Republicans Traditionalist Revival Owes Much to Putin’s Ideas of Russian Fascism…Part 2.
How traditionalism & fascism meet in Republican visions of what America should be…
Re-attainment of the mythic past feeds fascist tendencies in the present…
In Putin’s Ivan Ilyin inspired fascist Russia today, the fascist tenets of authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity and struggle, are held aloft by sub-routines deeply embedded in the Russian psyche by decades of hypnotic propaganda; a cult of personality bound up in the figure of Putin the redeemer, the fetishisation of dying for the Motherland mirroring the immense sacrifices made during the Great Patriotic War, the victimisation of an innocent Russia by the vile West, the enforcement of correct or traditional behaviour on the populace, the heroic deed of denouncing those ‘scum’ who speak out against the regime, the designation of ‘second class citizens,’ such as journalists or those that may have worked for a Western company, as ‘foreign agents,’ the general acceptance of government intervention in everyday life, in matters legal, in business, in culture, even in family life.
The aim is always the re-attainment of this heroic world. The destruction of everything other than the ‘truth’ that is the fascist story will see time cycle back to the glory days, and only the destruction of factuality or real truth, liberality, and democracy, as embodied in the nations of the West, will see this brought about, and the only man who can achieve this is the mythical leader.
The striking similarities with the principles of Rene Guenon’s traditionalism are stark, dark and foreboding.
Most people see time as a linear function, where in general things advance, improve or modernise; medieval to renaissance to the enlightenment to the modern age, for example. But traditionalists see time, much as fascists do, as cyclical.
Taking time as cyclical function, as borrowed from Hinduism by Guenon, traditionalists see advancing time as running backwards, taking us inevitably back to a previous golden age, but to reach this societal apogee it is necessary to pass through “silver, bronze and dark, before a vicious moment of destruction and rebirth returns society to its previous golden age.”
Thus, with advancing time societal decline and continued degradation are the only certainties; the only solace being that each passing second takes us closer to the glorious past. “Social depravity is (then) both your curse and your salvation.”
Traditionalism, much like fascism believes in a hierarchy, and in each age the hierarchy degrades as some levels of the hierarchy fade and disappear, whilst other rise only to fade themselves as time continues to degrade.
In the dark age — or where we are now — “governments and aesthetics achieve ultimate materiality…” and it ushers in an “…age of the slaves where human bodies replace spirituality, honor and money as our chief concern — where we assign political power based on quantification of bodies (think democracy and communism) and expand mass communities through calls for equality as borders and boundaries of all kinds disappear.”
During the dark age any official institution or office of any expertise, such as a doctor, a university professor, a priest, a politician or a journalist, a hospital, a university, a government, an independent think-tank, is bound to be phoney, or fake in today’s parlance, and is probably doing the opposite of what they actually claim to be doing.
Fascists too spurn knowledge and facts because they are the enemies of the fascist truth. Educated individuals have the means to argue and refute fake news, so reducing the educated to corrupt, inept bureaucrats undermines their credibility and demeans their achievements.
Just look how Republicans have attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci for the perfect example…
Thus, society at large, or those of us who do not follow traditionalist (or fascist?) teachings, are lost in the emptiness having abandoned eternal truths and golden age spirituality and have put our trust in linear history and a belief that our institutions can guide us to the truth and prosperity.
Following right-wing rhetoric, our economies and states are demonised for stripping us of our national sovereignty, for the relaxation of our borders, and for our efforts at globalisation. Our institutions and those who run them are inherently corrupt and have no good intentions.
Traditionalists believe fervently in the establishment of borders; borders between men and women, borders between cultures, borders between races, borders between castes or levels of society. Each should remain distinct and each have their own way of finding their own truths.
So in the dark age, those borders are blurred or gone. Julius Evola, a famous 20th Century traditionalist, who added many of the racial and sexual dimensions to traditionalism, spoke about the “blackening” and “feminisation” of the global population, thereby demonising inter-racial unions and the mixing of cultures, and what we would today call the LGBTQ community, just as fascism does.
That Steve Bannon is well versed in the lore of traditionalism is well known, but how much influence he had on Trump is not. The decisions we know he had a hand in were, according to Bannon himself and following the discussion in Part 1., along with many of Trump’s early executive orders, designed to attack as many of the sacred causes of Trump’s opponents as possible, and thereby fitted both Trump’s and Bannon’s agendas perfectly.
For example, the “nominations of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education, Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, Mick Mulvaney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.” Each were “…figures who had either expressed outright hostility to their agency’s existence or who aspired to dramatically reduce the agency’s operation and mandate.” Add to those the weakening of the Affordable Care Act and the removal of many environmental protections, and Trump was hitting hard the things Obama had hung his political hat on, and that Bannon wanted too wanted to see destroyed.
It was a win-win situation for Trump and Bannon.
Such political devastation would fit Trump’s personalised agenda perfectly. The chance to get one up on a rival — Obama — in a grudge match that was, and probably still is, one way only, and was wholly and completely personal. Whilst the deconstruction of these revered institutions hastened a return to the golden age for Bannon.
And the notoriety, the increase in the public gaze and interest in his every move during those early days in the White House as Trump tried to push through his Muslim ban must have been like whipped cream to a kitten, even as his self flattery had to go into over drive, insisting his inauguration day crowds were far larger than Obama’s had been, when it was plain to see that it just wasn’t the case.
Trying to separate Trump’s actions from his ego is impossible. Everything revolves around his fragile, easily damaged and often fraught egoism. Indeed, so taken is he by his own image, his own inflated idea of himself, that Maggie Haberman, a NYT journalist who had frequently been on the end of what she calls his ‘poison pen notes,’ said that when she came to write a book about him she quite expected she would be turned down when she requested an interview. But to her surprise she was welcomed in, saying afterwards that, “he had an almost reflexive desire to meet with nearly every author writing a book about him…” so convinced was he of own ability to ‘turn’ reporters and authors his way.
Later on, when Haberman asked if, knowing how it had all turned out, he would run again given the opportunity to turn back time, she wrote candidly, “…reflecting on the meaning of having been president of the United States, (Trump’s) first impulse was not to mention public service, or what he felt he’d accomplished, only that it appeared to be a vehicle for fame, and that many experiences were only worth having if someone else envied them.”
This is patently not a man who cares for politics, or for democracy, or what it is, or how it functions. He cares only about self-image, about ego, about having people look and point and gasp, about being the talking point of the day, and he’s prepared to do anything, to say anything, to sacrifice democracy, to cede the security of his country and his people to be that talking point, and all to satisfy his own unquenchable lust for fame and ego.
Bannon, a man I would guess who is far brighter and more switched on politically than Trump will ever be, could see all this. He could also see that his own anti-democratic vision had a far better chance of becoming a reality if he hitched his wagon to the Trump train. If he was prepared to feed Trump’s ego, to give him the rhetorical tools, the political know-how to twist the knife into the heart of his rivals, to show Trump how to become that notorious talking point he so desired to be, then not only would Trump win, it would also hasten the chaos Bannon himself desired, and ultimately bring the world closer to a new golden age.
And the first step in that journey was/is to destroy American democracy, to destroy American institutions, to destroy American factuality, and create a state of unreality, where conspiracy theories and fake news replace reasoned, truthful debate; a world where ignorance reigns supreme and where the population is wholly divided between ‘us and them;’ between the rulers and the conquered.
In Trump’s world we’ve all witnessed his truly astounding capacity for truth destruction, his use of conspiracies, his bizarre embrace of the ridiculous in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and his disdain for facts and those who present them.
The state of unreality was well underway during his Presidency, and should he get re-elected in 2024 expect the attacks on factuality to become even more heated, even weirder, even more strident, and even more violent.
The America public remains wholly divided, perhaps more so now than before 2016, and not solely as a result of Trump’s divisive actions it should be said. He has had much help from the unscrupulous money-making machines that are the social media companies and their cold, unfeeling algorithms, and from Putin’s troll labs, and from the right-wing media.
But Trump has also revelled in his portrayal of ‘us and them’ throughout his Presidency.
‘Us and them’ is the backbone of fascist thinking (1) and is the wedge that divides everything, and one that Trump wields with impunity.
Trump’s ‘us and them’ reveals itself in multiple ways, such as the political right and the political left. The traditional family, and those who live (for want of a better term) an alternative lifestyle — think LGBTQ. The downtrodden, exploited masses, and the intellectual elites or the establishment. White Christians, and the rest who are not white Christians. Those who love America, and those who want to tear it down.
The common thread being that the conservative, fascist values are Christian, white, family orientated, hierarchical, lawful, good and American, whilst the liberal values are non-Christian, non-white, perverted, equal, illegal, bad and un-American.
Hence, the Proud Boys are good Americans and Antifa are terrorists; Donald Trump is to be revered while Hillary Clinton should be locked up; white Americans are lawful citizens while Hispanic immigrants are drug dealers, rapists and murderers; white Christian Americans are good, law abiding family people, while transgender individuals and gays are un-American law breakers and perverted peadophiles out to groom and corrupt children.
This is text book fascism (1) and wholly mimics what has already occurred in Russia under Putin. And not far behind is Hungary under Orban, and India under Modi.
And lurking in the shadows of U.S. politics, waiting to be brought into the limelight, American fascism is becoming bloated and ripe once again under the tutelage of a highly divisive Republican rhetoric and a highly partisan SCOTUS.
Bannon admitted as much himself when on the campaign trail with Trump. Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter in 2016 of what was to come should Trump win (or indeed, win again), he gushed “…it will be as exciting as the 1930's…,” or, in short, the decade when America’s embrace of fascist Nazism was at its’ height.
In Part 3. in 2 days time I’ll finish this mini-series by taking a closer look at how the Republican party have used fascist doctrine to promote their patriarchal vision of America, and how the decision to overturn Roe is a step on the road to autocracy and follows a well worn fascist playbook.
Thanks for reading.
- How Fascism Works: The politics of us and them, Jason Stanley, 2018.
