Bret Stephens, in a New York Times column analyzing possible reasons Kamala Harris would lose, blames her supporters for the “politics of name-calling, which happens every time Trump’s voters are told they are racists, misogynists, weird, phobic, low-information or, most recently, supporters of a fascist — and, by implication, fascists themselves.”
Put aside Stephens’s strange concern that name-calling by Trump opponents is a reason Trump might win (which seems about as plausible as suggesting Harris might lose because she plays too much golf). Consider his claim that calling Trump a fascist is an insult to Trump voters.
Here, Stephens is echoing what has become a popular new concern on the right. “Are tens of millions of Americans really falling for a fascist takeover?” asks The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page incredulously. In his interview with Harris, Bret Baier seized upon Harris’s harsh critique of Trump as dangerous and unfit as a slap in the face to the great and good American people who plan to vote for him. “If that’s the case, why is half the country supporting him?” he scolded. “Why is he beating you in a lot of swing states? Why, if he’s as bad as you say, that half of this country is now supporting this person, who could be the 47th president of the United States? Why is that happening? … So are they misguided, the 50 percent? … Are they stupid? What is it?”
One obvious flaw in this complaint is that Trump calls Harris and other Democrats fascist, as well as communist, in keeping with his long-standing habit of automatically flinging any charge made against him back at his critics.
Yet nobody is wringing their hands about the insult to the half of America supporting Kamala Harris. Why is that? I would posit because nobody actually believes Harris is a fascist. The concern about transitively denigrating supporters of an alleged fascist only pertains to Trump supporters because the charge is plausible. Trump’s name-calling can be ignored because it’s transparently empty.
The word fascist in Stephens’s column contains a hyperlink to a Times news story, which reports, “On Wednesday, speaking in Washington Crossing, Pa., Ms. Harris quoted Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Mr. Trump, describing his former boss as “fascist to the core,” as detailed in a new book from the journalist Bob Woodward.” Stephens appears to be arguing that merely quoting a former general who worked for Trump sharing his candid view of the former president, Harris is saying his voters are, “by implication, fascists themselves.”
I can see why that would feel hurtful. With all due respect to the self-esteem of the pro-Trump community, however, the question of whether Trump actually does pose a danger to the Republic strikes me as more important than the feelings that might be wounded by discussing this issue publicly.
Baier and the Journal are making a slightly different case. They are suggesting that the fact that he commands support from half of the public proves Trump can’t be fascist. The argument runs as follows: The American people are smart and wouldn’t support a dangerously unfit authoritarian for office; therefore, the fact that half of them support Trump proves Trump isn’t a fascist.
One flaw in this argument is that many people who have more direct knowledge than the American public as a whole consider Trump dangerously unfit for office. This list includes many Republicans who have worked directly for Trump: Milley, former Trump chief of staff John Kelly (who recently recounted Trump’s admiration for Adolf Hitler’s loyalty-focused hiring practices), and many, many others. It seems strange to hold the intelligence of the broader public as a reason to ignore the testimony of a group of people privy to far greater information on the subject.
A second flaw is that obviously not everybody who considers Trump dangerously unfit for office will oppose him. Many Republicans denounced Trump as a dangerous authoritarian after January 6 yet later decided to support him anyway. Some of them are now his most generous donors or are currently managing his campaign. So we clearly can’t infer that Trump is not a fascist from the mere fact that he enjoys mass support. Obviously, a large number of Republicans are willing to support a fellow Republican they personally consider to be authoritarian.
To be sure, many Americans are against fascism and oppose Trump on that basis. This brings us to the third flaw in the argument. Some people who support Trump now might change their minds if they learn that many of his former staffers consider him dangerously unfit for office. That, presumably, is the reason Harris is mentioning it.
Some of them might disregard these warnings or decide they want to vote for Trump anyway. But the only way anti-fascist voters are going to reject Trump on anti-fascist grounds is if they are aware of Trump’s authoritarianism.
Is calling Trump dangerously unfit for office the best way for Harris to win? I don’t know! Probably not. In any case, most of her messaging is focused on regular Democratic issues like abortion rights and taxing the rich. But whatever messaging is most effective, the most insulting position to the American public is the insistence that they can’t handle being informed about the anti-democratic inclinations of a man who might become president.
I have previously argued that Trump is more precisely understood as an authoritarian rather than a fascist (fascist being a more extreme subset of authoritarian). But the terminological distinction seems to be lost on everybody, so I am using the common term for the purposes of this debate.
Source link
