2. The thing with Adorno is that, contrary to what people who have a stereotypical idea of him might think, he really loved clowns. He was, as a scholar wrote, "a fan" of clowns, mimes, acrobats, circuses. Silliness was genuine utopian break. But he also saw the danger of clowns
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3. Here's Adorno on clowns & fascism. The point about how a clownish leader (the classic fascists but more recently Berlusconi, Ford, Trump) serve as a rebuke to respectability is I think acute: the message of clowning is anti-system.pic.twitter.com/IJX9IzEgfl
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4. Pushing Adorno's point, fascist clowning serves a dual purposes for different audiences: for hard-core anti-system followers its a signal the leader despises existing order as they do. For elite conservative fellow-travellers it is plausible deniability: "he's only joking"
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5. I think Douthat's account, and similar ones, suffer from an excessive focus on Trump's psychology (does this buffoon have what it takes to be Mussolini) and not enough on how that persona functions as part of larger political movement, which is more focused than he is.
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5. Two things can both be true: Trump himself would rather be a TV star than a dictator (
@DouthatNYT's point) & 2) Trumpism has energized and radicalized an anti-majoritarian political faction, with deep roots inside GOP, which is a genuine threat to democracy.Show this thread
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Also, re-defining "deep state" to mean simply the permanent bureaucracy rather than a conspiratorial coup-cabal inside the security services sure is something
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I continue to want someone to do a serious take on the comportment of power and fascism to counter all these implicit assumptions that power and fascism are somehow well-groomed, polished etc.
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Who says that?
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Kind of weird that he would think that though, since by all accounts HIS organization was not like that
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Douthat and Wood suffer from the assumption that their protected, stable lives mean Trump's fascism hasn't crushed others. Millions fewer immigrants will live in this country; millions will be unable to vote because of his SCOTUS appointments; thousands have faced state violence.
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