Sunday, April 09, 2017

Trump's "Anti-Fascist" Critics Praise Trump for Waging War

Ever since he became a serious candidate for president, Trump's foes have attacked him for being a "fascist" (among other things). Their insults intensified after Trump was elected president. And intensified still further after he assumed office and began issuing orders.

Ironically, after Trump's most fascist action yet -- his military strike on Syria -- those same critics are now praising Trump.

According to Glenn Greenwald [April 7, 2017]: 

In every type of government, nothing unites people behind the leader more quickly, reflexively or reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how true that is, as the same establishment leaders in U.S. politics and media who have spent months denouncing him as a mentally unstable and inept authoritarian and unprecedented threat to democracy are standing and applauding him as he launches bombs at Syrian government targets.


We are truly living in an Orwellian Bizarro World. While some of Trump's previous actions were not particularly libertarian, neither were they strictly fascist. Barring people from a country (e.g., Trump's Muslim travel ban and his attempts to deport criminal aliens) is not fascist. I'm sure many of Hitler's and Stalin's victims would have loved it had these dictators deported them rather than murdered them.

Barring people from entering a country is unfriendly. Waging wars of aggression on them -- killing them -- is far worse. Far more fascistic. Indeed, wars of aggression are one of the key traits of fascism.

So it is ironic -- supremely ironic -- that Trump's critics, neoliberal and neocon, in media and in government, who for so long have excoriated Trump for being fascist, are now praising him for his most purely fascist act yet.

Sorry about our past insults, Mr. President. We were worried you weren't a real fascist. Now that we see you are, we'll stop calling you a fascist.

Strange times indeed.

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