I don’t know how you feel about that. Like, is this fascism? Is this not? Where are you falling on that? I think it’s pretty fascist. Like, if you want to call it neo-fascism, I’m fine with that, too, but I don’t shy away from the —— At some point, the word doesn’t have any meaning if we can’t apply it to things in the modern world. I think sometimes you end up with words that people have decided are so beyond the pale, racist, fascist, et cetera, that they become — people stop being willing to use them because it feels like you’ve moved outside of ordinary discourse. But these words describe things. And I don’t think you can understand the aesthetic of Trumpism, I don’t think you can understand some of its impulses without at least some connection to fascist movements of the 20th century, which were — every one is different in its own way. Exactly, yeah. But, I mean, there’s a reason they’re all very interested – in Schmidt. – Yeah, yeah. And I think part of the hesitancy has to do with really exceptionalizing Hitler, and that it sounds like you’re saying: If he is fascist, he is Hitler. And that’s not what the term means. And there have been plenty of fascists who aren’t Hitler. And fascism is a pathology of injured power. I mean, it emerges in Italy and in Germany in the injuries of the First World War. It’s soldiers and generals and industrialists who are hurt by the sanctions. But it’s powerful people who are hurt. Whereas like left revolutions are powerless people who are hurt. One of the things that we see in the Epstein files are these concerns about #MeToo, about accountability. A lot of talk about #MeToo, people going to Epstein because he is a sex criminal. And they know that, and they’re asking him for advice about what to do about the fact that know the movement is coming for them and they might be held accountable. So if we are in a fascist moment, right, then it is a counterrevolution. We have to understand: What are elites revolting against? Like, who hurt them, what hurt them? And I think part of what they are revolting against is that there was starting to be some accountability. Their impunity was — there were a few chinks in the armor, and some of that was women who were beginning to hold powerful men accountable. And so this unleashing of the far right is partly them protecting themselves.
