A political science professor during Trump's first term argued against use of the word fascism. He was skeptical that the Trump crew had that kind of power. "I have since turned out to be wrong," said Corey Robin to On the Media. Good on him for recognizing that. www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm... - ThreadSky

jayrosen.bsky.social • 5 days ago

A political science professor during Trump's first term argued against use of the word fascism. He was skeptical that the Trump crew had that kind of power. "I have since turned out to be wrong," said Corey Robin to On the Media.

Good on him for recognizing that. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/mahmoud-khalil-and-a-new-red-scare-plus-press-freedom-under-threat?tab=transcript

Comments

northcarolinats.bsky.social•5 days ago

Unsuccessful/incompetent fascism is still fascism

sueinrockville.bsky.social•5 days ago

Great! Just great!
Small comfort to all of us who have been showing all the evidence of Trump’s collusion with Russia and how Putin bought the entire Republican Party by 2016
Over $400 million was was money loaned via the NRA into Trump and GOP coffers

xiruxi.bsky.social•4 days ago

A lot of leftists of Robin's ilk have downplayed Trump's fascist nature because it was seen as "cringe" resist lib stuff.

"Oops, I missed the rise of a fascist"

Thanks for telling us now when it's too late. Pathetic stuff.

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

Speaking of @davidneiwert.bsky.social's shift in opinion, there's an old thread, on the-site-that-shalt-not-be-named:
https://x.com/DavidNeiwert/status/1849903531068883277
where he shows how the contours of Trump became unmistakably fascist in shape, to him and Robert O Paxton, particularly by 2021.

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

Shoot. Meant to append this to that other post.
Me and my clumsy thumbs.

davidneiwert.bsky.social•4 days ago

I wrote about that in more depth at Substack.

https://open.substack.com/pub/davidneiwert/p/the-road-to-fascism?r=37dbf&utm_medium=ios

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

Speaking of fascism scholars, I wrote this in response to an internationally recognized climate researcher's recognition of authortarian attacks on academics.
https://bsky.app/profile/thimbles.bsky.social/post/3lhm72mjsxc2d

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

Now it's not been announced by @timothysnyder.bsky.social but it appears that he and Jason Stanley are shifting residence towards the University of Toronto.

https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2025/03/stanley-from-yale-to-toronto.html

https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/person/timothy-snyder

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

@davidneiwert.bsky.social wrote in real time in 2016 about how Trump was not fascist, but his campaign certainly had the fascist vibe.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-may-not-be-a-fascist-but_b_8973768
The major difference between Trump then and now was that Trump then was a cheap, corrupt, litigious crook...

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

...who recognized there was a market for an authortarian style and adopted a persona to fit the market.
The Authortarians have existed since Bush, since Nixon on the conservative side. In the archives of @digby56.bsky.social you see that authortarian pedigree:
https://digbysblog.net/2025/03/24/the-slippery-slope-from-black-sites-to-el-salvador/

thimbles.bsky.social•4 days ago

Sorry, didn't get to finish my thought on account of immediate work.

But yeah, I think that as power and influence from the right has come to Trump, he has become more authoritarian, more fascist.
What started out as marketing has become gospel. He believes his own sermons now.

hrryan.bsky.social•5 days ago

He should apologize. "I was wrong" is a good start but he needs to make amends.

micahismyname.bsky.social•4 days ago

I don't understand why scholars keep resting the definition of the word on the power they wield. Am I just wildly misinformed? Like, Bernie as accomplished very little outside naming post offices but I would still describe him as a democratic socialist. It's about intention.

0mphaloskeptic.bsky.social•5 days ago

Love Corey Robin, but he's still "misunderestimating" Trump. Trump and Musk are outright nazis, as are most of the sociopaths Trump has installed in his administration.

katiecannon.bsky.social•4 days ago

lol..

Mussolini: Fascism is better called corporatism where the state uses state power to create the currency to subsidize corporations

saltyboomer.bsky.social•5 days ago

We should celebrate this dude's epiphany because *years later* he admits he f_ed up? Because he's a Prof? C'mon! JFC

xiruxi.bsky.social•4 days ago

Only a decade late! /s

He obnoxiously mocked critics the whole time for using the word too. And continued his denialism after Jan 6

rickmazzoli.bsky.social•5 days ago

historian/scholar Robert O Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism) changed his mind too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html

onthemedia.bsky.social•5 days ago

Thanks for sharing Jay

jayrosen.bsky.social•5 days ago

Keep up the good work. This was good work.

magiprocessioner.bsky.social•4 days ago

If only there was some evidence for Robin to come to this conclusion earlier within the past decade…

henryschoenberger.bsky.social•2 days ago

DUH...it was self-evident. I am sick of all the gutless Americans who rely on naked assertions and mere conclusions v empirical realities, and the past that is prologue.

rationalpear.bsky.social•5 days ago

do poli sci professors generally understand fascism? it doesn’t seem like it, cuz “power” is only a part of it. learning from the scholars and historians, it’s a way of doing politics. trump 1 checked most of the boxes (including political violence).

rilkefan.bsky.social•4 days ago

As I recall he preferred to blame Democrats, but even the Murc's Law left has to see Trump for what he is now.

afib.bsky.social•5 days ago

Unimpressed. Even I saw Trump's fascist potential as early as 2016, and knew that he would realise it if he returned to power. It's abysmal that a political science prof didn't see this.

510pat.bsky.social•4 days ago

Spare me. Too little too late.

voline.bsky.social•5 days ago

I will never understand why Corey Robin thinks the only kind of fascist is a successful fascist. Was Mussolini not a Fascist before he took power? The word describes an ideology, or an impulse, not a power relation.

rilkefan.bsky.social•4 days ago

He's an ideologue. Liberals said Trump was a would-be fascist. That would have meant Sanders had been reckless, that accelerationist ideas were crazy, that Democrats were correct.

xiruxi.bsky.social•4 days ago

Yep. The focus of the left was on sneering at liberals and their "cringe" "resist" stances. Not worrying about fascism. We need some f ing apologies.

voline.bsky.social•4 days ago

I don’t think that follows at all. He’s being overly cautious in his conclusions. Robin is the opposite of an ideologue. If you’ve read his The Reactionary Mind, you’d see that he doesn’t view ordinary “conservatives” as much better than fascists.

afib.bsky.social•5 days ago

An attitude/impulse/mentality more than an ideology, but otherwise yes, exactly.

edelweissblood.bsky.social•5 days ago

The other big Crooked Timber related bust-up I'd love to see revisited is the one where Graeber said the US hegemony is propped up by threats to just invade and take stuff from countries if it's not given freely and half the bloggers lost their minds at the very idea

davidjorgonson.bsky.social•4 days ago

Clearly events have proven Graeber wrong. Trump is dismantling US hegemony by threatening to invade Canada, etc.
And the biggest opponents of the US hegemonic order are cheering him on.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-03/vladimir-putin-would-love-donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-clash/105000670

greganrig.bsky.social•5 days ago

Give me a break. Robin was a pompous, condescending ass for months upon months arguing against tons of evidence that has been borne out. He deserves no praise whatsoever.

xiruxi.bsky.social•4 days ago

Months? Try years. Quite literally a decade.

jeremyjsharp.bsky.social•5 days ago

One more to the pile of "sure, I enabled him before but I never imagined..." halfwits who chose-- CHOSE-- not to see the bloody blatantly obvious in the first place. Bolton, Kelly, McConnell, Pompeo, Barr, so many others.

tokusatsugifs.bsky.social•5 days ago

To be fair, the 4 estates were not aligned for Trump in his first term, as harmful as it was. Now they are.

differance.bsky.social•4 days ago

yeah I'm not ready to give him credit for finally caving, given how many people he insulted and how many lies he told over the past decade of disingenuous denials and condescending criticisms of others.

melissahbuckner.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think about the reticence to use the term “fascist” when referring to Trump early on. How naive we all were. Tragically.

minouroufail.bsky.social•4 days ago

Who's this "we".

bimbelon.bsky.social•5 days ago

Call this what it is. Trumps fascist tendencies were obvious from day 1. He slowed the realization of the threat that Trump posed. "I have since turned out to be wrong"? No you were wrong from the beginning.

42eyes2ears.bsky.social•4 days ago

Never doubt the Zimbardo/Stanford experiment.

ukwebfan.bsky.social•4 days ago

Duh!

jessicasunja.bsky.social•4 days ago

📌

mememoreme.bsky.social•4 days ago

As if definitions matter when words are quickly co opted and twisted. Weird that anti fascist (ANTIFA), Woke, not to mention diversity equity and inclusion became blasphemous. Corruption corrupts.

planetgaia.bsky.social•4 days ago

It’s very clearly fascism 😡

acmeleader.bsky.social•5 days ago

CC: Tom Nichols

jp-invention.bsky.social•5 days ago

Serious question- What does ‘we have to save ourselves’ really mean though??

spacegizmo.bsky.social•5 days ago

It means we have to work together as citizens to make it very clear that this is all insane and unacceptable. Relentlessly mock the enablers. We need to be exhausting. See the civic's rights movement for an example for the mainland USA, or the 2019 protests in Puerto Rico for a more recent example.

bioturbonick.net•4 days ago

This is a regime that does not plan to ever leave.

chrisker.bsky.social•4 days ago

For one, they're morons. And trying to rig elections is really hard. Especially at the state level. POTUS is at risk if they have a majority in Congress, and hopefully that's not the case next time.

If they do try to go around all that, then we're past discussion anyway.

bioturbonick.net•4 days ago

They don't have to do that much rigging. And Congress is becoming irrelevant.

pndrp.bsky.social•5 days ago

It means the systems and politicians we thought were in place to protect us have been co-opted by the billionaires and that if we want a government of the people, by the people, for the people, then we, the people, are going to get off of our asses and fight for it ourselves.

jp-invention.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yes but what does fight for ourselves mean? I doubt this guy meant picking up the phone and making phone calls. I see a lot of people saying it’s up to us, but I don’t know practically but they mean we can do.

pndrp.bsky.social•5 days ago

A lot of that depends on who & where you are & what can you do. Look for like minded people in your area who are resisting or want to & get involved. Go to marches, protests, meetings. Fundraise or donate. Run for local office or find suitable local candidates. Etc. And yes make phone calls.

dontputmarbles.bsky.social•5 days ago

To me, it means we're not going to vote our way out of this. Every lever of power has been seized by the right. Courts are playing catch-up and can only slightly delay the authoritarian creep. Dem politicians aren't up to the task of defending Democracy, anyway - they don't seem too concerned.

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