December 18th, 2016

12-18-2016

Trump's Threat to Public Discourse

Roger Berkowitz is interviewed by Courtney Tenz in Deutsche Welle about how Hannah Arendt helps make sense of the rise of Donald Trump. Read it in German here.

"There is a real danger that we face in Trump's utter disregard for reality and his utter disregard for the meaning of words in the sense that he can say one thing today and then say another thing tomorrow and deny that he said what he said yesterday. That risks creating such a cynical attitude towards public discourse and a shared public world that after Trump, there's a possibility of someone much worse than Trump emerging. The real challenge from an Arendtian point of view over the next four years is to insist on the meaning of public discourse and on the importance of public institutions and not allow cynicism to take over."

Form more information visit: http://www.dw.com/en/trump-could-destroy-public-discourse-and-lead-to-someone-worse-according-to-hannah-arendts-philosophy/a-36766400

The Hatred of Small Differences

Writing in Time Magazine, Leon Botstein argues that discrimination against Muslims and Europe and African Americans in the United States is similar to racism against Jews in Europe in the 1930s. The key to understanding prejudice, Botstein argues, is to see that prejudices increase the more minority populations are assimilated.

"The several generations of Muslim immigrants to Europe since the end of World War II may not be deeply versed in European history, but it would be hard for them not to sense the widespread and unavoidable shadow cast by the Holocaust and the liquidation of European Jewry between 1933 and 1945. Little in post-1945 European politics has not been shaped by the effort the grapple with the consequences of Fascism during the interwar era and the war itself, particularly the extermination of the Jews. The ugly fact in that history is that the Jews, once Europe’s most visible and shared minority population, became more hated the more they successfully adapted and assimilated into European national cultures. Rabid political anti-Semitism—whether in France during the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer falsely accused of espionage; or at the turn of the century in Vienna when the city’s mayor, Karl Lueger, pioneered the use of anti-Semitism as a successful electoral strategy; or later, in Germany, when the assimilated Jew par excellence, the wealthy and brilliant foreign minister Walther Rathenau was assassinated by right-wing operatives in 1922—was directed not against pious Jews in black hats, who kept the Sabbath, deferred to rabbinical courts and ate strictly kosher food. Virulent modern anti-Semitism was directed against Jews who willingly shed all that, and became loyal, successful citizens of France, Austro-Hungary and Germany. Their command of the language, dress and social and cultural habits of Europe’s nations made them indistinguishable from their Christian counterparts. What enraged the majority population in late 19th-century and early 20th-century European nations was not difference but rather sameness, and in particular exceptional sameness: the triumph of Jewish adaptation and assimilation. The composer Richard Wagner in 1850 argued that what made the Jews dangerous and insidious was that they were integrated and unidentifiable. By entering the elite of the nation their essentially subversive presence suddenly became invisible and powerful. Jewish bankers, manufacturers, scientists, writers, doctors, lawyers and artists were now Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans. They were the real problem, not the pious Yiddish-speaking anonymous Jew with his foreign and unfamiliar ways living in a ghetto.... Turning to post-Donald Trump America, the European predicament offers a cautionary comparison. White America has prided itself as a nation based on acquired citizenship, freedom of religion and the rule of law, and formed by immigration. But that ideology was dominant two generations ago. The defining distinction, from the beginning, has been race and color, not religion or nationality. What post-Trump white America has expressed by endorsing Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” is not merely anger against elites in general but targeted resentment against the recent history of success by Americans of color. The racism in this year’s election was not about an older stereotype of the Willie Horton-type, but directed against Barack Obama. It is precisely the parity in the achievements of black Americans, those who have become CEOs, scholars, scientists, artists, doctors, lawyers and politicians—and now even president—that has fueled the resurgence of intolerance and anti-immigrant sentiment."

Form more information visit: http://time.com/4597969/election-racism-obama/

Is This How It Ends?

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt ask the question of the day, "Is our democracy in danger?" Levitsky and Ziblatt are not saying the sky is falling. And it is not. They have studied how democracies fail around the world. While American democracy has unique advantages that will likely protect it, there are a number of factors that lead democracies to fail, and many of these warning lights are flashing red in the USA. Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that democracy in America could indeed be threatened, especially if we were faced with a major terrorist threat or war.

"The risk we face, then, is not merely a president with illiberal proclivities — it is the election of such a president when the guardrails protecting American democracy are no longer as secure. American democracy is not in imminent danger of collapse. If ordinary circumstances prevail, our institutions will most likely muddle through a Trump presidency. It is less clear, however, how democracy would fare in a crisis. In the event of a war, a major terrorist attack or large-scale riots or protests — all of which are entirely possible — a president with authoritarian tendencies and institutions that have come unmoored could pose a serious threat to American democracy. We must be vigilant. The warning signs are real."

Form more information visit: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-threat-to-democracy.html