[Gail White]

Mark, I understand that Jewish groups have become very active against Trump's migrant policies, some of them under the heading #NeverAgainIsNow.

[Max Goodman]

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Mark. You've given me things to think about.

[Mark McDonnell]

I'm glad to see that Gail. And thanks Max.

Two clarifications/questions, from someone out of the loop. I think calling the border camps concentration camps and making an analogy to earlier such camps is completely valid. The congresswoman didn't call them 'death camps' after all. I don't agree with the Holocaust museum's statement, I just questioned whether 'spineless' was the right word to describe it. I called it extreme. I suppose to know how to describe it, one would have to know their reasons and motivations, which they don't provide in the statement. I suggested it might be some form of extreme protectiveness about the horrors of the Holocaust, which does seem a little misguided and counterintuitive to the idea of vigilance and 'never again'. If it's a 'spineless' statement, though, that must imply (I think) that they're making it because they don't want to be seen to be attacking Trump. Presumably because of Trump's pro-Israel stance. If that is the case then, yeah, I suppose it is spineless. Is this the general feeling that people have about the museum's decision to release that statement?

Second, back to the idea of calling people like Roger Kimball 'Nazis'. In purely constructive terms, ie thinking about what is most likely to get people to vote for anyone but Trump in 2020, is this helpful? Or is does it just give Trump more of the ammunition he wants in order to smirk at his rallies and say to his base 'look, they call anyone they don't agree with a Nazi. Even this award winning intellectual art critic'. You have real Nazis and white supremacists over there, a lot of whom support Trump. Call them Nazis, sure, because they are. Roger Kimball is many unpleasant things but I don't think he meets the definition of a Nazi, though he may be a happy collaborator if a genuine Nazi/fascist regime did emerge in the US. Doesn't it soften the word to use it like this? By all means call Trump and his administration's policies what they are: inhumane, bullying, heartless, totally corrupt and mendacious. Point out when they show signs of being analogous to past examples of fascism even, as Cortez did. This isn't 'pearl-clutching' and it's nothing to do with the quest for 'civility' in public discourse. I have no concern for the feelings of some smug, privileged, odious right-wing commentator who gets called a Nazi. I just genuinely worry that if the word is thrown around too easily it could be counter-productive and you will lose people. You said, Aaron, of the word 'Nazi', that it was "not an accusation I make lightly. It's an accusation I make out of...careful consideration". Do you think, then, that it would be a good idea for the Democrat candidates to start using it about Trump and public figures who support him? Is it a word that should become more widespread in the general discourse as a practical means of getting rid of Trump and his ilk from politics?

Of course, if people think Trump's base is just unswayable, no matter what anybody says or doesn't say then none of this matters. But then in that case nothing anyone says matters, does it? Including Cortez and the Holocaust museum. Who is anyone trying to persuade?

As always, I'm just thinking things through aloud.

Thanks

[Roger Slater]

Mark, I don't think you have to kill a few million people before the word "Nazi" can be appropriately invoked. Just being a virulent racist who cages children and breaks the law while egging on thugs is quite enough, I think. But I'll let this video speak for me (brought to my attention by Matt Q, I think).

[John Isbell]

These are worthy questions, Mark. A sidebar: Democrat for Democratic is a politically charged term, brought into use by the GOP and widely disseminated by them, perhaps in an effort to separate that party from immediate semantic linkage to democratic values. One might thus say the Republic Party, only I find the American left less unscrupulous and more honest, by and large, in their use of language. Just to note your choice of term has entered America’s charged political landscape. I continue to bristle at the term’s dishonesty.

Cheers,
John

Update: the moral being, I guess, that language is an explosive thing and it deserves to be handled with care. :-)

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Roger,

I already watched the video when Matt first posted it. I got it and I like it. It's a brilliant satire of a thousand internet arguments. I don't think you understood my point though, or you didn't read it properly, or you're deliberately addressing a different one because it's easier. I know it was long, but I was trying to be very clear and precise in how I worded it.

Hi John,

I'm glad you think they're worthy questions, I thought you might have a go at answering them. I've never heard anyone else quibble at the term Democrat, it must not be a thing in England. It seems acceptable enough at the left-wing Guardian newspaper, who are usually quite careful about such things.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-rashida-tlaib

[Julie Steiner]

Originally Posted by Mark McDonnell

I've never heard anyone else quibble at the term Democrat, it must not be a thing in England. It seems acceptable enough at the left-wing Guardian newspaper, who are usually quite careful about such things.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-rashida-tlaib

But Mark, note that both incidences of the phrase "the Democrat Party" in that article from the Guardian are direct quotes by Donald Trump. [Edited to say: Or Donald Trump's quote of a quote. But close enough.] Using the wrong name for the Democratic Party is a tactic deliberately designed to annoy Democrats, and I'm confident that the Guardian's writers would never do that themselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

I think you and I are pretty much in agreement on your other point, with a few differences. Personally, I think it's 100% fair and accurate to compare supporters of xenophobic strongmen to Nazis; but on the other hand, I share your concern that making insecure people [Edited to clarify: I'm referring to rank-and-file supporters here, not to public figures like Kimball, whom, unlike you, I consider fair game] feel attacked and despised by calling them "Nazis" is probably 100% ineffective for persuading them to abandon their support of a strongman who says, "Look how my enemies attack and despise you wonderful people! They want to deprive you of the protection, power, and glory you deserve. But we'll destroy and humiliate them, won't we?"

[Quincy Lehr]

Is Kimball a Nazi? No. But he is, at least and without hyperbole, a fascist sympathizer whose publication has published and defended overt racists and has been one of the most strident defenders of the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil. Moreover, as a key writer for American Greatness, and overtly racist and hard nationalist publication, he has aligned himself with an explicit attack on branches of conservatism that still reference the legacy of nineteenth-century liberalism. It is an intellectual milieu that looks like this:

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/17/206965...nce-2019-trump

It’s not as if this is new, exactly. It’s more that the subtext has become the text, with a political establishment that may be able to hold onto a degree of power for the time being, but which is deeply distrusted, and rightfully so. The looming climate catastrophe poses two options—a massive move towards equality, democratic planning, and international solidarity, or genocide. Team Genocide, even as it fundamentally miscasts the crisis, is getting far less coy about what it’s willing to do to preserve its Cheesecake Factories, McMansions, and pretentious trust-fund magazines.

[John Isbell]

Hi Mark,

Yes, I've been posting my thoughts in this particular discussion for a bit already, as you'll note. As to your most recent worthy arguments - you do indeed often make those, to my mind - I'll just observe my longstanding feeling that when Hillary made the, again to my mind, calculated decision to call Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables," she did so in a catastrophic error of judgment from a tactical perspective.
Folks have noted that my comments tend to be shorter rather than longer. I think I'll do just that this time as well. As Pascal once wrote, "Please excuse this long letter. I had no time to make it short."

Cheers,
John

[Mark McDonnell]

Hi Julie!

I made reference to 'Democrat candidates' in the spirit that you might say 'she's a Democrat'; I didn't say the 'Democrat Party', which would just sound wrong to me anyway. I'd literally never heard of this particular semantic minefield, and John's picking me up on it just felt like a distraction, but fair enough, I'm happy to be corrected.

It's not that I don't consider Kimball 'fair game' or have any concern about him feeling attacked. As I said above 'I have no concern for the feelings of some smug, privileged, odious right-wing commentator who gets called a Nazi'. When I initially questioned Aaron about his calling him a 'Nazi fuck' it was through qualms about the feelings of Holocaust victims, and then later through a concern that calling someone a Nazi who isn't actually a Nazi could empower Trump. The same principle that makes you balk at calling rank-and-file supporters Nazis. I personally don't care what language Aaron uses to express his justifiable anger on this very niche website, I was just making a point about the usefulness of that sort of language becoming more common in the general political discourse vs the risk that it could backfire. It's a tricky one isn't it, because saying 'don't call Roger Kimball a Nazi' can easily be interpreted as 'Don't slander that poor man's reputation'. That's not my agenda here at all, it is the same as everyone else's: to encourage action that makes Trump's reelection the least likely scenario.

Hi Quincy - nothing there I don't agree with, and what I said to Julie.

Hi John - I'm still interested, from you or anyone else, in opinions on my first question about the motivations of the Holocaust museum and the description of their statement as 'spineless'. It's not a loaded question, I'd genuinely be interested in opinions, as someone concerned but removed from the issue by an ocean. The Pascal is always funny.

Cheers folks

Edit: the more I read about Bolsonaro, the more frightening he sounds. It's very important for any forces aligned against what he and Trump represent to play it right, if they're to be defeated democratically. God knows what that (the 'playing it right') means though really tbh.