EFFORTPOST Revisiting Trump Derangement Syndrome

"Trump isn't a fascist. He's just an old man inflicting his narcissistic delusional consensus reality on the entire nation, backed by white supremacist militias which he has already used to attempt to overturn an election."

distinctions WithouT differences

@Impassionata asked me to handle @carpathianflorist 's cowardly request to define "tds," and while at first I was annoyed that Impassionata punted to me, the task has been growing in my mind.

There is this problem with predictive models: if you modeled Trump as an authoritarian dictator type from day one, you were carrying certain preconceptions which may or may not predict Trump's behavior on any given day. It became fashionable, in this postmodern way, to talk about "two movies on one screen." It became fashionable to view Trumpian 'fascist vibes' as an affectation and not an indication. After all, Trump didn't actually attempt to lock Hillary Clinton up.

This notion of 'kayfabe' made politics virtual in a way that would have stunned Baudrillard. Trump, it could be said, was only LARPing fascism, but (so went the theory of the people who denied the validity of the fascist indicators) this was only an elaborate ruse by which to draw leftists into overreacting to the fascist vibes and further discrediting them and empowering Trump.

The net effect was the term "Trump Derangement Syndrome," borrowing from "Bush Derangement Syndrome" which was a traumatic response to the machinery of war being leveraged in post-9/11 America. A large number of people described Bush as a fascist, and this was simply not true.

But it is true that the latent fascism of the United States accelerated under Bush. It is true that surveillance became normalized and the police state became deeply established.

I think much harm has been done by a misreading of Umberto Eco's ur-fascism. Seeking a simplistic definition of fascism and seeking to understand leftists in their own words, would-be commentariat, the chatterati, descended on Eco's article and misunderstood it.

It's also worth noting Jacques Ellul's assertion of "The Victory of Hitler," that regardless of the demise of Nazi Germany, there was no undoing the power of the military-industrial complex, that it could be tethered to a racist political movement at any point. This is the 'ur-fascism' lurking in the background of politics since 1945.

So there's a difference between the latent tendencies towards fascism, the introduction of the "pledge of allegiance" to classrooms, and the development of an actual racist violent movement.

It's more or less indisputable that Eco's ur-fascism exists in American politics. The question is whether or not a movement is active in its pursuit of power, a racist movement, a violent movement, a movement around a strongman.

Which is all to say that there is precedent for "Trump Derangement Syndrome" to describe an overreaction, a label for leftists who are 'taking the bait.'

But this is about communication of the danger. There were many, many points before Hitler's complete control of the police state. The historian says: this movement, Trumpism, bears many of the markers (but not all) of other movements with authoritarian demagogues. It's reasonable to expect that this is a danger to the continued stability of the United States, a danger to democracy, a risk of a purge of undesirables.

Indeed, the actual fact of the matter is that the child separation occurring in immigration processing centers was a deliberate cruelty (and that any separations which occurred under Obama were not inflicted as a regular punishment but out of concern for child trafficking; a distinction with a difference.) This cruelty of Stephen Miller was one of a large number of events which occurred which could not reasonably be said to be 'kayfabe.'

So there is all of this smoke, and there are all of these people who habitually engaged in denialism about that smoke. "That's not smoke, it's just kayfabe." "That's not smoke, it's just a LARP."

And prior to January 6th, perhaps there was limited evidence that Trump would actually engage dictator mode. But this refusal to accept the results of an election is the act of a tyrant. It's the act of a tyrant who is attached to a white supremacist movement which glorifies violence.

It's a fire.

So I ask you the question: who has been deranged by Trump? The people who reacted reasonably to the presence of a fire and called it a fire, even though the denialists called them deranged in their urgent reaction to the presence of a real threat?

Or the people who engaged in denialism about the fact of that fire?

Again, this is simply a matter of fact: Trump is a tyrant, a dictator, an authoritarian leader who does not care about the truth, who resorts to violence, who makes up lies about immigrants to demonize them and justify their mistreatment.

Anyone who can't accept that these people, if given power again, might very well commit genocide, has Trump Derangement Syndrome: Trump distorts their ability to see reality plainly. Trump becomes a figure who they have habitually defended and this deforms their understanding of the reality of these social forms.

Trump is a national disaster.

If you are late to this understanding, and can only now admit to the fact of the fire that the left has been warning about for the better part of a decade, pull the fire alarm. The best time to pull the fire alarm is as soon as you see the smoke. The second best time is now.