Jason Stanley on Trump's Fascist tendencies.

Jason Stanley writes in Newsweek-

As president, Donald Trump has focused on restricting immigration and deporting undocumented residents.

I think we should attack Trump for doing less in this department than Obama precisely because, unlike Obama, Trump does not have the intellectual and organizational capacity to uphold the law of the land. Moreover, unlike Obama, he is not prioritizing deporting new arrivals and those with a criminal record. His policies inflict maximum pain for minimal results.

To be fair, Obama was never the 'deporter in chief' as his critics alleged. Bush deported twice as many. But Clinton removed 20 percent more than Bush.

It is a separate issue that immigration laws are draconian and that the Organs of State which enforce them are unfit for purpose and violate the constitution on a routine basis. However, these problems should be tackled in a bipartisan manner by proper jurists.

It is utopian to believe that a country like America can just dispense with laws on migration. But it is in everybody's interest to see that the letter and the spirit of the law is upheld in this area. Failure to do so will lead to the corruption of the judicial function in other areas of life.

The focus of Stanley's article is Trump's atrocious comments re. certain Congresswomen of color.

He has railed against supposedly lax immigration laws and birthright citizenship. And he has begun his re-election campaign with these themes, taking four non-white Democratic congresswomen as his main targets.
In a tweet this past Sunday, the president suggested that Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

Ayanna Pressley's ancestors were in America a long time before Trump's ancestors moved there.

In subsequent tweets, he described them as "Anti-America" and "pro-terrorist," with a mission to transform the United States into a "Socialist or Communist Country."

The 'squad' must be delighted with this unsolicited testimonial from a crooked billionaire!

He has taken particular aim at Omar, a Muslim congresswoman from Minnesota who arrived as a refugee from Somalia in childhood.
To some Americans, their fellow citizens of Muslim faith are a fifth column in the United States, whose loyalty is to their fellow Muslims rather than their country. As we saw with conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama, this view is often attached to allegations of a secret Muslim plot to bring socialism to our shores. As a Muslim leftist, Omar is a tempting target for a president who has relentlessly targeted immigration by this religious minority in his rhetoric and policies.
The chants of "Send her back" in North Carolina reflect the belief that Omar's political opposition is not legitimate because it is a reflection of the subversive nature of Muslim immigrants.

The true scandal here is that there is a nexus between 'Big Meat' and the Administration such that refugees from places like Somalia are dumped in places with few civic amenities so as to serve as a captive labor pool for 'dirty' and ill-paid jobs which nobody else will do.

On the other hand, thanks to Obama's 'Operation Janus' a lot of wholly innocent, law abiding, completely apolitical, naturalized Americans have been targeted for removal. People like Omar should highlight the absurdity, the unjustifiable expense, and the sheer arbitrariness of such procedures. Consider what would happen if your employer or your Doctor or your biggest customer is suddenly deported. Who will compensate you for your suffering?

The world is an increasingly intricate and interdependent place. Remove one cog from this machinery and the knock-on consequences could be horrendous. It is important that Rules are fair and administered in a transparent manner. It is foolish to increase Uncertainty by acting arbitrarily so as to reap some supposed political reward.

Stanley could have made this perfectly valid and sensible point. He chooses a wholly different tack-

It is absurd to conceive of America fundamentally as a place where a group of people with a shared ethnic, linguistic and religious past reside.

Sadly, it is this very conception which has held sway for much the greater part of American history. 

America is more coherently thought of as a set of political ideals that unify Americans in a collective effort to realize them.

A common set of political ideals can unify people living in different countries and at different periods of history. It is not 'coherent' to think of an actual nation- more particularly a democratic nation with competing political parties with widely different values and ideologies- as unified by 'political ideals'. Moreover, such ideals, more often than not, exist wholly independently of any 'collective effort' of any sort. One reason for this is that the attempt to realize one's ideals generally results in a calamity- more particularly when this is 'collectively' done.

Chief among these ideals is freedom, particularly political freedom.

Freedom, at least political- as opposed to soteriological- freedom, isn't an ideal.It is something empirical. We can and do work collectively to be represented by people we like or find inspiring or have confidence in. Such collective effort is the result of an 'over-lapping consensus' regarding that particular candidate, or the program she represents. It is not based on a univocity of some ideal type.

The American project involves criticizing our past and our present, in an effort to realize our American values over time—a commitment to this project, not a shared religion or race, is what binds us together.

Sheer nonsense. History is bunk. We may pay a few pedagogues to ration Credentials in the subject for a few, often quite badly paid, aspiring pedagogues but we don't listen to Historians- or, if we do, we soon find they are imbeciles. This is also true of Philosophers.

America exists despite, not because, of any 'project' some stupid pedagogues claim to discern. Stanley may believe that if a young girl at JNU spends her time 'criticizing America's past and present in an effort to realize American values over time', then she will become American. She will get an American passport and a plane ticket to the destination of her choosing within that vast country. Sadly, this is not now- nor ever has been- the case. Her sister with a Masters in Electronics from an IIT may get a Visa and a Green Card and so on, even if she is a devout Hindu with zero interest in American history. To get her citizenship, she will cram some information into her head, but will forget it all immediately once she passes the test.

It is scarcely possible to engage in the American project by replacing political freedom with unquestioning loyalty.

Why not? One is free to display 'unquestioning loyalty'. Indeed, soldiers in the US military show exemplary and unquestioning loyalty to the Commander in Chief. They embark on military missions knowing full well that they have a zero percent chance of surviving but do so because they are patriots and consider it a sweet and decorous thing to die for their country.

Robust political criticism of our past and present is thus a fundamentally American practice.

No it is practice fundamental to being a political historian of America. Such people can be found in Universities all over the world. Even amateurs, like myself, can engage in this practice. It is not 'fundamentally American' at all. Historical amnesia is an especially attractive aspect of the American psyche.

Threatening to strip citizenship from political opponents for engaging in it is fundamentally un-American.

It is so fundamentally American that there was a House Committee on un-American activities from 1938 to 1969 when it was renamed the House Committee on Internal Security. This was abolished in 1975 when its functions were transferred to the House Judicial Committee. This was a standing committee from 1945 to 1975. Many naturalized citizens had their citizenship revoked and this practice continues to this day.

One may believe this to be 'un-American' but it is American as a matter of fact. During Obama's Presidency, under his 'Operation Janus' initiative a law-abiding truck driver of Pakistani origin became the target of de-naturalization because of a mistake on the part of the Government to do with the checking of finger-print records. The US government is spending a lot of money to remove this wholly innocent man. But, that's the American way, the decision of the Warren Court in Afroyim v Rusk notwithstanding.

In the case of genuine political opponents, many Americans who were born to American parents have been put under so much pressure that they have renounced their citizenship and moved abroad.

In this context, it is important to remember that Fascists and Nazis were imitating America's racial and political policies when they targeted political opponents and members of ethnic or religious minorities. It is foolish to describe a mainstream American politician as taking inspiration, or otherwise imitating,  comparatively backward nations, which were militarily defeated, and whose leaders' lives ended miserably.

Stanley concludes his article thus

No political party in the United States today can be justifiably compared with the National Socialists. But the Republican Party, under the leadership of Trump, is seeking to retain political power by borrowing crucial elements of its ideology and tactics. All patriotic Americans should be aghast.

Either the Republicans can be compared to the Nazis or they can't be compared to them. Why stipulate that they can't be 'justifiably' compared to them and then proceed to do precisely that very thing? It is foolish to think Trump is borrowing anything from a bunch of jokers who crashed and burned a year before he was born. On the contrary, it was the Nazis who borrowed America's racialist and eugenic laws. Why did they do so? The answer is that, in conformity with Gabriel Tarde's mimetic law, it is normal to imitate one's superior. America was way ahead of Germany or Italy back then. It was the role model. In terms of power and wealth, America has no rival on the global stage- though China's rise may cause it some concern. That is why its politicians aren't going to copy some sad loser who shot himself in his bunker or some stupid clown who was hanged by own people.

Americans, patriotic or not, should be aghast at the imbecility displayed by this Professor at Yale University. He tells us that his father escaped from Hitler and his mother from Stalin to settle in the America of Jim Crow. They did not leave for Israel or some other less racist country. They stayed in America and started a family. Jason himself has studied in Germany and taught in England. No doubt, he could easily relocate to either country. But he shows no signs of running away from an America which, he tells us, is ruled by a guy who is 'borrowing crucial elements' of Nazi ideology and tactics.  Why? It may be that he is very brave and part of an underground Resistance movement. Or it may be that he is lying in the hope of generating some publicity for himself and his worthless books.

It is noteworthy that Trump's twitter riposte to 'the squad' accuses them of racism. This is deeply satisfying to his core supporters who have been longing to turn the tables on those who consider them to be 'deplorable' bigots.

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 4h4 hours ago

The “Squad” is a very Racist group of troublemakers who are young, inexperienced, and not very smart. They are pulling the once great Democrat Party far left, and were against humanitarian aid at the Border...And are now against ICE and Homeland Security. So bad for our Country!

Jason Stanley is not young, and, judging by his philosophical output, he is far from smart. Still, people like him ought to reverse the trend of casting White people in the role of Nazis. After all, the Nazis were popular with the vast majority of German people because, like America, they used racist laws against minorities and immigrants. They might still be around if they hadn't tried to fight America. Franco and Salazar survived to a ripe old age. Apartheid South Africa flourished with Western help while the Soviet Union still existed and posed a threat.

What the 'squad' needs to be doing more off is showing how the lot of ordinary working families can be ameliorated and made more secure by properly targeted initiatives. Sadly, the Democratic 'circular firing squad' is still in full-swing with Biden taking a lot of heat for Obama era deportations. Hopefully, once a candidate is settled on, the Party can concentrate on bread and butter issues. Meanwhile, it should disintermediate shitheads like Stanley and also get rid of some of our own crazy sub-continental origin Leftists. Don't send them back but do push them into some more productive type of donkey work.