The Atlantic published a strong warning against the erosion of democracy this morning, written by none other than Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s a good read, giving a cliffs notes version of all the ways Republicans are pushing America off a fascist cliff.
Not just Donald Trump, mind you. Republicans have been too busy eroding our democratic traditions themselves or protecting Donald Trump to do anything about it. And now Clinton is adding to the voices that call them out.
I’ve seen this go around lately:
Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
That word is “Nazi.” Nobody cares about their motives anymore.
George Takei shared it. It’s a quote by Julius Goat from his reaction (in January 2017) to Trump’s impending inauguration.
Fascism creeps, slowly. It doesn’t just start with people being led into gas chambers, that’s the end state. It starts with little things, small ways to gradually erode democratic principles. If you spot fascism here, you have a chance of killing it in the cradle. By the time you have mass concentration camps it’s too late.
So, allow me to make a big deal out of Trump violating a rule prohibiting early disclosure of employment data.
It’s important to remember that the war is against fascism. The Nazis were a particularly (if only briefly) effective group of fascists, but when looking for signs or common features of fascism, just from the 20th century alone it’s important to consider Italy, Spain, Central and South America… and so on.
In 1995, Umberto Eco wrote an essay describing what were, in his view, the fourteen common principles of fascism. His full essay is available online at the New York Review of Books, but this summary should be useful for future reference, to keep watch:
