“We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the U.S.,” a Wednesday New York Times headline read.
Sure, plenty of well-known Democrats (mostly from Hollywood and the media) vowed to leave the U.S. in the event of a second Trump presidency: Sharon Stone, Cher, Barbra Streisand, Raven-Symoné, Whoopi Goldberg, Elon Musk’s gender-confused son Xavier Wilson, and even Cardi B rank among those who’ve at least hinted at that kind of radical action. But few of them have actually done anything about it.
But even the New York Times knows that nobody takes the vague premonitions of actors, entertainment media figures, and models seriously. To have three Yale professors who actually study the tragic events of the past century leave the U.S. because they think their country is going in the direction of Nazi Germany — well, that’s sensational. (READ MORE: The Plight of the Afrikaners Is a Clarifying Moment for Western Civilization)
The New York Times piece was a video opinion by history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore who are married, and philosophy professor Jason Stanley, in which the threesome explained that they’d relocated to the University of Toronto, and they thought the U.S. was turning into a fascist state with President Donald Trump as its burgeoning supreme leader.
They cited ICE’s detention of Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, whose student visa had been revoked alongside thousands of other international students, after the federal government accused her of engaging “in activities in support of Hamas.” They explained that “American exceptionalism is basically a way to get people to fall into line.” After all, if America is an exceptional place where fascism can’t happen, then “you don’t have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom.”
For Stanley, Columbia University’s decision to give in to the Trump administration’s demands to counteract antisemitism on its campus was the last straw. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target … that’s a losing strategy.”
For Snyder, moving wasn’t as much about getting away from Trump (although he’s repeatedly said he sympathizes with that position), but about supporting his wife, Shore, who does seem to have left because of Trump. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink…. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink,” Shore said in the NYT opinion.
Trump, these professors asserted (at least by implication), is on the fast track to becoming an American authoritarian.
“The lesson of 1933,” Shore said, “is that you get out sooner rather than later.”
It’s tempting to roll our eyes, mutter “good riddance” under our breath, and move along from this kind of story. If a particular segment of this country with whom we disagree strongly has decided to end all our quibbles with them by making themselves absent, who are we to stop them? But there is a broader problem underlying their likening Trump’s America to fascism, and it’s worth uncovering. (READ MORE: Another Ivy League University Living in Woke Fairyland)
At the heart of the issue is a redefinition of the word “fascism” in such a way as to make it sound like it means the same thing as “patriotism.” These Yale professors — and a good many people who think like them — find the American assertion that this country, with its quasi-sacred founding and its insistence on the rights of man given him by God, is an exceptional one a troubling concept. They seem to equate “Make America Great Again” with Adolf Hitler’s “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.”
But to do so ignores the very close association between fascism and racism, specifically antisemitism. Hitler, as you will remember, was virulently opposed to any race other than his Aryan one. He imagined a world in which blue-eyed, blond-haired giants ruled the earth, and Jews, Roma, and his detractors no longer existed. It’s this connection with racism that Snyder, at least, hasn’t quite fit into the picture.
In a recent piece with the Free Press, Peter Savodnik noted that Snyder’s depiction of Yale as a cloister of free speech and acceptance simply defies the reality that has unfolded at Yale after October 7, where pro-Hamas demonstrators antagonized Jewish students and even poked one woman in the face with a Palestinian flag. As a progressive, Snyder, according to one of his colleagues at Yale, may find it hard or even impossible to “imagine that those on the left could hate Jews.” (READ MORE by Aubrey Harris: Australia and Canada Reject Trumpism by Embracing Trumpism)
To the historian, Trump’s decision to investigate antisemitism on campus is merely an excuse to bully universities. “Nobody ever goes after universities in order to help Jews,” he told Savodnik.
The result is that fascism has become a cheapened term that, at least in popular progressive parlance, has become confused with patriotism. The love of one’s country is a duty, Cicero affirms. That’s not to say that the country should become a god in the popular imagination, but that we should be proud of it, work for its benefit, and wish it well.
READ MORE from Aubrey Harris:
Trump Is the Reason Democrats Aren’t Talking About Abortion
Australia and Canada Reject Trumpism by Embracing Trumpism
Kids Don’t Need to Be ‘Dancing With Robots’ in School
