Fascism: A Warning — Madeleine Albright
A thorough history of fascism and its close relatives is weighed down by (sometimes) forced contemporary parallels
To my mind, a Fascist is someone who identifies strongly with and claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use whatever means necessary — including violence — to achieve his or her goals. In that conception, a Fascist will likely be a tyrant, but a tyrant need not be a Fascist.
Madeleine Albright uses this working definition of fascism in the opening chapter of her new book, Fascism: A Warning. I am somewhat amenable to accepting this definition. However, I personally like to include absolute separation, for historical reasons, between fascism and communism such as support for private ownership of property. Any definition that includes Joseph Stalin as a fascist, as Albright does, is not wholly workable for me. That said, I can respect a broader definition that tries to make an ideologically-neutral distinction. In that way, Albright’s book is successful in pointing out some identifying features of fascism and following those through the global history of the 20th and 21st centuries.
In this thorough history, the usual suspects receive their due space. Mussolini and Hitler’s respective rises are explored in adequate depth, and the years of World War II receive a separate chapter to cover their undignified ends. These are the obvious targets for identification of fascism because, well, the men themselves identified as fascist. But Albright’s history of fascism does not end there. Stalin’s fascist tendencies are explored, but so are Slobodan Milosevic Yugoslavia/Serbia, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, along with Kim Il-sung and his successors in North Korea and many others. Even though I would not call all of these leaders fascists, I respect Albright’s resolve to define fascism and apply that definition to many different world leaders to look at similar qualities.
The shadow hanging over this entire book, of course, is Donald Trump. He has been accused (mostly for legitimate reasons) of having fascist tendencies. While I would have rather enjoyed a structure of this book that purported to relay a history of fascism and close with a chapter about Trump and democracy (which is exactly this book on the surface), Albright instead sprinkled veiled references to Trump’s tendencies throughout so that you can never fool yourself on what Fascism: A Warning is “about”. This leads not only to false equivalencies, but also in rare cases to outright lies. In order to not talk ill of a former Secretary of State that I generally admire, I am going to assume that it was a publisher’s decision to include so many Trump parallels in order to sell more books. It’s a good strategy, because the pull quotes are irresistible. In fact I’ll pull one of them now to show what I mean.
“Like Mussolini a decade earlier, Hitler was given the keys to power by an elderly man who felt he had no better option — and, like Il Duce, he arrived in the nation’s highest office without ever having won a majority vote, yet by constitutional means.” (emphasis mine)
The side-eye is strong with this one. But it could be a coincidence that she points out that detail and that literally just happened in the 2016 election, right? But wait, there’s more. She chooses her words carefully when telling a story of meeting with Slobodan Milosevic while she was Secretary of State, as she relays Milosevic’s use of “alternative facts” to legitimize his genocide against Bosniak civilians and prisoners of war. (By the way, Bosniaks are Bosnian Muslims.) Albright also mentions Hugo Chavez’s and his propensity to wear ball caps, along with his similar speaking style.
The most egregious example of a forced parallel, however, verges on an outright lie. In a paragraph about Mussolini’s push to reform the government structure in Italy, Albright says: “He initiated a campaign to drenare la palude (“drain the swamp”) by firing more than 35,000 civil servants.” This implies that Mussolini used the phrase drenare la palude at some point, which implies that Trump is following directly in Mussolini’s footsteps by using that phrase. However, “drain the swamp” is a thoroughly American phrase in its origins. Mussolini never used the Italian equivalent even though he did fire more than 35,000 civil servants and try to make good government in Italy. He even drained literal swamps in Italy as part of his infrastructure reform efforts. However, trying to link Mussolini to Trump by implying his use of one of Trump’s signature phrases is irresponsible at best. I would not have known it was a lie had I not thought it so amazing that I researched a little to check its legitimacy. Many reading this book will be misled by that implication.
For those that know me well or have read certain book reviews of mine, you probably know that I am not quick to defend Donald Trump. I am glad to in this case, however, because it is a symptom of something much larger at stake. I would argue that this issue is larger than any political issue or even the future of our American democracy. What is at stake today is society’s understanding of truth. In the last few years, our political climate has been flooded with “alternative facts”, false equivalencies, and deliberate misleadings. If truth becomes something you can twist or even completely dispose of in order to advance your political objectives, you are acting in a manner reminiscent of these fascist figures. The idea of absolute truth must be protected at all costs. Without it, there is nothing on which to base our society.
I hope this is not seen as an overreaction to Albright’s book. With several changes, I think that Fascism: A Warning would have been extremely helpful for those wanting to attain a broader understanding of fascist tendencies and it would have truly been a warning for the American people. Indeed, it may even regain that designation when this Trump moment has passed. By the end of the book, I taught myself to overlook the Trump parallels and seek out the redeeming qualities of the book, and there are many. Albright herself admits that the only “true fascist” in the book outside of Hitler and Mussolini is Kim Jong-Un, and I appreciated her candor. Looking at all of these examples from recent world events can be incredibly enlightening and help us look for warning signs. Maybe, with that knowledge, when fascism comes for us… we’ll stop it.
