Bill Donohue's latest bit at NewsMax reminded me of the Weimar Republic
Donohue, rapid wingnut extraordinaire, known to most of us for his aggressively hostile frothings masquerading as defense of the Catholic church, now offers us his ideas in "Trump Is a Man of the People"
It would, of course, be noteworthy if a real estate career focussed on casinos, golf courses, resort hotels, and other symbols of conspicuous consumption by some mysterious magical process actually forged "a man of the people" -- unless Donohue's notion of "the people" is limited to the fairly thin stratum of our society with the luxury to visit casinos, golf courses, and resort hotels
Although I do, in fact, suspect that Donohue's notion of "the people" is limited in exactly that way, something else reminded me of the Weimar Republic
Donohue begins by quoting David Brooks' sudden insight last month that he (David) had spent "large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata" and ends with an appeal to "meet the proletariat." The use of such Marxist terminology by a rightwinger, with a history at the Heritage Institute, now pushing a luxury-capitalist as "a man of the people," deserves our attention. Donohue has certainly not become a Marxist: he is quite careful to take a dig at Marx halfway through his article, remarking that Marx had "no .. idea of what life is like for blue-collar workers" since he "never set foot" in a factory
The catastrophic collapse of the Weimar cast a long shadow over the twentieth century. Before WWI, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) had done a remarkable organizing job, gaining political power for German workers. But as in the rest of Europe, the advent of war in 1914 created a wave of "patriotism" that swept away these gains and replaced them by political support for the war. Guns-and-butter conflicts, however, developed soon after, and the SPD split irreparably long before the Armistice. The war ended with a spontaneous revolution in Germany; and part of the SPD remained as successor to the collapsed monarchy, forced to negotiate peace abroad with the victors, who demanded evidence of stability in Germany, while the German military escaped all responsibility for the adventures in France; meanwhile, the other ex-SPD fragment believed conditions for socialist revolution now existed in Germany and sought to pursue it. This split -- between the socialists who thought capitalism ripe for overthrow now and the socialists who wanted to obtain gains through parliamentary methods -- was so severe that the two sides really never worked together after WWI. "Socialism" remained a popular notion in Germany during the Weimar years, but it became an increasingly muddled notion, with the help of rightwing propaganda that distinguished "English socialism" (Marxism) from "German socialism." A number of rightwing nationalists pushed their own ideas as "German socialism" -- the most familiar example today being the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). Especially notable is the careful development of flexibly incoherent scapegoat theories, such as the notion that "the Jews" were somehow simultaneously the agents of international capitalism and of worldwide Bolshevik revolution
This seems (unfortunately) to me the direction Donohue is heading: he would co-opt Marxist language while simultaneously deriding the Marxist analysis that gives the language meaning. And he would set up a series of scapegoats. Donohue finds "America .. justifiably angry" about "the machinations of those below them who have learned how to game the system." Thus he jumbles together with his Marxist terms an analysis demonizing those at the bottom of the system: "many in the working class, as well as those in the lower middle class, interact daily with those in the lower class, and what they see angers them." In case the bottom of our own social system doesn't provide enough scapegoats, Donohue finds another group to demonize: "Muslim barbarians" because they "live a tribal existence" and "are not interested in freedom and equality"
This murky mishmash apparently leads Donohue to his view that "Trump is a man of the people"
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