The Loose Use of the Word "Fascism"

The Word ‘Fascism’ and its Associations.

On April 28, 2023 the reader-funded Guardian published an article written by Jason Stanley entitled: Tucker Carlson is not an anti-war populist rebel. He is a fascist.

Let me say at the very outset the heading of this article is telling us as readers what we are to believe as true, namely that Tucker Carlson is a ‘fascist’.

According to Mr. Stanley, Mr. Carlson is a fascist for the following:

·         Claiming the real enemies of America are internal – racial minorities, doctors and politicians, professors and educators, and large corporations who shift jobs to other countries.

·         Resolution against US support for Ukraine like America’s pro-fascist parties opposed US intervention on the side of its allies against Nazi Germany.

·         Spreading tropes central to neo-Nazi propaganda; White replacement theory.

·         A defender of the Christian traditions by his anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

·         Disguised antisemitism that uses dog-whistling.

·         Valorisation of violence; January 6 insurrection.

In declaring Mr. Carlson is a fascist Mr. Stanley needs to take responsibility for the truth of this declaration. However, we as readers have the duty to test the validity of this declaration. Is Mr. Stanley going to tell us the truth or is he going to make significant omissions and is selectively telling us things to support his conclusions?

Thus, it is our responsibility to spend a little time deconstructing Mr. Stanley’s assertion and looking for facts and truth in order to make sure that Mr. Stanley is not distorting the facts to somehow disorient us to make us believe that Mr. Carlson is a fascist. It is reasonable then to try to define the nature of fascism.

What is Fascism?

We are living in a very turbulent and dangerous world not dissimilar to the times leading up to World War 1 (WW1) and the years from the end of this war to World War 2 (WW2). The years between WW1 and WW2 were particularly turbulent economically, politically and socially in Europe and the United States of America (USA).

The Russian Revolution sent shock waves through Europe and the USA. The spectre of communism threatened the foundations of the capitalist order. The demobilisation of millions of soldiers returning to their homes and families expecting recognition and economic security. Instead, they suffered a pandemic that killed millions, unemployment, low wages and inflation and then the Great Depression.

Social unrest exploded; calls for workers’ rights, better wages, an assertive union movement and strikes. A strong labour movement working with labour and social democratic parties challenged the liberal democracies in the USA and Europe.

This is the context in which Fascism needs to be understood. Fascism can be understood as a reaction against the tide of socialist revolution, particularly in European countries where liberal democracy and the capitalist order underpinning liberal democracy was its most vulnerable and weak such as Italy and Germany.

The way Mr. Stanley describes fascism as an ideology does not provide the reader with an accurate understanding of how, in the historical cases of fascism this reactionary ideology existed on top of the objective conditions of the authoritarian fascist state as a defender of economic interests in the form of monopolistic capitalism.

Fascism in these two countries was an ideology and a form of state and economic organisation whose purpose it was to save the capitalist system. Fascism provided the muscle and reactionary psychological framework that would enforce the emerging austere neo-classical economic theory on a restive working class in Italy and Germany.

This is why Initially many in the liberal democratic elite particularly in the USA and the United Kingdom looked on with approval and even applauded the rise of the Fascist states in Italy and the Nazi Germany.

As a support for the fascist state, as exemplified in fascist Italy and Germany the fascist ideology was so effective that the same working class and lower middle classes acquiesced in handing the power of the state to fascist forces even though this directly impacted on the social and economic conditions and interests of these classes. The Fascist state was brutal in suppressing workers’ rights and living conditions as well as well as small businesses in order to maximise the profits of corporate monopolies.

How the ideology of fascism took hold of the psyche of men and woman to the degree that it did is an important question to answer; one that sociologists and psychologists have been grappling with for decades.

In the end the Fascist experiment spiralled out of control resulting in death and destruction in Europe and Asia and the virtual collapse of Capitalism in Europe, particularly Germany and Italy. As a result of WW2, the spectre of the Fascist State, as exemplified in Italy and Germany had been vanquished in Europe, Japan and the USA.

The Risks of Using Emotive Labels

Mr. Stanley in using term ‘fascist’ in in a modern-day context with respect to Mr. Carlson is emotive and misleading. Mr. Stanley does not really enlighten us about fascism, its historical context. He seems to be using the word ‘Fascist’ as a polemical tool like ‘Communist’ was used in the 1950’s in the USA and western countries to denote those on the left who questioned the capitalistic order or pushed for social progress; I am referring to the McCarthy period.

Many people on the left, academics, writers, actors and unionists were branded as ‘Communist’ and made to be seen as enemies of the state. This labelling destroyed the lives of many who identified themselves as progressive, as wanting a more equitable and peaceful world. There were communists among them but the majority would not have classified themselves as ‘Communist’ or supporters of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

In this dark period, labelling and persecuting people as ‘Communist’ or puppets of the USSR only served to poison public debate in the USA and other liberal democracies such as the UK, Canada and Australia.

Mr. Stanley, I contend is at risk of doing just this in a time when there is domestic economic turmoil within liberal democracies where the working classes and middle classes are experiencing challenges imposed upon them by the COVID pandemic, austere governmental economic policy in the context of public spending cuts, rising inflation and interest rates. Questions are being asked by diverse sections of society about where the current economic order and the crisis in geopolitics is taking us. Are we headed towards economic disaster and to war? If so, how can we as we avoid these evils?

Mr. Carlson, like many people on the right, centre and left of politics are grappling with these questions. Instead of trying to answer the questions of war, peace and economics, which Mr. Carlson legitimately asks Mr. Stanley bandies about the term ‘fascist’. In doing this Mr. Stanley immediately diminishes the import of these questions and in doing so poisons the debate.

Proving the existence of a Fascist mind set

Racial Isolationism and the War in Ukraine

Mr. Stanley sets out to show that it really is not that difficult to prove Mr. Carlson has a fascist mind set. Mr. Stanley writes:

“But is it really so complicated to classify Carlson’s political ideology?”

Mr. Stanley answers this question as follows:

“In short, Carlson urged, the real enemies of America are internal – racial minorities, doctors and politicians, professors and educators, and large corporations who shift jobs to other countries. Carlson has been resolutely against US support for Ukraine. Insofar as Carlson has since that point gone to war, it has rather been against these supposed internal enemies.”

Mr. Stanley continues:

“…he [Mr. Carlson] spreads tropes central to neo-Nazi propaganda, such as “white replacement” theory, suggesting that leftist elites seek to replace “legacy Americans” by foreign non-white immigrants. On the other hand, he denounces media, intellectual and political elites, as well as US intervention in Ukraine, platforming those who identify as the “anti-war left”, such as Jimmy Dore.”

Mr. Stanley then asks:

“How should we best understand this set of views? If Carlson has fascist sympathies, as do, quite inarguably, many of those who applaud him, how do we understand his firm stance against US military and financial support for Ukraine?”

Note, that Mr. Stanley in putting forward his case commences with the presumption of innocence:

 “If Mr. Carlson has fascist sympathies…”

It is possible that Mr. Carlson is just a sympathiser of and not an outright fascist.

To prove that Mr. Carlson is a fascist Mr. Stanley draws our attention to Mr. Carlson’s ‘firm’ stance on the Ukraine war.

Mr. Stanley looks to the history of the USA as a guide to resolve the ambiguity between being a sympathiser and a true adherent to fascism. Mr. Stanley relates that:

“Before the beginning of the second world war, all of America’s pro-fascist parties opposed US intervention on the side of its allies against Nazi Germany. Often, the opposition to the US supporting Britain against Nazi Germany was represented as “isolationism”.”

Here Mr. Stanley invokes the label ‘isolationism’ as a way to detract from the issue in question, namely the questioning of the foreign policy of the USA and the use of public resources to fight a war overseas.

Mr. Stanley concludes:

“It is simply inarguable fact that American racial fascism has a clear isolationist tradition, especially when the wars in question are against fascist opponents.”

But does this definitively prove that Mr. Carlson is more than a fascist sympathiser?

Mr. Carlson is probably correct about 1930s American racial fascism with respect to Nazi Germany and WW2. However, there are disquieting aspects arising from the way he builds his case against Mr. Carlson.

Mr. Stanley’s assumption is that the current war in Ukraine, like WW2 is a war against fascist opponents. American racial isolationists, like Mr. Carlson are supporting the fascist enemy, namely Russia.

Mr. Stanley is careful to say “American racial fascism” as he likely knows that American isolationists in the 1930s were not all fascists. It is not sufficient to say that isolationist thought is solely associated with a fascist mindset. Mr. Stanley does not provide us with the full context of 1930’s isolationist debate.

In the United States there were the internationalists who advocated the full participation of the US in world affairs. Opposed to this world view were the isolationists, who reflecting on the horrors of WW1 and the great depression argued that it would be better for the USA to focus on the needs of the US public. The talk of war overseas was seen by isolationists to be a diversion from the economic decisions required to promote the welfare of the American public. The tension between internationalists and isolationists had an indirect benefit in that it provided the space for the New Deal under the Democratic Party President Franklin Roosevelt.

The implication in Mr. Stanley’s reasoning that the net effect of isolationism irrespective of whether it was advocated by Fascist or liberals, namely it all resulted in a kind of appeasement of the Nazi regime.

Mr. Stanley lumps critiques of the involvement of the USA in the war with Ukraine irrespective of whether they are from the right or left of politics in the USA as Russian sympathises or at the very least appeasers of Russian fascism.

In one of his last shows Mr. Carlson interviewed Robert F. Kennedy during which the Ukraine war was discussed. Mr. Kennedy was putting forward a case that could be interpreted as isolationist with respect to this war. Does this interview demonstrate that Mr. Kennedy is at best a fascist appeaser? Then there is the example of CODEPINK the woman-led peace advocacy organisation which has voiced apprehension at the escalation of the Ukrainian Civil War and has called on both sides of the conflict to take steps to stop this war. Are the likes of CODEPINK and Geoffrey Sachs because they want to encourage a negotiated settlement to be regarded as appeasers or Putin’s puppets?

Mr. Stanley, when using the Ukraine War to expose Mr. Carlson’s anti-war stance with respect to this is also performing a sort of whistle-blowing of his own that very likely misleads to public’s perception of this war and the anti-war movement in general. This is dangerous and needs to be called out.

Do Mr. Carlson’s isolationist sympathies reveal his inner fascist? Not necessarily it may be that Mr. Carlson’s inner man views things in a non-fascist isolationist framework; a rare republican who believes that government should promote social needs as opposed to getting involved international conflicts.

Perhaps Mr. Stanley realises the ambiguity of the isolationist justification as an indicator of Mr. Carlson’s inner psyche. Mr. Stanley next looks for another indicator that may signal the nature of Mr. Carlson’s sympathies.

A Fascist Russia

Mr. Stanley asks: “But is Putin’s Russia fascist?”

He writes:

“Just as Nazi Germany represented itself as the defender of Christianity and Europe’s classic traditions against an existential threat posed by leftist atheist Jews, Putin represents Russia as the sole defender of the European Christian traditions against similar existential threats, such as “gender ideology”.”

Mr. Stanley is falling short of accusing President Putin of being a fascist antisemite. He uses the words “similar existential threats” with reference to “gender ideology”.

Does trying to defend Christian traditions from gender ideology equate to President Putin being fascist?  Not necessarily, defending Christian traditions can be explained as simply a conservative world view.

There are many Christians who have similar views on ‘gender ideology’ and may also see ‘gender ideology’ as an existential threat to their belief system. To a liberal these views are conservative, perhaps even reactionary. However, liberals need to be wary when they apply the label of fascist on Putin as this can also confuse the public’s perception by staining the image of conservative Christians with the patina of fascism.

Also Mr. Stanley does not explain why he thinks that President Putin regards himself as the ‘sole’ defender of Christian tradition.

So does all this support Mr. Stanley’s assertion that Putin is a fascist? It does not. Mr. Stanley has only succeeded in blurring the differences between conservatives and fascists.

What about the imputation that Putin’s Russia (as opposed to Putin himself) is fascist? Mr. Stanleys question invites us to consider the possibility that the Russian state may be fascist as well.

Mr. Stanley plants ambiguity and diffuses confusion. What is the linkage between the modern Russian political system and the Nazi state? Mr. Stanley does not provide a clear explanation for this equivalence because he omits from his narrative certain historical facts.

Since Mr. Stanley does not provide a more detailed nature of the German state as it operated in the 1930’s we can go to the Anne Frank House web site which provides a summary of the nature of the Nazi State.

·         President Hindenburg’s promulgation of the Reichstag Fire Decree which provided the basis for the Nazi dictatorship. This Decree suppressed civil rights, freedom of expression, granting of powers for police to conduct arbitrary searches of houses and to arrest people and the outlawing of political opponents.

·         The banning of the communist party and the arrest of thousands of communists. The people arrested were placed in concentration camps where they were abused and tortured. Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and well-known Germans were also arrested and interred in the same manner.

·         The ‘Enabling Act’ allowed Hitler to enact new laws in his own right without the President’s influence. This law formed the basis of the NAZI dictatorship.

·         After amassing the above powers Hitler then went about changing society to conform with Nazi ideology. This was done by purging the civil service of the politically-suspect such as Jewish public servants.

·         In order to prevent workers forming organised opposition the private trade union movement with its many independent unions was replaced by the German Labour Front. Which was a part of the Nazi Party’s organisational structure.

·         The banning of all political parties resulting in Germany becoming a single-party state.

·         Cleansing of the Cultural and scientific spheres. All aspects of life that were considered to be “un-German” were obliterated. Books by Jewish, left-wing and pacifist authors were burned. Jews were victims of violence and oppression and a series of ant-Jewish measured were unleashed that culminated in the Holocaust.

Furthermore, according to Anne Frank House:

“The Reichstag only met 12 times between 1933 and 1939, and enacted only four laws — the “Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich” of 1934 (which turned Germany into a highly centralized state) and the three “Nuremberg Laws” of 1935.  All passed unanimously.”

The Reichstag “…. would only meet eight more times after the start of the war…. The Reichstag convened for the last time in the Kroll Opera House on 26 April 1942. It unanimously passed a decree proclaiming Hitler "Supreme Judge of the German People", officially allowing him to override the judiciary and administration in all matters.[7] Any last remnants of the privileges of the Reichstag's members were removed and the Führer became de jure the final decision-maker, with the power of life and death over every German citizen. In practice, this merely legitimized a situation that had been in place since 1933. For all intents and purposes, this extended the provisions of the Enabling Act indefinitely.”

Now, compare the Anne Frank House description of the Nazi State with the following description of the Russian political system of today. I refer you to the WorldAtlas web site article entitled: What Type Of Government Does Russia Have?

From WorldAtlas article you will conclude that the Russian governmental structure is not the same as the German state as described by Anne Frank House. Given this dissimilarity it is incumbent of Mr. Stanley to at least try to explain how modern Russia works. I suspect that Mr. Stanley does not provide this context because it may go against the narrative, he is trying to make a case for, specifically that Putin’s Russia is fascist.

WorldAtlas (somewhat facetiously I might add) commences its analysis with the following broad observations:

“On paper, Russia is a federal democratic state. In practice, however, many regard it as a dictatorship built around one man, President Vladimir Putin, who has been the leader of the Russian Federation since the year 2000. Russia has all the working parts of a democratic state, but since Putin took power, experts believe these working parts have been made to serve him and those close to him. Today, many believe that Putin now controls all levers of power in the country.”

As you can see the WorldAtlas equates the Russian state with Mr. Putin, just as Mr. Stanley does. However, the WorldAtlas does not claim that the Russia is fascist.

WorldAtlas then goes onto layout the aspects of the Russian State that describes existing only in “theory”. Specifically, the idea that it is a “federal, democratic state”.

The WorldAtlas refers to the 1993 constitution that formalises Russia as a federal, democratic republic informing us that:

“This constitution supposedly protects people’s fundamental human rights, such as freedom of expression and freedom of association. Article 10 of the constitution mentions the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that one would expect to find in any modern democracy, as well as the powers of those branches. It also proclaims the independence of the three branches.”

The branches referred to here are the Executive (which includes the Presidency and cabinet government), Legislature and the Judiciary.

According to the WorldAtlas since attaining power since 2001 Putin consolidated the Executive power (Putin’s) as follows:

·         Government takeover of two independent media outlets. These were ORT and NTV

·         Centralisation of power of Russia’s political institutions under him

·         Circumventing the two consecutive terms of the Russian Presidency by resigning in 2008 and taking on the role of Prime Minister until 2012 and running for election again and winning the Presidency in 2012.

·         Upon regaining the Presidency adding an extra two years to the previously constituted four-year term.

·         There is the possibility that Putin may amend the constitution to allow him to rule beyond his current consecutive term.

With respect to the Legislature

·         Establishment of his own United Russia party

·         United Russia party now dominates the legislature

With respect to civil society: The results of Putin’s actions are specified as follows:

·         Accusations of assassinating critics within and outside Russia

·         Violent Suppression of protests

·         Arrest and jailing of opponents

·         Russia’s media is entirely controlled by Putin and his supporters

·         Wheels of Democracy only appear to be working as follows:

o   Although elections are held these are widely regarded as sham

o   The election laws are rigged in Putin’s and his supports favour.

·         Many would argue that Russia is fast becoming a totalitarian dictatorship.

These things are concerning and, in many ways, run contrary to the intention of the Russian Constitution. The WorldAtlas does not use the word fascist.

However, Mr. Stanley is drawing an equivalence between Hitlers Dictatorship with Putin’s role in modern Russia in order to prove that Mr. Carlson is a fascist like Hitler.

Thus, according to Mr. Stanley:

“If Russia is not fascist, then even Nazi Germany in the 1930s was not fascist. As the historian Timothy Snyder has urged, “we should finally say it”: Russia is fascist.”

This deduction is based on an equivalence that does not exist.

The point I am making is that Russia, unlike Nazi Germany is built on the basis of a liberal democratic constitution and the rule of law. This formal system in Russia may be under challenge. The same thing can be said for any liberal democracy, such as the USA or France that is organised along liberal democratic lines like that of Russia. These democracies also face challenges from corruption, political interference, gerrymandering, censorship, media control and political propaganda.

Whatever Putin is up to he is doing it within the confines of the Russian constitution. In Russia there is still a division of power, political parties and independent trade unions and civil society that can stand up to anti-democratic tendencies.

In western liberal democracies Russian government affiliated media is banned, assets are frozen, news media and social media running counter to government policy is monitored and influenced by security services. All this demonstrates creeping totalitarianism or authoritarianism in the USA and Europe.

The Twitter files case highlights how totalitarian forces may be operating in the US. Then there is the case of Julian Assange. No one is suggesting that the US State is fascist in the classical sense. However, there are totalitarian overtones.

In June 2022 the Supreme court ruled that there is no constitutional right to abortion in the United States reversing the Roe V Wade landmark decision of 1973. There has been no suggestion that the conservative supreme court majority and the republicans are fascists.

I conclude by drawing your attention to a YouTube video published under the Big Think. The piece was presented by Mr. Stanley and is entitled “What is propaganda?”

In the video Mr. Stanley explains propaganda as:

 “… a kind of communication that makes a case for a goal, bypassing reason. So, what it does is it’s method to mobilize towards something while concealing from you things that you reasonably should think, should consider…. propaganda takes notions like freedom, integrity, and it weds them to these irrational biases…. Why was killing hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis called Operation Iraqi Freedom? Because the idea was somehow, freedom is what Americans do. If we are doing it must be freedom”

Further into the video Mr. Stanley informs us that:

“….. It’s inevitable that people have these associations between words and images. Democracy involves having many such associations, having lots of different words and lots of different discussions that are happening, so we can pick and choose among them. When there’s like two views standing off each other, when one group thinks that the conservatives are all fascists, and the other group thinks that all liberals are communists, well, then democracy starts to disappear”

I cannot help but feel Mr. Stanley’s piece in the Guardian as a form of propaganda aimed at convincing us that Tucker Carlson is a fascist. One of the main reasons is because Mr. Carlson does not condemn Putin’s war in Ukraine. Fascism is somehow something that Putin’s Russia does. If Mr Carlson does not support Ukraine in the war, then he is a fascist isolationist. Mr. Stanley asks people, especially those on the left of politics to bypass reason. It is not just fascists that can have an isolationist position on the war…the Left can as well. Having conservative religious beliefs does not necessarily mean you are fascist. Mr. Stanley omits to say that Oligarchic and totalitarian challenges to democracy are not just limited to Russia and China.

Mr. Stanley in his YouTube video draws the following positive moral:

“So, the goal should not be to talk in neutral ways. The goal is to have lots of different ways of living and lots of different ways of thinking and to recognize that we are not a threat to each other.”

In his Guardian article Mr. Stanley appears to have forgotten this moral and in doing so is himself instrumental in the disappearance of democracy.

References

Tucker Carlson is not an anti-war populist rebel. He is a fascist | Jason Stanley | The Guardian

Germany 1933: from democracy to dictatorship | Anne Frank House

What Type Of Government Does Russia Have? - WorldAtlas

(104) What is propaganda? | Jason Stanley | Explain It Like I’m Smart by Big Think - YouTube