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16th July 2019 03:10
Link to Post #1
Avalon Member
Is Donald Trump’s America Becoming Nazi Germany? A Critical Look at one Historian’s Troubling Similarities
American historian Christopher R. Browning’s comparison between Donald Trump’s America and Nazi Germany is deeply troublesome. An expert specializing in origins of Nazi genocide, Browning has leveled very serious accusations against the Trump Administration and the current government of the United States. We custodians of history should preserve its lessons to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past; in short, we should not take these accusations lightly. We should suspend bias and subjectivity, if possible, and determine if Browning’s observations merit concern.
I responded to this essay off-the-cuff here, but find the quality of his analysis so problematic I’m left to categorize it only as fear porn instead of honest intellectual discourse. Consequently, I feel compelled, for the record, to respond in a much more detailed and critical way.
The main problem with Browning’s assertion isn’t so much his thesis or potential warnings against the rise of fascism in America (we should explore this further), but rather the degree to which his rhetoric is laden with presumptions, loaded with misnomers, and frankly, misinformed.
Foremost is the tacit presumption underlying Browning’s entire argument, e.g. “autonomous nation states” and “isolationism” are bad. Are they bad? If so, why and how? What degree of isolationism is good? Can we discern some virtue from vice here? Or is this simply a two-dimensional equation?
Browning assumes a two-dimensional equation his readers should accept as gospel, e.g., globalism good/isolationism bad, despite the fact the United States of America, a Constitutional Republic founded by and for the people, maintains a deep skepticism of global entanglements as the direct result of breaking away from the suffering yolk of tyrannical monarchy. Browning rejects the cornerstone on which the country was founded and tacitly condemns isolationist sentiment, presumably because withdrawal from the world stage might lead to social conditions rife for murderous dictatorship. However, should we not discuss the point or at least support this notion without presuming it?
According to the essay, President Trump is systematically dismantling the international structure responsible for peace and stability for seven decades since WWII. This analysis implies a parallel to Nazi Germany’s role in upending world stability in the 1930s, and while it is true there hasn’t been a world war since 1945, I would ask him, what peace and stability is he talking about? Since WWII the planet has been in a state of perpetual warfare and conflict and the US Regime alone has killed 20 – 30 million people. Moreover, lost in his presumption of world stability is the fact that, save for an extinction level event, e.g., an asteroid striking the planet or the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera, democide, under the auspices of ever-concentrating government, is the most deadly threat known to humanity. The death toll of democide is estimated at as much as six times greater than the death toll of the totality of human warfare in past century. Let’s think about that. What is really more dangerous to human life? So-called “international anarchy” between nation states? Or concentrated power of government? In short, the march towards globalism is hardly peaceful, especially when lesser powers or hapless people oppose its agenda.
Dishonest discourse often avoids critical support of its underlying presumptions. Instead, misnomers and loaded rhetoric conflate presumptions with negative and positive values, e.g. rhetoric like “xenophobic” is interchanged with “nationalism”; “hegemony of white Anglo-Saxon protestants” and “white-anti-immigration” is interchanged with “immigration”. These words assume a qualifying support of the thesis without proper examination. Words like “national self interest” are interchanged with “specious pretext”, “Helsinki Summit” is interchanged with “abasement before Putin” and “law enforcement” is interchanged with “shameful separation of families at the border”. Finally, misnomers morph into all-out political talking points, e.g., “governing style” interchanges with “huge tax cuts for the wealthy” (a debatable assertion, at best, if not outright inaccurate). In any case, all these concepts are loaded with tabloid sensationalism that discredits his argument; none are critically examined or explored.
I would agree there is some danger to isolationism and unabashed nationalism. Sentiments of tribalism may also complicate the current immigration conflict on the U.S. border, but these are hardly two-dimensional issues. They certainly are not interchangeable terms with the pejoratives Browning employs, and it is beyond reproach for an honest historian to conflate these terms.
Specifically, if we are to entertain Browning’s presumptions, we should first establish why some Americans—particularly those who support nationalism and the Trump administration’s retreat from various machinations of the international order—are suspicious of globalism. This may provide insight about whether the same prejudices and public complicity that gave rise to the Nazi regime also apply to the collective sensibility of American people, and particularly to those who support the Trump Administration’s America First campaign. Simply, why are Americans suspicions of globalism? Are these worldviews really dangerous and ill-conceived? Why or why not? However, we already know the answers to these questions if we blindly subscribe to the presumptions underlying the essay, i.e. Americans who reject globalism, and specifically those who support the Trump Administration, are xenophobic and bigoted. But do these ad hominem presumptions stand to reason? I’m willing to have the discussion, as it seems integral to the issue. I am also willing to embrace globalism—and condemn a certain brand of nationalism--but only after honest and critical analysis.
To give Browning a pass, intellectual elites often harbor deep-seated biases for planetary government; this is given in university discourse, this is given in social sciences; this is given in think tanks tasked with solving planetary problems, and this bias is apparent in Suffocation of Democracy. We plebs and the planet’s resources require hands-on management; world population requires curtailment (a euphemism for systematic culling); world peace requires global governance. Moreover, the rhetoric of intelligentsia is often laden with subtle presumptions designed to precipitate the onset of global government, regardless of whether such rhetoric is a deliberate flourish of the pen or an unconscious bias. For example, when tackling collective planetary problems academics employ words like “ecological disaster” synonymously with “human-caused climate change” and present their connection as given, even though an honest scientific examination of the question raises valid doubts as to whether or not anthropogenic climate change is a real issue. In other words, the solution presupposes the problem. The Club of Rome, Agenda 21, Trilateral Commission--all examples of organizations with objectives toward this end. But here’s the thing: while these organizations may be founded on noble intentions, they are nonetheless authoritarian in nature and global in scale and therefore problematic.
I will be blunt. The virtues of globalism are hardly givens, which is especially apparent when cheerleaders like Browning fail to maintain a balanced viewpoint. If I am mistaken on this point, let’s discuss. Why or why not? If the populist trend sweeping the globe circa 2019 is indeed backward and paranoid and dangerous, as tacitly implied in Suffocation of Democracy, let’s discuss. However, that discussion may yield unsolicited conclusions, namely that populism is the organic reaction to ill-conceived concepts of concentrated power ever encroaching on the interests, civic liberties, and the lives of the planet’s population. Whatever the case, Browning does not address these questions but instead ascribes negative value judgments on them. Moreover, he ascribes judgments commensurate with social conditions responsible for the Holocaust without an appropriate level of examination.
I would submit, as a counter to these presuppositions, the machinations of globalism present the very dangers Browning is railing against. We are seeing a concerted move toward fascism, but not the brand Browning describes. We are seeing a neutralization of the free press and the prioritization of law and order above individual rights. Anyone paying attention understands we are already amid a fascist transformation (well before Donald Trump came on the scene), and, for better or worse, we are on our way toward a corporatist brand of world governance. The rogue administration of Donald Trump’s Presidency has merely thrown an inconvenient wrench in the machinations driving this march.
Put another way, Browning’s arguments can be applied to the incipience of globalism itself. Observing the fascist evolution of corporate globalism is an assessment so expansive with example and supporting evidence a mere survey of the facts would derail this discussion. I will be blunt again. Globalism is dangerous. At the very least, it can be dangerous, even given the noblest intentions. Not because it fosters racism and xenophobia (as is the critique of nationalism), but because it fosters conditions rife for the most horrific dystopia imaginable and for the mass enslavement of the species. The yolk of globalism, at its natural conclusion of global government, will produce a stranglehold never before known to humankind. It will foster conditions rife for the very real prospect of inescapable tyrannical oppression. If, as Washington observed, government is like fire, a dangerous servant and fearful master, then global government is like a mushroom cloud, a fearful servant and potential extinction-inducing master. Government is dangerous indeed. And global government, without any checks or balances, is as dangerous as it gets. Global government has all the earmarks to usher in its wake death and destruction in unimaginable quantities, all in the name of virtue and righteousness. If and when we reach this threshold as a species, what Huxley described as the Ultimate Revolution and what Orwell described as a boot on a human face forever, there will be absolutely nothing any of us will be able to do to remedy it. I would ask Browning of the presumptions underlying his essay: is this really the world we want to live in? Where checks and balances are nonexistent? Why should anyone who understands the horrors of history embrace this particular brand of governance?
To be fair, Browning is not advancing a specific argument supporting global government or even globalism, but he is arguing against nationalism and hides no disdain for Donald Trump and his supporters who are impeding its forward march by embracing the dreadful domestic policy of America First. With great irony, historians who launch tacit pejoratives at those who harbor suspicions of globalism fail to consider history itself. Americans, as a lot, are generally very suspicious of government. This is just our nature; it is an integral part of our history as a people; it is woven into the very Constitutional system of our government and is an integral part of our collective soul; it is the very spirit on which our nation was formed. I do not mean to imply we Americans are anarchists; we do, as a generalization, recognize the necessity and virtue of government, but for the most part we subscribe to the notion that government is best and most virtuous when the centers of power are concentrated closest to the people. The further the centers of power from the people, the more susceptible to corruption and tyranny. This is just common sense. In other words, city hall is preferable to provincial government; provincial government is preferable to state government; state government is preferable to federal government; and federal government is preferable to world government. People well understand everyday women or men have absolutely no recourse or remedy against the whims of tyrannical world government, but they can certainly organize a successful uprising against the whims of tyrannical city hall. These facts appear inconvenient for Browning, who instead ascribes negative value judgments on national characteristics. Again, the message is clear: globalism good/nationalism bad.
The ad hominen attack on nationalism and subtle biases in Suffocation of Democracy are not the only problems with this essay. Browning also misinforms his readers. An academic with Browning’s credentials should know the United States of America is not a Democracy. The United States of America is a Constitutional Republic. How is that-which-we-are-not being suffocated? He rails against gerrymandering, the electoral collage, and the fact that the popular vote has been subverted in four of the past five presidential elections. But this is precisely by design; we are not a people governed by mob rule. Two wolves and one sheep should not determine the evening menu.
Browning also claims a new brand of “alternative facts propaganda” has emerged in the incarnation of Fox News (programming favorable to the President’s agenda) and likens the broadcast to Joseph Goebbel’s Ministry of Propaganda. The “critical free press”, in contrast, e.g. PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The New York Times (media outlets broadcasting factual news critical to the President Trump) has been effectively neutralized by Presidential decree. This, however, is a blatant mischaracterization of the media. In reality, the news outlets Browning cites, including Fox News, as well as 90% of all information available via mediated experience to the American people, does not remotely resemble a “free press” network; this premise misinforms and is patently false. The aforementioned outlets more precisely makeup an information cartel and comprise a highly sophisticated propaganda apparatus that would make Joseph Geobbels blush. The cartel is concentrated in ownership among six mega corporations and its sole objective is to manage accordingly the public perception of the governing power structure, per the interests of the governing power structure, and per the interests of its corporate-oligarch overlords, e.g. Big Pharma, Big Tech, the Food and Military Industrial Complexes, etc. Facts and truth are irrelevant to the purpose of achieving its objective, save for when facts and truth effectively serve the objective. This dynamic is well known to serious scholars who study the epistemology of mediated experience in the milieu of corporate globalism, and Browning, a historian, should know better. In short, there is no such thing as “free press” in America. Indeed, the people themselves understand this at some visceral level, which is a direct consequence that gives “fake news” its moniker and legs. Certainly “fake news” did not become a cultural meme because a potential dictator effectively neutralized the “critical free press” with slight-of-hand trickery. Memes do not become memes without underlying veracity. But perhaps the greatest irony to Browning’s implication to the contrary, aside from the fact that it elucidates a President at odds with the power structure by challenging its propaganda apparatus (which does nothing but delight his supporters), is the inescapable conclusion that it’s all fake news at the end of the day, and the "real free press," i.e., the independent press and particularly atomized journalists and independent bloggers genuinely critical of globalism and of the power structure itself, are systemically censored, supressed, and banned in a narrative reminiscent of the biblical story of David and Goliath. Indeed, Browning may be on to the rise of fascism in America, although he has honed in on it through the entirely wrong lens.
Another example of misinforming his readers centers on the concept of “illiberal democracy”, and by implication, its rapid rise aside the Trump Presidency; illiberal democracy is the notion that democratic elections are largely ceremonial, irrelevant, and insufficient to check authoritarian power. While I do not disagree with his assessment, I am compelled to point out this observation is hardly unique to the Trump administration or to the American political process in general; where has Mr. Browning been? Georgetown historian Carroll Quigley accurately outlined this very dynamic in his 1966 seminal work, Tragedy and Hope, and then again in 1981 when he delved even deeper into discourse exposing the detailed machinations of power in Anglo-American Establishment. Is it dishonest to imply Donald Trump and his cohorts in Congress have suddenly rendered democratic institutions feckless to a burgeoning continuity of power that supersedes elected officials and survives election cycles. If Browning is just now becoming aware of this dynamic, he is several decades late to the party.
In closing, I see this as nothing but a political hit piece designed to polarize observers who do not have a sufficient background of the facts to discern the complexities of Browning’s argument from his unconscious biases and from the underlying dynamic driving the current political struggle in America. Indeed, we should be wary and skeptical of President Trump’s rogue approach to managing the problems Browning addresses in his essay. We should also hold his feet (and our government) to the fire if that rogue approach genuinely threatens world stability. But in holding our leaders’ feet to the fire, we should not thrown them into the flames with dishonest rhetoric and analysis meant only to score political points against our ideological opponents. Rather, we should convince by persuasion and reason. That is the democratic way of civil societies.
That is not the way of this essay. Its title may well have been How to Thrown your Political Opponent on the Third Rail, by Christopher R. Browning, Expert of Electromagnetism.
Last edited by T Smith; 16th July 2019 at 03:49.
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17th July 2019 02:31
Link to Post #2