{"id":4141,"date":"2018-11-17T16:05:54","date_gmt":"2018-11-17T21:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4141"},"modified":"2018-11-20T11:18:30","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T16:18:30","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-epilogue-4-13-neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist-counterrevolutionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-epilogue-4-13-neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist-counterrevolutionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Epilogue 4\/13: Neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist Counterrevolutionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cPolitical Warfare Attacks \u2013 A Primer.\u00a0<\/strong>As used here, \u201cpolitical warfare\u201d […] refers to political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model. Political warfare is one of the five components of a Maoist insurgency. Maoist methodologies employ synchronized violent and non-violent actions that focus on mobilization of individuals and groups to action. […] In Maoist insurgencies, the formation of a counter-state is essential to seizing state power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Rich Higgins (White House, NSC), POTUS & Political Warfare\u00a0<\/em>(2017)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Praxis 4\/13<\/a> seminar, \u201cCritique & the Alt-Right,\u201d began by questioning what to call the growing right-wing movements in the United States and around the world. Should we use the expression \u201cAlt-Right,\u201d the preferred term of Richard Spencer (who claims to have coined it), one that connotes perhaps an innocuous or respectable idea (as Zeynep Gambetti<\/a> suggested) of offering merely an \u201calternative\u201d to the traditional Right? Should we use, instead, following Jason Stanley<\/a>, the term \u201cFascist,\u201d or following Ruth Ben-Ghiat<\/a> \u201cfascistic\u201d\u2014or would that elide the differences between mid-twentieth century fascists like Mussolini or Hitler and our unique historical circumstances today? Should we turn instead to the language of counterinsurgency and of a new American \u201cCounterrevolution,\u201d as Jeremy Scahill and I discuss on the Intercepted<\/a>\u2014and as George Shaw titles Part V of his collected volume, A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of Its Members and Leaders<\/em>: \u201cCounterrevolution\u201d? Or should we call these movements \u201cWhite Supremacist,\u201d but again does that elide differences with Antebellum and post-Reconstruction America? (Should those differences matter?) Or should we draw instead on other terms such as \u201cWhite Nationalist\u201d or \u201cUltranationalist,\u201d or \u201cFar Right,\u201d or \u201cthe New Right\u201d as the French press did in the 1970s, or \u201cRight Populism\u201d as Etienne Balibar (1:58:13)<\/a> suggested at the seminar? Or is there, instead, perhaps, a strategic reason to call them \u201cGramscians of the Right,\u201d as Karl Ekeman<\/a> suggests (see especially video<\/a> at 2:14:53)? And in all this, I might add, should we capitalize any of these terms?<\/p>\n

Words matter, we all agree\u2014in fact, that may be our one point of agreement, even with these contemporary right-wing extremists. As Ekeman underscores, the texts we read consist, at their core, of dictionaries\u00a0<\/em>that redefine, recast, and infuse with political meaning ordinary language terms. They consist principally of what the authors refer to as \u201cMetapolitical Dictionaries\u201d: Guillaume Faye\u2019s Why We Fight\u00a0<\/em>is essentially an alphabetized glossary \u2013 from pages 72 to 262, practically 200 pages of the 271-page book is definitional; and Daniel Friberg too has a lengthy metapolitical dictionary in his The Real Right Returns.<\/em><\/p>\n

Language is political. In fact, if you read these texts closely, it is the main site of struggle\u2014the main battle, in Friberg\u2019s words, is over \u201cshaping people\u2019s thoughts, worldviews, and the very concepts which they use to make sense of and define the world around them.\u201d (Friberg, 24) It is precisely what triggers, on both sides, the \u201cemotions, identifications, and fantasies\u201d that, as Renata Salecl<\/a> observes, provoke, worry, and incite to action, especially in our increasingly anxious digital age. Cesar Sayoc is the most recent frightening example<\/a>. And finding the right term to use is itself a form of critical analysis, perhaps one of the most precise.<\/p>\n

Having rewatched the seminar<\/a>, listened again carefully, and continued to read and ponder the question, I have reached the (tentative) conclusion that any naming must take account of the following guideposts:<\/p>\n

1\/ On Fascism<\/em>:\u00a0The formal term \u201cFascist,\u201d etymologically tied to the Roman fascio\u00a0<\/em>as the symbol of law-and-order, describes a political regime that, at least to me, predates our general awareness of Hitler\u2019s \u201cFinal Solution\u201d to the Jewish question. In this sense, there is almost a before and after to the term fascism. There is, on the one hand, the ideal of fascism as an identifiable political regime: an authoritarian, law-and-order, single-party, executive power detained by a dictator who governs in the name of the people in an ultra-nationalistic manner. And on the other hand, there is the reality of fascism, post-1930s, as genocidal. Although fascism today retains the earlier formal character, it is practically impossible now to speak of fascism without including the genocidal dimension. Hence the confusion whether the term describes the before or the after\u2014and hence my preference for referring to the latter as neo-fascist: neo-fascist in that one can now only speak of fascism after the Holocaust as having a genocidal dimension.<\/p>\n

It is essential to read Jason Stanley\u2019s analysis in How Fascism Works<\/em><\/a> to identify the multiple ways in which these extreme-right writings function\u00a0<\/em>along fascist lines.<\/a>[1] The parallels are unmistakable. \u201cDemography is destiny,\u201d Shaw writes (xi). Diversity is making \u201cwhite societies poorer, more dangerous, and finally unlivable for whites,\u201d he adds. (xi) Friberg talks of \u201cnatural selection\u201d (60), of women\u2019s \u201cnatural role in society\u201d (61), and of the right of \u201cEurope\u2019s native populations\u201d to self-determination and self-defense (6). Guillaume Faye writes that \u201cThe base of everything is biocultural identity and demographic renewal.\u201d (37) \u201cA people\u2019s long-term vigour lies in its germen<\/em>, i.e., in the maintenance of its biological identity and its demographic renewal, as well as in the health of its mores and in its cultural creativity and personality. On these two foundations a civilisation rests,\u201d Faye emphasizes. (37) \u201cIslamic power is threatening to install itself in France,\u201d he adds (40); but \u201cthere is an alternative: reconquest<\/em>.\u201d(41) Richard Spencer talks of the superiority of the white \u201cand not just white, but Anglo and Germanic,\u201d at quarterbacking. (101) There is also ample material in the American collected volume that justifies the \u201cphysical removal\u201d of Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ, and others (Shaw, 206-214). This contemporary discourse works in the same way as classic fascism did.<\/p>\n

Yet when we remark that FDR was attracted to Italian fascism, or that FDR was tempted by fascism in the 1930s, we are not suggesting that he was drawn to the extermination of Jews. In this sense, the Final Solution, or rather our association of fascism with Hitler\u2019s Final Solution, transformed the meaning of fascism. The definition of fascism may not change with the Holocaust, but the connotation of fascism does, such that we need to make a distinction between fascism in the early 1930s and neo-fascism today: today, any embrace of \u201cfascism\u201d\u2014or charge of \u201cfascism\u201d\u2014must include the claim of a willful and deliberate (whether explicit or not) embrace of genocidal violence against those who are not considered part of the people (or at the very least, a willful ignorance or carelessness about the Holocaust or genocidal possibilities). To deploy the term \u201cfascist\u201d today is to inevitably include the element of genocide. History has radicalized the term. And so, I would prefer \u201cneo-fascist\u201d today as a way to underscore that genocidal dimension.<\/p>\n

One further point. Regardless of whether we use the term \u201cfascist\u201d or \u201cneo-fascist,\u201d the term itself makes it very easy for anyone accused of fascism to ridicule its usage or to counter the charge, particularly by using the endorsement of right-wing political leaders in Israel as a form of inoculation. Comparing a person to Hitler or Mussolini, or to Stalin for that matter\u2014putting aside persons who are openly Neo-Nazi (notice the use of the term \u201cneo-\u201c there)\u2014has been such a trope over the decades since 1945, that the charge has been somewhat watered down. This too may militate in favor of the prefix \u201cneo-\u201d.<\/p>\n

2\/ On<\/em> Counterrevolution<\/em>:\u00a0These texts betray a clear counterrevolutionary ambition. The language of war is all over the writings\u2014both explicitly and between the lines. \u201cCivil war is already upon us,\u201d Augustus Invictus writes. (Shaw, 214) \u201cThe war beings within you!\u201d the Friberg book closes. (117) Europe \u201cis at war<\/strong>\u201d Faye writes in bold. (29) \u201cWhy do we fight?\u201d he asks. \u201cWe fight only for the cause of our own people\u2019s destiny.\u201d (39) The entire final section, Part V, of George Shaw\u2019s volume\u00a0A Fair Hearing\u00a0<\/em>is called \u201cCounterrevolution.\u201d As noted earlier<\/a>, some contributions go so far as to marginalize General Pinochet, suggesting that Pinochet\u2019s methods of summary execution (by throwing victims out of helicopters) were not efficient enough (Shaw, 210-11). Throughout, the counterrevolutionary paradigm is modeled on counter-insurgency theory. Hence the importance of highlighting \u201cThe Counterrevolution\u201d in any description and identification of these extreme-right movements.<\/p>\n

The relation back to Maoist insurgency theory\u2014which is at the source of what the French commanders called \u201cla guerre r\u00e9volutionnaire<\/em>\u201d or what became known in this country as \u201cmodern warfare\u201d or \u201cunconventional warfare\u201d\u2014is explicitly made in the white paper \u201cPOTUS & Political Warfare<\/a>\u201d written by Rich Higgins when he was part of the strategic planning office at the National Security Council in President Donald Trump\u2019s White House, before being\u00a0fired by H.R. McMaster for writing it<\/a>. Higgins argues there that Trump is the target of insurgency warfare, or what he calls \u201cpolitical warfare,\u201d that traces back directly to Mao\u2019s strategies. He defines \u201cpolitical warfare\u201d in a short \u201cprimer\u201d\u2014here too, we have a \u201cmetapolitical dictionary\u201d\u2014in the following terms:<\/p>\n

Political Warfare Attacks\u00a0<\/strong>– A Primer. As used here, \u201cpolitical warfare\u201d does not concern activities associated with the American political process but rather exclusively<\/u><\/strong>\u00a0refers to political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model.FN2 Political warfare is one of the five components of a Maoist insurgency. Maoist methodologies employ synchronized violent and non-violent actions that focus on mobilization of individuals and groups to action. This approach envisions the direct use of non-violent operational arts and tactics as elements of combat power. In Maoist insurgencies, the formation of a counter-state is essential to seizing state power. Functioning as a hostile competing state acting within an existing state, it has an alternate infrastructure. Political warfare operates as one of the activities of the “counter-state” and is primarily focused on the resourcing and mobilization of the counter state or the exhaustion and demobilization of the targeted political movement. Political warfare methods can be implemented at strategic, operational, or tactical levels of operation.<\/p>\n

Political warfare is warfare. Strategic information campaigns designed to delegitimize through disinformation arise out of non-violent lines of effort in political warfare regimes. They principally operate through narratives. Because the left is aligned with lslamist organizations at local, national and international levels, recognition should be given to the fact that they seamlessly interoperate through coordinated synchronized interactive narratives. (Higgins, 3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reference, in footnote 2, is to \u201cThomas A. Marks\u2019 treatment of the Maoist model as discussed in Maoist People\u2019s War in Post-Vietnam Asia\u00a0<\/em>(Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press, 2007), 1-14.\u201d (Higgins, 3 n.2)<\/p>\n

So the explicit foundation of the ongoing struggle that Trump purportedly faces is modeled on Maoist insurgency theory\u2014and of course we all know what the proper response to a Maoist insurrection is: counter-insurgency practice.<\/p>\n

What these writings make clear is that the \u2018internal enemy\u2019 that must be defeated\u2014the insurgents\u2014include Muslims and Latinos (as Trump made clear with the Muslim Ban and more recently with his constant pre-Midterm demonization of the \u201ccaravan\u201d), the Movement for Black Lives, civil rights advocates, and trans* persons (what Higgins refers to as \u201cACLU and BLM\u201d and \u201ctransgender acceptance,\u201d at 1-2), and now as well the \u201cCultural Marxists.\u201d (Higgins, 1) Sam Moyn just published an important piece in the New York Times<\/em><\/a> the day before our seminar on the trope of \u201cCultural Marxism\u201d and the increasingly threatening discourse, fantasies, and attacks aimed at the post-modern Left. Moyn draws our attention to new research on the way in which \u201cCultural Marxism\u201d has been deployed by the extreme-right, including a fascinating article by J\u00e9r\u00f4me Jamin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The category of \u201cCultural Marxism\u201d has become the most efficient way for these extreme-right counterrevolutionaries to identify the \u2018active minority,\u2019 in the language of counter-insurgency theory, because the category regroups and serves as an umbrella term to capture the range a targets\u2014including Muslims, Blacks, trans* and other minorities. Moyn and Jamin document this well: From the viewpoint of extreme-right conspiracy theorists, the shift from materialist Marxism to cultural Marxism (supposedly achieved by the Frankfurt School) entails a shift from one conception of the proletariat as working class men to another conception based on identity politics. The right-wing conspiracy theorists see in the Gramscian or Frankfurtian turn, the creation of a new proletariat<\/em>, with \u201cCultural Marxist\u201d theorists becoming both their protector and the extreme-right\u2019s greatest nemesis:<\/p>\n

Marxist must now extend their defense of the \u201cproletariat\u201d to the \u201cnew proletariat,\u201d who are now made up of women to be protected against \u201cmacho men\u201d; foreigners protected from \u201cracist nationals\u201d; homosexual people from \u201chomophobes\u201d; Humanists from \u201cChristians\u201d; juvenile delinquents against \u201cviolent and aggressive police\u201d; and so forth. Regarding strategy, the theory states that Cultural Marxists must accuse their enemies of being racists, anti\u2010Semites, homophobes, fascists, Nazis, and conservative, which allows for the implementation of a \u201cpolitically correct\u201d language, and the banning of criticism of Cultural Marxism. (Jamin, 6-7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rich Higgins, formerly of Trump\u2019s White House, provides his own \u201cprimer\u201d on \u201cCultural Marxism\u201d\u2014again, note the \u201cmetapolitical dictionary\u201d:<\/p>\n

Cultural Marxism relates to programs and activities that arise out of Gramsci Marxism, Fabian Socialism and most directly from the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory. The result is induced nihilism, a belief in everything that is actually the belief in nothing.<\/p>\n

That post-modern (diversity\/multiculturalism) narratives seeks to implement cultural Marxist objectives can be demonstrated by reference to founding Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse’s repurposing of the term tolerance. In a 1965 paper<\/u>, Marcuse defined tolerance as intolerance; said it can be implemented through undemocratic means to stop chauvinism (xenophobia), racism, discrimination; and should be extended to the left while denied to the right (Higgins, 4).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the main culprits for \u201cCultural Marxism,\u201d Higgins and others maintain, is the academe. Higgins writes of the academe that \u201cAcademia has served as a principle counter-state node for some time and remains a key conduit for creating future adherents to cultural Marxist narratives and their derivative worldview.\u201d (Higgins, 2) But academics are not the only ones who benefit from all this and engage in political warfare, Higgins tell us. Others benefit and are captured by \u201cCultural Marxism\u201d as well, including \u201c\u2018deep state\u2019 actors, globalists, bankers, lslamists, and establishment Republicans.\u2019\u201d (Higgins, 2) (We will come back to the term \u201cglobalist\u201d shortly; as for the \u201cdeep state,\u201d Higgins views it through a Hegelian lens.<\/a>[2])<\/p>\n

As Jamin writes \u201cthe ultimate goal of Cultural Marxists, according to the conspiracy theory, is to discredit institutions such as the nation, the homeland, traditional hierarchies, authority, family, Christianity, traditional morality in favor of the emergence of an ultra\u2010egalitarian and multicultural, rootless, and soulless global nation.\u201d (Jamin, 7) The conspiracy theorists trace this all back to an insurgent Frankfurt School. Jamin cites a wonderful passage from Pat Buchanan\u2019s book, The Death of the West\u00a0<\/em>(2002):<\/p>\n

The Frankfurt School packed its ideology and fled to America. Also departing, was a graduate student by the name of Herbert Marcuse. With the assistance of Columbia University, they set up their new Frankfurt School in New York City and redirected their talents and energies to undermining the culture of the country that had given them refuge. (Buchanan, 2002, pp. 78\u201380) (cited in Jamin, 7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Jamin points us to the PR language for a film by James Jaeger called Cultural Marxism. The Corruption of America\u00a0<\/em>(2011) that describes how \u201cthe Frankfurt School, a Marxist splinter group, established itself at Columbia University and began \u2018the long march through the institutions.\u2019 The idea was, and still is, to infiltrate every corner of Western culture and pervert traditional values with \u2018political correctness\u2019 and Marxist ideologies. The ultimate goal is to destroy American free\u2010enterprise capitalism by undermining its economic engine, the Middle Class and the basic building block of society, the family unit.\u201d (Jamin, 8, quoting the film’s official website)<\/p>\n

For the extreme-right, especially the conspiracy theorists, the greatest threat today is this \u201cCultural Marxism,\u201d with its roots in Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, that draws its tactics from the \u201cpolitical warfare\u201d model of Mao\u2019s insurgency theory. So much so in fact that, as Moyn opens his editorial, William Lind begins his 2014 novel \u201cVictoria\u201d with the crusading massacre of the faculty at Dartmouth College: \u201cIn less than five minutes of screams, shrieks and howls, it was all over. The floor ran deep with the bowels of cultural Marxism\u201d (quoted in Moyn\u2019s editorial). The counterrevolutionary dimension is essential.<\/p>\n

3\/ On White Supremacy<\/em>:\u00a0It is also important to underscore that the central aim of these authors is, as Jason Stanley correctly notes, the \u201cattempt to send words into the respectability space.\u201d The European extreme-right texts, and particularly Daniel Friberg, do a better job at that than the more boorish Americans collected in George Shaw\u2019s edition. And there are even subtle distinctions between the Swedish and the French texts\u2014with Friberg eschewing the talk of revolution or violence (34-35) by contrast to Faye (29-35)\u2014as well as comparative levels of crassness among the American texts.<\/p>\n

For the most part, the American texts are far more explicitly and single-mindedly focused on race. Although all the extreme-right texts share attacks on Muslims, Jews, women, LGBTQ, among others, the American texts really center race. As noted in the introductory post<\/a>, Shaw\u2019s very first utterance, the very first sentence of his edited collection, is that \u201cIf alt-right ideology can be distilled to one statement, it is that white people, like all other distinct human populations, have legitimate group interests.\u201d (Shaw, ix) Overall, the American texts have a far more \u201cWhite Supremacist\u201d tone linked back more directly to the White Supremacy politics of the Antebellum and post-Reconstruction period in the United States.<\/p>\n

Here too, then, it might be important to qualify the term \u201cWhite Supremacist\u201d with \u201cneo-\u201d in order to distinguish these works within their national historical traditions. The American texts are inflected with the American history of slavery; the European texts, by contrast, are infused with the history of colonialism. It is necessary to distinguish between these different strands of extreme-right writings.<\/p>\n

In the American context, the term \u201cWhite Supremacy\u201d as a political ideology was called out more frequently in political and judicial discourse in the twentieth century, I believe, than now. I\u2019ve been noticing, but I\u2019d have to do more research, a number of opinions from mid-20th\u00a0<\/sup>century that discuss White Supremacy in a more open way than today. Chief Justice Earl Warren refers specifically to \u201cWhite Supremacy\u201d in Loving v. Virginia\u00a0<\/em>(1965), the case striking down Virginia\u2019s antimiscegenation laws. \u201cThe fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications,\u201d Warren wrote, were \u201cmeasures designed to maintain White Supremacy.\u201d (388 U.S. 1, 11) Associate Justice Rehnquist refers to White Supremacy specifically in Hunter v. Underwood\u00a0<\/em>(1985), striking down Alabama\u2019s voter disenfranchisement laws. At an important juncture in his opinion, Rehnquist highlights what John B. Knox, president of the convention, said in opening the 1901 constitutional convention in Alabama (of which the delegates were all white): \u201cAnd what is it that we want to do? Why it is, within the limits imposed by the Federal Constitution, to establish white supremacy in this State.\u201d (471 U.S. 222, 229) (see also Louisiana v. United States<\/em>, 380 U.S. 145, 149 (1965); but again, I need to do more research on this).<\/p>\n

In any event, today, the passage of time has rendered white supremacist ideology more radical, extremist, and more of an outlier than it was during the Antebellum period. It would be important to historicize and reanalyze the term now\u2014leading me to believe that the use of \u201cneo-\u201d might be appropriate here as well.<\/p>\n

4\/ On Social Darwinism<\/em>:\u00a0What became clear during our discussion\u2014especially from our lengthy discussion with Zeynep Gambetti over the place of neoliberalism in these extreme-right texts and the continuities from neoliberal evisceration of institutions to the extreme right<\/a>[3]\u2014was the important dimension, as well, of social Darwinism. But not any kind of Darwinism. What became apparent, in order to maintain the coherence of certain passages (Friberg 30-31, 57-59), is that this social Darwinism is not focused on the individual, at the level of selection, but on ethnic and racial groups. The claim is not that individual traits compete or select, but that group traits matter. That\u2019s why these writers extol the racial superiority of whites or native Europeans. Theirs is an ethnicized social Darwinism that has little resemblance to natural selection and, instead, a far greater proximity to eugenics.<\/p>\n

5\/ On Nationalism<\/em>:\u00a0Finally, and quickly, the texts differ importantly in the ultranationalism of the American extreme-right, by contrast to the European nativism of Friberg and Faye.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

With these five guideposts in mind, I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that, rather than call these extreme-right movements \u201cthe Alt-Right,\u201d we should be careful to distinguish the European texts from the American.<\/p>\n

For the U.S. writings\u2014the writings by Spencer, Shaw, etc. in A Fair Hearing<\/em>\u2014and for the broader extreme-right movement of which President Donald Trump now forms a part, as well as now many in the Republican Party who are fellow-travelers of the extreme-right base, I would prefer to use the expression: neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist counterrevolutionaries<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For the European Right texts we read, I would use the term: neo-fascist-European-nativist-counterrevolutionaries<\/em>.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Tragically, to watch this all unfold in real-time, one need only pay close attention to President Trump\u2019s words at press conferences and campaign rallies.<\/p>\n

Last week, on November 7, 2018, at a White House news conference, President Trump explicitly rehearsed the neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist counterrevolutionary position on the supposed \u201cracism\u201d of anti-racism.<\/a>[4] This is a central <\/em>tactic of these extremists: to turn concern about racism and the encroaching extreme-right into a racist position. Trump made the exact move that Guillaume Faye, Friberg, and the American authors proscribe: to boomerang the charge of racism back at their opponent. Faye writes at length of \u201cthe repressed racism of the dominant anti-racist ideology\u201d <\/strong>(230, bold in original). He emphasizes that anti-racism \u201cin fact is an inverted racial obsession. What\u2019s called \u2018anti-racism\u2019 is but a pathological expression of xenophilia.\u201d (Faye, 262) Friberg writes that \u201cto be \u2018anti-racist\u2019 is [\u2026] to be part of a movement which is directly linked to a reckless hatred for Europe and her history.\u201d (10) In other words, anti-racism, believe it or not, is \u201cracist.\u201d This is at the very core of these texts.<\/p>\n

Trump deployed this ideology in the most shocking and deliberate manner. It was total and complete dog whistle politics. Listen to the exchange, or even more, view it here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Yamiche Alcindor (PBS Newshour): \u201cOn the campaign trail, you called yourself a \u2018nationalist.\u2019 Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists. Now people are also saying. \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Donald Trump: \u201cI don\u2019t know why you say that, that is\u00a0<\/em>such<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>a\u00a0<\/em>racist<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcindor: \u201cThere are some people who are saying that the Republican Party is now supporting white nationalists because of your rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump: \u201cOh, I don\u2019t believe that, I don\u2019t believe that, I don\u2019t believe that. Why do I have my highest poll numbers ever with African-Americans? Why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African-Americans? That\u2019s such a racist question.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Alicodor tries to intervene].<\/p>\n

Donald Trump: \u201cHonestly, I know you have it written down and everything. Let me tell you, that is a racist question.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Alicodor tries to intervene].<\/p>\n

Donald Trump: \u201cYou know what the word is? I love our country. I do. You have nationalists, you have globalists [\u2026] But to say that, what you said, is so insulting to me. It\u2019s a very terrible thing what you said!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It would be hard to imagine a more pristine illustration of turning anti-racism into racism against whites. Trump was calling out to his neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist counterrevolutionary base.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s language is coded\u2014the words he uses, the things he is willing to say, when he says them, where, how, how many times, everything about Trump\u2019s discourse is coded. When he uses the word \u201cglobalist\u201d here and elsewhere\u2014as when he responds to Laura Ingraham<\/a> that \u201cshe\u2019s just a globalist, and I don\u2019t see any other connotation than that\u201d<\/a>[5]<\/sup>\u2014we know that he is communicating to his base the anti-semitism that is hidden behind that word. It is a term that has become, effectively, an anti-semitic slur.<\/a>[6]\u00a0<\/sup>Rich Higgins wrote of \u201cglobalists\u201d the following: \u201cGlobalists and lslamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed. Atomization of society must also occur at the individual level; with attacks directed against all levels of group and personal identity. Hence the sexism, racism and xenophobia memes. As a Judea-Christian culture, forced inclusion of post-modern notions of tolerance is designed to induce nihilistic contradictions that reduce all thought, all faith, all loyalties to meaninglessness.\u201d (Higgins, 2) The term is so fraught.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s cultivated silences about right-wing terrorism, such as the violence at Charlottesville or Cesar Sayoc\u2019s pipe bombs\u2014as compared to his lashing out at non-White Supremacist violence is calling out to his neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist counterrevolutionary base. Trump\u2019s repeated use of the term \u201cpolitical correctness,\u201d especially in the context of the Muslim ban, picks up directly on extreme-right thinkers, such as William Lind author of \u201cWhat is \u2018Political Correctness\u2019?,\u201d that, in the words of Jamin, use the term to \u201cevoke[] the all\u2010powerful nature of a new state ideology in the United States.\u201d Lind calls this \u201c\u2019Political Correctness,\u2019 and immediately associates it with Cultural Marxism, that is to say what he calls \u2018Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms\u2019 (Lind, 2004, p. 5).\u201d<\/a>[7]<\/p>\n

We are now watching, in real time, neo-fascist-white-supremacy-ultranationalist counterrevolutionary discourse define the American Presidency. This is utterly intolerable, and it is inconceivable to me how the American public has allowed this to happen. The 2018 Midterms were a first corrective. All the same, Leo Strauss must be regaling.<\/p>\n

\u201cA man of independent thought can utter his views in public and remain unharmed, provided he moves with circumspection. He can even utter them in print without incurring any danger, provided he is capable of writing between the lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing<\/em><\/a>[8]<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notes<\/h1>\n

<\/a>[1] Again, Paul Street does a good job of synthesizing all this here: https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/the-signs-of-creeping-fascism-are-all-around-us\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[2] On the \u201cDeep State,\u201d Higgins writes: \u201cThe successful outcome of cultural Marxism is a bureaucratic state beholden to no one, certainly not the American people. With no rule of law considerations outside those that further deep state power, the deep state truly becomes, as Hegel advocated, god bestriding the earth.\u201d (Higgins, 2)<\/p>\n

<\/a>[3] Zeynep Gambetti emphasized how these writings represent \u201ca specific mode of re-politicization in an age of neoliberal depoliticization, but one that exacerbates the problems plaguing political systems instead of effectively overcoming them.\u201d Along these lines, in Gambetti\u2019s words, the texts are radicalizing and politicizing practices that \u201cliberals themselves have helped constitute and normalize.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>[4] The exchange with PBS Newshour\u2019s Yamiche Alcindor is here on YouTube: https:\/\/youtu.be\/7bSMiSTdthE<\/a>. Paul Street does an excellent job of analyzing this exchange here at TruthDig: https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/the-signs-of-creeping-fascism-are-all-around-us\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[5]\u00a0https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2018\/10\/31\/donald-trump-fascism-and-the-doctrine-of-american-mythology\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[6]\u00a0https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2018\/03\/the-origins-of-the-globalist-slur\/555479\/<\/a>;https:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/us-news\/.premium-how-did-the-term-globalist-became-an-anti-semitic-slur-blame-bannon-1.5895925<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[7] Jamin J. Cultural Marxism: A survey. Religion Compass. 2018;12:e12258. https:\/\/doi. org\/10.1111\/rec3.12258 (available at https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1111\/rec3.12258)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[8] Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing<\/em>, p. 24 (I recently reread this passage in James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance<\/em>, p. 183).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt \u201cPolitical Warfare Attacks \u2013 A Primer.\u00a0As used here, \u201cpolitical warfare\u201d […] refers to political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model. Political warfare is one of the five components of a Maoist insurgency. Maoist methodologies… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-4-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}