Against the backdrop of many unusual revelations during Thursday’s first January 6 prime-time committee hearing, one stood out for its depravity: that during the attack, when rebels chanted “Hang Mike Pence” in Capitol halls, President Donald Trump suggested the mob really need to execute its vice president.
“Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he said, according to a source in the commission. “[Mike Pence] he deserves it. ”
Approving violence is hardly new to Trump; this is something he has done many times, often in a supposedly funny tone. But the reported comment of January 6 is qualitatively worse given the context: coming against the background of an actual violent attack that he helped ignite, and one that did little to stop. The commission found that the president had not taken any steps to protect the Capitol building by not calling in the National Guard or even talking to his secretaries of defense and home security.
While he de facto allowed the mafia to run wild, he personally welcomed the most violent stated goal of people he recognized as “our supporters.”
During Trump’s presidency, there was a heated debate among experts as to whether it was right to describe him as a “fascist.” One of the strongest counter-arguments that his political movement did not include the kind of street violence typical of Italian and German fascism was undermined on January 6 – although some scholars still say the term is a bit inaccurate.
But when a leader directs a mob to attack democracy in order to maintain his power in defiance of the democratic order, and then privately refuses to stop them while supporting the killing targets of people he claims to be his supporters, it’s hard to see he is anything but a leader of a violent anti-democratic movement with important parallels to interwar fascism.
This does not prove that fascism is in all respects a perfect analogy for the Trump presidency. Yet when it comes to analyzing Jan. 6, both Trump’s behavior and the Republican Party’s broader response to the event, last night’s hearing proved that the analogy could be not only appropriate but illuminating.
January 6 is the culmination of a long history of fascist rhetoric
In The Anatomy of Fascism, Columbia University historian Robert Paxton gives a fairly clear definition of the political trend:
Fascism can be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive concern for the decline of the community, humiliation or sacrifice and compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of engaged nationalist fighters working in troubled but effective cooperation with traditional elites, abandons democratic freedoms and pursues goals of internal cleansing and external expansion with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restrictions.
Most of this seems to respond quite well to Trumpism. “Obsessive concern for community decline, humiliation or sacrifice”? Check. “Compensatory cults to unity, energy and purity”? Check. “Inconvenient but effective cooperation with traditional elites”? Check. “No ethical or legal restrictions”? Check, check and check.
One key factor that was missing, at least for most of Trump’s presidency, was violence. Paxton’s definition emphasizes the central role of force in fascist politics: that a “mass party of engaged nationalist fighters” uses “redemptive violence” to pursue “goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Yet Trump himself has long harbored a fascination with political violence. In an interview with Playboy in 1990, he praised the Chinese government’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
“When students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it up,” Trump said. “They were vicious then, they were terrible, but they suppressed him by force. It shows you the power of strength. “
During the 2016 campaign, Trump suggested that “people from the Second Amendment” could be acquitted of killing Hillary Clinton if she won the race. He repeatedly encouraged his supporters to attack the counter-protesters, even offering to pay their legal fees. The dangers were obvious; During the Republican election, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) warned that his language could lead to mass violence:
This is a man who during rallies told his supporters to beat the people in the crowd and he would pay their legal fees, someone who encouraged the people in the audience to be rude to anyone who stood up and said something he does not like. …
But leaders cannot say what they want because words have consequences. They lead to actions that others take. And when the person you support for president walks around and says things like, “Come on, slap them, I’ll pay your legal fees,” what do you think will happen next?
During his presidency, his passion for extrajudicial violence re-emerged.
In 2017, he described some of the white-collar supporters in Charlottesville as “very good people.” During a rally in 2019, he “joked” about the shooting of migrants at the border to applaud the crowd. In a 2020 tweet, he used a slogan from the era of segregation to call for violence against George Floyd’s protests (“when looting begins, so does the shooting”). During a presidential debate with Joe Biden, Trump told the Proud Boys – a far-right militia that would later lead the attack on the Capitol – to “step back and stand aside.”
What this record shows is that the potential of a Trump-led political movement to lead to bloodshed has always existed. The president seemed to believe in the cleansing and redemptive power of violence; this has been a hallmark of his thinking for years, even decades. The fact that he sometimes presents these comments as jokes or even withdraws after proposing them is characteristic of far-right political movements – which often put their most extreme positions in a kind of ironic tone that allows their supporters to accept at the same time. radical ideas, while distancing oneself from them.
The question for Trump was whether his fascination with violence would ever manifest itself in a mass movement: that he would join an illegal act of violence designed to secure his own power.
This, of course, happened on January 6. But as events unfolded, there was important information we didn’t know: the extent to which Trump intended to promote violence and how he reacted as it unfolded in real time.
On the first point, commission chairman Benny Thompson (D-MS) suggested in an interview that they had evidence that Trump’s team was in direct contact with both the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers, the other militia group that led the attack. Their proof was not presented last night; there is also some evidence that Trump’s subordinates do not allow him to communicate directly with extremist groups. This makes it difficult to assess the question of intent.
But on the second point, the commission’s evidence is humiliating. Pence’s comment on the hanging, along with his refusal to do anything to stop the violence, clearly shows that the president has agreed to the violence: that he sees it as supporting his cause. This is undoubtedly fascist.
Does the label “fascism” matter?
Like my colleague Dylan Matthews, I have long hesitated to describe Trump as a fascist.
Unlike the interwar fascists, Trump has not set out an ideological alternative to liberal democracy that involves the abolition of elections – in fact, he does not seem to have a consistent ideology at all. The biggest threat the Trump-led Republican Party poses to democracy is not explicitly overthrowing democracy, but carving it out – an ultimate game that resembles Jim Crow South or modern-day Hungary far more than Nazi Germany. I have a real concern, in my opinion, that the hyper-focus on the interwar model may lead us into a debate on definitions that diverts attention from more resonant and informative parallels.
But when we talk specifically about January 6, the analogy with fascism is really useful.
Events such as the March against Rome in 1922 or the 1923 Beer Hall coup help us understand how attempts to seize power by force – even unsuccessful ones like the Coup – can play a role in the rise of radical far-right movements. They help us understand the clarifying and organizing power of violence, the way in which uniting to hurt others can help reinforce dangerous political tendencies.
And that helps us understand the potential for a recurrence of violence, especially given the ongoing whitening of the main Republican Party since January 6th.
One of the defining elements of interwar fascist supremacy is the complicity of conservative elites – their belief that they can manipulate fascist movements for their own ends, empowering those movements while remaining in the lead. That’s how the main Republican party came close to Trump, even after a violent attempt to seize power that revealed how far he was willing to go to retain power.
In the midst of last night’s hearing, Republicans’ official Twitter account of the House Judiciary Committee has repeatedly ridiculed and downplayed the importance of the House hearing – even calling it “old news.”
Everything. Star. News.
– House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) June 10, 2022
Was not. Although some of the revelations were telegraphed in broad leaks, including comments about Pence’s hanging, the details have not yet been made public – and there were many revelations that were simply brand new.
But the issue here is not factually inaccurate on the part of the Republican Party. That is, Republican officials saw their work as a cover for Trump, even when evidence emerged that …
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