I’m “mit Ihm”: On electoral compromise

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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.

Paul von Hindenburg - “mit Ihm” campaign poster 1932 copy

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.