Convicted Felon Publishes "History" Book, Part 1.1

Perhaps more than any other conservative commentator of the last decade, Dinesh D'Souza has made his name trying to pin the sins of racism, segregation, and terrorism on the political left. The brunt of his argument in Hillary's America was that the Democratic Party is the party of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, and segregation, and of course, historically speaking, he's right. It was members of the Democratic Party by and large who were responsible for these outrages. That said, it's a very different Democratic Party today than it was even 50 years ago.

D'Souza is now back with The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, an apologia for Trump and another attempt to paint the left with the brush of the far right. D'Souza attempts, like his predecessors Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) and Jonah Goldberg (in Liberal Fascism), to demonstrate that fascism generally and National Socialism particularly were far left ideologies and not, as scholarly and popular consensus would have it, ideologies of the far right. This blog series will examine the specific claims that D'Souza makes in this volume.

The First Two Chapters

The first chapter of D'Souza's book offers essentially an overture of things to come. There are no solid arguments so much as the introduction of the leitmotifs to which he returns throughout the book. It is really in the second chapter, entitled "Falsifying History," that he deploys his first set of points. He actually starts off on sort of the right foot: he attempts to distinguish between conservatism and right-wing politics. However, in doing so, he begins some terminological sleight of hand that lays the groundwork for the rest of his book.

It's important to distinguish between the right wing and conservatism. Rightly, D'Souza recognizes that what distinguishes one as conservative will depend on time and place. Whereas Edmund Burke, as the ur-conservative, was a monarchist, American conservatives are not. D'Souza's claim that American conservatives "want to conserve the principles of the American Revolution," which included "capitalism, political freedom or constitutional democracy, and freedom of speech and religion."[1] He adds a few pages later that "American conservatives also seek to conserve the transcendent moral order that is not specified in the Constitution but clearly underlies the American founding."[2]

There is much with which I could take issue so far, but these points of disagreement are largely beside the point. The key point here is that, while he does not explicitly state it, he identifies conservatism with the political right without acknowledging the distinctions that exist between the two or defining the right wing to any appreciable extent. As a result, D'Souza's treatment of these key terms end up being drastically underdefined, allowing for their later abuse.

We can agree with D'Souza that conservatism has to do with maintaining a set of putatively objective values; similarly, in so far as we can stipulate that we might disagree on particulars, conservatives in the United States believe themselves to be true to the Constitution of the United States as a document that establishes limited government power and expansive rights. The problem with these definitions is not only their aforementioned shallowness but also their lack of relevance to the specific time and place of interwar Europe, in which fascism and National Socialism emerged.

As we will see, both conservatives and reactionaries during this period flourished who were not particularly wedded to the rule of law. However, they did ascribe broadly to traditional ideas about right and wrong, good and evil. In this regard, we can say that these parties were conservative to some extent, although clearly D'Souza's specifically American designation doesn't fit. Part of the problem that emerges with D'Souza's text is that he does not recognize distinct social and economic barometers of "left" and "right" or "conservative" and "progressive."

Determining Political Orientation

Briefly, if we adopt a political model that acknowledges distinct social and economic dimensions, we can possibly taxonomize people and groups a bit more constructively. We might agree, e.g., the economically the gamut would run from socialism to capitalism. On the left, socialism would include communism and democratic socialism, and on the right, capitalism would encompass varying levels of laissez-faire. We might just as easily label the left end of this continuum "equality" and the right end "freedom"; socialism assumes that the role of government is provide equal opportunity, if not equal outcome, while capitalism assumes that the role of government economically is to mind its own business, thereby maximizing economic freedom. We should note there that it seems D'Souza is comfortable with labeling socialism as left wing and capitalism as right wing.

The other axis, the social one, would also range from permissive on one end to repressive on the other. This axis measures the extent to which government plays a role in social conditions. The permissive end assumes that government should not intervene unless a dispute arises, and the extent to which this intervention takes place could vary along that end of the scale. Conversely, the repressive end assumes that government has a role in limiting personal freedoms to some extent for moral reasons or reasons not related to harm or damage caused to another person.

Without labeling the ends of this continuum just yet, we should that D'Souza's own concession that conservatism is concerned with objective morals would place it on the repressive end. This is not to say that all forms of objective morality are repressive; rather, it is important to bear in mind that repression is the far end of that scale. Tendency in that direction would indicate acceptance of government limiting or banning certain behaviors, e.g., gay marriage, drug use, prostitution, etc., which arguably are "victimless crimes" or matters of moral relativism. Thus, we might label the permissive end of this continuum "liberal" and the repressive end "conservative."

The following clarifications should be made before continuing. First, D'Souza, in a  seeming attempt to avoid confusion, uses "progressive" rather than "liberal" to connote the left, and this is a position with which I agree and so am following. Second, it is important to concede that, as we will see, fascist economic policies tended not toward the freedom end of the economic continuum but rather toward state control. This fact is complicated because the "socialist" end of that continuum would not necessarily pertain to state socialism; certain forms of anarchism and syndicalism would fall on that end as well. Nevertheless, the presence of constraints means the absence of freedom. Therefore, should we accept D'Souza's argument thus far, fascism and National Socialism are political ideologies characterized by repressive social policies and statist economic policies. To the extent that the economic and social axes run from left to right, fascists are therefore socially right and economically left.

David Nolan's chart below is a good, although not perfect, visual approximation of what we're talking about. Fascists, per the argument here, would fall at the bottom. Notably, D'Souza would probably agree with locating them at this point on the Nolan chart. His disagreement would entail whether progressives belong there as well. However, this is a much longer debate and outside the scope of this series.

D'Souza Reviews the Literature

Returning to D'Souza's book, a perhaps minor point is his assertion that "the Left seeks government authority to enforce and institutionalize progressive values,"[3] including abortion and gay rights. Important, he asserts that support for such positions indicates rejection of a transcendent moral order; thus, such a viewpoint would position progressives in either the liberal or authoritarian quadrants of Nolan's chart – possibly the center. This point notwithstanding, D'Souza does not even acknowledge an anarchist left in this part of his argument.

Soon thereafter, D'Souza begins his attack on scholars he deems to be "progressive," beginning with Robert Paxton, author of Anatomy of Fascism. D'Souza claims that Paxton is aware of fascism's left-wing pedigree but that he consciously withholds this knowledge from the public, who naïvely consider fascism to be right wing. I guess as a kind of disparagement, D'Souza notes that Payne's principal area of expertise is neither Germany nor Italy but France. He then writes, "Anthony James Gregor is the greatest living authority on fascism, and Stanley Payne recently published a definitive book on the history of fascism."[4]

The choice of Gregor as D'Souza's go-to expert is obvious – Gregor has repeatedly argued for a left-wing origin of fascism. Payne, for his point, has not, although selective quoting of him by D'Souza would seem to suggest otherwise. What's perhaps most notable here are the experts D'Souza doesn't cite: e.g., Ernst Nolte or Roger Griffin. Nolte would seem to be a natural choice for D'Souza, arguing as he did, that fascism was inherently anti-conservative; moreover, Nolte was a staunch political conservative. However, Nolte also argued that fascism was at its core an anti-Marxist philosophy – this point would complicate D'Souza's argument too much. We'll see where some engagement of Griffin would have undermined D'Souza's presentation.

Hitler the Socialist

Following a passing assertion that Father Charles Coughlin was a leftist – suffice it to say that the National Union of Social Justice did not challenge Franklin Roosevelt from the left; if anything, it preached a "third position," like fascist corporatism – D'Souza begins his treatment of National Socialism.

To be continued

[1] Dinesh D'Souza, The Big Lie: The Nazi Roots of the American Left (Washington: Regnery, 2017), Loc 576.
[2] Ibid, Loc. 597.
[3] Ibid, Loc. 620.
[4] Ibid, Loc. 681.

Softening the Ground

This post will probably be long and perhaps only tangentially connected to history, but it's important, I think, to write down some things I've seen going on. I'm not alone in having seen these things, but perhaps can offer a perspective not yet put forward. My topics will be two, one specific and one general. They are, respectively, Stefan Molyneux and authoritarianism.

On Molyneux much has been said. Rather than retread old ground, such as allegations of cultish behaviors, blatant lying, perhaps most notoriously on Joe Rogan's podcast, and rank hypocrisy against his own earnestly stated personal principles, it suffices here to say that, until a couple of years ago, Molyneux was marketing himself as an anarcho-capitalist or hard libertarian: lots of talk about free markets and rising tides lifting all boats. That sort of thing. Then, he took a disturbing turn, even for him.

Molyneux as a public figure has always been conservative and right wing (terms that intersect quite a bit but not entirely). However, the far right turn he's taken over the last few years is more sinister. He's begun broadcasting explicitly racist positions, including a lot of pieces on the race-IQ correlation, with his conclusion (unsurprisingly) being that this correlation is both overwhelmingly genetic and immutable. He's blended in quite a bit attacking Islam generally, a subject with which I perhaps disagree with him less but that nevertheless he paints with an overly broad brush. Therefore, when Trump emerged politically, Molyneux was almost immediately on board, jettisoning in practice certain principles that, at least in theory, he'd long held, such as laissez faire (Trump is a protectionist) and moral absolutism (think about it for a second).

Of course, Trumpists aren't rare and right wingers aren't experiencing a shortage on the Internet, where Molyneux primarily resides. What's disturbing about Molyneux's case is the mainstream attention that he has received. Leaving aside an appearance on his YouTube channel a few years ago by Noam Chomsky, during which Molyneux largely kept his reactionary views to himself, Molyneux's right-wing guests have run the gamut from mainstream conservatives (e.g., Dave Rubin) to fringe mainstream figures (Ann Coulter) to alt-right mainstays (Mike Cernovich). As a result, Molyneux now gets retweeted by the President's sons, and this is where the danger really lies.

Before the general situation I mentioned above, however, a final specific point about Molyneux. His guest today (July 6, 2017) was Axel Kaiser, a Chilean writer and journalist with libertarian leanings who joined Molyneux to discuss "the untold story of Augusto Pinochet." Kaiser presented the standard mainstream right-wing case, i.e., Pinochet was bad but Allende was worse. He argued that Allende intended to institute a Marxist totalitarian dictatorship (false), committed horrendous violence (partially true), etc., but I didn't hear anything particularly surprising in what he said. Molyneux, however, pushed his luck. Isn't it true, he asked, that Allende was arming leftist terrorist groups? They were being armed, Kaiser answered, but probably not by Allende. In fact, he continued, many of the most violent leftist rhetoricians of the Allende period shrank away in cowardice rather than have to fight the junta that Pinochet led. Molyneux responded that he found that most leftists preferred to exert statist violence against the helpless and wilted when having to face a real military.

The obvious counterexample of the Viet Cong aside, one must note what Molyneux is doing here. He is painting the left as an inherently violent body of ideologies. Now place this within a larger context of the last few months or so, during which we have seen an overexaggeration of leftist violence against Trump supporters and either denial or weak excuses for right wing violence, not to mention a complete lack of responsibility to answer for Trump's clear exhortations to violence during the campaign. To be clear, violence is in general not something to be admired, and although the mere fact of punching a Nazi says more about the person that evokes such a response and how historically Nazis have had to be dealt with than it does about the person doing the punching, I accept as well that there is an inherent danger in defining the whole right as Nazis.

So we have the left being painted as violent and unhinged. Just think about the most recent episodes of right-wing outrage at Kathy Griffin's ham-handed kabuki theater of beheading the President or at the staging of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in Central Park in New York with the title character decked out in Trumpian finery, and you'll notice a trend. Now couple this with the ongoing attacks on the media. Last week it was a dust-up between the President and Mika Brzenzinksi. This week, it's outrage that CNN found the creator of a video in which the President, in a clip from his WWE days, wrestles a person to the ground, the person having the CNN logo pasted over his face. "CNN has blackmailed this young man!" we are told by Molyneux and others. It is all part of a delegitimation of the left.

It’s worth noting that the interior logic here is sound, although the premises are heavily flawed. If the media against Trump is leftist, and leftists are violent, then of course the media are potentially violent enemies who would commit blackmail. That the U.S. media is overwhelmingly corporate, rather than liberal, is beside the point. So is the overwhelming lack of violence since the 1970s on the left, a large proportion of which supported a rather centrist candidate for President just a few months ago. The right has been significantly more violent in recent decades: the Order, Oklahoma City, and Eric Rudolph come to mind.

The most important question is where Molyneux et al. are going with this rhetoric. It seems to me that they are softening the ground for an authoritarian seizure of power. I've done my level-headed best to resist this position for the last several months, but it's become increasingly clear that this is what is going on. Trump is elbows deep in scandal, and some of it will inevitably catch up with him. It seems unlikely to me that he will finish his term as President, although how his term will end is anyone's guess. My wife suggests he has set the stage for an excuse of illness allowing him to resign. That's possible, to be sure. Impeachment, the other realistic way that he leaves office other than illness or death (he's 71 and obese), hinges on the majority party in the Congress, which is Republican in both cases. Obviously, there are Republicans who have taken (and a few who have even kept) principled stances against Trump, but they are few, and the majority of the party seems content to have Trump in office to rubber stamp whatever they are able to get passed, which seems to be the standard Reaganesque fare of deregulation, tax cuts, and making Americans poorer, dumber, and sicker.

If Trump were smart, he'd realize that he'd be impeached the minute he completed the Republicans' legislative agenda. But he isn’t smart, as should be abundantly clear by now, and I'm a pessimist with regard to this agenda and how successful it will be. And then, if my predictions are correct, Trump will face impeachment. The question for consideration here is what the alt-right will do when he does. I suggest that they are preparing for a violent confrontation and are hoping that they have sufficiently prepared the armed population among them for when push comes to shove. They will not allow Trump to be removed from power against their will.

Is Trump involved in this? Probably not, although maybe his sons are. Certainly figures like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon are, I'd imagine; neither of them seems terribly enamored of democracy. The most important question, it seems to me, is whether the President would go along with a scenario like this. Maybe the most important question of all is whether they will even wait until impeachment becomes a viable option or will allow some Reichstag Fire/9-11 type event, whether staged or genuine, to be zero hour.

So what can you do? I'd recommend reading Timothy Snyder's excellent book On Tyranny and following the directions in there. Remember that what's happening in this country isn't normal by any stretch of the imagination and that defending democratic institutions and the rule of law is more important now than perhaps at any time in the last 150 years. Finally, whenever one of these people on the right wing wielding this rhetoric -- whether Molyneux or Cernovich or one of their band of merry men -- has a megaphone, be there to remind everyone within earshot what they are doing. They are preparing the stage to subvert democracy in this country. If that happens, then what happens next isn't pretty, if history is any lesson.

Don't let them win.