I have been absent from this blog for the last several days because, like the rest of the world, I have been watching the TV coverage of the series of events unfolding in Russia. Because the events started on a weekend, the usual top-tier commentators were not available for the cable news shows, so they called upon their second tier, third tier, fourth tier, and fifth tier commentators. I listened to retired diplomats, retired generals, retired generals, retired Soviet experts, retired Russian experts, and they all had exactly the same thing to say: “I do not know.” Nobody seemed to have any idea what was going on and they still do not. When I was a boy, living in Kew Gardens Hills in New York City, people my parents’ age would ask softly and somewhat secretly, when something happened in the larger world, “is it good for the Jews?” The question asked over and over again these past several days was, “is it good for Ukraine?” Well, everybody agreed it was not bad for Ukraine but nobody really knew whether it was good for Ukraine.
On another matter, totally unrelated, when I was not
listening to this deep commentary on Russia and Ukraine, I was hearing over and
over again the just leaked audio of Trump at Bedminster rustling papers and
showing them – or not as the case may be – to the people working on Mark
Meadows’ memoirs. The text of that audio
is included in the document indicting Trump but neither the document supposedly
being shown by Trump nor the event itself is actually part of one of the 37
counts of the indictment. The point of
including it is that Trump at one point says of the document that it is
classified and that he could have declassified it when he was president but now
that he no longer is president he cannot do so. This demonstrates conclusively,
first that Trump knew that he had not been reelected and second that he knew
the rules governing the declassification of documents, two facts which it is
essential to establish in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. This is a fairly simple point, but for some
reason most of the commentators seem completely unable to grasp it.
I had a lovely visit on Monday with a summer school class at
St. John’s University in Rochester, New York that is using my textbook, About
Philosophy. The chair of the department, Tim Madigan, is past president of the
Bertrand Russell society, and he wanted to hear my story about the time I met
Russell so I shall talk to him tomorrow. In the fall, when classes start again,
I shall do a zoom visit with Harvard undergraduates majoring in Social Studies. I reflected that if I had met an 89-year-old
graduate of Harvard when I was an undergraduate there he would have been
someone who was born during the Civil War!
It is quite lovely today in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Perhaps when the weather is not so fine I shall try to say something about the
fact that the United States is now seriously flirting with authoritarian
fascism. Even though I have been a strong and very vocal critic of American
domestic and foreign policy for 70 years, I confess that until now I had not
really feared that America might go the way of Germany or Spain or Italy, or
any of the other countries that descended into authoritarian rule.
35 comments:
Dear Professor Wolff, American foreign policy once militantly aimed to make the world safe for democracy. This is now a small world as Disney gleefully put it. Fascism is on the ascent everywhere and through the osmosis of porous borders enabled by the latest computer technology, fascism is creeping into our borders rather than flowing from our land of the free
freedom flowing from our land of the free
Again with calling anything and everything fascism, and with the completely baseless comparisons to 1930s Italy, Germany, and Spain. Get a grip, for crying aloud. Ridiculous.
To anonymous: like me, you must see some differences and similarities between now and the heyday of fascism.
A few salient features that spring to mind are fascism today as in Turkey Russia and India are linked to religious and traditional values, they are not revolutionary, and seek to enrich an elite, and maintain some semblance of stability and take power democratically. Plus their technological means of control surpass the Nazis et al
Surely anonymous, someone as famous and well read as you will notice these considerations and let them inform your brilliant analysis
Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany were not religious movements at all; Italian fascism was certainly revolutionary rather than conservative or reactionary (making a new man and all that) in contrast to Nazism; both Italian fascism and German nazism were militia parties which came to power after plenty of violence in the streets, and myriad other conditions; and neither were elite movements, either, in the case of fascism it was a movement of the middle classes, as has been repeated ad nauseam in the literature. And Spain’s Francoist movement was rather different altogether and there was a bloody civil war in between. Some American politicians might be wannabe fascists, but any serious analogy is just not there. Whatever happened to talking about authoritarian far right movements?
It is said that the mark of intelligence is "strong opinions, weakly held".
Having said that, I was pretty sure yesterday that this was a genuine coup attempt by the Wagner group. Today, I'm not so sure anymore. To wit (selected quotes):
A Private Russian Army Just Materialized In The Heart Of Europe
The Deployment Of This Private Military Company To Belorussia Will Give Russia A Strategic Advantage
Before I get to Steshin, I was reading elsewhere that Belorussian leader Lukashenko plans to build 3 main base camps for the Wagnerites, each camp housing around 8,000 fighters. The bases will be equipped with all the comforts and conveniences that the Wagnerite mutineers are accustomed to: barracks. bunks, a parade ground, a cafeteria, laundry room, etc. However, to punish them for their recent treason, they will not have a French chef on hand to cook their meals. [I just made that last bit up; of course they will have a French chef!]
At the given moment, the actual Belorussian army numbers around 45,000 men, with around 300,000 in the reserves. Never in its entire history has this army had to fight a real war; from that fact, one may deduce its level of battle-readiness. But now specialists from the Company will show them, and tell them, what a real war looks like. And will teach them, and train them.
This is because Batka understood that he is not going to be able to stand to the side and watch Russia fight alone against 50 nations. He knows that Belorussia is next on the chopping block.
A shout-out to Poland. The Poles have been planning to jump into the fray once our counter-offensive begins. But now, right on their border, there has magically appeared an army, just bursting with strength, hardened in battles, capable of very quickly adapting to “Blitzkrieg” rhythms, adept in urban warfare, and not just urban.
source: Ukraine War Day #490: Batka Builds An Army + Corpus Delicti
Anonymous,
Just as what it means to be on the left has changed in the last 90 years (since Hitler came to power), so what it means to be a fascist may change.
To be on the left in 2023 not only involves siding with the working class as it did in 1933, but also involves a commitment towards feminism, gay rights, the environment and several other concerns that people on the left 90 years ago did not pay attention to and even in some cases were hostile towards. I live in Chile and I can tell you that the Latin America left until fairly recently saw homosexuality as a "bourgeous vice". No longer.
So too the fascism of Trump, Vox in Spain and Bolsonaro in Brasil differs in many ways from that of Hitler and Mussolini.
"Having said that, I was pretty sure yesterday that this was a genuine coup attempt by the Wagner group. Today, I'm not so sure anymore."
From the very beginning I thought the coup was subterfuge so Putin can have his best general: Prigozhin & his best troops: Wagner ready to strike Kiev again from the north.
Michael,
I see it more as a fixing operation where Russia deters the Poles and ties up Ukrainian troops in the north while fighting their way in the south through Odessa and linking up to Transnistria. At that point, Russia will have all that rich farmland and control access to the Black Sea.
The reason that we haven't seen or expect to see big arrow moves by the Russians is because the collective West has denied them the effective use of air power. So they've fallen back on attrition warfare using artillery, where they enjoy a 10-to-1 advantage against the Ukrainians. A comment from a blogger:
I’ve explained before that the reason Ukrainian AD is very difficult to fully destroy/degrade by way of SEAD/DEAD, is because they no longer operate in ‘hot’ mode with the radars turned on, just blindly scanning the skies hoping to catch a Russian plane. If they did that, Russian Su-30mk’s, Su-34’s, Su-35’s armed with anti-radiation Kh-31P’s would ‘wild weasel’ them out of existence.
But with these systems, Ukraine can operate its AD with radars ‘cold’, i.e. turned off, and use a combination of forward observers to notify them if/when a plane is in the area, or some other detection system like US AWACs, fed directly to their networked tablet. And only then, the Ukrainian AD can turn on its radar—now that it knows exactly where the Russian plane is already—and line up a shot, not having to fear being countered because they will turn the radar off again right afterwards.
source: US/NATO ISR Addendum: Deep Dive Into The Delta Leaks
Michael L.
I don't follow you. Lukashenko is a Putin ally and client. If Putin wanted Lukashenko to host, so to speak, Prigozhin and Wagner, he could have just asked, or "asked," him. And now there's some reporting (via radio reports, presumably in print too) that it's not even clear that Prigozhin is in Belarus.
Moreover, why would Putin try another drive on Kiev right now? And why rely entirely on mercenaries, which is what the Wagner group is, to do it? Wouldn't he want some regular soldiers involved? The goal of taking the capital and replacing the current Ukrainian govt may remain a desideratum of Putin, but I think he may know it's not a realistic war aim, not at the moment. I don't think your theory makes a great deal of sense. Though admittedly, no one on the outside seems to be sure of what's going on.
What is clear is that Russia is fighting the war in a brutal manner. Today a Russian missile hit a pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk, killing 11 and wounding 61.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-kramatorsk-missle-attack-restaurant-afeae73466c0260a1ed3c355532f21c8
p.s. Mearsheimer has an analysis of what he thinks the future trajectory of the conflict will be. It's on his Substack.
The initial Russian drive on Kiev seemed less than competent, to put it mildly, and that was before a lot of Western aid kicked in. They seem to be performing better in a defensive posture. They've leveled some cities to the ground, hung on to some territory, killed an untold number of civilians, and committed atrocities.
One thing that is abundantly clear from the Russian military's performance (though it was prob clear already from behavior in Syria and Chechnya, etc.) is that its battlefield doctrine, for lack of a better word, is entirely unconcerned with the laws of armed conflict (also known, somewhat misleadingly, as IHL, or intl humanitarian law). I mean, they could not care less.
The U.S.'s use of drone strikes in the Afghanistan/Pakistan area and elsewhere certainly left/leaves much to be desired in terms of minimizing civilian casualties, ditto for the air strikes in the anti-ISIS campaign, but at least the U.S. military makes some effort to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. The Russian military makes basically none. Firing missiles intentionally at a pizza restaurant is an act of terror. For the military of a what passes for a great power to be doing this in 2023, just as its air force deliberately bombed hospitals in Syria in recent years, is beyond a disgrace.
I believe Putin wants to add another front to the current war in Ukraine. Wagner may be the force that has the capability to hold its own north of Kiev. The war began with Russia invading from the north & threatening from the east. All of Putin's best troops were originally in the east. When Ukraine's troops were able to use special high-tech Western weapons to defeat Russian armored columns from the north, the two front war disintegrated into a eastern front war only.
So now instead of attacking from the north with futile tactics and the worst troops, the best troops with the best tactics & leadership will try to invade from the north. I believe.
If President Zelensky is attacked from the north by Wagner, he has one of two options. Either he (1) withdraws his best troops from the eastern front to deal with the northern invasion, (& the eastern front with the worst Russian troops will be able to easily butt heads & perhaps gain ground in eastern Ukraine), or he (2) can defend Kiev with just the garrison troops & least capable infantry divisions surrounding Kiev.
So Putin can win in one of two almost guaranteed ways. He can either obtain Kiev (possibly winning the war for Russia's forces), or reestablish his hold on eastern Ukraine with a firmer grip on power there. Of course, I believe all this MAY happen.
LFC
Of course, the effect on the Russian people by making a go for the capital has two results.
1. It gets the Russian populaces minds partially out of the war.
2. It makes Putin look like a great leader of the Russian people.
Moscow should pin a Gold Star on Wagner's boss for such an outcome that helps them keep their power domestically.
Plus, it allows Putin to reposition Russian troops without suspicion. This would give Wagner the element of surprise on the northern front.
Mearsheimer thinks the likely outcome of the whole thing will be a kind of frozen conflict w Russia in control of the territory in the east it has purported to annex and Ukraine reduced to what M. calls a rump state. However, that's just one scenario. On my blog a while back I suggested a possible frozen-conflict ending but of a somewhat different sort.
Michael
In the initial drive for Kiev the Russians stupidly positioned their tanks in long single-file columns on narrow roads. Another failed drive for the capital will not make Putin look like "a great leader of the Russian people" but rather a feckless idiot.
Professor Wolff, what do you think will be the impact of race makeup in the development extreme right wing/ fascist movements. It seems clear to me that Whites will no longer be a majority in the nation in the next couple of decades. Trump Supporters can whine and foam at the mouth but nothing can stop the future.
LFC,
Firing missiles intentionally at a pizza restaurant is an act of terror.
Check out his article and note the part near the bottom with the picture. Here's a quote:
Video from the scene taken immediately after the event show English speaking men with the one helping a wounded exposing a quad angle tattoo with the number 3 written in it on his right arm (see at 7 sec in).
This is said to be a sign of the 3rd Ranger Battalion of the U.S. army which is a part of the U.S. special operation forces.
Another video taken during rubble clearing at night has a (British?) English speaker saying "Look what these bastards are doing to this country. There's soldiers under this rubble all over."
This seems to confirm that the hotel complex and its restaurant were not exclusively used for civilian purposes but housed and catered to foreign soldiers.
You can see the tattoo in the Twitter video here:
First minutes after attack in Kramatorsk.
Here's another Twitter video:
In Kramatorsk, English-speaking "mercenaires" near the building that was shelled. Judging by the tattoo, one of them is a veteran of the 3rd Ranger Battalion of the US Army.
Also, this:
The use of human shields is forbidden by Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. It is also a specific intent war crime as codified in the Rome Statute, which was adopted in 1998. The language of the Rome Statute prohibits "utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas, or military forces immune from military operations."
The link to the article I quoted above (Moon of Alabama):
Ukraine SitRep: Prigozhin Affair - Kramatorsk Missile Attack
LFC
"Another failed drive for the capital will not make Putin look like "a great leader of the Russian people" but rather a feckless idiot."
Another failed drive might, but who says another drive to the capital will fail? Hannibal wiped out 3 large Roman armies, until the Romans learned from their mistakes, and Fabius 'the stayer' (& the shield of Rome) & Marcellus (the spear of Rome), checked Hannibal.
Ahmed Fares
The Moon of Alabama post refers to the missile strike as being of "unknown provenance" [sic!].
I read a few of the comments attached. One of them, which actually has nothing to do with the topic at hand, is nothing short of disgusting in its language.
If you prefer to believe that the hotel and restaurant were full of U.S. and British special forces etc etc, fine.
This will be my last comment here for a while on Ukraine, so feel free to flood the comments section here with links to Moon of Alabama if you want. I don't think I'll be following them.
My point is not that the meaning of the word ‘fascism’ doesn’t change - of course it does. My point, rather, is that it is ridiculous to talk of current conditions as if they bear any actual relationship to the 1920-30s Italy/Germany/Spain, an analogy that is constantly brought up on this blog. And in any case, Trump is more of a populist, wannabe strong man than anything else.
Anonymous,
There are tight and loose definitions of fascism.
For example, Eric Hobsbawm in the Age of Extremes does not consider Franco to have been a fascist, but a traditional rightwing authoritarian.
In Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship there was a debate on the left whether Pinochet was a fascist or a typical Latinamerican rightwing strongman.
In any case, if someone says they fear that a Trump victory will bring fascism, they're not making an affirmation of political theory, but expressing a justifiable fear that we here in this blog all share.
Anonymous @10:57 a.m.
The original post here does not "talk of current conditions as if they bear any actual relationship to the 1920-30s Italy/Germany/Spain." Rather, the original post mentions Germany, Italy, and Spain as examples of authoritarianism (or more specifically right-wing authoritarianism), which of course they were.
Quoting the last sentence of the post: "...I confess that until now I had not really feared that America might go the way of Germany or Spain or Italy, or any of the other countries that descended into authoritarian rule." (emphasis added)
Very cute, LFC, but I did say ‘constantly brought up’ on this post. Not long ago there was a post that said something like ‘now I know what it must have felt like in the 1920-30s Italy/Germany/Spain’. Look it up, I don’t think you are so secure in your interpretation as you think you are - and why bring up that period AT ALL in relation to the current state of affairs in the US anyway?
I did not realise, s.w., that a blog I believe the chief blogger defined quite recently as only tangentially focussed on political matters rather than philosophical ones, had a criterion for entry: “a justifiable fear that we here in this blog all share.”
Anonymous,
Professor Wolff is one of the foremost analytic philosophers of the second half of the 20th century and in addition, was one of the founders of the social science program at Harvard.
I imagine that he knows as well as you and I do that the conversation about what constitutes fascism can be complex.
Sometimes he talks to us as a philosopher, sometimes he talks to us as a concerned citizen, sometimes he talks to us with an irony that is difficult to capture. Like any complex and highly intelligent human being, he has many personae.
It takes a while to get to know him well and since I've been here since 2016, I assure that he's worth the effort of getting to know him.
Anonymous,
If it were the case that only cranks were using the term "fascism" w/ respect to aspects of the U.S. political scene, then I could see your position.
But it's not the case. Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works is not written by a crank but by a Yale philosophy professor. I'm not sure I agree with everything he says there, but it's a view that is not obviously and totally wrong. His point is not that the U.S. in 2023 is like Germany in 1933 but rather that certain features of political discourse can be seen in a variety of contexts: idealization of a mythic past, anti-intellectualism and disdain for expertise, hypernationalism and xenophobia, the mobilization of what might be understandable resentments or anxieties by demagogues, etc.
If you don't like the F-word and think it's misleading, don't use it. But I can't get similarly exercised about its use when I think about what happened on 1/6/21 (or British style 6/1/21). I don't tend to use the word much myself in relation to the contemporary U.S., but I also don't get highly upset about its use.
The extreme right-wing parts of the U.S. political scene -- Marjorie Taylor Greene, Michael Flynn, Lauren Boebert, the Freedom Caucus, etc., the militia movements -- are fairly frightening. I think you're in the UK (?), Anonymous, so maybe you're not as aware of this.
anon., res ipsa loquitur:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1675106793079590912
DeSantis reminds me of a petty middle-ages satrap who can't decide which warlord he wants to serve while conspiring to overthrow them all.
re: fixing operation
Ukraine moves soldiers north to protect its border from a possible invasion by mercenary Wagner troops
Russian rebel warlord Prigozhin builds new base for 8,000 men from his Wagner private army in Belarus, satellite pictures show
AF, If L & P keep fooling around Belarus will also be in NATO. By the time Wagner gets its act together Ukraine will have F-16s & 18s as well as ATACMs and cluster munitions. Also, I see a former Crimea prosecutor has "drowned" while swimming the Volga.
aaall,
More wonders weapons, seriously?
As HIMARS, Javelins, and M777s fail in Ukraine, the US donates a new wonder weapon, the Bradley IFV
Alligators (KA-52s). Oh, my!
New Round of Ka-52 Destructions of AFU Bradleys and Other Vehicles
Also, the Russians see your F-16s/F-18s and raise you S-400.
Ten minutes of Lancet drones at work.
Summary of the Lancet suicide drone at work …
These things are cheap.
Bendett said that, according to publicly available Russian sources, a Lancet drone costs approximately 3 million roubles (around $35,000).
A description of what's happening in the video above between the UAV and the Lancet:
The UAV is a scout. The scout is made according to the "flying wing" scheme. It is somewhat similar to the "Eagle", but specially adapted for the tasks of reconnaissance, recognition and classification of the object.
They soar in the sky on an almost silent electric motor for 5 hours. With the help of convolutional networks of the latest generation, such a reconnaissance UAV easily detects enemy targets and transmits images of identified objects to the Lancet high-performance microcomputer which in turn manages the priorities of the goals. According to the available information, neural networks best detect moving objects. They also perfectly recognize objects under disguise. But unfortunately, they still do not work well with the layouts of the equipment.
That's not all! Lancets use convolutional neural networks for visual odometry! What is visual odometry? In simple terms, this is the ability to navigate on the ground without GPS or GLONASS. The AI simply compares the images from the camera of the reconnaissance UAV with what is in the memory card. It's like a person who is second once he arrives at the place and says - Oh! I was here! There 's a cool cafe around the corner. That's why it's impossible to silence the Lancet's navigation with GNSS suppression. Because he doesn't need this navigation. Thanks to convolutional neural networks!
American Marine Corps Veteran Mercenary Confirmed Killed in Kramatorsk "Pizzeria" Strike
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