1/ So is Donald Trump a Nazi?
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2/ There has been a lot of talk since Trump was elected, and especially since the child detention centres, along lines that he is a fascist, a Nazi, or close enough to both to make it worth drawing the comparison. Is defensible?
3/ First, Trump isn’t a Nazi. Nazis don’t exist any more - they are in the innermost circle of hell reserved for history’s worst people. Trump is supportive - at least not unsupportive - of the Alt Right, a far right/libertarian hybrid. But they’re not Nazis and neither is he.
4/ So is he a fascist? I don’t think so. Trump shows disdain for democratic institutions but he is an elected leader - by millinos. He seems frustrated by the rule of law and democratic process but he is far, thankfully, from rejecting democracy or advocating a one-party state.
5/ I’m not discounting that in another time Trump would have been a fascist. I think he probably would. But definitions matter. We need to keep a laser focus on what we criticise Trump and his movement for. Because misplaced comparisons can do damage.
6/ You lose the trust with the millions of people who don’t strongly object to Trump but are uneasy with his policies - you set your argument up to fail by making a comparison that can easily be rebutted. And those people then say: I’m not listening as you are over-egging.
7/ But. The discussion doesn't ends there.
That’s where it begins.
Here’s my main point. Societies can’t just be divided into “free” and “unfree” any more than a human can be described as “healthy” or “unhealthy”. Like a body, a state is a hugely complex, interlocking system
That’s where it begins.
Here’s my main point. Societies can’t just be divided into “free” and “unfree” any more than a human can be described as “healthy” or “unhealthy”. Like a body, a state is a hugely complex, interlocking system
8/ That means that certain parts can be working well whilst others are not. It means that pathologies can be localised to one system, but they can also be - at any given time - spreading. And like an body, a social pathology can predate the symptoms by months or even years.
9/ In some 20th century states every aspect was corrupted to make mass killing and oppression possible. The leader, but also parliament (a fig leaf), judiciary (loyal to the leader not justice) and the perverse incentives for individuals to act contrary to their consciences
10/ That level of pathology is common to societies run by fascists, communists, Nazis. Name is unimportant. But you can pull the common themes together and see how societies progress towards un-freedom and even genocide.
11/ I helped make a film featuring survivors of three different genocide. Their experiences had much in common - discrimination, dehumanisation, neighbour being turned against neighbour, splitting society into tribes and racial hierarchies
12/ Don’t forget that democracy and liberalism isn’t the natural state of human society - they are historical aberration. Most societies, in most of recorded history, have been oppressive, unfair and unequal.
13/ So Trump. He’s no Nazi or Fascist. But he - and his movement - do things which corrode liberal democracy. How can we tell? Human rights. The European Convention was designed by people who understood the pathologies which led to totalitarian states
14/ Like Hersch Lauterpacht, who lost his family in the Holocaust, and David Maxwell Fyfe, who prosecuted at the Nuremberg War Crime trials. They helped create a simple list of rights needed for a free society: fair trial, no torture, freedom of speech… rightsinfo.org/the-rights-in-…
16/ Human rights laws are a blueprint for a free society - but they are also an early warning system. And breaches of human rights are therefore a useful way of assessing how pathological the behaviour of a leader or government is to the political system they are running.
17/ *That’s* why we should worry about Trump. He is rhetorically and by policies against ideas of human rights standards. He withdrew US from UN Human Rights Council. He rejects international institutions which are the framework for international human rights standards
18/ His anti-Muslim polcies are discriminatory - draws distinctions between “us” and Islam, so building tribal consciousness which leads to bad places. Speaks of “infestation” - language familiar to Goebbels (Jews are “rats”) and Hutus in Rwanda who called Tutsis “cockroaches”
19/ Trump supports torture of terror suspects and practices which have been outlawed in international human rights law for 40 years. … His child separation policy would never have survived a human rights challenge and was rightly seen as crossing a line
20/ So Trump isn’t a Nazi or a fascist. But there are warning signs which we cannot - must not - ignore. Human rights can be a litmus test to see the difference between policies and practices we dislike and ones are genuinely corrosive of democracy and may lead to darker places.
