Trump hesitated to condemn Nazis because he IS a Nazi

I'm still angry.

I'm so angry that I probably should not try to write. My original intention was to embed a clip from last night's John Oliver episode and let it go at that.

But the need to express myself has taken hold, so I'm going to offer my thoughts -- and if this essay seems unorganized or intemperate, apologies. Again: I'm still angry.

Ever since Trump fastened onto birtherism, we've wondered: Does he really believe in that nonsense? Or is he simply using right-wing conspiracy theories for the purposes of self-promotion?

I think the answer is clear now: Trump really is a True Believer. He is also, at heart, a fascist.

True, he finally denounced the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who assembled at Charlottesville, but he did so only when politically forced to do so. His words came far too late, backed by far too little sincerity.

Conspiracy theory is the road to fascism. Psychologically, Trump is the sort of person likeliest to embrace right-wing conspiracy theories: He's an ill-read, low-IQ blowhard who thinks that he's smarter than he actually is, and who remains perpetually resentful of those who possess greater brainpower.

I've met a lot of guys like that, although the ones I bumped into never had money. There was a time when I tried to debate that sort of person. Always a mistake. Those assimilated into the ConspiraBorg are way beyond argument.

Many years ago, I became peripherally involved with the JFK assassination research community, taking a particular interest in JFK's far-right opponents -- Guy Banister, General Walker, the Birchers and so forth. Researching that subculture brought me into confrontation with people I had read about but never hoped to meet: Illuminati-spotters, Holocaust deniers, and racists who consider "mixmaster" to be the ultimate insult.

Not only that. Some of the JFK assassination researchers -- the good ones, the liberals -- morphed into doppelgangers of JFK's far-right opponents. I will always defend the memory of Jim Garrison, yet I must also admit that some Garrison fans share certain attributes with the fans of Willis Carto and Milton William Cooper. On both left and right, there is the automatic presumption of bad faith on the part of anyone who disagrees. On both sides, one encounters a knee-jerk reliance on ad hominem argumentation, particularly of the "spook-baiting" kind.

In short: Even the "good" conspiracy theorists sometimes descend into a kind of fascism. Yet they sincerely identify themselves as anti-fascists.

On the far right, the F-word evokes mixed feelings. Although James Alex Fields, the white supremacist who used his car as a lethal weapon, has openly proclaimed his love for Hitler, most white nationalists prefer to argue that mainstream liberals and Democrats are the true fascists.

Personally, I'm sick of that doubletalk. Give me the fascist who wears the F-word on his t-shirt without shame or subterfuge. He may be evil, but at least he's honest.

Our president remains a classic doubletalker, though he is not as effective as he once was, perhaps because age and job stress keep eroding his verbal skills (which weren't very impressive to begin with). Even so, most of the country refuses to recognize Trump's fascism for what it is. The truth is simply too horrible to admit.

There's another problem. Too many people cannot get beyond this simplistic equation: Fascism = anti-Semitism. Trump praises Israel and has a Jewish son-in-law. How (many would ask) can one apply the label "fascist" to such a man?

My answer: Fascism has always been a more complex ideology than most Americans realize. Mussolini invented fascism, yet he didn't hate Jews -- at least not in the virulent way that, say, Julius Streicher did. As I keep reminding readers, Anders Brevik -- the neofascist Norwegian mass murderer -- remains an admirer of Israel. The Nazi party of 1940 and Richard Spencer's group are two different things; the new beast is not the old beast.

The current American fascist movement is split between old-schoolers -- those who retain a transcendental hatred of Jews -- and new-schoolers who consider Israel a valuable ally in the battle against Islam.

But the situation becomes ever more complex the closer one looks. Steve Bannon hates Islam and respects Alexander Dugin, yet Dugin admires the more extreme forms of jihadist Islam. For Dugin, the enemy is neither Judaism nor Islam: The true enemies are equality, tolerance, democracy, multiculturalism and progress. In a word: The Enlightenment.

Steve Bannon always insists that he loves Israel, as if that statement could bleach the F-word from his t-shirt -- but only the most foolish Jews would ally themselves themselves with a modern fascist like Bannon. The old-school anti-Semites may be relatively quiet now, but I am certain that they will one day reassert their dominance of the far right. If the supporters of Steve Bannon take full control of this country, no Jew anywhere will be safe.

Americans must understand that we have a Nazi-influenced president who also happens to have a Jewish son-in-law and a daughter who converted to Judaism. Yes, it's a bizarre situation. But it is what it is.

The Russian connection. In recent days, those pushing back on Russiagate have mounted two mutually exclusive attacks.

On one hand, we have a recent article in The Nation (I refuse to link to it) which claims -- insanely -- that the Democratic party is responsible for the leaks that deep-sixed Hillary Clinton. This piece of propaganda actually goes so far as to imply that the Guccifers (both 1 and 2!) were constructs of those hideous, scheming Democrats, especially the hideous, scheming DNC.

I need not offer a detailed counterargument. If you are the sort of person who can take that inane claim seriously, even for an instant, find yourself another blog. A long time ago, I stopped arguing with Holocaust deniers, with Jehovah's Witnessess, and with people who are convinced that the aliens built a base beneath Dulce, New Mexico. Fanatics are beyond debate; I refuse to be sealioned by some nutjob who thinks that the DNC created Guccifer 2.0.

So much for the first line of attack. The second line of attack holds that Obama was warned about Russian interference as early as 2014. Although the Politico article at the other end of that link is worth reading, rightwingers have seized upon this line of investigation to argue that Russian interference is really all the fault of those hideous, scheming Democrats. This absurd claim has already flavored some of Trump's tweets.

Needless to say, Propaganda Claim 1 and Propaganda Claim 2 cannot be reconciled. One can say that Russiagate is imaginary or one can say that Russiagate all the fault of Barack Obama. One cannot say both things at the same time.

How does the Russian connection link up with American neofascism? First and foremost, I'd point to this tweet from David Duke:

White man... your enemy isn't Russia -
#TheScaryThingIs your enemy is those telling you Russia is your enemy, believe me.

Duke adorns this sentiment with the hashtags #TeamWhite and #MAGA.

From there, you may want to proceed to a piece published just a few hours ago in the Observer: "Richard Spencer and His Kook-Right Ilk Are Agents of Russian Influence."

Our extreme right, with very few exceptions, are super-fans of the Russian president, in whom they see a strong, traditional leader who runs the world’s only white nuclear-armed great power. Their websites brim with adulation for Putin as a demigod who resists the Western social justice agenda with more than words.

This article was written by John Schindler, whom I do not trust -- although in this instance, his argument is open to independent verification.

Where next? I would suggest exploring the strange philosophical realms ruled by Alexander Dugin. Although I talk about him a lot, it would be a mistake to regard Dugin as a kind of Marvel comics supervillain. To me, he symbolizes a much larger phenomenon.

Since the 1950s, one faction of the post-war international fascist movement has had a love affair with Russia -- and after the fall of the Soviet Union, many Russians have reciprocated their affection. If the previous sentence seems unfathomably strange to you -- "Didn't Hitler invade Russia? Wasn't there a really horrible siege of Leningrad?" -- I can only direct your attention to Kevin Coogan's important work Dreamer of the Day, which offers a detailed, scholarly investigation of certain little-known developments within the world of post-war fascism.

Coogan's book focuses on an influential fascist "thinker" named Francis Parker Yockey. In the 1950s, Yockey decided that Communism was a temporary affliction, and that the day would come (once the Marxist menace withered away) when Russia would prove an ideal homeland for a new "white power" movement.

Allow me to republish a section of an earlier post:

While doing some research into Robert Spencer, the neo-Nazi who pals around with Steve Bannon and Pam Geller, I found some statements which led me to suspect that Spencer has read Frances Parker Yockey's Imperium. This post-war Nazi "Bible" remains unfamiliar to most Americans.

Have I read it? Of course. I've also read Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan's remarkable biography of Yockey. Although hard to locate -- try inter-library loan -- this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand post-war fascism.

Yockey's Imperium attempts to prove that, in ancient times, the white race -- that "hardy band of adventurers" -- traveled the world, initiating every great intellectual leap made by the human race. Pyramids in Egypt, printing in China, formal logic in India, the wheel, cuneiform writing, fire: Thank Whitey. The so-called "Aryans" did all of these things and so much more.

According to Yockey, creativity is a purely Aryan "thing." Many Aryans do not understand this truth about themselves because they've been deceived by a group which Yockey calls the "culture distorters." And just who are they? Yockey usually plays it coy when it comes to identifying these people, although you may be able to hazard a guess.

If you're thinking that Yockey joined up with the American Nazi Party of George Lincoln Rockwell, you're wrong. Rockwell could not tolerate Yockey's obsessive hatred of America. Surprisingly, Yockey favored Russia. That's right: An American post-war fascist sided with Russia in the middle of the Cold War -- not many years after the battle of Stalingrad!

Although Yockey had no love for communism, Marxism was, in his view, just a temporary affliction. More important, he felt, was the fact that the Russian people eschewed racial mixing, Yockeyism's great sin. They were also more chary of those pesky "culture distorters." Near the end of his life, Stalin's drift toward anti-Semitism made many American hate-mongers rethink their attitudes toward him.

Yockey worked within with the first American fascist movement of the post-WWII era: The National Renaissance Party of James Madole. (The NRP also published the works of Eustace Mullins, who later became very popular with conspiracy buffs on both the right and the left.) Yockey's greatest champion was Willis Carto, founder of Spotlight magazine -- a formative influence on the American conspiracy buff subculture.

(Intriguingly, some theorists have speculated that Carto had a hand in Yockey's mysterious death.)

For five decades, Yockeyism has been the "secret ingredient" laced into the giant pot of stew served up by America's conspiracy buff subculture. Is it any surprise to see Trump's conspiracy-addled entourage spouting riffs that sound like passages from Imperium?

Yockey's most radical ideas can be stated simply: Russia = good. Join forces with Russia. Unravel the power of those evil Wall Street culture distorters who run America.

That's pretty much the message of the Trump campaign, isn't it? Allow me to offer a tentative prediction: Before we are done with the Trump movement, we will see the boldest Trumpers endorse Imperium openly.