Harvard Law constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe is amplifying the recently released The New Republic article ‘Yes, That’s Right: American Fascism’ with the pull-out quote below.
“We can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’”
The article, written by editor-in-chief Michael Tomasky, makes the case for choosing the latter course and engaging in the fight.
“We can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, ‘He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight.’”https://t.co/EvhO7zwGsZ
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) May 29, 2024
In his 1995 essay ‘Ur-Fascism,’ novelist Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) — who grew up in Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy — made a list of 14 common or typical features of fascism.
Eco noted that the features “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”
The list of features includes: Disagreement is treason; Appeal to social frustration; The obsession with a plot; Contempt for the weak; and Machismo and weaponry.