The above is an extract from a long piece in the Times by Prof Niall Ferguson about whether Donald Trump is a dictator or not. Ferguson thinks he isn’t and I agree but we come at it from different perspectives.
I’ve queried before, in respect of Ferguson, whether right-wing historians can write good history. They certainly can of course, even if conclusions might be disputed. The issue is when the right-wing politics takes precedence over any historical judgement.
Ferguson underlines a long history, mostly from the 1930s, of warnings that the US was becoming a fascist country. In the event as he notes this didn’t happen, which doesn’t mean that the warnings weren’t relevant.
Turning to the present day he suggests that fascism means the rounding up and imprisonment or murder of left and liberal opponents. It certainly does. He also suggests that under fascism there is no independent police force or judiciary, the State has absolute rule.
Ferguson is right here. While ICE is randomly rounding up people on its lists prominent leftists are not yet being imprisoned or killed. Equally despite Trump’s best efforts the Courts are still challenging many of his decisions sometime successfully.
This tells us in my view (but not Fergusons) that while Trump is not a dictator he would like to be. Its not yet too late to stop him just as fascism in Italy and Germany could have been stopped.
Looking at the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany, Ferguson looks to the later 1930s and sees no comparison with Kristallnacht, or concentration camps. He is right, so far. The comparison however is the earlier 1930s, say from 1930 to 1933 when the Nazis managed to subvert democracy and seize power.
The London Review Books has an interesting Diary piece by Patrick Cockburn (9th October) about the Times correspondent in Germany at this time. He saw what Hitlerism meant before the Nazis took power and correctly saw where it was heading. The Times was not hugely sympathetic to his reports being instead interested in what Hitler was doing. He was expelled from Germany in 1937
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n18/patrick-cockburn/diary
The paragraph I’ve extracted speaks to Michael Rosen’s well known poem Fascism arrives as your friend. It promises to clean things up, get rid of things that are not liked. By the time people realise what this actually means it can be too late.
Ferguson’s view of Trump and dictatorship might be described as best as complacent and that doesn’t make for good historical understanding.
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