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How They Are Falsifying Trump’s Legacy

By Walter Donway

January 19, 2021

When an ardently supported—and bitterly opposed—political leader leaves office, the struggle does not end. Next on the agenda is the battle for the legacy: how the leader’s ideas and accomplishments will be assessed by the public—and by history.

The New York Times, which has tried to destroy Donald Trump since his first news conference in 2016, has lost no time making its bid to “write” the Trump legacy.

The New York Times, which has tried to destroy Donald Trump since his first news conference in 2016, has lost no time making its bid to “write” the Trump legacy. The cover story headline of the New York Times Magazine, Sunday, January 17, is “The American Abyss.”

It alleges that:

Challenging the outcome of the 2020 election is a “big lie.”
Dishonesty and rhetoric around it define “fascism.”
The January 6 riot in Washington D.C. was an “insurrection.”
Neither faction of the Republican Party cares about democracy.
The election challenge was about “white supremacy,” which defines America.
By 2024, Trumpism may lead to a “coup” and full fascism by Republicans.

“Allegations All the Way Down”

It is enough for the New York Times that Trump challenged 2020 election results and a couple of hundred demonstrators turned criminally violent at a Republican protest demonstration (the first Republican “riot” in four years of the left rioting)—to open the “abyss.” That is, to make Trump voters (and the Republican Party) America’s gravest danger of full fascism by 2024.

The story’s cover photo is a long shot of the January 6 demonstration in Washington protesting the stonewalling of all demands for investigation of reports of widespread election fraud. Closer up there appears to be the beginnings of the invasion of the Capitol Building where Congress was reviewing and certifying Electoral College reports to officially affirm that Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris won the election. All photos throughout the story are of the demonstrators who turned violent at the building’s doors; defied or attacked guards; and roamed through the building yelling threats and trespassing in offices and other areas.

In this long story by Yale University historian Timothy Snyder you will find not one mention of the evidence demanding investigation of serious and sweeping irregularities of every kind in the six battleground states. Only dozens of ways to say: “no evidence,” “big lie,” “fantasy of fraud,” “opposing elections.” There is no mention of the 36-page report by Dr. Peter Navarro, White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, and the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator, entitled “The Immaculate Deception.”

Releasing the report on December 21 and following with a press conference, Dr. Navarro, who earned his doctoral degree in economics from Harvard and taught for more than two decades in the University of California system, explained that there is “tons of evidence” of irregularities that almost certainly tipped the election to Biden.

Prof. Snyder’s mantra is “only allegations,” “allegations of allegations,” and “allegations all the way down” (this must be how you get Yale undergraduates to believe you). But Dr. Navarro explains that he had access to “many thousands” of affidavits of individuals reporting irregularities; these (sworn) allegations must be investigated to produce “evidence.”

Dr. Navarro challenges reporters to take seriously this need for an intensive, sustained investigation. But, by now, any reporter or editor anywhere in the entire mainstream press who dared to do so would be driven out of his job and blacklisted in the profession. But “allegations” aren’t lack of evidence; allegations indicate the need to investigate to see if there is evidence. If a woman “alleges” that she was sexually harassed by her boss, does the New York Times chatter “just an allegation”? Not only do they investigate, they presume guilt and urge the public to “believe women”—even before they investigate.

Given Dr. Navarro’s credentials plus the facts, logic, and references in his report, this should have been headlines for days. Instead, mainstream media reported only the story that a White House official had violated the Hatch Act by criticizing Democrats.

Prof. Snyder writes that President Trump “spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged. …” Yes, and Dr. Navarro explains that in state after state, using as cover the COVID-19 crisis, Democrats drastically changed long-standing laws and regulations safeguarding elections. Signature verification, ballot-opening procedures, mailing out ballots, chain of custody (of ballots) rules, mass mailing of ballots to all addresses, preparing ballot counting machines: It all was altered, safeguards weakened, and Republican court challenges turned down by Democratic judges. You think that Trump did not follow these frenetic Democratic preparations for the election?

I dwell upon allegations of possible fraud because Prof. Snyder identifies this as the first big lie by Trump. And later compares it with Adolf Hitler’s lies about Jews. Postulating that any claim to a stolen election is transparently false and dishonest, Prof. Snyder builds his case. Every time Trump reaffirms his challenge to the election, Prof. Snyder counts it as one more step toward … Well, what is the worst scare term in our political vocabulary?

“Post-Truth is Pre-Fascism”

It takes the professor just half a page to get to “fascism.” But you could guess that, couldn’t you? Wanting to write only the very worst about Trump, Times reporters and columnists have bandied about “fascist and Nazi” in hundreds of “news” reports, columns, and editorials.

On his way to making this the characterization of the Trump legacy, Prof. Snyder explains why Trump supporters ate up this big lie. They have not been educated to “resist the powerful pull of believing what” they already believe. I mean, how many of the 74 million voters for Trump even went to college—never mind Yale?

In the Republican Party, writes Prof. Snyder, there are two types of politicians: the cynical “gamers” who just work the system for personal gain and the “breakers” who want to break the system, so they have “power without democracy.” And how, dear reader, are either of those corrupted camps going to aid the leftist Democrats in opposing Republican Party fascism?

Prof. Snyder’s specialty is Eastern European history between the two world wars. That means from Lenin to Hitler. He has written very well-received, award-winning books. Sure he understands “fascism”?

By now, it is a familiar story. If you are, say, a democratic socialist who favors constantly enlarging government interventionism in the economy, and an ever-growing welfare state, then you cannot even consider that an economic system can be the essential foundation of totalitarianism. That the economic element that makes suppression of all freedom and genuine liberalism possible is necessary.

For Prof. Snyder, the defining characteristics of “fascism” are all about political rhetoric, racism, ultra-nationalism. For him, those are fundamentals. But all those elements are found in all other totalitarian systems. George Orwell wrote “1984” about communist totalitarianism, not fascism. Does the People’s Republic of China espouse ultra-nationalism? And as for political rhetoric, is communism defined by rhetoric that is divisive, condemns the press … that claims to be the sole source of truth? How about Cuba? Or North Korea? Or Zimbabwe?

Fascism is a Variant of Socialism

A “pre-postmodernist” analysis—one not rooted in the clashing racial, sexual, and ethnically oppressed and oppressors—offers a far more logical and explanatory definition of fascism.

Fascism is an economic system that is a variant of socialism. In Germany, it was called “national socialism.” How do the two forms of socialism differ? The communistic variety of socialism controls the nation’s economic life (and therefore, all else) by public ownership of property, the means of production. The fascistic variety of socialism accomplishes the same dictation of economic life by complete interventionist regulation while leaving property private in name only.

Benito Mussolini, a onetime Marxist, was caught up in nationalist fervor. He broke with communistic-style socialism, with its internationalism, but also distinguished fascism from liberal capitalism:

The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill.

Adolf Hitler, whose National Socialist (Nazi) Party adapted fascism to Germany beginning in 1933, said:

The state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property.

Fascism is socialism in terms of its economic fundamentals, its takeover of business and all production, and the resulting inevitable regimentation of private, public, and political life. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Fascism has nothing to do with the principles, policies, or actions in office of President Trump.

This makes Prof. Snyder’s entire article a hit job on the legacy of President Trump.

This makes Prof. Snyder’s entire article a hit job on the legacy of President Trump. He is the first businessman who has served as president in more than a century. Out of commonsense, he dismissed the environmental crusaders who would reverse the Industrial Revolution. He enabled American energy production to reach the level of global independence as other presidents have only promised for decades. He notably is not ideological. He considered becoming active in both Democratic and Republican politics. He values the remains of the America capitalism that has made his success possible. He wants no ideological revolution. He wants to go back: “Make American Great Again.”

The “Insurrection” with No Goal

Having made his case for Trump’s “Big lie” about the election—and that President Trump incited the attack on the Capitol building—Prof. Snyder devotes most the rest of his article to a leisurely historical investigation of fascism. But, rather abruptly, the article’s conclusion is that Donald Trump, his supporters, and the Republican Party today are all about white supremacy.

I almost couldn’t bring myself to write this essay. Prof. Snyder can write all he wants about fascism, Hitler, anti-Semitism, and Nazi terminology. If you accept that Trump’s “post-truth is pre-fascism” then all this almost subliminally conveys that Trump, his term in office, the 2020 election, and the January 6 riot are all about fascism.

In fact, however, Prof. Snyder admits that for four years he has predicted an “attempted coup.” Except, January 6 was nothing like a coup. That is because it was an unplanned, undirected event of angry violence and boiling frustration. That does not justify it. And we still are not certain who the rioters were.

Prof. Snyder has made an honest observation. He writes of the violent demonstrators “none appeared to have any clear idea of how this was to work or what their presence would accomplish. It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary movement, when a building of such significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.”

He has made a crucial observation. The break-in was criminal beyond doubt. It was a disaster for President Trump. It is an embarrassment to Republicans. But this was an attack by the headless horsemen. Not an “insurrection” or “coup.”

Prof. Snyder warns that in life after office Donald Trump will become “the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie.” A leader of the Republican “breakers.” The professor assumes that by this point in the article readers accept that Trump “pre-fascism” may presage the future American politics?

But All of It Is About “White Supremacism”

Okay, but you are writing for the New York Times, buddy. Aren’t you forgetting something? I mean, like “white supremacy”—the postmodernism-defining characteristic of America?

Here is Prof. Snyder: “Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high.”

This is the fuzzy logical fallacy of the argument from intimidation: The assertion is true because anyone who doesn’t challenge it is uninformed. It’s a popular mode of reasoning among academics.

And later: “The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history.”

Wait! We have the “big lie” about the stolen election. We have “post-truth is pre-fascism.” We have President Trump inciting an insurrection, but not telling the insurrectionists to do anything (“so much milling around”).

How do we get from this to “right-wing white supremacy” as the real story, here?

Well, there are two plausible explanations.

First, Prof. Snyder knows that whatever else you say in the New York Times, it has to come back to white supremacism.

Second, as Prof Snyder writes: “Trump’s focus on alleged ‘irregularities’ and ‘contested states’ comes down to cities where Black people live and vote. At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a crime committed by Black people against white people.”

I have followed the election and commentary on possible fraud, but I never had heard that this is all a racial issue. I never heard Blacks blamed for stealing the election.

This is one more injection of poison into the challenge into the 2020 presidential election. Suddenly, it is all about “white supremacy.” Not election irregularities. Not about the call for a full and fair investigation.

There is no empirical evidence for any pattern of white supremacy in America.

Get this straight: There is no empirical evidence for any pattern of white supremacy in America. This is not about observation; it is about ideology. The dominate ideology in U.S. higher education today is “postmodernism.” And postmodernism posits that all politics must be understood in terms of oppressors and oppressed. If you study politics, that is what you study.

The “oppressed” in Marxism are the working class; the oppressed in postmodernism (neo-Marxism) are racial, sexual, and ethnic groups. How does this work in America? The white majority oppresses other groups. Whites oppress Blacks. White men oppress women. This has become known as “identity politics” or the “politically correct” and now dominates the Democratic Party.

What constitutes “white supremacism” has altered radically under the pressure of university faculties and a mainstream media that relentlessly promotes the “oppression” charge. A Gallup organization historical review of attitudes toward race concludes that “there have been long-term changes in two basic attitudes on race. The percentage of Americans who say they would vote for an otherwise well-qualified person for president who happened to be black has risen to 96%, up from 38% in 1958. And the percentage of Americans who approve of marriages between blacks and whites moved from 48% in 1965 to 87% …”

But that is not “white supremacism” for postmodernists and why they preach that black Americans are oppressed. The same Gallup article reports that the “most recent national survey…conducted by the Associated Press/NORC last fall, found that 74% of blacks agreed that the U.S. federal government should ‘pay reparations for slavery and racial discrimination in this country by making cash payments to the descendants of enslaved people.’”

Having attempted to paint a “pre-fascist Trump,” Prof. Snyder projects a fully fascist future. It happens this way. Trump continues as a political influence because he is a “martyr.” He will “repeat his big lie incessantly.” This could lead to a “coup” in the 2024 election. And—garble, garble, garble—this has to do with white supremacism.

You wonder if I am fair, here.

Prof. Snyder writes: “Our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into them and us. To keep it going for four more years, courts terrorism and assassination.” The fact is that Prof. Snyder’s characterization of fascism fits the rhetoric of the neo-Marxist Democratic left: Their policies and programs that are moving us toward genuine fascism.

To throw off this obviously applicable charge against interventionist-welfare statists (a charge going back to at least the 1960s), and against a new generation explicitly socialist on the fascist model, has been the dream of the mainstream media since Donald Trump came on the scene. They crave to shift to President Trump and Republicans the charge of “fascism.”

Their goal is to whitewash socialism. The debate over fascism, we are assured, has nothing to do with economics or property rights. It is all about postmodernist rhetoric. So, no need to fret about loss of economic freedom, Prof. Snyder’s article implies; just worry about “white supremacy.”

But as you turn your attention away from property, “The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property.”

Which is the dream of all socialism.

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About the Author: Walter Donway

Walter Donway contributes to Savvy Street on political economy, science, and trends in fiction, film, and culture. Walter Donway’s most recent book is Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office (Romantic Revolution Books: New York, September 2017). His Amazon profile can be found here

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