The Fascist Lie

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, October 25, 2024

 

Given all of the fascism talk, and my own history with the topic, I started writing a G-File about fascism and 2,000 words later, it wasn’t close to done or, really, a G-File. So, I’ve written a kind of fascism explainer, which you can read here. Whether it was a worthwhile exercise is not for me to determine. But it did free me up to come at this from a different angle. 

 

One of my standing peeves is confusing words for things. I really want to stay out of the philosophical weeds here (I’ve learned the hard way that some people really don’t want to read about “reification”). All I mean by this is that words describe reality—accurately or inaccurately—but they don’t create reality.

 

Oh, and before you dust off your college essay about how “perception is reality” or how this or that is “socially constructed”: Sure, we can use words to convince people of all sorts of things, and that changes some aspects of “social” reality. If I convince enough people that the banks are insolvent, we’ll see a run on the banks. 

 

But just because a bunch of people believe something is true doesn’t mean they’re right. As Shakespeare said, “You can call a rose an unwashed butt crack and it would smell as good.” 

 

Sorry, that was in the first draft of Romeo and Juliet, he later punched it up. Don’t fact-check me on this. But you get the point. Or maybe you don’t. So again: The point is that there’s an objective reality out there, and no matter how hard you spin it, no matter how hard you sell, the reality is unmoved. People can behave as if reality is different than it is, but reality gets a vote. For instance, if I falsely yell, “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater, everyone might run for the exits in a panic. But that doesn’t mean the theater will actually be on fire.

 

The easiest way to understand this is that lies aren’t true, even if you convince a lot of people to believe the lie. Jews don’t control the weather, and no matter how hard you try to prove it, it won’t become true. But you can do an enormous amount of harm by convincing people of the lie. 

 

So, what does this have to do with fascism? A lot. 

 

Fascism, much like communism, is a whole system based on lies. The political scientists don’t call them lies. They use words like “theory” or “ideology.” But the theories and ideologies are wrong because they describe reality wrong. If you’re convinced that bears are repelled by the smell of Cheeto dust, when you put that theory to the test, the story will end with a bear eating an abnormally orange dude screaming, “This makes no sense! It’s like the bears didn’t even read my book!” 

 

Fascism is a system of lies for other reasons. Fascist (and, again, communist) leaders organize and mobilize people around lies. They make up stories about how some group is an existential enemy, and therefore we must crush them before they crush us. They lie about how the economy works, about their own brilliance and mastery. And the lies often work. There are still fewer Jews in the world than there were when Hitler came to power because his lies about Jews led to the deaths of so many of them. 

 

Fascism is also a system of lies because fascists do not believe there’s anything wrong with lying. Again, I’m trying to avoid philosophical jargon, but it’s worth recalling that the fascist ideologues of Mussolini’s Italy were enamored with Nietzschean philosophy and its American cousin, philosophical pragmatism. It gets complicated, but the utility of these ideas was that lies are useful. Convince enough people to believe a different metaphysic and you’ve changed metaphysics and achieved the “transvaluation of values” that Nietzsche gushed about. When there is no actual Truth, the merit of lowercase truth or lies resides entirely in what the pragmatist philosopher William James called “cash value.” (I should say that James didn’t believe in lying as a good. But he did have an exceedingly utilitarian definition of truth.) 

 

If a lie works, it becomes true enough for the task at hand. The will-to-power treats lying as a tool, a means to an end. The French theorist Georges Sorel, a huge influence on Mussolini and Vladimir Lenin alike, didn’t think Marxism worked as a “scientific” description of reality, but it was a vital lie, a “myth” that could be used to mobilize the masses. Fascist metaphysics married James’ “will-to-believe” with Nietzsche’s “will-to-power”: Make the masses believe X and they will move to make X real, or real enough to put the right people in power. I don’t think Gilbert Allardyce is quite right when he says that “Mussolini and Hitler were the first to make a public creed of lying.” But he was certainly right that lying was their creed.

 

In fascist, communist, and similar societies, truth claims are not settled by arguments, testable facts, and objective standards. They’re settled by power. What is deemed “true” in Vladimir Putin’s Russia is whatever Putin and his henchmen tell you it is. 

 

Now I should say that while it’s true that all fascists lie, it’s hardly the case that all liars are fascists. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren lie—or, to be more charitable, sincerely say provably untrue things—all of the time. They’re not fascists, though. Politics itself is often about telling lies, half-truths, etc. Any effort to mobilize large numbers of people will skirt with, or fully embrace, arousing passions without a fastidious regard for the truth. Talk of “banned books” arouses passions that would not be aroused by an accurate description of the alleged problem. “My fellow Americans! A librarian in one Indiana school district removed a book from the shelves because parents complained it wasn’t appropriate for third graders!” won’t mobilize much of a backlash. Nor will, “A Pennsylvania court sidestepped the legislature to allow absentee voting during a pandemic!” But “Democrats, in cahoots with globalist pedophiles stole the election!” can get at least some people to riot. 

 

Which obviously brings me back to Donald Trump. 

 

Trump’s relationship with the truth is wholly fascistic, but also wholly detached from the intellectual roots of fascism. I have no doubt that he knows absolutely nothing about philosophy and nearly nothing about history. He doesn’t consult books by fascists or about fascism when he talks about “the enemy within.” He didn’t even know who Erwin Rommel was, never mind that “German generals” repeatedly tried to assassinate Hitler. He just believes that Hitler got to do what he wanted without any external or internal restraint, and therefore concluded that his generals must have been not only as ruthless as Hitler but blindly loyal to him. Loyalty to Trump (and the praise that is a prerequisite for loyalty) is all Trump cares about. That’s it. I am sure that he has no idea what the Führerprinzip was, but if you explained it to him he’d say, “Yes! That’s what I’m talking about.” That’s why he fawns over strongmen and autocrats and heaps scorn on restraints on his will.

 

And that’s what the mini-Trumps want, too. They’re like Chester, the little dog from Looney Tunes, that followed Spike around. Tucker Carlson’s creepy, almost tumescent, excitement about “Daddy” spanking Americans like naughty little girls is just the latest example of how Trump has elevated and surrounded himself with people who think there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be solved by letting Trump have maximum freedom to do whatever he wants. The only rule of the MAGAprinzip is that we must let Trump be Trump, because Trump is axiomatically right, even when he’s obviously wrong. Jews don’t control the weather, but when Trump takes out his Sharpie and dictates the “real” path of a hurricane, the only correct position in Trump World is “Daddy knows best.” J.D. Vance knows the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, but he also knows that he can never say Trump was wrong about anything. 

 

For reasons I get into in that explainer, I don’t believe in theories of the fascist personality type. But there is a personality type that is attracted to fascism, by which I mean they are attracted to unrestrained power. Ideology is at best a secondary consideration. Joseph Stalin had the same personality type. So did Mao (though in fairness they did have ideologies). So do illiterate and highly literate strongmen alike. It’s Epstean’s Law on steroids: Self-interest is the only value and virtue that matters. Loyal friends, followers, and industries should not be restrained so long as they stay loyal. I can write 2,000 words on how Trump’s theory of political economy and criminal justice is fascistic in less time than it would take for me to finish a cigar. But it boils down to, “For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

 

With all of that said, I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to call Trump a fascist. Again, it’s not because I think it’s unfair to him. He unfairly calls people “fascists, communists, and Marxists” almost every day and the people outraged by the use of the F-word against him never say a word. Indeed, I think some of that outrage on Trump’s behalf falls into the category of protesting too much. The sting of truth really stings. 

 

Still, the people saying, “that’s what they always say” about conservatives or Republicans have a point. I’m not an expert on many things, but on this I have more receipts than almost anybody alive. I wrote Liberal Fascism precisely because I was so disgusted by nearly a century of slander against conservatives along these lines. The problem with the “that’s what they always say” defense is that the “they” here isn’t Rachel Maddow or the New York Times. The “they” are patriotic, conservative, people who worked with him daily. John Kelly, Trump’s former Chief of Staff and Mark Milley the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have gone on record saying that they think Trump is a fascist. Kelly and others have provided lots of context for why they think this. You can disagree with them. But they are not the “they” people are invoking to dismiss them. John Kelly is not an English professor at Brown. Mark Milley is not an associate producer at MSNBC. They are men who’ve given their lives to military service in defense of this country and the Constitution. They can be wrong about Trump or lots of other things, but the proof needs to be more than “I don’t want to hear it” or “that’s what they always say.” I’ll be blunt: I am utterly incapable of understanding why you would take Trump or his praetorians’ word over theirs. 

 

Indeed, the way that the testimony of people who worked with Trump is dismissed is the MAGAprinczip at its purest. The test for truth is whether or not you are loyal to Trump, nothing else matters. It’s Critical Trump Theory. Start with the conclusion that Trump is right and then reason backward.

 

The reasons I don’t like calling Trump a fascist could take up a whole separate essay. But the main reason is that the word has been ruined. And on this I do blame the left almost entirely (though I reserve a small sliver of blame for myself). Which brings me back to the problem of confusing words for things. 

 

For decades the left believed that calling someone a fascist was enough to win an argument. They believed that if you could slap a fascist label on a thing that made it fascist. And since “fascist” is coded as evil, there’s no more room for debate. “Racist” works the same way: For the left once you call someone a racist, the argument is over. Much of the left believes they have a monopoly on political virtue. The further away you get from the left, the closer you get to bad. It’s like the heliocentric theory of political morality. The closer your orbit to the left, the closer you are to righteousness. The outer planets live in the permanent darkness of fascism or racism. 

 

The moral and intellectual laziness was corrupting. When Newt Gingrich unveiled the Contract with America, Rep. Charlie Rangel declared, “Hitler wasn’t even talking about doing these things.” Technically, that’s true. Hitler didn’t talk about banning proxy votes in congressional committees or introducing zero-based budgeting. But when zero-based budgeting is worse than Hitler, you’ve lost the plot. 

 

And you’ve also lost the ability to persuade. The fact that John Kelly or Mark Milley think Trump is a fascist is important not because they used the F-word, but because in their judgment the word is accurate. The problem is that the word is ruined. It’s lost its explanatory and descriptive value thanks to decades of abuse. Call Trump a fascist and the people who like him don’t hear anything other than, “You hate him.” They knew that already. And, as stupid as I think this reaction is, it’s why they like him.