This Week in Trump Campaign Surrogate Tikvah Tablet (10/4)

[David Shasha]

Alana Newhouse Still Following the Lysol Talking Points: “Left Fascism”

 

Prior to Sukkot there was not much Trump Campaign support from Tikvah Tablet, but there was this excellent article on one of the Lysol Talking Points:

 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/real-history-left-fascism

 

Russell Berman is at the Hoover Institute, the site of Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Senator Mike Lee’s infamous event:

 

https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/JVae6I3QlmM/m/rDql86i4CQAJ

 

Berman references the notorious Stephen Miller Mount Rushmore Lysol speech:

 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/01/stephen-miller-david-horowitz-mentor-389933

 

It was not the first Tikvah Tablet mention of it, Liel Leibovitz got there first:

 

https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/4HjZn-JTGZ4

 

Rather than accuse the Murderer-in-Chief and his Proud Boys of Fascism, Berman attacks the Left:

 

Amid his expected patriotic appeals, Trump also called out the “merciless campaign to wipe out our history” being carried out by an ideological movement that he described in attention-getting terms as “a new far-left fascism.” That designation is more historically specific and pointed than one associates with standard political attacks and should therefore give us pause. It provides an opportunity to think through some of the complex historical connotations of the accusation of “left fascism,” just as it challenges us to consider the applicability of the term to the current developments in the country.

 

We must take Lysol seriously as a great thinker:

 

In today’s polarized culture, it has become commonplace to dismiss anything the president says, including his surfeit of tweets, out of hand, without thinking about it or even without reading it. This intellectual laziness deserves to be called out. The accusation of “radical left fascism,” a term that carries lots of history, especially for the left, deserves attention. Disagree if you will but at least think it through. What did Trump mean by using the term and where (if anywhere) is it an adequate descriptor of our cultural and political moment? Is there a repressive potential inside the left?

 

The following paragraph is as good a presentation of Newhouse’s support for Trump as we have:

 

We can start with the terms Trump explicitly used in the speech. “One of their political weapons is ‘Cancel Culture’—driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.” That a “cancel culture” is spreading across the country is indisputable. While an earlier version of “political correctness” involved subjecting dissenting points of view to moralistic judgment, today’s “cancel culture” takes the intolerance a further step: obligatory retractions, forced resignations, statements of public distancing not only from peers but also from institutional leaders in universities and corporations. Are we at “totalitarianism” yet, as Arendt used the term? Probably not: One’s speech can be curtailed in today’s America and one can lose one’s job, but the personal safety of heterodox thinkers does not seem to be in jeopardy, so far. The result, though, is precisely what Luxemburg predicted—a flattening out of public debate for fear of offending the ruling sensibilities. For all the talk of the dangers of Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the press, no journalist has been fired for criticizing his policies; by way of contrast now we are seeing dismissals because of editorial decisions deemed insufficiently hostile to the White House.

 

Indeed, after all the consternation about Trump’s support for the Alt-Right Anti-Semites, it is interesting to see how Tikvah Tablet is on the wrong side.

 

 

 

David Shasha