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Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
@tzimmer_history
Jan 5, 2020 • 8 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
Bret Stephens. After lending credence to racist ideas about Jews promoted by white supremacist “race science” last week, he casually perpetuates the myth of the “clean” Wehrmacht by referring to Erwin Rommel as a “worthy adversary” in his latest column./1
As @DavidAstinWalsh points out in this great thread, it takes quite the mixture of laziness and ignorance to not know and understand how thoroughly debunked this myth of the honorable and respectable German fighting force is – and has been for decades./2
@DavidAstinWalsh I’m also struck by the ways in which Stephens evokes Nazism and the Second WW. Think back to August, when he equated someone mocking him on Twitter with Goebbels, and the criticism he received with the dehumanization of Jews as prelude to genocide./3
@DavidAstinWalsh It’s not only uninformed – it’s also entirely opportunistic and in bad faith. Not only does he not have a firm grasp of what he’s talking about, he also clearly doesn’t care. In his columns, history – even that of genocide and total war – is just a convenient prop./4
@DavidAstinWalsh There’s never any deeper reflection inspired by the past to be found, no honest questioning of the present derived from past example. Stephens obviously thinks citing the past makes him sound educated, and evoking Nazism is supposed to give weight to his nonsense. That’s it./5
@DavidAstinWalsh At this point, it’s simply disgraceful for the NYT to hold on to this man. I also want to mention, again, how unconscionable it is for Germany’s leading weekly magazine @DIEZEIT to provide Stephens with an additional platform./6
@DavidAstinWalsh @DIEZEIT I have harped on this in earlier threads – before () and then again right after the #bedbug debacle./7
@DavidAstinWalsh @DIEZEIT It shows how much harm the NYT is causing by championing Stephens, and not just to the political discourse in America. Internationally, Stephens is just known/presented as an acclaimed “NYT columnist,” which guarantees a huge audience. What a joke. /end

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More from @tzimmer_history

Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Dec 16
The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism
 
Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.
 
New piece (link in bio): My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “The Modern Conservative Tradition and the Origins of Trumpism: Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project”
What should we call the pro-Trump forces that are dominating the American Right today? Conservatives? Reactionaries? Something else? The terminology really matters because it reflects and shapes how we think about the nature of Trumpism and how to situate it in U.S. history.
We need to distinguish between colloquial or abstract philosophical notions of what it means to be (small-c) “conservative” - and the political project that referred to itself (and was widely referred to) as the Conservative Movement in post-1950s America.
Read 7 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 28
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right

Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.

Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):

🧵1/ My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “Meet the Ideologue of the ‘Post-Constitutional’ Right: Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.”
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation. 2/
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From, at least rhetorically, claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.” 3/
Read 14 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 28
Meet the Ideologue of the “Post-Constitutional” Right
 
Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.
 
New piece (link in bio): My latest Democracy Americana newsletter: “Meet the Ideologue of the ‘Post-Constitutional’ Right: Russell Vought, one of the architects behind Project 2025, believes there is nothing left to conserve. He desires revolution – and to burn down the system.”
I wrote about Russel Vought’s ideology of “radical constitutionalism” that captures the defining sensibility on the Trumpist Right: The Left has command of America, all that is noble has been destroyed, nothing short of a radical “counter-revolution” can now save the nation.
Vought’s case is emblematic of the Right’s trajectory more broadly: From – at least rhetorically – claiming “small government” principles and “constitutional conservatism” to an ever more aggressive desire to mobilize the coercive powers of the state against the “enemy within.”
Read 4 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 5
Why the Stakes in this Election Are So Enormously High
 
Democracy itself is on the ballot. If Trump wins, the extreme Right will be in a much better position than ever before to abolish it.
 
Some thoughts from my new piece - while we all nervously wait (link in bio):
 
🧵1/ My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “Why the Stakes in this Election Are So Enormously High: Democracy itself is on the ballot. If Trump wins, the extreme Right will be in a much better position than ever before to abolish it.”
Consider this my closing argument: As of right now, only one of the two major parties in the United States, the Democratic Party, for all its many flaws, is a (small-d) democratic party. The other one is firmly in the hands of a radicalizing ethno-nationalist movement. 2/
The fault lines in the struggle over whether or not the democratic experiment should be continued map exactly onto the fault lines of the struggle between the two parties. Democracy is now a partisan issue. Therefore, in every election, democracy itself is on the ballot. 3/
Read 16 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 2
Weekend reading:

Combine the myth of American exceptionalism, (willful) historical ignorance, and a lack of political imagination and the result is a situation in which a lot of people refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously.

This week’s piece:

thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/it-could-def…My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “It Could Definitely Happen Here: Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.”
There is a pervasive idea that in a country like the United States, with a supposedly centuries-long tradition of stable, consolidated democracy, authoritarianism simply has no realistic chance to succeed, that “We” have never experienced authoritarianism.
But the political system that was stable for most of U.S. history was a white man’s democracy, or racial caste democracy. There is absolutely nothing old or consolidated about *multiracial, pluralistic democracy* in America. It only started less than 60 years ago.
Read 8 tweets
Thomas Zimmer Profile picture
Nov 1
It Could Definitely Happen Here
 
Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.

Some thoughts from my new piece (link in bio):

🧵1/ My latest “Democracy Americana” newsletter: “It Could Definitely Happen Here: Many Americans struggle to accept that democracy is young, fragile, and could actually collapse – a lack of imagination that dangerously blunts the response to the Trumpist Right.”
I wrote about the mix of a deep-seated mythology of American exceptionalism, progress gospel, lack of political understanding, and (willful) historical ignorance that has created a situation in which a lot of people simple refuse to take the Trumpist threat seriously. 2/
There is a lot of evidence that this election may be decided by a sizable group of people who strongly dislike Trump and his plans, but simply cannot imagine he would actually dare / manage to implement any of his promises and therefore aren’t mobilizing to vote. 3/
Read 14 tweets

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