A lot to digest in this @samuelmoyn piece on the political dangers of the misuse of historical analogy, especially an overly promiscuous use of "the political F-word" (fascism) to contextualize 😡. A couple of quick responses. nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/…
1: Methodologically, I 100% agree that historical comparisons, especially when made for policy analysis, must always identify BOTH the similarities between the cases AND the differences. Neustadt & May made this point definitively in THINKING IN TIME amazon.com/Thinking-Time-…
2: I also agree (though with some reservations) that when comparing monstrous historical episodes, the point of comparisons should not be the diminish or relativize the monstrosities in question. "Not as bad as the Nazis" is lousy history and lousy politics.
3: Fascism is a notoriously slippery concept, practice, and politics. Unless we wish to restrict the term only to European politics (or even just Italian politics) from the 1920s to the 1940s, it entails broad generalizations for which particular cases always form exceptions.
4: The reason for this is simple: all fascisms entail a malign worship of the quasi-mythic past of the nation -- the details of which by definition are always particular and specific and variable from nation to nation.
5: Sam is also clearly right that 😡 is not some radical aberration from American political history, but rather stands incarnates a long homegrown political tradition, albeit one that rarely of late has reached the White House, and never in such vulgarian form.
6: Certainly Sam is right that we need to acknowledge and specify the way that 😡 is hardly sui generis but rather a heritor of Know-Nothingism, of Babbitry, of McCarthyism, of "the paranoid style," and so on.
7: But where I must say I disagree, and quite strongly, is whether we cannot ALSO apply the F-word to 😡. For in fact, I would argue that these domestic political traditions *are* the American vernacular form of the fascist style.
8: I staked out my position on this question three and a half years ago. I agree with the Confucian principle of 正名 (Zhèngmíng) — that it's important to "rectify the names." From the perspective, I believe the F-word is the right political label for 😡.
9: To @samuelmoyn's methodological point however, in using the F-word to describe Trumpism, we must also be attentive to the differences between contemporary Trumpism and the historical "OG" fascists.
10: Some of those differences are about the American particularities of 😡, as discussed above. But others have to do with the fact that politics in general have wildly evolved since the 1930s. I discussed that briefly here:
11: I'm reminded here of the debate that's been taking place on here over whether MJ or LeBron is the GOAT. Some people try to compromise by saying, "Well, they played in different eras, so you can't really compare them."
12: @samuelmoyn seems to me to be making the equivalent of a "you can't compare MJ & LeBron" argument with respect to 😡 & fascism. But here's the thing, it's just not true that you can't 'objectively' compare players across eras! For example, consider:
13: In sum: I agree with Sam's methodological point about taking care when making historical comparisons, but in the end I think the comparison of Trumpism & fascism, mutatis mutandis, not only holds empirical water but also usefully clarifies the political stakes of our moment.
