no Republicans still in office with sufficient moral fibre to join this fight?
SCOTUS would do well to remember what revolutions tend to do: they eat their own.
Stunned but not surprised by SCOTUS’s DJT immunity ruling. Do these people really think that breaking the Constitution is going to make any of their “achievements” lasting?
Links: Russo-Ukrainian War
Here are some worthwhile articles related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No paywalls – all links lead to freely available texts.
Under Cover of War: The Kremlin’s Fascist Project" by Nancy Ries, Today’s Totalitarianism, August 2022.
The war is a profound turning point, ending any pretense of “soft” authoritarianism with its modicum of space for resistance. The Kremlin’s fascist project may not succeed in the end, but it is crucial to see its effects within Russia as a fundamental component of the 2022 attack on Ukraine…. The Kremlin structures its war-making machine in ways that deliberately produce atrocity…. [And on TV, there is] a “pedagogy” of exterminist consciousness and practice, a key tool of the fascist project unfolding within and beyond Russia.
In Ukraine, I saw the greatest threat to the Russian world isn’t the west – it’s Putin" by Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, December 17, 2022.
The Kremlin’s imperial war has made its own culture and language a common enemy for people across its former empire.
“The Skill Involved in Zelensky’s Congressional Address” by James Fallows, Breaking the News, December 23, 2022.
The words of the speech were ‘left brain,’ with careful writerly eloquence. The in-person performance was ‘right brain,’ with emotional power beyond the words. The combination was remarkable.
“Special Issue: Weaponizing History in the Russo-Ukrainian War,” edited by Beatrice de Graaf and Lien Verpoest, Journal of Applied History, December 2022.
Art by @neivanmade on Instagram. The term "rashism" is what Ukrainians call Russian fascism.
Justitia Again
The following cartoon and comment, which I posted on February 5, 2017, did not age well.
After the latest Spiegel cover and all the news it embodies, this cartoon by Sam Machado feels really good, particularly with its use of gender against the U.S. chauvinist-in-chief.
In case you missed it, this report from July 5, 2022, sums up all the damage: “The U.S. Supreme Court term in review.”
Leadership Failure
. . . As senators and House members trapped inside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday begged for immediate help during the siege, they struggled to get through to the president, who—safely ensconced in the West Wing—was too busy watching fiery television images of the crisis that was unfolding around them to act or even bother to hear their cries for help.
“Six Hours of Paralysis" (Washington Post)”
Looking forward to a more productive week in quarantine now that martial law and the end of our democracy appear to be off the table for the time being.
Two Faces of America
To stand in Mann’s study today, with editions of Goethe and Schiller on the shelves, is to feel pride in the country that took him in and shame for the country that drove him out—not two Americas but one. In this room, the erstwhile “Greatest Living Man of Letters” fell prey to the clammy fear of the hunted. Was the year 1933 about to repeat itself? Would he be detained, interrogated, even imprisoned? In 1952, Mann took a final walk through his house and made his exit. He died in Zurich, in 1955—no longer an émigré German but an American in exile.
Alex Ross (The New Yorker)
Happening Here
WPA Federal Art Project in New York City, ca. 1936/37. The play was based on a novel about fascism happening here.
Repository: Library of Congress.
American Psycho
Is insidious destruction of our democracy by a bureaucratic samurai with the soothing voice of a boys’ school headmaster even more dangerous than a self-destructive buffoon ripping up our values in plain sight?
– Maureen Dowd, “Who’s the Real American Psycho?," New York Times, November 10, 2018.
Emperor Mussolini
The caption reads, "I've decided to accept God, but he has to become Italian." The German here for "accept," "gelten lassen," could also be translated as "allow."
Source: Simplicissimus, May 3, 1926, http://www.simplicissimus.info.
Richard Evans on Trump
"How do the early days of the Trump administration look like the Third Reich? Historian Richard Evans [an important historian of Nazi Germany] weighs in." Interview by Isaac Chotiner, Slate, Feb. 10, 2017.
The question might still seem hyperbolic to many, but sober, historically informed analysis along such lines can be informative for understanding both present and past.
Assault on Facts and Credibility
All administrations lie, but what we are seeing here is an attack on credibility itself.
The Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov drew upon long familiarity with that process when he tweeted: “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
– Charles J. Sykes, ”Why Nobody Cares the President Is Lying,“ New York Times, February 4, 2017.
'American Tragedy'
. . . A friend called me full of sadness, full of anxiety about conflict, about war. Why not leave the country? But despair is no answer. To combat authoritarianism, to call out lies, to struggle honorably and fiercely in the name of American ideals—that is what is left to do. That is all there is to do.
– David Remnick, “An American Tragedy,” The New Yorker, November 9, 2016.
Values
American national leaders gain their legitimacy by competing in compliance with not merely the outward forms but the clear values of our Constitution—equal dignity, religious freedom and tolerance, open deliberation, and the rule of law. These values don’t bind Donald Trump; norms of decency do not apply; he shrugs off the very burden of fact itself.
– Garrett Epps, “Donald Trump has broken the Constitution,” The Atlantic, November 9, 2016.
'The American Face of Fascism'
It is no surprise that the American face of fascism would take on the forms of celebrity television and the casino greeter’s come-on, since that is as much our symbolic scene as nostalgic re-creations of Roman splendors once were Italy’s.
– Adam Gopnik, “Being Honest about Trump,” The New Yorker, July 14, 2016
Fostering Historical Thinking with Brecht’s Galileo
Spring is almost here, which means its time to order books for the summer term. Summer in DC gets hot, and the summer terms are short, so I usually try to assign things that are both reasonably entertaining and not too long for the general audience I get in my introductory survey courses that are mandatory requirements for all majors. Besides covering a variety of themes and genres, I often try to pick one book that will jump-start historical thinking. I want a book that will make students more aware of how much "the past is like a foreign country" that we will not understand, if we do not try to fathom the conditions and assumptions of the time without letting our contemporary worldview get in our way.
Last year I tried Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, which I had first experienced as a TA for Sandra Horvath-Peterson at Georgetown University back in the 1990s. Of course, Brecht adapts Galileo's story to his own purposes, but it provides a useful point of departure for a discussion about the Scientific Revolution. It also forces students to come to terms with the limits of historical fiction.
It usually goes pretty well, though the first section I did it in was a little rocky, partly because not enough students had done the reading, but also because I was surprised that so few people had any general knowledge of fascism. The paperback edition we used, translated by Eric Bently, contains some excellent material on Brecht's prejudices, but it spends too much time on material more of interest to specialists in drama. Some students read the first part of it, but most gave up and went straight to the play. So I integrated a mini talk of Brecht's time into the discussions and got them to reason out how the problems of the nineteen thirties and forties had manifested themselves in a play Brecht had set in the seventeenth century. I also assigned sources from 1615 and 1633, so that they could get a sense of the issues from Galileo's own time.
One point I tried to make clear was that science was only then beginning to manifest itself as an independent discourse, that it was perfectly natural for the Church to be interested in science at the time and even claim authority on the matter. Of course, I'm no specialist on the matter, but it seems to me that this basic point is worth making. Most students seemed to get it too. Indeed, I felt like cheering when one woman near the end of a class wondered aloud what people would think about our own world in another few hundred years. Sound trivial? Maybe to historians and those for whom historical thinking comes naturally. In our presentist society and with this presentist generation, I think the question was excellent. This student and her classmates were thinking historically.
The success of this discussion was also due in part to another issue. I have begun to “legitimate confusion” for my students,1 that is, I have begun to cultivate an awareness in them of just how hard historical interpretation can be and how important learning how to ask questions can be. With this attitude, students can explore sources and ideas honestly and thoughtfully without fear of getting it wrong and looking bad. With such an awareness, students were willing to attempt the leaps of imagination necessary to navigate among three different time periods, the early twenty-first century, the nineteen thirties and forties, and the first few decades of the seventeenth century.
I might try this book again, though I could also do with a change. Perhaps some of you have some ideas?