The F Word

Nope, not that one. I mean fascism. Not all readers may know what that term means or implies, historically. Most have a vague idea that the term is associated with Hitler (and maybe Mussolini), but don't realize that the word isn't merely a label for a type of politics that may seem obscure to them. It's a label for a particularly dangerous type of authoritarian politics that ends democracy. 

Political scientists often point to numerous examples where fascists and fascist-adjacent authoritarians came to power VIA ELECTIONS and then do everything in their power to assure that their political opponents (along with academics, journalist, artists, and other voices of dissent) are silenced, thrown in prison, and even killed. They do not relinquish power and subsequent elections are effectively "rigged" by the fact that opposition has been illegally crushed.

It's been shocking to me for some time that the European Union, a democratic institution, has not done something dramatic about Victor Orban's Hungary. His rise to power -- and many years in office -- exactly reflect this danger. Many Americans on the right are openly infatuated with this pathway and celebrate Orban as if he were someone to emulate. 

In any case, it is important to realize that the road to fascism is the road to the end of democracy, even if a democratic election lies along the pathway. The presence of a prominent (and successful) fascist in American politics poses great potential dangers.

For those wanting more detail, the Council on Foreign Relations provides a helpful definition of fascism: 

Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual. This model of government stands in contrast to liberal democracies that support individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent.

In many ways, fascist regimes are revolutionary in nature. They advocate for the overthrow of existing systems of government and the persecution of political enemies. However, such regimes are also highly conservative in their championing of traditional values.

And although fascist leaders typically claim to support the everyman, in reality, their regimes often align with powerful business interests.

Why would John F. Kelly, Donald Trump's longest-serving Chief of Staff, a former four star general in the US Marines, call Trump a fascist? 

Shall we go through the definition?

First, does Trump lead "a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of the nation over the individual"?

Trump is a self-described nationalist and ran as a populist, claiming to support the little guy who elites had trampled in the past. He claims to lead a very popular mass political movement. Trump lied and said he won the 2016 election in a "landslide" and repeated the lie after the election of 2020. 

The movement's slogan is literally "Make America Great Again" (MAGA), which is not the same as the liberal democratic objective to prioritize individual rights and dissent. I refer to liberal democracy here as a form of limited government -- the type America has attempted to create since its founding, open to free flowing information, equal protection under the law, minority rights despite majority rule, the rule of law, and a market economy. Americans aspire for a more perfect union, but this can require struggle. America's orginal voters were property-owning white men. Only gradually were other men, women, people of color, adults aged 18 to 21, etc. allowed to partake in this democratic experiment.  

Numerous Trump policies and/or proposals put his view of national goals over individual liberty -- the Muslim ban, the family separation policy, recision of Title IX protections for transgender students, and many more.  If none of that seems bothersome to the reader, don't forget the famous classic poem "First They Came" by Pastor Martin Niemöller.

What about militarism? Trump's efforts to MAGA included (in his first term) an effort to "make our military stronger than ever" as his then-Secretary of Defense said at the time. Trump perhaps wanted to be viewed as the "peace candidate" in 2016, but he repeatedly made (or makes) outlandish military threats against other states -- including North Korea, Iran, and now "the enemy from within." That's militaristic. Trump talks openly about deploying the US military against alleged internal threats -- despite laws designed to prevent that exact scenario. 

Incidentally, that Defense Secretary statement about military strength was from former four-star Marine General Jim Mattis, who reportedly agrees with Kelly and called Trump “the most dangerous person ever.” Notoriously, Trump appointed numerous generals to fill top slots in government, including to positions that are typically reserved for civilians, worrying some scholars of civil-military relations and democratic governance.

Beyond Kelly and Mattis, others from that group have offered similar warnings about Trump as a fascist threat to democracy:

Mark Milley, who was appointed by Trump to be the nation's highest ranking military officer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called him "fascist to the core" and "the most dangerous person to this country" in comments to journalist Bob Woodward.

Some of the non-military former staffers have also agreed with Kelly and signed an open letter.

Second does Trump "advocate for the overthrow of existing systems of government and the persecution of political enemies"? Was his regime "also highly conservative in...championing of traditional values"? 

After January 6, the answer to the first question seems obvious. Trump has been offering the "big lie" since losing to Joe Biden in 2020 and still does not accept the results of the election even though he lost dozens of court cases and all of the "evidence" for a stolen election has been convincingly  and thoroughly debunked. Even when Trump sympathizers attempted to recount ballots in Arizona, they arrived at a result that favored Biden by even more votes than the original count. Trump knew that he lost -- according to his Attorney General and his political advisors. His own daughter (Ivanka, who served in the administration) admits that he lost. 

Some people might consider all this and merely think Trump is a "sore loser." But there's much, much more. He gathered protesters and extremists to Washington in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election, he worked with political figures in various states to manufacture fake Electoral College electors and ballots, he is charged with inciting protesters to criminal and violent behavior, and he both privately and publicly urged Mike Pence to take actions that are not in the power of the Vice Presidency. 

Since losing, Trump has repeatedly said he will seek revenge on his political enemies -- it's a growing list that includes lots of Republicans that have spoken out against his lies. I do not have time or energy to document each case as an "NPR investigation has found that Trump has made more than a hundred threats to investigate, prosecute, jail or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, including private citizens." By name he has mentioned Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Anthony Fauci, etc. Trump openly says he wants retribution. 

The championing of conservative values is part of Trump's message so I won't belabor it. He appointed judges who eliminated the right to abortion and calls now for a "states-right" approach, which is what segregationists wanted for civil rights. He supports tax cuts and gun rights and makes anti-immigration and massive deportation a central argument for his election. These are now all conservative causes -- to say nothing of his recent use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. 

Third, despite Trump claiming "to support the everyman," did he, "in reality...often align with powerful business interests"? Trump's main legislative victory as president was a huge tax cut that primarily aided wealthy people and business interests. He appointed a large number of billionaires to his Cabinet -- and very few women or people of color. Elon Musk, the world's richest man, has been advising Trump and openly campaigning for him in person and on his social media site. 

That's the CFR list, but I could easily add more points. Trump has said he would be a dictator on day one. He has stoked violence in American politics -- a critique I have been making for many years. Trump repeatedly praised authoritarians and dictators while he was president -- and after. The list includes Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Hungary's Victor Orban, and Chinese President Xi Jinpin. Behind the scenes he apparently admired Adolph Hitler. He has "joked" about serving as president beyond two terms (contrary to the US constitution) and reportedly made all kinds of policy suggestions that would not be legal. Some of the generals and other former Trump officials speaking out against him say he has no understanding of the rule of law. 

I haven't even mentioned his almost unfathomable propensity to lie -- notably even claiming falsely that his January 6 speech encouraged merely peaceful protest, that no one was killed that day, or that no one was armed. All readily disproved. Oh, and by the way, this lying is buttressed by his constant criticism of the media, which he has called "the enemy of the people," and threats to jail reporters and strip away broadcast licenses. 

Anyone thinking of voting for this man should take into account the views of the numerous inner circle Republicans -- including former Vice President Dick Cheney -- who are courageously speaking out against Trump and urging his defeat in November's election. 

NOTE: I may update this piece with links and ideas that I overlooked.

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Immigration and Crime

I participated in a panel in my department today on Foreign Policy and the 2024 election. I talked about NATO and climate change -- with these questions in mind: Will these policy issues influence the outcome of the election (maybe climate change); and how will the election results influence policy going forward?

Colleagues talked about Russia/Ukraine, Gaza/Lebanon, China, and immigration.

The last issue was the most controversial as the panelists (and student audience members) had the deepest disagreement on this issue during the Q&A.

I feel compelled to fact-check some of the statements that were flying around the room.

Contra to alarming claims, the Biden administration has not had an "open borders" policy. This claim is basically a Republican talking point in recent presidential campaigms, not some settled matter of public policy. The libertarian Cato Institute, which used to be reliably Republican, agrees. On the left, advocates of open borders certainly do not view the US border as open. 

Next, immigrants do not commit "most crime" or even a disproportionate share of them.  A number from New York City referenced in today's discussion was essentially made up by "police sources" and reported in the tabloid New York Post.  Meanwhile, a more thorough dive by the NY Times this past February revealed quite different official data from the NYPD:

But police data indicate that there has been no surge in crime since April 2022, when Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas started sending buses of migrants to New York to protest the federal government’s border policy.

More than 170,000 migrants have arrived in the city since then, and it is difficult to know what crime statistics would show had they not come. But as the migrant numbers have increased, the overall crime rate has stayed flat. And, in fact, many major categories of crime — including rape, murder and shootings — have decreased, according to an analysis of the New York Police Department’s month-by-month statistics since April 2022.

The story also quotes (by name) experts: "Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that there was no discernible migrant crime wave."

Beyond NYC, the paper also referenced academic studies: 

"In 2023, researchers at Stanford University found that immigrants were imprisoned at lower rates than people born in the United States. In 2020, a University of Wisconsin-Madison study noted that undocumented immigrants in Texas tended to have fewer felony arrests than legal residents."

The Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice recently discussed a study it funded conducted using Texas data, which is perhaps the one referenced by the TImes (or a follow-up): 

 An NIJ-funded study examining data from the Texas Department of Public Safety estimated the rate at which undocumented immigrants are arrested for committing crimes. The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes.

Reuters collected an array of academic studies in mid-summer debunking the myth of out-of-control immigrant crime. "A meta-analysis of more than fifty studies on the link between immigration and crime between 1994 and 2014 found there was no significant relationship between the two." . 

The evidence seems overwhelming. The American Immigration Council looked at data from 1980 to 2022 and found "that as the immigrant share of the population grew, the crime rate declined." The Council also looked at recent data from the FBI and Census Bureau:

Using Uniform Crime Reporting data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and population data from the U. S. Census Bureau, the Council also explored the relationship between total crime rates and immigrant shares of the population between 2017 and 2022 at the state level. Using beta regression analyses and data from all 50 states, the result shows no statistically significant correlation between the immigrant share of the population and the total crime rate in any state. This means higher immigrant population shares are not associated with higher crime rates, which aligns with a wealth of prior research on this topic.

The Brennan Center for Justice links to numerous studies. The Center notes that the immigrant crime myth goes back to at least the 1930s and has been used to tarnish "Irish, Catholic, Jewish, Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and German people" who immigrated. One study by a Northwestern scholar referenced in the Reuters story I noted above uses data going back 150 years. The results showed that more recent immigrants are even less likely to commit crimes and become incarcerated than previous waves of immigrants. 

Personally, I've referenced stats in my classes from the Anti-Defamation League that reveal much the same information -- immigrants commit fewer crimes than citizens. By the way, links in this quote are in the original and not all of them currently work. The bolded parts are also in the original. 

Study after study has shown that immigrants – regardless of where they are from, what immigration status they hold, and how much education they have completed – are less likely than native-born citizens to commit crimes or become incarcerated.

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while the overall percentage of immigrants and the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. both increased between 1990 and 2016, the violent crime rate in the U.S. during that time plummeted 48 percent and the property crime rate dropped by 41 percent. More recent population and crime data from the Pew Research Center reveals the continuation of this trend. Studies have consistently found that immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans and that there is a negative correlation between levels of immigration and crime rates.

Other studies have found that crime rates are lowest in states with the highest immigration growth rates, and that states with larger shares of undocumented immigrants tend to have lower crime rates than states with smaller shares.

The ADL also debunks myths about terrorism, non-citizen voting, public health, etc. Customs and Border Protection also post annual stats. While those numbers undoubtedly reflect growing border encounters, they do not show a great number of criminals coming across the border as a percentage of the total. This is a link to the obviously non-alarming crime numbers from CBP.

When pressed for numbers, the Trump campaign responds with anecdotes about specific crimes. In a nation of 330 million people, this is a terrible and misleading way to document anything. Spend a few minutes on the internet and one can find misleading instances of all sorts of horrible crimes committed by all sorts of trusted people -- mothers, coaches, teachers, priests, etc. Those specific cases would not necessarily make any generalizable point. 

Michael Light, the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, said U.S. research overall does not indicate immigrants are more likely to commit crime.

"Of course, foreign-born individuals have committed crimes," Light said in an interview. "But do foreign-born individuals commit crime at a disproportionately higher rate than native-born individuals? The answer is pretty conclusively no."

 

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Firsts

Here are 2 striking paragraphs from a (free access) column by Kate Cohen in the WaPo earlier this month:

When [Kamala] Harris was born, 60 years ago this month, women could not serve on a jury in all 50 states. They had to have a male relative sign a business loan. They had no legal recourse against sexual harassment or marital rape. There was no no-fault divorce. They could get the pill, but only if they were married. They could not get a legal abortion unless their lives were in danger, and they could be fired for getting pregnant. They could not be admitted to Harvard College or the U.S. Military Academy or join their local Rotary, Kiwanis or Lions Club. Among the Fortune 500 companies, there was not a single female CEO.

To get to the point where she might become the first female U.S. president, Harris first had to become the first female district attorney of San Francisco, the first female attorney general of California and the first female vice president of the United States.

Many of my students are about 20 years old and do not know about events from 10 or 12 years ago. My guess is that even middle-aged adults won't realize the history mentioned here. 

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Republicans for Harris

In late August more than 235 Republicans who describe themselves as "alumni" of the campaigns or presidencies of George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney published a public letter explaining why they would not be voting for Donald Trump -- and would be voting for Kamala Harris. 

Here's a key part of their message:

Of course, we have plenty of honest, ideological disagreements with Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz. That’s to be expected. The alternative, however, is simply untenable. 

At home, another four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership, this time focused on advancing the dangerous goals of Project 2025, will hurt real, everyday people and weaken our sacred institutions. 

Abroad, democratic movements will be irreparably jeopardized as Trump and his acolyte JD Vance kowtow to dictators like Vladimir Putin while turning their backs on our allies.

Earlier in the message, they blast Trump for lying about the results of the 2020 election and inciting an insurrection. They describe the crowd as "a mob of sore losers and sycophants."

I have an old friend who was part of the HW Bush administration, but I do not see his name on the list of signatories. From a conversation we had in the last year or so, I'm pretty sure he won't be voting for Trump. It's another step to say you are voting for Harris -- and to do so publicly as these individuals have done.

Incidentally, the list does not include Liz or Dick Cheney, though their positions on this are well-known. 

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Trump's Violent Fantasies

Donald Trump is back to his habit of fantasizing about the government (under his leadership) using illegal violence against criminals, immigrants, and/or political opponents. I blogged about this in 2019 when he was in office. I also compiled references to his violent rhetoric dating to the start of his first campaign in 2015 through 2019.

A couple of days ago in Erie, PA, Trump said something that sounded like the plot for "The Purge." It imagined a whole new level of violence:

"You know, if you had one day, like one real rough, nasty day," he said, during a section of the speech about how left-wing politicians are allegedly preventing police from enforcing the law, "one rough hour, and I mean real rough, the word will get out and it will end immediately. End immediately. You know, it'll end immediately."

Trump defenders say that the former president was speaking "in jest," but it didn't seem like a joke (watch below) and is entirely consistent with comments he has made over the years. Plus, populists employing similar authoritarian rhetoric have actually empowered death squads in various countries around the world. In the Philippines, for example, 1000s of people were killed by the police during a war on drugs and crime authorized by a newly elected populist right-wing president. A similar pattern emerged in Brazil in 2019 where the police killed 17 people per day, on average. 

In those deaths, the police act as judge, jury, and executioner. So much for constitutional protections like due process of law and prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment. How is it conservative to abandon the bill of rights? 

If you want to skip straight to the quoted message in the video below, you cannot, because Trump starts with "one real rough, nasty day" around 2:15, gets off-track with a made-up anecdote about Kamala Harris (referencing a decriminalization law signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger years before Harris was elected to state or national office), and then around 3:25 into the video mentions "one rough hour, and I mean real rough." The first few minutes ramble through some complaints about debate moderators and some made-up stuff about crime. He criticizes statistics, though candidate Trump often references (made up or out-of-date) statistics to support his points.

That last linked article from the Washington Post notes that crime statistics have been in general decline since the 1990s, but did spike in 2020, Trump's final year of office (during the pandemic). Crime stats remained a bit high until 2022, but have declined substantially since then. 

 

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