Tag: rightwing

The rise of Nazi thoughts and deeds in American politics – a marker

Around a decade ago, I put a marker on my blog regarding Peter Thiel, because I thought it worthwhile to track his decline. Last week the pattern of Nazi related activities in the American right got to the point where I thought: I need to start noting these.

First off, Peter Thiel is giving a lecture on “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series” of all things. One thing that stood out for me was the reference to Carl Schmitt. In case you don’t know much about Schmitt and his relationship with the Nazis, you can read this.

Next up, JD Vance (who is also aware of Schmitt), said, “I don’t know why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family. Those are your streets.” Read that, I thought, I wonder if we should be prepared for someone in the Trump administration to propose Aktion T4. This is a marker to see if they are going to go down that road.

None of this Nazi infused thinking is new. Mike Godwin in 2023 said comparing Trump to Hitler was not wrong, in light of Trump “calling people vermin” and “talking about blood poisoning”.

Godwin’s Law — “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1.”  — is good to keep in mind. It’s easy to reach for comparison of the American right wing to the Nazis, and that comparison should be resisted. Many authoritarian actions that the Trump administration has been doing are terrible but such actions are not strictly limited to Hitler and company. But as these actions pile up, and as right wing thought and action echo behaviors of Germany after 1933, it’s worthwhile keeping track. Actions like the formation of a secret police, the use of concentration camps, the attacks on the museums and the arts, or the takeover of cities by the military.

(Photo of Miller, Hegseth and Vance with the National Guard in Washington D.C.)

P.S. For people who say, Americans would never do anything terrible, I would simply start by by pointing out CIA Black Sites, where Americans would “detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants” in extrajudical locations outside the U.S.

Project Esther, or how to demonize your opponents and for what purpose


When it comes to demonizing your opponents, I was really struck by how strong an example the Heritage Foundation demonstrates here: Project Esther: A National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism. Start with the first paragraph:

“America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American “pro-Palestinian movement” is part of a global Hamas Support Network (HSN) that is trying to compel the U.S. government to abandon its long-standing support for Israel. Supported by activists and funders dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy, the HSN benefits from the support and training of America’s overseas enemies and seeks to achieve its goals by taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government, and relying on the American Jewish community’s complacency. The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism intends to enlist all willing and able partners in a coordinated effort to combat the scourge of antisemitism in the United States.”

Let’s unpack that paragraph. Do you find any room there for someone like me who opposes the actions of the Israeli government, never mind those who may be supportive of the Palestinians who are bearing the brunt of the Israeli army against the Hamas organization? I don’t. As far as Heritage is concerned,  I am “anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American”. Furthermore, you cannot consider yourself  “pro-Palestinian”: you are considered instead part of “a global Hamas Support Network (HSN)”. Not only that, but by being part of the HSN, you and I are caught up with those “dedicated to the destruction of capitalism and democracy”.  If that’s not bad enough, Heritage states that we are hurting America by “taking advantage of our open society, corrupting our education system, leveraging the American media, coopting the federal government”.  The only way you could be any worse is if you were Jewish and adding to “the American Jewish community’s complacency”.

To generalize, the formula Heritage seems to be using to demonize their opponents is:

  • Ignore the spectrum of opposition, from those expressing mild disapproval to other engaging in violent action.
  • Instead, collapse that opposition and lump all your opponents together.
  • Make sure you collapse the opposition so that it is associated with the most extreme end of that opposition.
  • Relabel the opposition with a name and an acronym that ensures others associate it with this negative extremity.
  • Invent a list of nefarious actions to apply to the opposition.
  • Claim the leadership of those who would naturally go against such negative extremity.

This particular example revolves around the conflict in the Gaza Strip. But it could easily apply to any situation. For example, during the October Crisis in Canada, all those wishing for more autonomy for Quebec and opposing the Canadian government in various forms could have been lumped into the FLQ Support Network (FSN) and the Canadian establishment could have said anyone in this new FSN bucket was an enemy of Canada and democracy and more. As you can see, it’s an easy formula to apply.

Of course it is not just enough to demonize your opponent. Once you do that, you need to use that demonization to justify your future goals. For Heritage, some of their goals for Project Esther are listed below:

  • DE1: HSO propaganda purged from curricula.
  • DE2: HSO-supporting faculty and/or staff removed or fired.
  • DE3: HSO access to campuses lost and/or denied.
  • DE4: Foreign members of HSOs/HSN access to campuses lost and/or denied.
  • DE5: Money from foreign HSO supporters not accepted by schools.

Basically, any thing they don’t like in schools and universities they can label as coming from HSO (Hamas Support Organizations) and work to have it removed under the guise of attacking antisemitism. Attacks on free speech by right wing organizations is not new, and that is part of the point of Project Esther. First demonize your opponent, then use the demonization to ban them or strike them in some way while claiming it’s for a good cause.

Whenever a person or group use the formula to demonize their opponent, you can assume some follow on extreme action is being lined up by them. Don’t be that person or a part of that group, and don’t participate in that form of thinking.

The American Right is familiar with Carl Schmitt and you should be too (for different reasons)

Nuremberg Laws English.jpg

I would have thought that Carl Schmitt is someone who should have been assigned to the dustbin of history. I would have thought wrong.

According to this piece in the New York Times from the summer of 2024:

J.D. Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio who is vying to be Donald Trump’s running mate, declared: “The thing that I kept thinking about liberalism in 2019 and 2020 is that these guys have all read Carl Schmitt — there’s no law, there’s just power. And the goal here is to get back in power.”

Masterful bit of projection there by Vance of his own ideas on to the American left.

Give the rise of Nazi thought on the American right, it should not be surprising that some of its members are turning to Schmitt. For those who are unfamiliar with him, his Wikipedia entry starts with this:

Schmitt wrote extensively about the effective wielding of political power. An authoritarian conservative theorist, he was noted as a critic of parliamentary democracy, liberalism, and cosmopolitanism.His works covered political theory, legal theory, continental philosophy, and political theology. However, they are controversial, mainly due to his intellectual support for, and active involvement with, Nazism.In 1933, Schmitt joined the Nazi Party and utilized his legal and political theories to provide ideological justification for the regime. Schmitt supported many of Hitler policies including the Night of the Long Knives purge and the Nuremberg Laws.

Based on what we have seen so far, expect to see the Trump administration put more of Schmitt’s ideas in action over the length of Trump’s latest term in office.

To learn more about Schmitt and his ideas, you can read the Times piece and the wikipedia page. You can also check out a review of this book on him. For German readers, you can read his defense of the Night of the Long Knives, here.

(Image credits: By Government of Germany – Flickr: Nuremberg Laws English, Public Domain, Link. It’s important to see just where Schmitt’s ideas lead, hence why I included this terrible diagram. After all, “he praised the Nuremberg Laws for dispensing with the commitment to “treat aliens in species and Germans equally.” – NY Times)