"The German language became a language of superlatives, so that everything the regime did became the best and the greatest, its achievements unprecedented, unique, historic, and incomparable... The language used about Hitler, Klemperer noted was shot through and through with religious metaphors; people 'believed in him,' he was the redeemer, the savior, the instrument of Providence, his spirit lived in and through the German nation...Nazi institutions domesticated themselves [through the use of a language] that became an unthinking part of everyday life."
Under the Trump regime, memories inconvenient to authoritarian rule are now demolished in the domesticated language of superlatives, so the future can be shaped so as to become indifferent to the crimes of the past. For instance, he has talked about the Civil War as if historians have not asked why it took place, while at the same time ignoring the role of slavery in its birth. During a Black History Month event, he talked about the great abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass as if he were still alive. Trump's ignorance of the past finds its counterpart in his celebration of a history that has enshrined racism, tweeted neo-Nazi messages, and embraced the "blood and soil" of white supremacy.
How else to explain the legacy of white racism and fascism historically inscribed in his signature slogan "Make America Great Again" and his use of the anti-Semitic phrase "America First," long associated with Nazi sympathizers during World War II? How else to explain his support for bringing white supremacists such as Steve Bannon (now resigned) and Jeff Sessions, both with a long history of racist comments and actions, into the highest levels of governmental power? Or his retweeting of an anti-Islamic video originally posted by Britain First, a far-right extremist group -- an action that was condemned by British Prime Minister Theresa May?
It gets worse: Trump created a false equivalence between white supremacist neo-Nazi demonstrators and those who opposed them in Charlottesville, Virginia. In doing so, he argued that there were "very fine people on both sides," as if fine people march with protesters carrying Nazi flags shouting, "We will not be replaced by Jews." Trump appears to be unable to differentiate "between people who think like Nazis and people who try to stop them from spewing their hate."
But there is more than ignorance at work in Trump's lengthy history of racist comments. Trump's sympathy for white nationalism and white supremacy offers a clear explanation for his unbroken use of racist language about Mexican immigrants, Muslims, Syrian refugees and Haitians. It also points to Trump's use of language as part of a larger political and pedagogical project to "mobilize hatred," legitimate the discourse of intimidation and encourage the American public "to unlearn feelings of care and empathy that lead us to help and feel solidarity with others," as Ben-Ghiat writes.
Trump's nativism and ignorance works in the United States because it not only caters to what the historian Brian Klass refers to as "the tens of millions of Americans who have authoritarian or fascist leanings," it also enables what he calls Trump's attempt at "mainstreaming fascism." He writes:
"Like other despots throughout history, Trump scapegoats minorities and demonizes politically unpopular groups. Trump is racist. He uses his own racism in the service of a divide-and-rule strategy, which is one way that unpopular leaders and dictators maintain power. If you aren't delivering for the people and you're not doing what you said you were going to do, then you need to blame somebody else. Trump has a lot of people to blame."
Trump's language, especially his endorsement of torture and contempt for international norms, normalizes the unthinkable, and points to a return to a past that evokes what Ariel Dorfman has called "memories of terror ... parades of hate and aggression by the Ku Klux Klan in the United States and Adolf Hitler's Freikorps in Germany... executions, torture, imprisonment, persecution, exile, and, yes, book burnings, too."
Dorfman sees in the Trump era echoes of policies carried out under the dictator Pinochet in Chile. He writes:
"Indeed, many of the policies instituted and attitudes displayed in post-coup Chile would prove models for the Trump era: extreme nationalism, an absolute reverence for law and order, the savage deregulation of business and industry, callousness regarding worker safety, the opening of state lands to unfettered resource extraction and exploitation, the proliferation of charter schools, and the militarization of society. To all this must be added one more crucial trait: a raging anti-intellectualism and hatred of 'elites' that, in the case of Chile in 1973, led to the burning of books like ours."
The language of fascism revels in forms of theater that mobilize fear, hatred and violence. Sasha Abramsky is on target in claiming that Trump's words amount to more than empty slogans. Instead, his language comes "with consequences, and they legitimize bigotries and hatreds long harbored by many but, for the most part, kept under wraps by the broader society. They give the imprimatur of a major political party to criminal violence." Surely, the increase in hate crimes during Trump's first year of his presidency testifies to the truth of Abramsky's argument.
The history of fascism teaches us that language operates in the service of violence, desperation, and troubling landscapes of hatred, and carries the potential for inhabiting the darkest moments of history. It erodes our humanity, and makes too many people numb and silent in the face of ideologies and practices that are hideous acts of ethical atrocity. By undermining the concepts of truth and credibility, fascist-oriented language disables the ideological and political vocabularies necessary for a diverse society to embrace shared hopes, responsibilities and democratic values.
Trump's language -- like that of older fascist regimes -- mutilates contemporary politics, empathy, and serious moral and political criticism, and makes it more difficult to criticize dominant relations of power. Trump's language does more than produce a litany of falsehoods, fears and poisonous attacks on those considered disposable; it works hard to prevent people from having an internal dialogue with themselves and others, relegating self-reflection, critical thinking, and the ability to question and judge to a scorned practice.
Trump's fascistic language also fuels the rhetoric of war, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, anti-intellectualism and racism. What was once an anxious discourse about what Harvey Kaye calls the "possible triumph in America of a fascist-tinged authoritarian regime over liberal democracy" is no longer a matter of speculation, but a reality.
Any resistance to the new stage of American authoritarianism has to begin by analyzing its language, the stories it fabricates, the policies it produces, and the cultural, economic and political institutions that make it possible. Questions have to be raised about how right-wing educational and cultural apparatuses function both politically and pedagogically to shape notions of identity, desire, values, and emotional investments in the discourses of casino capitalism, white supremacy and a culture of cruelty. Trump's language both shapes and embodies policies that have powerful consequences on people's lives, and such effects must be made visible, tallied up, and used to uncover oppressive forms of power that often hide in the shadows. Rather than treat Trump's lies and fear-mongering as merely an expression of the thoughts of a petulant and dangerous demagogue, it is crucial to analyze their historical roots, the institutions that reproduce and legitimate them, the pundits who promote them, and the effects they have on the texture of everyday life.
Trump's language is not his alone. It is the language of a nascent fascism that has been brewing in the US for some time. It is a language that is comfortable viewing the world as a combat zone, a world that exists to be plundered. It is a view of those deemed different as a threat to be feared, if not eliminated. Frank Rich is correct in insisting that Trump is the blunt instrument of a populist authoritarian movement whose aim is "the systemic erosion of political, ethical, and social norms" central to a substantive democracy. And Trump's major weapon is a toxic language that functions as a form of "cultural vandalism" that promotes hate, embraces the machinery of the carceral state, makes white supremacy a central tenant of governance, and produces unthinkable degrees of inequality in wealth and power.
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