Let me remind you that Robert Paxton has now reached a point where he argues that trumpism constitutes a form of fascism in the US and that under Trump the US was fascist in a way it wasn’t before and after. So the idea that his definition and understanding of fascism is an inherently very narrow one is just pointless.
Robert Paxton argued that fascism comes from a specific confluence of events in which the traditional elite relies on a radical right wing to maintain their power due to having lost legitimacy or needing power to suppress the left, forming a coalition between traditional stake holders in the state (Like capitalists, clergy, nobility, what have you. In the Russian case this would be the capitalist class who bought out the state during the shock doctrine) and right wing nationalism which tends towards a mass movement character. This movement co-opts the popularity of the movement into a suppression of “actual democracy” (Really liberal bourgeois dictatorship of course) and maintains power by balancing the powers of the coalitions. This movement then either decays into generic “authoritarian” rule under the traditional elite, or is increasingly radicalized towards genocidal redemptive violence.
Russia of course decayed into oligarchic fascist rule by the traditional power brokers.
Robert Paxton has now reached a point where he argues that trumpism constitutes a form of fascism in the US and that under Trump the US was fascist in a way it wasn’t before and after
This is an awful take. He thinks Trump was exceptionally different from prior U.S. presidents (by a way other than his rhetoric), that we voted fascism out, but that Genocide Joe is not fascist?
This is an awful take. He thinks Trump was exceptionally different from prior U.S. presidents (by a way other than his rhetoric),
Yes. He does. Which is why I think it’s not useful to say that his definition of fascism is uniquely restrictive. I have a suspicion that my interlocutor, given their focus on Francoist Spain was actually thinking of Stanley Payne who does have a very restrictive definition of fascism that specifically excludes francoism… because he is a francoist. I’ll address your other bigger point because it is actually worth addressing, I just saw this first.
Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2020 removes my objection to the fascist label. His open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary. It is made even more plausible by comparison with a milestone on Europe’s road to fascism—an openly fascist demonstration in Paris during the night of February 6, 1934.
You’re lying again.
Here’s a link to the article you cited but didn’t link because you’re such a dishonest fucking hack.
https://www.newsweek.com/robert-paxton-trump-fascist-1560652
Paxton hasn’t changed his opinion AT ALL you fucking liar. He didn’t magically make his definition of fascism more broad and inclusive like you are dishonestly presenting here.
He applied his exclusive definition and pointed specifically to inciting public violence to work along side his political movement. How does that apply to Putin you dishonest hack?
In what sense at all has Paxton “reached the point” of changing his definition as defined in that book you haven’t read when finally removing his resistance to calling Trump fascist in light of specifically Jan 6th?
You’re pretending Paxton has shifted to a broad and inclusive definition of fascism and he absolutely has not you liar. If you had read anatomy of fascism then you wouldn’t have claimed what you just did.
You’re such a fucking hack, man.
Read the article you’re citing.
Read the book you’re citing.
You fucking wanker.
