Tweet

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1394672837470965762

More from @FinchelsteinF

Finchelstein

@FinchelsteinF

21 May

When I was a grad. student I was critical by default. But when I started my Phd thesis, I got drastically humbled by how difficult it is research & write. This is why when I see people critical by default of works by others, I try to see what they have done in their own research?

how much work they published on their own? How is their research going? It is so easy to criticize the work of others from the perspective of do nothing in twitter but twitter can also be a place for learning rather than uninformed ranting

I have learned a great deal from many people in twitter...but in order to criticize as i you were Braudel you need to be Braudel...And I am sure Braudel had better things to do (research & writing) rather than merely dismissing the work of others

Read 5 tweets

Finchelstein

@FinchelsteinF

19 May

There is no way coup supporters would agree with a historical investigation...History (and academic historians) are regarded as enemies because empirically based accounts of the past are damaging to fascist type of lies..

Totalitarian propaganda is rooted in the cult of the leader & this is why fascist ideologies are the opposite of history...

Precisely because it is rooted myth, fascism fears REAL investigations of the past

Read 4 tweets

Finchelstein

@FinchelsteinF

1 May

We should not try to answer fascist lies, especially when/if they are posed as questions. Antidemocratic slogans such as "rigged elections", "race theory" or "gender ideology" cannot be normalized that way. Fascist lies are ideological statements that distort past & present

fascist lies contain the most simplistic answers to the most complex questions such as the meaning of democracy, equality & stability. Their function is to validate but not substantiated the cult of the leader.

of course, outside of the ideology of the leaders' cult, these might have a different context and meaning but when presented within, for example Trumpista o Bolsonarista ideologies they do not meant nothing beyond the fantasies, racism & prejudice of the leaders.

Read 7 tweets

Finchelstein

@FinchelsteinF

15 Apr

I was recently asked about the so-called fascism debate regarding Trump. There is no such thing if the prevailing idea is that the question can be a definitive yes or no.& answer depends on whether Trump was/is a replica of Hitler. He was not and neither were Mussolini, Pinochet

We should leave this form of binary thinking that insists that fascism cannot happen in the US because it happened differently in Europe before. This view often combined views of American exceptionalism with a lack of historical knowledge of actual fascism.

It is often presented, I should better say affirmed without too much context by colleagues who work on something else & suddenly felt urgent need to present simple dichotomies, thus reducing fascism to their limited knowledge of some European cases. Fascism was global,still is...

Read 9 tweets

Finchelstein

@FinchelsteinF

10 Apr

Fascism & escape from reality are synonymous. These applies to leaders & followers. In recent days, Trump insisted on his great lies, "They rigged and stole our 2020 Presidential Election, which we won by a landslide" & "Radical Left will destroy our Country if we let them."

When you study Trump's recent statements you can confirm how close we were to fascism in the USA.
Not only theorists like Arendt or Adorno noted this issue of fascist simplification as a source of authority via denial of reality...but fascists were quite explicit about this.

Adorno wrote, "By talking with individuals of fascist leanings, one can learn the psychological implications of this ‘key’ idea. Their more-or-less cryptic hints frequently reveal a kind of sinister pride; they speak as if they were in the know and had solved a riddle

Read 11 tweets

Finchelstein

@FinchelsteinF

14 Jan

Beyond the issue of Trump's wannabe failed fascism, I hope some time in the near future discussions of fascism will reflect the transnational nature of the problem. Fascism was not only German & Italian & it crisscrossed the world, from Latin America to Egypt, India & China...

In fact in his failed fascism, Trump's presents features (in terms of coup, religiosity, economics, etc) which are more characteristic of other fascisms, especially but not exclusively Latin American ones.

but I think at least for historians, the problem is so many experts on Europe and USA have no clue of global south history whereas those working on global south cannot afford to ignore history of the north.

Read 4 tweets

Share this page!

Finchelstein

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @FinchelsteinF

Finchelstein

Finchelstein

Finchelstein

Finchelstein

Finchelstein

Finchelstein

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?