tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/facism-34141/articlesFacism – The Conversation2024-02-02T16:09:17Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2208142024-02-02T16:09:17Z2024-02-02T16:09:17ZBiden is campaigning against the Lost Cause and the ‘poison’ of white supremacy in South Carolina<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569668/original/file-20240116-17-rcsaui.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=580%2C210%2C7662%2C5265&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Joe Biden at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina on Jan. 8, 2024. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-joe-biden-waits-to-speak-next-to-south-carolina-news-photo/1910415169?adppopup=true">Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the blur of breaking news, one of President Joe Biden’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/08/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-political-event-charleston-sc/">first speeches</a> of the 2024 campaign was given in South Carolina and has already been mostly forgotten in the ongoing coverage of the state’s democratic primary on Feb. 3, 2024.</p>
<p>We should pay it more attention.</p>
<p>The site of the speech on Jan. 8, 2024, was Charleston, South Carolina’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where, on a summer evening in 2015, an avowed white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, including <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/politics/south-carolina-church-shooting-clementa-pinckney/index.html">Rev. Clementa Pinckney</a>, the church’s pastor and a state representative. At Pinckney’s funeral, then-<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN05jVNBs64">President Barack Obama</a> sang a heart-felt version of the Christian hymn <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200149085/">Amazing Grace</a>.</p>
<p>From the pulpit, Biden sounded like a preacher. </p>
<p>“The word of God was pierced by bullets in hate and rage, propelled by not just gunpowder but by a poison,” <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/08/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-political-event-charleston-sc/">Biden said</a>. “A poison that’s for too long haunted this nation. What is that poison? White supremacy. … Throughout our history, it’s ripped this nation apart.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://joseph-kelly.com">historian who studies democracy in the American South</a>, I am doing research for a book on free speech, lying and fascism in America during the 1920s and 1930s. What I have learned is that Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Joe Biden speaks at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>The original big lie</h2>
<p>In 1820, 44 years after the nation’s birth, U.S. Sen. <a href="https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/smith-william/">William Smith</a> of South Carolina was the first to claim in Congress that men were not created equal. Boldly rejecting the Declaration of Independence as effusive “enthusiasm,” Smith injected white supremacy into public discourse.</p>
<p>It spread like wildfire, and there’s little wonder. Smith, who owned several plantations and at least 71 enslaved people, was among more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2022/congress-slaveowners-names-list/?itid=sf_local_dont-miss-brights_p004_f001">1,800 U.S. legislators</a> who enslaved Black people. </p>
<p>Southern propagandists rewrote history, arguing the founders never really believed in equality. If you disagreed, vigilante thugs would beat you up or chase you into exile. They killed more than a few people who spoke up against slavery.</p>
<h2>‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’</h2>
<p>The Supreme Court’s infamous 1857 decision in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/60us393">Dred Scott v. Sandford</a> extended Southern racist ideology into the North. Black people, the court held, are “so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and … the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery.”</p>
<p>The following year, in his campaign for the U. S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln sounded the alarm. He addressed the consequences of slavery on America’s democracy and warned that “<a href="https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/housedivided.htm">a house divided against itself cannot stand</a>.” </p>
<p>“This government cannot endure,” he said, “permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it … or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="In this black-and-white photograph, a white man dressed in a dark suit sits in a chair with his hands on his lap." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/569676/original/file-20240116-15-ho7zat.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=927&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">An 1860 portrait of Abraham Lincoln.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abraham-lincoln-may-20-1860-salted-paper-print-from-glass-news-photo/1215985241?adppopup=true">Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The Civil War was supposed to end slavery and the white supremacist ideology that underpinned it. The <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/13th-amendment">13th</a>, <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/14th-amendment">14th</a> and <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/15th-amendment">15th Amendments</a>, known as the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/reconstruction-amendments/">Reconstruction amendments</a>, made equality explicit in the Constitution, extending civil and political rights to newly freed African Americans. </p>
<p>That upended the Southern social order.</p>
<p>The South then invented what Biden called the “<a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2024-01-08/biden-links-trump-election-denialism-confederate-lost-cause">self-serving lie</a>” of the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/growing-up-in-the-shadow-of-the-confederacy/537501/">Lost Cause</a>,” the rewritten version of the Civil War that claims <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp">slavery</a> had nothing to do with the war. The white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan was <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan">the violent hammer</a> of this “Lost Cause,” and its emergence coincided with <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/">Jim Crow laws</a> that established racial segregation across the South and disenfranchised Black voters until the 1960s.</p>
<h2>Democracies in peril</h2>
<p>In his State of the Union address on Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sounded a new alarm. His “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/fdr-the-four-freedoms-speech-text/">Four Freedoms</a>” speech was an updated version of Lincoln’s and further defined freedom within a democracy.</p>
<p>The immediate issue was whether the U.S. should help England and other European allies defend against the <a href="https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/gi-roundtable-series/pamphlets/em-18-what-is-the-future-of-italy-(1945)/the-rise-and-fall-of-fascism">fascist regimes</a> of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.</p>
<p>This was no academic question of foreign policy. In helping Britain, President Roosevelt stated, the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear.</p>
<p>Biden has rung a similiar alarm. During his speech at Mother Emanuel church – and again during other campaign stops before the <a href="https://www.usvotefoundation.org/south-carolina-election-dates-and-deadlines">Feb. 3 Democratic Party primary in South Carolina</a> – Biden acknowledged that he is not only running against the GOP front-runner Donald Trump but also against a “second lost cause” myth. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=360t4mRmPcA">Biden called out Trump</a> for his “big lie” about the 2020 election that Trump has repeatedly claim was “rigged” against him. He criticized those who he said are attempting to “steal history” again and spin <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67889403">the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection</a> as “a peaceful protest.” </p>
<p>At its core, Biden warned, Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is a resurrection of southern-style white nationalism and the age-old disregard for equal rights. </p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.instagram.com/joebiden/reel/C1x2_oVt0cg/">We all know who Donald Trump is</a>,” Biden said during his speech and in his ads, calling on Americans to work to make up for centuries of racism and discrimination “The question we have to answer is who are we?”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220814/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Patrick Kelly volunteers for the Charleston County (SC) Democratic Party. </span></em></p>During a campaign speech in South Carolina, President Biden made it clear that he is not only running against Donald Trump but also against white supremacy.Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of CharlestonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2207302024-01-25T16:08:35Z2024-01-25T16:08:35ZWhat can we learn from the history of pre-war Germany to the atmosphere today in the U.S.?<p><em>The Guardian</em> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/13/end-of-democracy-bernie-sanders-on-if-trump-wins-and-how-to-stop-him">recently published an interview with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders</a> about what happens if Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election in the United States. </p>
<p>His dire answer: “It will be the end of democracy.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571242/original/file-20240124-23-tw39ed.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/society-societe/icw-ca/index-eng.aspx">Prof. David Dyzenhaus will talk about his research on politics and the rule of law in an interview with Scott White, The Conversation Canada's Editor-in-Chief. Click here to join the event for free by registering.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The challenge the U.S. faces, Sanders said, “is to be able to show people that government in a democratic society can address their very serious needs. If we do that, we defeat Trump. If we do not, then we are the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s.”</p>
<p>Sanders is of course evoking the extreme political polarization and social discontent of the last three years of Germany’s first experiment with democracy. </p>
<p>That experiment ended with Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933. </p>
<p>The senator is right that there are frightening echoes of the end game of Weimar in western democracies. But in the U.S., at least, his timing is off. The United States already is the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s.</p>
<h2>Polarization in pre-war Germany</h2>
<p>Naturally, there are some differences. </p>
<p>In Germany, the main fault line of polarization was between the far-right factions, with the Nazi Party the most prominent, and the Communist Party — both of which contested elections with the express intention of destroying democracy if they won power. In contrast, the main division in the U.S. is between Democrats and the far-right groups that dominate Trump’s Republican party. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/david-dyzenhaus">My expertise</a> is not political science but law, in particular the rule of law. I study the nature of law and its relationship to politics. </p>
<p>I wrote <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/2553">a book about the problems of the legal and political order in pre-Hitler Germany</a> — and why those circumstances remain highly relevant to contemporary debates about what’s going on in the United States and other western democracies (including debates in <a href="https://www.law.utoronto.ca/news/demise-rule-law-in-canada-professor-david-dyzenhaus-lawyers-daily">Canada</a>).</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman and a man read a poster glued to a post." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571267/original/file-20240124-17-ghk9c5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berlin citizens read the 1932 emergency powers decree.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-nazi-rise-to-power/the-weimar-republic/the-weimar-constitution/">Weimar Constitution</a> had existed for only 14 years when Hitler forced the German parliament to make his will the ultimate source of legal authority. </p>
<p>His path to power was facilitated by the ease with which Article 48 of the constitution — the emergency powers provision that allowed the president to bypass parliament — could be exploited.</p>
<h2>The resilience of the U.S. Constitution</h2>
<p>In contrast, the U.S. Constitution dates from 1789, which makes it the most established constitution of the oldest democracy. It showed its resilience on Jan. 6, 2021, in the failed attempt by Trump and his supporters to take power by insurrection after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2018/628309/EPRS_BRI(2018)628309_EN.pdf">Konrad Adenauer</a>, West Germany’s first president who was elected after the Second World War, later reflected that the problem with Weimar was not its constitution, but that there weren’t enough democrats — meaning politicians, judges, lawyers and others who believed in democracy.</p>
<p>Three years ago in the United States, only a small number of small-d democrats stood between a successful coup and Biden taking office: the Republican-appointed judges who rejected Trump’s attempts in the courts to contest particular elections, the Republican election officials who withstood the pressure to rig the votes in their districts and even Vice-President Mike Pence, though it seems that <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/dan-quayle-convinced-mike-pence-to-reject-trumps-coup.html">he wavered dangerously until the last minute</a>.</p>
<p>Weimar democracy was similarly salvageable until the end of 1932, and so the analogy between it and the U.S. in early 2024 is strong.</p>
<p>The role of lawyers and courts in such scenarios can be crucial.</p>
<h2>Coup d'etat in Prussia paved the way</h2>
<p>In 1932, the German federal government — dominated by right-wing aristocrats — used the emergency powers provision of the Weimar constitution to replace the legal state government of Prussia, one of 39 separate states that made up the German republic. <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2952263">This coup d’état effectively took over the powers</a> of a state that was the main bastion of democratic resistance to the extreme right-wing forces of the time.</p>
<p>At the time of the coup, the Prussian state government considered armed resistance. But because it felt such action would end in defeat and, as social democrats, they were committed to legality, they chose to challenge the constitutional validity of the decree before the Staatsgerichtshof — the court set up by the Weimar Constitution to resolve constitutional disputes between the federal government and the states in Germany’s federation.</p>
<p>After hearing oral arguments between Oct. 10-17, 1932, the court fudged its decision in a way that effectively upheld the decree in a judgment on Oct. 25.</p>
<p><a href="https://aeon.co/essays/carl-schmitts-legal-theory-legitimises-the-rule-of-the-strongman">This decision is regarded as a significant precursor to Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933</a> and his decision to make himself the ultimate source of legal authority in Germany, thus effectively putting him beyond the reach of the law.</p>
<p>Some of the most prominent legal scholars of the time appeared on both sides of the dispute, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23735189">including Carl Schmitt</a>, a fascist legal theorist who presented the federal government’s side in the Prussia case and then signed up with the Nazis after 1933.</p>
<h2>Nazi lawyer still admired</h2>
<p>Schmitt was determined throughout his career to use legal arguments to destroy liberal democracy from within. Today, <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/online/2020/01/15/william-barr-the-carl-schmitt-of-our-time/">Schmitt is very popular</a> — along with other right-wing figures from the Weimar period — with the far-right coterie of lawyers who tried to mastermind Trump’s own attempt at a coup in January 2021.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man is featured on the cover of an old academic journal" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571266/original/file-20240124-29-wxuqg0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=979&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘The View of the Third Reich’ – lawyer Carl Schmitt on the cover page of the German journal Der Wirtschafts-Ring (The Economic Ring) in 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The U.S. Supreme Court will soon <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-supreme-court-trump-cases-1.7064843">decide current</a> and potential future cases involving Trump’s challenges to the rule of law. For example, Trump has mused that if he is re-elected, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-wants-use-military-against-his-domestic-enemies-congress-must-act">he could use the Insurrection Act</a> to suppress any political protests.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court’s decisions on cases involving Trump’s legal authority could be as momentous for the future of democracy in the United States as the decision of Staatsgerichtshof in 1932.</p>
<p>With a majority of conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court — including Justice Clarence Thomas, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/virginia-thomas-the-wife-of-justice-clarence-thomas-agrees-to-interview-with-jan-6-panel">whose wife has been accused of trying to help Trump overturn his election defeat</a> — the portents for democracy and the rule of law are not good.</p>
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<span class="caption">Prof. David Dyzenhaus will talk about his research on politics and the rule of law in an interview with Scott White, The Conversation Canada’s Editor-in-Chief. Click here to join the event for free by registering.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/society-societe/icw-ca/index-eng.aspx">Prof. David Dyzenhaus will talk about his research on politics and the rule of law in an interview with Scott White, The Conversation Canada's Editor-in-Chief. Click here to join the event for free by registering.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Dyzenhaus receives funding from SSHRC for related research projects</span></em></p>Adolf Hitler’s rise to power was aided by courts and lawyers in pre-war Germany. A similar situation exists today in the United States.David Dyzenhaus, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2192102023-12-06T16:27:39Z2023-12-06T16:27:39ZElliott Erwitt: Jewish photographer who fled fascism and spread a little joy in a post-WWII world<p>“Photography has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them,” Elliott Erwitt once said.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/elliott-erwitt/">Erwitt</a>, who was one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century, died on November 30 at the age of 95. In a career spanning more than 70 years, his witty, gentle and beautifully observed images beguiled generations of admirers and propelled him to become one of the best known – and <a href="https://www.blind-magazine.com/en/news/elliott-erwitt-master-photographer-from-magnum-photos-dies-at-95/">well paid</a> – photographers of the 20th century. </p>
<p>Born Elio Romano Erwitz in Paris in 1925 to Jewish-Russian parents, he migrated with his family to the US in 1939 to escape the fascism spreading across Europe as war broke out.</p>
<p>He taught himself photography at school and by 1950 – now as Elliott Erwitt – he was commissioned by the US government to <a href="https://www.worldphoto.org/blogs/08-08-17/finding-lost-negatives-young-elliott-erwitt">produce a photo essay</a> that <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/society/elliott-erwitt-pittsburgh/">documented mid-century Pittsburgh</a>. </p>
<p>In 1953, legendary <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/robert-capa/">war photographer Robert Capa</a> invited Erwitt to join <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/">Magnum</a>. It was the world’s first photo agency, founded in 1947 by four European photographers including Capa, <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/henri-cartier-bresson/">Henri Cartier-Bresson</a>, <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/george-rodger/">George Rodger</a> and <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/david-seymour/">David “Chim” Seymour</a>.</p>
<p>The agency popularised the term “photojournalism” and produced work to satisfy the insatiable demand for images produced on small, handheld cameras like the <a href="https://www.kenrockwell.com/leica/screw-mount/iiif.htm">35mm Leica</a>. As a Magnum photographer Erwitt went on to take pictures for LIFE magazine and many other publications during that golden era of illustrated journals.</p>
<h2>Working with the greats</h2>
<p>Capa and Cartier-Bresson had a profound influence on the young Erwitt. Capa <a href="https://www.life.com/photographer/robert-capa/">redefined war photography</a> by following his own <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/07/29/if-your-pictures-arent-good-enough-youre-not-close-enough-vintage-prints-by-war-photographer-robert-capa-to-headline-photo-london">guiding principle</a> that “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”. </p>
<p>Cartier-Bresson influenced Erwitt through his pursuit of geometric compositional methods and exploration of “the decisive moment”: the concept of the critical moment to press the shutter. This is seen in one of his most famous photographs, <a href="https://www.moma.org/collection/works/98333">Behind the Gare St Lazare</a> (1932), capturing a stocky man leaping over a large puddle, exquisitely mirrored by his reflection.</p>
<p>Erwitt’s work straddled commercial photography, photojournalism and personal work that he made on his way to and from the studio. He said that distinctions between commercial and personal work were less important than the similarities. He employed techniques such as bold graphic composition, humorous and ironic juxtapositions and storytelling through use of the “decisive moment”. </p>
<h2>Lucky breaks and a good eye</h2>
<p>It was in 1959, while working for Westinghouse Refrigerators at a trade fair in Moscow, that Erwitt had the opportunity to take his world-famous photograph of then US vice-president <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Nixon">Richard Nixon</a> <a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/elliott-erwitt-moscow-nikita-khrushchev-and-richard-nixon-1">jabbing a finger into the chest</a> of Soviet leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikita-Sergeyevich-Khrushchev">Nikita Khrushchev</a>.</p>
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<p>In a single moment, Erwitt created an image that symbolised the tensions between Russia and the US – and it was published all over the world. To an American audience it represented the US standing up to Soviet aggression. For audiences in the Soviet Union it was a symbol of American intimidation.</p>
<p>Like French humanist photographer <a href="https://www.robert-doisneau.com/en/robert-doisneau/">Robert Doisneau</a>, Erwitt was not beyond employing an element of staging in his personal pictures. This becomes evident when comparing Doisneau’s picture <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170213-the-iconic-photo-that-symbolises-love">The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville</a> (1950) and Erwitt’s <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/elliott-erwitt/16-california-1956-california-kiss/">California Kiss</a> (1956).</p>
<p>Both images have become an indelible part of the visual language of 20th century photography and arguably, the wider culture, through print sales, postcards and publication.</p>
<p>It is this element of organised visual storytelling, combined with his undoubted skill with the camera that resulted in Erwitt creating such well known and celebrated images. He must also have been keenly aware of the commercial possibilities when choosing his subjects.</p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/fine-prints/18-new-york-city-1974-dog-legs/">photographed dogs and their owners frequently</a>, making five very popular books on the subject, <a href="https://www.holdenluntz.com/magazine/photo-spotlight/elliott-erwitt-dogs/">saying</a>: “I take a lot of pictures of dogs because I like dogs, because they don’t object to being photographed, and because they don’t ask for prints.”</p>
<p>His photographs have become much more widely known and valued than some of his contemporaries. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/nov/28/larry-fink-dead-photographer">Larry Fink</a>, another American photographer who died five days before Erwitt, for example, received far fewer column inches in praise of his grittier, social documentary pictures. </p>
<h2>Telling stories</h2>
<p>Erwitt was both a gifted visual storyteller and hugely successful commercially. He reached audiences beyond the illustrated magazines, the art world and the photojournalism of newspapers. His work – if not necessarily his name – became known to the general public in the US and beyond, a feat not achieved by his contemporaries <a href="https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/william-klein?all/all/all/all/0">William Klein</a>, <a href="https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/robert-frank?all/all/all/all/0">Robert Frank</a> or even the recently discovered <a href="https://www.vivianmaier.com/about-vivian-maier/">Vivian Maier</a>.</p>
<p>The breadth and financial success of Erwitt’s work across several genres remains an inspiration to the generation of photographers who have followed. British photographer <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/martin-parr/">Martin Parr</a>, for example, like Erwitt uses humour, juxtaposition and a very identifiable style to great effect. He is also a member and, like Erwitt, a former president of Magnum.</p>
<p>Other British photographers who might be said to owe a debt of gratitude to him would be <a href="https://www.mattstuart.com/">Matt Stuart</a>, who has published several books of his own street photography and <a href="https://www.dougiewallace.com/well-healed">Dougie Wallace</a>, who has made two successful books with dogs as the subject. </p>
<p>In many ways, it would be impossible to repeat the success of Elliott Erwitt. His career could only have flourished in post-war New York. He helped to define what the city’s creative culture was and would be in the aftermath of the second world war.</p>
<p>The idea of “humanist photography” was readily consumed by a war-weary generation. The addition of humour and uncontroversial subject matter found a ready audience who were captivated by his superlative and often humourous <a href="https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/elliott-erwitt-the-art-of-looking-at-art/">photographic storytelling techniques</a>.</p>
<p>Elliott Erwitt’s deeply human images have endured over decades and still find favour with photographers and the public alike today – because we all recognise and enjoy a virtuoso performance when we see one.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Graeme Oxby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>His witty, gentle and beautifully observed images propelled Erwitt to become one of the best-loved photographers of the 20th century.Graeme Oxby, Senior Lecturer/Programme Leader BA & MA Photography, University of LincolnLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2073802023-07-07T08:53:51Z2023-07-07T08:53:51ZUnpacking the controversy behind Roger Waters’ latest tour<p>“I will not be cancelled,” roared the former Pink Floyd singer <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/01/roger-waters-review-a-powerful-humanist-spectacular#:%7E:text=%E2%80%9CThey're%20trying%20to%20cancel,%2Dyear%2Dold%20is%20tearful.">Roger Waters</a> at a recent concert in Birmingham, part of a European tour mired in controversy. There have been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65725902">police investigations in Berlin</a>, <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/holocaust-survivor-daughter-evicted-from-roger-waters-o2-academy-gig/">demonstrations in Britain</a> and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/germany-roger-waters-concert-antisemitism-allegations-protest-9cb70636d69019deab0b70e196b7f88b">accusations of fostering hatred against Jews</a>, but Waters has remained defiant.</p>
<p>At the centre of the uproar has been onstage imagery, particularly an SS-style leather trenchcoat emblazoned with <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/pink-floyd-star-roger-waters-says-he-was-opposing-fascism-when-he-wore-nazi-inspired-uniform-12890501">quasi-fascist crossed hammer symbols</a> which Waters has worn while brandishing a prop machine gun. The German investigation, which also precipitated a tirade of criticism in the UK, stemmed from laws forbidding displays of Nazi symbols as part of restrictions on hate speech – but with exemptions for artistic and educational purposes.</p>
<p>Waters’ <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/140cc3d7-0a3e-4bba-9c72-38fb498f58e2">riposte</a> – “It’s called theatre, darling, it’s called satire” – is first, that the costume depicts a fictional character who imagines himself a totalitarian icon and, second, is nothing new. The costume derives from the 1979 concept album <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/dec/05/pink-floyds-the-wall-a-bleak-manic-agonised-album-1979">The Wall</a>, whose protagonist descends into madness – a reflection connecting alienation to fascistic tendencies and, ultimately, a critique of them. Representations of these fevered imaginings have been a feature of Waters’ set for decades.</p>
<p>Another staple has been a flying inflatable pig, based on the 1977 album <a href="https://www.loudersound.com/features/rioting-bitter-acrimony-and-the-story-of-pink-floyds-unsung-masterpiece-animals">Animals</a>, which got him into <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/rogers-waters-defends-use-of-religious-symbolism-5812317/">hot water in 2013</a> when he adorned it with a Star of David, adding other religious symbols following complaints. The pig doesn’t feature a Star of David <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-rogerwaters-pig-idUSL1N37X0TS">on the current tour</a>. </p>
<p>So why has his tour generated all this fuss now?</p>
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<h2>An increasingly strident position</h2>
<p>Context is key, particularly Waters’ political trajectory since recording The Wall, and stances that have become progressively more strident and extreme. Although anti-war themes have infused his writing since his earliest compositions in the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVdIieS1HkY">late 1960s</a>, his anti-capitalism and critique of western imperialism have taken on an increasingly conspiratorial bent, overshadowing any message of peace.</p>
<p>Animals was based on <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/biography/">George Orwell’s</a> anti-Stalinist fable <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/170448.Animal_Farm">Animal Farm</a>, which Waters <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Intertextuality_and_Intermediality_o/dN2JEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=animals+pink+floyd+orwell&pg=PA105&printsec=frontcover">reconfigured</a> into a commentary on how industrial capitalism had debilitated British society. He has cited, and <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/rogers-waters-manchester-ao-arena-27098352">compared himself</a> to, Orwell at recent concerts.</p>
<p>But Orwell – himself no fan of capitalism or imperialism – was alive to the risks of giving succour to your <a href="https://academic-accelerator.com/encyclopedia/the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend">enemy’s enemy</a>. This was a theme that came up regularly in his work (such as <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/homage-to-catalonia">Homage to Catalonia</a>), as he noted the twin dangers of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21337504">fascism and Stalinism</a>, despite them being on opposite sides of the political fence.</p>
<p>Waters’ critique of western politics, however, has calcified to the point of holding positions which can be seen as aligned with elements of the authoritarianism he claims to abhor. In Poland, Krakow city council <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/roger-waters-poland-concerts-canceled-krakow-city-council-ukraine-comments-1235144951/">cancelled Waters’ concerts</a> earlier this year, objecting to his views on Ukraine.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rogerwaters/posts/pfbid0UZC1eyEkQ5upe4dAcS6JAJMV9SvRwfoL3uNhHoWxz9oiCPQftpnwKfFhArjgqs1Cl">open letter</a> to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, Waters accused her husband of caving in to “extreme nationalists [who] have set your country on the path to this disastrous war”. At the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/pink-floyd-star-roger-waters-addresses-un-at-russias-request-after-denying-incendiary-claims-in-row-with-ex-bandmate-12806682">invitation of Russian diplomats</a>, Waters <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/pink-floyd-star-roger-waters-addresses-un-at-russias-request-after-denying-incendiary-claims-in-row-with-ex-bandmate-12806682">addressed the UN Security Council</a> in February, denouncing violence but minimising Russia’s aggression, alluding to an invasion that was “not unprovoked”, and elsewhere questioning whether Putin is a “bigger gangster than Joe Biden”.</p>
<p>Likewise, for Waters, the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/white-helmets-group-ordinary-syrians-extraordinary/story?id=96971864">White Helmets</a> – a Syrian volunteer operation, opposed to al-Assad but with a focus on medical assistance and rescuing civilians from destroyed buildings – was a “<a href="https://consequence.net/2018/08/roger-waters-white-helmets-social-media/">fake organisation</a>”. The group was tainted, he believed, by the support and training it received from European organisation the <a href="https://www.devex.com/organizations/mayday-rescue-64239">Mayday Rescue Foundation</a> and its founder, former British Army officer <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-56126016">James Le Mesurier</a>.</p>
<p>Waters said Russia’s interventions in Syria, by contrast, were “<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23119144-rogerwaters_jamesball_editedtranscript?responsive=1&sidebar=0&title=1">at the invitation of the Syrian government</a>”, itself a legitimate government “in the absence of any evidence that says otherwise”. Waters has also claimed that al-Assad’s chemical attacks on civilians in Douma were <a href="https://www.newarab.com/opinion/pink-floyds-co-founder-roger-waters-says-white-helmets-fake">faked by his opponents</a>.</p>
<p>The former Pink Floyd singer also argues that Taiwan is part of China. And when challenged by a CNN journalist on Chinese civil rights abuses, Waters <a href="https://www.spin.com/2022/08/roger-waters-russian-china-ukraine-joe-biden-cnn-interview/">shot back</a>: “Bollocks. That’s absolute nonsense!”</p>
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<h2>Veering towards conspiracy theories</h2>
<p>Waters has been <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/roger-waters-michael-gove-keir-starmer-jewish-pink-floyd-b1086284.html">lambasted across party lines</a> from Keir Starmer to Michael Gove – not generally known for their shared opinions – and lays the blame for his touring travails and controversy, among much else, at the feet of the “<a href="https://rogerwaters.com/berliner/">Israeli lobby</a>”.</p>
<p>His difficulty here lies in journeying to the margins of political discourse where elements of the conspiratorially minded left and right share common ground in their opposition to the mainstream, despite their mutual enmity. Charges of antisemitism land more heavily in light of all this recent <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/roger-waters-interview-biden-war-criminal-defends-china-russia-1235123704/">controversial commentary</a> from Waters.</p>
<p>While criticism of Israel is of course not necessarily antisemitic, that doesn’t mean, as he appears to contend, that it can’t be. Waters’ definition of valid criticism of Israel is capacious enough to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/e5rPCRM_89g?feature=share&t=2821">include</a> that it “gave the country to the Tories … and also installed Keir Starmer as the leader of the Labour Party, who is completely controlled by the Israeli lobby”.</p>
<p>Bury South Labour MP Christian Wakeford accused Waters of using the performances to “<a href="https://www.nme.com/news/music/roger-waters-manchester-gig-should-be-banned-says-mp-3448591">stoke division</a>”, and asked the AO Arena in Manchester to reconsider hosting the show. In repsonse to the MP’s criticsms, Waters called him a “cripple”, <a href="https://variety.com/2023/music/reviews/roger-waters-controversial-comments-london-concert-review-1235635917/">adding</a> that he was “making shit up because you were told to by your masters in the foreign office in Tel Aviv”.</p>
<p>This could be viewed as carrying echoes of conspiracist tropes focusing on Jewish cabalistic control of the media and economy, dating back to a document called <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">The Protocols of the Elders of Zion</a>. It was initially produced in pre-revolutionary Russia by supporters of Tsar Nicholas II and re-circulated throughout the 20th and 21st centuries as a purported account of how the Jews plot world domination, despite the document being <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/insider/1920-21-exposing-the-protocols-as-a-fraud.html">exposed as a forgery in 1921</a>. </p>
<p>It’s in the context of Waters’ ossified approach to modern politics, clinging to a hard, unyielding anti-western line, that longstanding elements of his stagecraft have become contentious. And even if it’s somewhat missing the point to focus too tightly on the trenchcoat and machine gun, he seems unable to grasp how he’s largely the author of this condemnation.</p>
<p>He may be right that the origins of his show lie in antifascism, but not in assuming that’s the end of the matter. Waters’ work has frequently combined personal estrangement with sociopolitical concerns, but his current tribulations are a result of drifting from allegorical to specific, and from empathetic to paranoid.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and from the British Academy. </span></em></p>Waters’ hard and unyielding approach to modern politics has resulted in longstanding elements of his stagecraft becoming contentious.Adam Behr, Senior Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1137192019-03-17T14:50:08Z2019-03-17T14:50:08ZView from The Hill: A truly inclusive society requires political restraint<p>Terrible tragedies test leaders to the full. Anyone watching from afar must be impressed with the way in which Jacinda Ardern has dealt with the aftermath of the Christchurch horror.</p>
<p>Ardern has kept her shocked population regularly updated, walked the talk in her embrace of the country’s Muslim community, and flagged policy changes in relation to New Zealand’s gun laws. She has radiated deep compassion while publicly holding her emotions under control.</p>
<p>Friday’s atrocity would inevitably hit Australians hard, given the two countries’ “family” relationship. But we’ve been dragged much closer to it because the white supremacist perpetrator is an Australian.</p>
<p>On top of that, a federal politician has made appalling and shameful comments.</p>
<p>Senator Fraser Anning, ex-One Nation, who became notorious for using the words “final solution” when urging a popular vote on immigration, in his Friday statement declared Islam “the religious equivalent of fascism”, and said that “just because the followers of this savage belief were not the killers in this instance, does not make them blameless”.</p>
<p>A day later, when he was “egged” by a 17-year-old while appearing in Melbourne, Anning hit the youth twice.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, some would have liked to see Anning expelled from the Senate for his comments.</p>
<p>The Senate <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-a-senator-be-expelled-from-the-federal-parliament-for-offensive-statements-113711">doesn’t have the power to throw him out</a>, but it would be a bad course anyway, setting an unfortunate precedent as well as making him a martyr in the eyes of the extreme right.</p>
<p>The voters will dispatch him soon. Before that, the Senate will denounce him, with government and opposition releasing a bipartisan motion on Sunday for when parliament resumes on April 2 for its final week. The motion censures Anning “for his inflammatory and divisive comments seeking to attribute blame to victims of a horrific crime and to vilify people on the basis of religion”.</p>
<p>It also “calls on all Australians to stand against hate and to publicly, and always, condemn actions and comments designed to incite fear and distrust”.</p>
<p>“Standing against hate” requires robust leadership from the politicians.</p>
<p>Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten have done what they should, and what you’d expect, in the immediate wake of the NZ attack.</p>
<p>Morrison’s language was direct and accurate, describing the assailant as “an extremist, right-wing, violent terrorist”.</p>
<p>The Prime Minister and Opposition leader, and other leading politicians attended gatherings of the Muslim community.</p>
<p>Morrison signalled that the big internet companies need to act, after the gunman’s live streaming took time to be removed.</p>
<p>But is this enough? The NZ attack has opened debate about extremism and what is likely to give or deny it succour in this country.</p>
<p>The countering of extremism of all sorts demands action on many fronts. One of them goes to political culture - that politicians should eschew the low road that self-interest too often leads them to take. The same, incidentally, should go for those in the media.</p>
<p>We must put in a reality check here: history tells us it is impossible to guard absolutely against attacks from fanatics of whatever variety.</p>
<p>And we have to recognise also that in this battle the internet, for all its virtues, is a formidable enemy. It fertilises the spread of extremist ideologies of all brands. It both enables and encourages unbridled outpourings of hate.</p>
<p>Those with extreme views and seeking attention have a communications route and reach inconceivable when there was little more than the mainstream media, with its filters.</p>
<p>The internet is the convenient medium but it’s today’s political climate that is providing the environment for intolerant views to be given wider expression and greater legitimacy.</p>
<p>The culture wars and identity politics, favoured by right and left respectively, have sliced and diced the community, fracturing it rather than uniting it.</p>
<p>They rewrite the past, define the present, and poison the future.</p>
<p>The resulting conflicts and divisions are frequently marked by a degree of intensity and absolutism that carries risks for the public good.</p>
<p>In recent years politicians and commentators on the right have become preoccupied with what they see as restrictions on free speech.</p>
<p>But the commitment to “free speech”, admirable in itself, becomes dangerous when it morphs into a cover for hate speech or the targeting of minorities.</p>
<p>The Coalition government has itself been torn on the issue, as shown by its internal tensions over section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.</p>
<p>Now we have its chopping and changing on an entry visa for provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos for a speaking tour.</p>
<p>Despite the Home Affairs department telling Yiannopoulos he might not pass the “character test”, Immigration Minister David Coleman granted him the visa.</p>
<p>But following Yiannopoulos posting an offensive comment about the NZ attack, Coleman announced at the weekend he would not be allowed to come.</p>
<p>An increasingly polarised media has seen the right wing commentariat become more strident and minor political players from the far right gain inflated prominence. </p>
<p>Immigration has always been a sensitive issue and successive waves of migrants have had their adjustment challenges. But immigration has become infused with ideology, and often a lightning rod for cultural complaint and bigotry, open or thinly disguised.</p>
<p>Discussion of immigration these days focuses minimally on its nation-building side, and frequently homes in on Muslims, stoking fears both of and in that community.</p>
<p>Among the mainstream right of politics, fuelling them-versus-us sentiments has been widely used as a political tactic.</p>
<p>This has been seen in the government’s blatant exaggeration of the consequences that could flow from the legislation passed by parliament to facilitate medical transfers from Manus and Nauru, and in its targeting of Labor’s plans to boost the refugee intake.</p>
<p>Earlier there was Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s extraordinary claim that Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of “African gang violence”.</p>
<p>Bile flows freely when shock jocks get together with their political favourites, a regular feature of the airways today.</p>
<p>Australia has always had a particularly robust brand of adversarial politics but it has reached the stage where it is in desperate need of some tempering and self-discipline from political offenders.</p>
<p>The desirable immigration level, the appropriate size of the refugee intake and the like are legitimate matters for vigorous debate. But politicians (and media) should conduct those arguments much more responsibly than at present if they are serious about “standing against hate”.</p>
<p>A multicultural society will always require careful curation. It needs constant vigilance, general restraint and the avoidance of inflammatory language and claims for short-term political gain.</p>
<p>It’s no good being inclusive one day and shrill and politically expedient on another.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Senate doesn’t have the power to throw him out, but it would be a bad course anyway, setting an unfortunate precedent as well as making him a martyr in the eyes of the extreme right.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/813882017-08-15T22:41:15Z2017-08-15T22:41:15ZQuiet Canadian, ugly American: Does racism differ north of the border?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182168/original/file-20170815-28964-9zqby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People shouting and yelling slogans during a protest in front of the US Consulate to denounce Donald Trump's immigration policies on January 30, 2017 in Toronto, Canada.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 250px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/quiet-canadian" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In the aftermath of Charlottesville, it’s worth asking: Are Canadians really less racist than Americans? </p>
<p>A recent issue of <em>Rolling Stone</em> magazine — with a photo of a smiling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on the cover - asks: <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/justin-trudeau-canadian-prime-minister-free-worlds-best-hope-w494098">“Why can’t he be our president?”</a> It’s just the latest example of the global media’s current fascination with Trudeau and Canada and their supposed stark contrast to Donald Trump and the United States.</p>
<p>As a Canadian scholar at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, I’ve watched with fascination for months as media pundits both abroad and back home have promoted the idea of “Canadian exceptionalism.” </p>
<p>They argue that Canadians are especially tolerant, diverse and committed to multiculturalism. Many believe that Canada —with our self-described feminist prime minister and our compassionate approach to refugees — should show other countries how it’s done. </p>
<p>In the <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/canada-in-the-age-of-donald-trump/"><em>the Walrus</em></a>, author Stephen Marche argued that Canada is the last defender of multiculturalism on Earth. Canadian novelist Charles Foran claimed that Canada is a “post-nationalist state.” </p>
<p>“Call it post-nationalism, or just a new model of belonging,” he wrote in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/04/the-canada-experiment-is-this-the-worlds-first-postnational-country"><em>the Guardian</em></a>. “Canada may yet be of help in what is guaranteed to be the difficult year to come.” </p>
<p>More recently, Adam Gopnik wrote in <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/we-could-have-been-canada"><em>the New Yorker</em></a>: “Canada is the model liberal country.”</p>
<p>But pundits are forgetting that historical circumstances — rather than an exceptional tendency to be nicer or more tolerant — are what truly made Canada what it is today.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180633/original/file-20170801-4118-pvrqjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Justin Trudeau appears on the cover of Rolling Stone.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Martin Schoeller/Rolling Stone)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Myopic gaze’ from Americans</h2>
<p>In Gopnik’s <em>New Yorker</em> essay, “<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/we-could-have-been-canada">We Could Have Been Canada</a>,” he wonders why Canadians are not more similar to Americans. After all, both countries were settled by Europeans who relied on Indigenous knowledge about the land. Indigenous peoples in both places also taught settlers how to live amid different cultures and identities. So why did multiculturalism and liberality supposedly take hold in one place, but not the other? </p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.opencanada.org/features/canadian-exceptionalism/">writers</a> believe the key difference is the two different systems of government in Canada and the United States — a republic south of the border versus Canada’s constitutional monarchy — and the circumstances in which those governments emerged and evolved. Americans birthed their nation-state out of violent disobedience; Canadians, out of a conference on Confederation. </p>
<p>Gopnik agrees. He blames the American Revolution for denying Americans the opportunity to end slavery “more peacefully, and sooner.” Americans, he says, could have developed their country in an orderly and peaceful fashion, as Canada supposedly did. </p>
<p>But historians know this is a simplistic narrative. In <a href="https://earlycanadianhistory.ca/2017/05/29/the-american-gaze-adam-gopniks-canada/">Borealia</a>, a blog about early Canadian history, Jerry Bannister, an associate professor of history at Dalhousie University, writes: “American liberals’ gaze towards Canada may be rose-coloured, but more than anything it’s myopic.” </p>
<p>Gopnik assumes that without the American Revolution, slavery would have ended in 1833 when the House of Commons passed a bill to abolish slavery in the British Empire. </p>
<p>Perhaps so. But maybe not. And even if it did, that doesn’t mean Canadians are any less racist. </p>
<h2>Critical differences</h2>
<p>It’s a common myth that Canada didn’t have slavery. It did. As historians like <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469613864/bonds-of-alliance/">Brett Rushforth</a>, <a href="http://www.vehiculepress.com/q.php?EAN=9781550653274">Marcel Trudel</a> and <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/the-canadian-narrative-about-slavery-is-wrong/">Charmaine Nelson</a> point out in their scholarship, thousands of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans were held captive in Canada by merchants, traders and settlers. </p>
<p>Canada had slavery. But because of the colder climate, it did not have the conditions to grow profitable crops that relied on slave labour, including sugar, rice, tobacco and cotton. Consequently, Canada never developed a slave system akin to the entrenched and all-encompassing institution that many Americans implemented and protected for so long. </p>
<p>As in Canada, white settlers in the U.S. invaded Indigenous lands. But unlike in Canada, those people then settled that land with a significant population of enslaved Africans and African-Americans. This is a critical difference between the two countries. </p>
<p>Even as slavery bolstered the American economy, founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson recognized that it would be difficult for future generations to create a multicultural nation from one founded on chattel slavery and settler colonialism. </p>
<p>Much of the white supremacy and xenophobia that Canadians deride in American culture, and overlook in our own, can be traced to the racism that developed alongside the federally protected slave system in the U.S. Given this history, it’s not surprising that the overwhelming majority of white voters in former slave states voted for Trump. </p>
<p>As Joseph Crespino, a historian at Emory University, notes in his book <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8411.html"><em>In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution</em></a>, white southerners have succeeded in shaping the United States based on their own values. </p>
<p>Canadians are also fortunate to have avoided trying to claim a mantle of exceptionalism, as Americans have done for so long. From the very beginning, Americans believed that they had a duty to spread, or impose, their values on others; many still do. Canada hasn’t shared that belief.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=109&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=109&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=109&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182022/original/file-20170814-12228-tnccsd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trudeau sent this tweet out on Sunday August 13 in the aftermath of Charlottesville racist violence.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Puritan piety</h2>
<p>The idea of “American exceptionalism” can be traced to the arrival of Puritan settlers in Massachusetts in 1620 who promoted the idea of a white American settlement as the “city upon the hill.” Puritans hoped that their piety would serve as an example to the supposedly corrupt, luxurious Europeans and “savage” Native Americans. </p>
<p>The 1776 Declaration of Independence, and America’s victory in the War of Independence, further spurred American exceptionalism, as did key 19th-century concepts like the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/manifest-destiny">Manifest Destiny</a>, which declared that American colonization of North America was justified and inevitable. </p>
<p>But the hubris of American exceptionalism has rendered the country rife with hypocrisy. In the 20th century, critics noted that the self-described “leader of the free world” was defeating fascism in Europe while propping up racial segregation at home. </p>
<p>The idea that Americans needed to spread liberty and democracy around the world led the country into catastrophic conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. At home, it helped promote the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples in residential schools, which Canada also enacted. </p>
<p>As the counter-protests in Charlottesville and against Trump this week demonstrate, many Americans recognize their nation’s racism and bigotry, and are working to show their skeptical countrymen that diversity is an asset. </p>
<h2>Look inward</h2>
<p>This kind of work only happens when Americans drop the self-congratulatory plaudits, look inward, and acknowledge their own flaws, which is exactly what exceptionalism discourages. Instead of asking: “How can we be better?” exceptionalism asks: “How are we the best?”</p>
<p>Canadians know that Canada can be better. It’s nonsensical to suggest that Canadians know compassion better than any country when international agencies like <a href="https://www.amnesty.ca/news/public-statements/joint-press-release/un-human-rights-report-shows-that-canada-is-failing">Amnesty International</a> and the UN Human Rights Commission slam Canada for failing to alleviate the systematic discrimination of Indigenous peoples, and especially violence against Indigenous women and girls. </p>
<p>Canadians have a tendency not to be less racist than Americans, but less loud about it. As Charmaine Nelson, a professor of art history at McGill University, wrote recently in <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/the-canadian-narrative-about-slavery-is-wrong/"><em>the Walrus</em></a>, Canadians are “more insidious and covert” in their racism. This is where the notion of exceptionalism fails. </p>
<p>There is much to celebrate about Canada, which undoubtedly remains more tolerant and just than many countries. But Canadian patriotism should be about gratitude, not hubris. </p>
<p>Gratitude appreciates good fortune and breaks down pride. By taking off the blinders and revealing our collective ugliness, of which there is a lot right now, a Canadian patriotism rooted in gratitude can help initiate progressive change —which is exactly what Canada, as wonderful a country as it is, still needs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81388/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa J. Gismondi received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Media pundits are promoting Canada as exceptional in its tolerance and diversity but the truth is, Canadians have a tendency not to be not less racist than Americans, but to be less loud about it.Melissa J. Gismondi, Journalist, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696132016-12-12T03:41:21Z2016-12-12T03:41:21ZNormalizing fascists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149493/original/image-20161210-31396-4hib8e.gif?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://research.archives.gov/id/540151#.WErivM6rzno.link">National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, 1675 - 1958</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How to report on a fascist? </p>
<p>How to cover the rise of a political leader who’s left a paper trail of anti-constitutionalism, racism and the encouragement of violence? Does the press take the position that its subject acts outside the norms of society? Or does it take the position that someone who wins a fair election is by definition “normal,” because his leadership reflects the will of the people?</p>
<p>These are the questions that confronted the U.S. press after the ascendance of fascist leaders in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.</p>
<h2>A leader for life</h2>
<p>Benito Mussolini secured Italy’s premiership by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/March-on-Rome#ref276619">marching on Rome</a> with 30,000 blackshirts in 1922. By 1925 he had <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/benito-mussolini-9419443#the-break-with-socialism-and-rise-to-power">declared himself leader</a> for life. While this hardly reflected American values, Mussolini <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/when-we-loved-mussolini/">was a darling</a> of the American press, appearing in at least 150 articles from 1925-1932, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">most neutral, bemused or positive in tone.</a></p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149462/original/image-20161209-31396-1rhtllv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benito Mussolini speaks at the dedication ceremonies of Sabaudia on Sept. 24, 1934.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Saturday Evening Post even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Autobiography_(Mussolini)">serialized</a> Il Duce’s autobiography in 1928. Acknowledging that the new “Fascisti movement” was a bit “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=diggins+mussolini+rough+in+its+methods&source=bl&ots=rTXM3FoSTZ&sig=6nigpggTFpNwdEP0KxbEjPevjdQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjt9deVzOfQAhXEhVQKHcuHDbMQ6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=rough%20in%20its%20methods&f=false">rough in its methods</a>,” papers ranging from the New York Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer to the Chicago Tribune <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">credited it</a> with saving Italy from the far left and revitalizing its economy. From their perspective, the post-WWI surge of anti-capitalism in Europe was a vastly worse threat than Fascism.</p>
<p>Ironically, while the media acknowledged that Fascism was a new “experiment,” papers like The New York Times <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">commonly credited it</a> with returning turbulent Italy to what it called “normalcy.” </p>
<p>Yet some <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=1c9QAQAAQBAJ&lpg=PT4&dq=Mussolini%3A%20Biggest%20Bluff%20in%20Europe%20Hemingway&pg=PT51#v=onepage&q=Mussolini:%20Biggest%20Bluff%20in%20Europe%20Hemingway&f=false">journalists like Hemingway</a> and journals like <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA318&dq=diggins+mussolini+and+fascism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtzqms0OfQAhVLrFQKHT0NC4oQ6AEIHjAB#v=snippet&q=%22the%20new%20yorker%22&f=false">the New Yorker</a> rejected the normalization of anti-democratic Mussolini. John Gunther of Harper’s, meanwhile, wrote a razor-sharp account of Mussolini’s masterful manipulation of a U.S. press <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">that couldn’t resist him.</a></p>
<h2>The ‘German Mussolini’</h2>
<p>Mussolini’s success in Italy normalized Hitler’s success in the eyes of the American press who, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, routinely called him <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/441.html">“the German Mussolini.”</a> Given Mussolini’s positive press reception in that period, it was a good place from which to start. Hitler also had the advantage that his Nazi party enjoyed stunning leaps at the polls from the mid ‘20’s to early ‘30’s, going from a fringe party to winning a dominant share of parliamentary seats in free elections <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932#Results">in 1932</a>.</p>
<p>But the main way that the press defanged Hitler was by portraying him as something of a joke. He was a <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/2541.htm">“nonsensical” screecher</a> of “wild words” whose appearance, according to Newsweek, “suggests Charlie Chaplin.” His “countenance is a caricature.” He was as <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=UZkC2D6WkHEC&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=Dan+Nimmo,+Political+Commentators+in+the+United+States+in+the+20th+Century&source=bl&ots=RLFXWfPuPm&sig=BEfgzFfEUKa9-92j8VpRGVnLLbc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyscvlsOfQAhVX8GMKHahiDNgQ6AEIJTAC#v=onepage&q=Dan%20Nimmo%2C%20Political%20Commentators%20in%20the%20United%20States%20in%20the%2020th%20Century&f=false">“voluble” as he was “insecure,”</a> stated Cosmopolitan.</p>
<p>When Hitler’s party won influence in Parliament, and even after he was made chancellor of Germany in 1933 – about a year and a half before seizing dictatorial power – many American press outlets judged that he would either be outplayed by more traditional politicians or that he would have to become more moderate. Sure, he had a following, but his followers were “impressionable voters” duped by “radical doctrines and quack remedies,” <a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/150031488.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Sep+16%2C+1930&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post++%281923-1954%29&edition=&startpage=6&desc=THE+GERMAN+ELECTIONS.">claimed the Washington Post</a>. Now that Hitler actually had to operate within a government the “sober” politicians would “submerge” this movement, according to <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9801E6DB123BE433A25750C2A9609C946094D6CF&legacy=true">The New York Times</a> and <a href="https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/csmonitor_historic/doc/512913766.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Feb+24%2C+1931&author=&pub=The+Christian+Science+Monitor++%281908-Current+file%29&edition=&startpage=20&desc=Germany%27s+Tactics">Christian Science Monitor</a>. A “keen sense of dramatic instinct” was not enough. When it came to time to govern, his lack of “gravity” and “profundity of thought” <a href="http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/csmonitor_historic/doc/512996876.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=May+16%2C+1931&author=&pub=The+Christian+Science+Monitor++%281908-Current+file%29&edition=&startpage=15&desc=Hitler+Explained">would be exposed.</a></p>
<p>In fact, <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9906EEDB1539E033A2575AC1A9649C946294D6CF&legacy=true">The New York Times wrote</a> after Hitler’s appointment to the chancellorship that success would only “let him expose to the German public his own futility.” <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9506E3D8163BEF3ABC4950DFB7668388629EDE&legacy=true">Journalists wondered</a> whether Hitler now regretted leaving the rally for the cabinet meeting, where he would have to assume some responsibility. </p>
<p>Yes, the <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_Belief.html?id=IMELYD5xxXAC">American press</a> tended to condemn Hitler’s well-documented anti-Semitism in the early 1930s. But there were plenty of exceptions. Some papers downplayed reports of violence against Germany’s Jewish citizens as propaganda like that which proliferated during the foregoing World War. Many, even those who categorically condemned the violence, repeatedly declared it to be at an end, showing a tendency to look for a return to normalcy. </p>
<p>Journalists were aware that they could only criticize the German regime so much and maintain their access. When a CBS broadcaster’s son was beaten up by brownshirts for not saluting the Führer, <a href="https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Products/9781467117623">he didn’t report it</a>. When the Chicago Daily News’ Edgar Mowrer wrote that Germany was becoming “an insane asylum” in 1933, the Germans pressured the State Department to rein in American reporters. Allen Dulles, who eventually became director of the CIA, <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_Belief.html?id=IMELYD5xxXAC">told Mowrer</a> he was “taking the German situation too seriously.” Mowrer’s publisher then transferred him out of Germany in fear of his life.</p>
<p>By the later 1930s, most U.S. journalists realized their mistake in underestimating Hitler or failing to imagine just how bad things could get. (Though there remained infamous exceptions, like Douglas Chandler, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=OeVTAAAAMAAJ&q=Douglas+Chandler+changing+berlin&dq=Douglas+Chandler+changing+berlin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj48dPnyefQAhUrsVQKHStxCqY4ChDoAQgfMAE">who wrote</a> a loving paean to “Changing Berlin” for National Geographic in 1937.) <a href="http://www.historynet.com/encounter-dorothy-thompson-underestimates-hitler.htm">Dorothy Thompson</a>, who judged Hitler a man of “startling insignificance” in 1928, realized her mistake by mid-decade when she, like Mowrer, began raising the alarm. </p>
<p>“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lixOlrqPeqoC&pg=PA172&dq=thompson+No+people+ever+recognize+their+dictator+in+advance&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimkr6qyefQAhUJjVQKHX2zDn4Q6AEIJjAC#v=onepage&q=thompson%20No%20people%20ever%20recognize%20their%20dictator%20in%20advance&f=false">she reflected</a> in 1935. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69613/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Broich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the 1920s and early 1930s, American journalists tended to put the ascendant fascists on a normal footing.John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.