A warning against Trump

This book by Madeleine Albright, the well-regarded stateswoman who served President Bill Clinton as ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state, is a warning not so much against fascism as against President Donald Trump. Democracies — and not only the US or the West — are facing challenges that may breed fascist tendencies. Yet Albright’s conception of fascism remains limited to rallying Americans, particularly the Democrats and Republicans, against the anti-democratic politics of Trump and the dangers it poses to the US.

The merit of the cause — of fighting anti-democratic forces in any country — is beyond dispute. However, the impact of the book in serving that cause is debatable given its lack of political depth and intellectual rigour, especially in defining a fascist and fascism. That said, any discussion of Albright’s work cannot be without alluding to her role and utterances in public life.

Any mention of Albright brings to mind her cold-blooded assertion, during a television interview in 1996, that US policy goals justified the sacrifice of half a million Iraqi children. It is worth recalling it here.

Interviewer (on sanctions against Iraq): We have heard that half a million children have died… that’s more than died in Hiroshima…. is the price worth it?

Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but … we think the price is worth it.

Albright’s assertion that the US is the world’s only “indispensable nation” also cannot be forgotten. Justifying US coercive diplomacy against Iraq during a TV interview, Albright said: If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. She revelled in using the term (as did President Barack Obama).

The two assertions are revealing of her sensibilities in government and politics; and, appear relevant while reading the last chapter ‘The Right Questions’, where she suggests it would be useful to raise these queries “for freedom to survive”.

Why, she asks at the beginning of the book, are we talking about fascism? “One reason, frankly, is Donald Trump. If we think of fascism as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab”. Never has the US, she writes, had a chief executive in the modern era whose statements and actions are so at odds with democratic ideals. Trump, she says, has “degraded political discourse…shown an astonishing disregard for facts, libeled his predecessors…touted mindlessly nationalistic economic and trade policies, vilified immigrants and the countries from which they come and nurtured a paranoid bigotry toward the followers of one of the world’s foremost religions”. (Many may find this resonating in present-day India).

She does not tag Trump as a fascist, but calls him anti-democratic. She raises questions, such as — What is fascism? Who is a fascist? — but fails to answer with clarity. Instead of defining fascism, she confines herself to description and diagnosis, which is inadequate for the concept to be understood in all its dimensions elsewhere in the world, where anti-democratic trends are rising rapidly.

The first few chapters, about the people and places she connected with during her diplomatic duties, and her interactions during university lectures on the issue, are instructive. She dwells on Mussolini and Hitler, and how they epitomised fascism and all things fascist, as well as the conditions that give rise to this phenomenon. Albright was a young girl when her family was forced to flee Czechoslovakia twice — at the beginning of World War II; and again, in 1948, when the communists took power. Years later, she learnt that 26 of her family members had been killed in the Holocaust. Her emotional commitment to fighting fascism is beyond question.

Beyond the historical narrative of Hitler and Mussolini or Spain’s Salazar and Europe’s experience of fascism, her referencing tends to be off the mark. She does not distinguish between authoritarian rulers of various shades; and, makes little distinction between a despotic ruler and a totalitarian system. She refers to people being held down by the “fear factor” under authoritarian figures such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and the war criminal Slobodan Milosevic (president of Serbia). However, Albright does not call any of them fascist. North Korea under Kim Jong-un’s late father Kim Jong Il, in her view, was the only truly fascist regime in today’s world.

Albright recalls how India’s Hindu nationalists admired Mussolini, hailed Germany’s “revival of the Aryan culture” and, during World War II, joined a Nazi-organised legion to fight the British. Yet, there is no reference to the perceived fascist tendencies in contemporary India. The omission is so conspicuous that it cannot but be seen as deliberate and diplomatic. Even more glaring is her omission of Israel as the world’s most brutal militarist, colonial, racist and fascist occupation force, propped up by the US. Perhaps, that is the price indispensable US’s movers and shakers have to pay.

Fascism: A WarningMadeleine AlbrightWilliam CollinsNon-fiction₹699

Shastri Ramachandaran is an independent political and foreign affairs commentator based in Delhi