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Was wondering where Hillary got her campaign slogan from: Turns out it was Generalfeldmarschall Paul von Hindenburg. Incidentally, he was supported by the SPD in the hope he would stop Hitler. No sooner was he in office, however, than the Junker octogenarian decided to appoint the Nazi leader chancellor.
Yes, that’s right. A party founded only forty years earlier on ostensibly Marxist principles was now cheering “I’m mit Ihm.”
Before Trump’s campaign started tanking a little over three weeks ago, you heard the word “fascism” being thrown around a lot this election cycle. Many on the Left were saying that Trump must be defeated at any cost, even if that means supporting a hawkish Democrat like Hillary Clinton.
Somebody somewhere noted the irony: “Just for the sake of historical accuracy, you’d think more people would mention that pragmatic electoral compromises meant to prevent fascism are actually what resulted in fascism.” Or at least in the German Bonapartism that later led to the fascist consolidation of power.
Donald Trump is no Adolph Hitler. And Hillary Clinton’s certainly no Paul von Hindenburg. Even if she does favor military solutions to foreign policy problems, the comparison is a bit of a stretch. Žižek, despite his recent lapses in judgment, gets Trump about right. Trump is more of a centrist liberal than anything else.
Regardless, it’s not as if Clinton would appoint Trump to some sort of cabinet or ministerial position after the November vote. Fascism as a mass movement is still not really a threat in the West. Largely because the ruling class does not feel itself threatened enough to resort to supporting dictatorial measures that might suppress incipient revolt.
Historical analogies are usually misleading. Certainly this one is, if taken too literally. Perhaps this might simply serve as a healthy reminder of the perils of voting for the “lesser evil” once every four years.
‘No sooner was he in office’.
Hate to be Commissar Pedantic but Hindenburg became President in May 1925 – over seven and a half years before Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
Even his re-election (the one where the SPD had no real option other than to call for a vote for him as only two possible winners were Hindenburg and Hitler) was held in April 1932 and was thus 8 months before he was persuaded by von Papen to appoint Hitler.
And you probably know the joke that when the brownshirts paraded under his balcony on 30 January 1933 the victor of Tannenberg was heard to say that he had no idea we’d captured that many Russians…
Ugh, Zizek can be so dumb sometimes. Sure, sometimes he says he won’t touch healthcare and minimum wage. Then other times he says that he thinks there shouldn’t be a minimum wage and that we should deregulate Wall St. more. The truth is that he can say whatever he wants – if he gets into the WH he will sign/veto the bills that come across his desk and they are all going to come out of a Paul Ryan congress. ie big time anti-worker legislation. This is all, of course, putting aside his penchant for nativist proposals, encouragement of political violence, and other similar elements of his campaign that are incompatible with any sort of liberalism.
Those of us who have been tilting at neo-liberal and neo-con windmills for years now with little concrete results on the ground, can still dream the impossible dream.
That being Hillary is indicted and Bernie runs for the Democrats and crushes Trump. The sad truth here being that while Bernie’s victory would be an accurate reflection of the unprecedented disenchantment of the electorate with establishment politics, the chances of his being able to implement his policies in the face of an intransigent Congress are similar to the chances of my fanciful scenario itself taking place.
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