By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, June 09, 2020
Confronted by a clear and present fascist threat, the
staff of the New York Times rose up last week to humiliate and punish
quislings in its ranks.
In a now famous op-ed, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton called
for federal troops to quell riots and looting, an idea that the Times
staff considered worthy of Oswald Mosley or Benito Mussolini.
As the Times was disavowing the Cotton piece and
preparing to push out or demote its top opinion staffers for publishing it,
columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote a response called “Tom Cotton’s Fascist
Op-Ed.”
She acknowledged that the Times published Russian
president Vladimir Putin and Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, and “a similar
case could be made for hearing from Cotton, an enemy of liberal democracy.” But
the difference is that Cotton “is calling for what would almost certainly
amount to massive violence against his fellow citizens.”
The sophomoric and ahistorical charge that President
Donald Trump and his supporters are fascists is now a staple of elite
left-of-center opinion. That it has gained such traction is a sign of the
ever-increasing ideological radicalism of Trump’s opposition and of the
ever-diminishing ambit for free and open debate — fascists are to be shut down,
as the Times staff insisted, not tolerated.
There is no doubt that Trump’s periodic blustery
assertions of having total authority are gross, would freak out Republicans if
a Democrat made them, and deserve to be condemned. The president loves strength
and is drawn to theatrical demonstrations of his own power.
But his critics are unable to distinguish between wild
statements at press briefings or in cruel tweets on the one hand and
establishing a one-party state or invading France on the other.
Law and order, a favorite Trump theme, is not fascism.
Consider Cotton’s op-ed. The senator called for federal
troops to assist in subduing rioters and stipulated that “a majority who seek
to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.” If this
is fascism, any effort to stop people burning down buildings now has to be
considered dangerous.
Trump’s Rose Garden speech calling for an end to the
disorder and for using federal troops if necessary got a similar reaction.
“The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on
a declaration of war against American citizens,” Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon
said.
The New Republic warned of “an authoritarian
gangster state.”
Masha Gessen of The New Yorker wrote of Trump’s
subsequent photo-op with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church: “Perhaps he had
seen a picture of Hitler in a similar pose” (a photo of Hitler in a similar
pose that circulated on social media afterward was a fake).
Trump, like Cotton, distinguished between peaceful
protesters and rioters, and surely one purpose of his tough talk on federal
troops was to prod governors and mayors to get a better handle on the situation
on their own.
Much has been made of protesters being pushed back from
Lafayette Park before Trump walked over to St. John’s Church, but Attorney
General Bill Barr has explained this was an effort to expand the perimeter
around the park, where there had been mayhem and fires the night before.
Kristallnacht it was not.
No one has talked about crushing peaceful protests. No
one has urged the stifling of dissent (no one, that is, outside of the New
York Times and other “woke” circles). No one has talked of suspending the
election. In fact, to this point, Trump has been faulted for wanting an overly
normal election, with a traditional convention and standard in-person voting.
In a long piece on Trump “collaborators” in The
Atlantic, Anne Applebaum noted how “references to Vichy France, East
Germany, fascists, and Communists may seem over-the-top, even ludicrous. But
dig a little deeper, and the analogy makes sense.”
No it doesn’t. It only speaks of the lack of seriousness of those who insist on making it.
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