Is Trump a fascist or a buffoon?

Fascism is fashionable again, what sort of vigilance is needed to guard against it?

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A protester holds placards up in both hands. One reads: Trump is a fascist. The other: Repair the broken world

A protester outside a Trump rally.

dnyuz.com.

I was once called a fascist for saying that the only authority I recognised was God’s. Actually, it had the usual alliterative, adjectival expletive attached to “fascist” that was customary for those of us who received a leftist political education in the 1970s. Very Dave Spart.

Fascism is popular – or possibly populist – as an insult again. The epithet has been applied to Donald Trump in the final stages of the US presidential race. His former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, revealed that Trump had some emollient things to say about Adolf Hitler and retired US general Mark Milley has branded Trump “fascist to the core”.

Democrat presidential rival Kamala Harris endorsed their use of the F-word for Trump, in what must count as one of her more daring statements of the campaign.

And it’s not just evidence of Trump’s admiration for Hitler, historically the go-to evil icon for every anti-fascist. Trump likes tough-guy dictators and rulers. Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, President Erdogan of Turkey, China’s Xi Jinping have all received the Trump seal of approval.

That’s quite a list. What’s most worrying is that Trump has so many role models to choose from. Fascism seems fashionable again. Apart from trying to be nice and kind and not cruel to everybody in a Pollyanna kind of way, those of us of a non-combative religious faith are obliged to state quite why we do find this so worrying.

We’re in the territory here of the cruelty and savagery of the incompetent empty vessel.

Part of the answer to that is pragmatic. Fascist leaders are generally not supportive of their domestic religions, as they endeavour to build their own religious cults around themselves, though it has to be said that Hitler’s relationship with the Catholic Church was at best ambiguous, while Trump is quite reliant on the Christian Right in the US.

Another part of the answer attaches to my response to earthly authority as described at the top of this. It sounds like a cop-out and, in part, I accept that. It’s actually an opt-out, in that the Christian story doesn’t recognise worldly authority unless it serves its standards, rather than the other way around.

That’s why we’re feared by authoritarian political leaders – call them fascist if you will. By extension, the Christian faith isn’t politically populist, though it might be described as a popular movement. Our leadership model is among the people it serves, rather than from the front of them. That’s not a model that Trump or anyone he admires is likely to emulate any time soon.

It is what so confounded and ultimately threatened the political establishment in which it was founded. An itinerant preacher and miracle-worker emerges from the backwoods of a far-flung province of the Roman Empire – a fascist enterprise if ever there was one – to tell both it and its puppet state Judea that his and his insurgent followers’ authority comes not from this world. And the triumph of that claim is recorded in the subsequent two millennia of human history.

That’s not power to the people, nor really a power of the people, but a power of every person in a corporate unity. It is, if you like, the exact obverse of the Roman coin, the antithesis of the emperor and the antidote to every fascist leader that has ever followed and been followed.

I’m not at all sure that Trump is a fascist, as claimed. There’s a school of thought that he’s not bright enough, is too plain dumb, to join that rogues’ gallery. The most dangerous fascists of history, like Hitler, have a pitch-dark ideology that they pursue at all human cost to others and themselves. Trump has no apparent ideology other than the serving of his own vanities and insecurities.

That doesn’t make him undangerous, but it makes him a different kind of authoritarian from a true fascist. We’re in the territory here of the cruelty and savagery of the incompetent empty vessel. And we need to apply a different kind of vigilance from that of the authentic fascist. Because Trump is essentially a buffoon.

Idiotic or truly evil, ultimately the answer may not be to find electoral alternatives, but to measure them against what is transcendent and immutable in human nature.

The buffoonish authoritarian is a handmaid to fascism, but not the real thing. Perhaps every bit as destructive and oppressive of their people, but as an enabler of fascism rather than a principal. Like Benito Mussolini in Italy in the 1930s and Second World War, these are preening clowns, though of course not in the least bit funny.

It’s hardly on a par with the Reichstag fire in 1933, which Hitler manipulated for absolute power in Germany, but let’s not forget that Boris Johnson as prime minister attempted illicitly to prorogue parliament to get his way with Brexit in 2019. Like Trump, contempt for democracy and the “great man of history” personality cult tick a couple of boxes for fascism, but it doesn’t make them any less stupid.

Idiotic or truly evil, ultimately the answer may not be to find electoral alternatives, but to measure them against what is transcendent and immutable in human nature. And that brings me back to the first line of this piece.

Article

Comment

Mental Health

Podcasts

14 October 2024

4 min read

What all those BetterHelp ads say about ourselves

Podcasting and therapy alike scratch our itch to be inquisitive about things, even our own inner worlds.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Associate Minister at Holy Trinity Clapham, London.

A podcaster speaks into a mic before a screen.

Soundtrap on Unsplash.

There's one dominion Amazon hasn't conquered. Jeff Bezos famously chose his company's name, in part, because it's the largest river in the world and he wanted to create the world's largest bookstore. And Amazon has flooded the market. But as the world of podcasting is taking over our commutes and leisure time, Amazon isn't taking it over. That top spot belongs to BetterHelp.

Now that I've mentioned it, you probably know what I'm referring to: the ubiquitous ads offering online therapy, often reassuringly read by the podcast hosts themselves. Although Amazon is the second largest ad buyer on podcasts, BetterHelp spends more. A lot more. In the US, BetterHelp spent $22million in the second quarter of this year, followed by Amazon with $13million. . BetterHelp has pretty much been the top spender on podcasts Clearly, BetterHelp thinks the demand for therapy is right up there with the convenience of getting stuff delivered to your door.

The message of online therapy, and the medium of podcasts makes for a neat match. It seems our wants and needs are more and more solo endeavours. Our desire for entertainment and help are becoming something we access alone, behind headphones and closed doors.

Overhearing people talking about their therapist in a metropolitan café is now as as common as the extra-hot flat whites themselves.

I was stunned when I heard recently that Saturday Night Live celebrated fifty years on TV. It was a reminder of an age when families and friends would diarise prime-time weekend entertainment together in front of the glow of the screen. But common experiences are diminishing. Harvard fellow Flynn Coleman highlights that the third spaces where we have customarily congregated, found community, and ourselves, are vanishing.

She is, of course, right. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the damage our atomised online worlds have created. But where the CDC health report last year tragically detailed the harm social media causes teenage girls, the online space is not without hope. Krish Kandiah writes, 'Instead of demonising new technology as the problem, perhaps we need to find ways to turn it into the solution.'The online world isn't going away, so it must be at least part of the solution. Teletherapy is now available on the NHS, and while there are questions over the affordability and availability of online mental health care, and I cannot vouch for BetterHelp, making therapy more accessible by taking it online plays an important part in winning the battle of declining mental health.

Far from an echo chamber, an online therapist can challenge presumptions at right angles and enable clients to access worlds they previously only dreamed of. And, any good therapist wouldn't encourage you to isolate yourself. We still need community.

Therapy isn't as much a solo endeavour as we might first think. Of course, the therapeutic relationship itself is between two people, however objective one party might be. And just as the old adage goes, 'a problem shared is a problem halved', overhearing people talking about their therapist in a metropolitan café is now as as common as the extra-hot flat whites themselves. Therapy is losing its stigma, and the benefits of it are shared just as we want to share a podcast that's stimulated or amused us.

That elusive arrival at contentment, of happiness, of satisfaction is quite the claim for an online service provider to make.

Some things are sacred, though. James Marriott recently argued in The Times that the burden on those in the public spotlight to overshare isn't always helpful. How, where and with whom we share our inner thoughts matters. The Christian tradition sees that growth happens through relationship, rather than through broadcasting. Spanish mystic St Teresa of Avila wrote almost half a millennia ago about a journey inward, inside of ourselves to a space where only God dwells, if we choose to let him enter. On that journey, she wrote ‘It is a great advantage for us to be able to consult someone who knows us, so that we may learn to know ourselves.’

On that journey of self-knowledge, the online world can enhance our lives, but not replace it. Just as The Rest is History podcast can give you details about ‘greatest monkeys' that your friend can't, specialist help from an online therapist will help you in ways friends won't. But BetterHelp wants to be your friend. The main heading on their website mimics what we've probably all heard from someone we know: 'You deserve to be happy'. They've learnt from the Steve Jobs school of marketing: don't sell the product or service; sell how it will make them feel. That elusive arrival at contentment, of happiness, of satisfaction is quite the claim for an online service provider to make.

Podcasting and therapy alike scratch our itch to be inquisitive about things, even our own inner worlds. Where podcasting has challenged the old powers that sought to control the flow of information, we also do well to listen to external expert help. In this age, the online stream can flow information to us which, like the Amazon, might overwhelm us. It’s worth us asking: is there an external source of even better help available? One that will overwhelm us too – but instead overwhelm with the love we crave in our deepest selves?