After a few weeks of being seemingly stunned by the election of Donald Trump to a second term, the PBS News Hour is pumping up the left-wing resistance (if it’s still out there), throwing out scary words like “fascist” to describe the incoming Trump administration.
The latest example came Wednesday evening courtesy of PBS’s most biased reporter Laura Barron-Lopez, and Yale University leftist professor Jason Stanley, who has been calling Trump a fascist without results for six years, and is author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works.
Guest anchor William Brangham prepped the audience with fearful rhetoric before the segment: "….Still to come, how Donald Trump's reelection fits into a broader acceptance of authoritarian leadership." With the words "Extremism in America" on screen under a picture of Trump, Brangham and Lopez kicked off the one-sided smearing:
William Brangham: President-elect Donald Trump ran a lot of his campaign promising retribution for his enemies and asking absolute loyalty from his supporters. Now, as he prepares for a second term in office, Laura Barron-Lopez has a look at what that might mean for the future of U.S. democracy.
Laura Barron-Lopez: William, according to the Associated Press, 55 percent of voters said they were very or somewhat concerned that Trump would steer the U.S. toward becoming an authoritarian country, one where a single leader or small group has unchecked power. Still, more than one in 10 of those voters supported him anyways. To discuss this further, I'm joined by Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future….
Who answers a poll with "I fear he's an authoritarian, but I voted for him any way"? And who promotes that poll?
Like many leftists, Barron-Lopez misquoted Trump's "dictator for a day" joke with Sean Hannity, and his talk of using the military during times of unrest. Like...January 6?
Barron-Lopez: President-elect Trump has openly embraced a number of strongman leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Trump has also said that he would be a dictator for a day. He has expressed a desire to seek revenge against his political enemies, and he's also threatened to use the military against civilians during times of civil unrest. If Donald Trump ends up governing like a strongman, what does that mean for the future of democracy?
Stanley: He will end up governing like a strongman. He generally does what he says, which is why voters consider him authentic, perhaps, rightfully so. He's appointed Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary, whose writings show that he regards leftists, political opponents, university professors as the enemy, as the real enemy….For example, Orban took over the media, forcing the media to sell to his cronies and friends. And the thought was, the United States is too large for that. However, couldn't Elon Musk just buy the whole media?
The left’s aversion both to free expression online and to rich people owning media outlets (Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post and Ted Turner, to name two) is of very recent vintage, suggesting political hypocrisy.
Barron-Lopez invited her guest to replay a hysterical historical reference.
Barron-Lopez: You said before that the signs were there in terms of showing that voters may very well say yes to a strongman leader. Are there any historical parallels, past examples that you think mirror the moment that the country is in right now?
Stanley: ….What we're seeing here in terms of the sort of character of Trump, the sort of self-representation, as theorists like Ruth Ben-Ghiat have correctly pointed out, is something like Mussolini. There's lots of differences in underlying ideology, but what we have got is something similar to a fascist-supporting group….
Ben-Ghiat, another PBS favorite, has embarrassed herself there on a few occasions, suggesting Trump would herd his political enemies into camps.
Barron-Lopez: What could a second Trump term mean in terms of emboldening extremists or those who hold far-right views about the future of the country?
Stanley: ….These are people who believe that this is a Christian nation, that it's being ruined by secularists, everyone who's not a Christian nationalist or a virulent Trump supporter is a Marxist. This is fascism when you call everyone who is not a supporter of the leader a Marxist. You call your normal political opponents Marxists. You target the schools and universities and the press. You say they're controlled by Marxists. This is the dominant vocabulary of the Trumpist movement….
So a liberal accusing Trump of being fascist is only being factual -- but a Trump supporter calling a Trump-hater Marxist is actually being a fascist? Even when Trump opponents are openly Marxist, public broadcasters call it "baseless" to identify them that way. They won't identify them as "Extremism in America."
Stanley donated a whopping $5,000 to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, after previously giving to leftists Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). PBS didn’t bother disclosing those facts. Also note that Stanley has been calling Trump a fascist for at least six years now and yet still somehow remains a free man, which rather calls into question the former and future president’s fascist bona fides.
This hysterical segment was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular.
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS News Hour
11/27/24
7:32:09 p.m. (ET)
William Brangham: President-elect Donald Trump ran a lot of his campaign promising retribution for his enemies and asking absolute loyalty from his supporters.
Now, as he prepares for a second term in office, Laura Barron-Lopez has a look at what that might mean for the future of U.S. democracy.
Laura Barron-Lopez: William, according to the Associated Press, 55 percent of voters said they were very or somewhat concerned that Trump would steer the U.S. toward becoming an authoritarian country, one where a single leader or small group has unchecked power.
Still, more than one in 10 of those voters supported him anyways.
To discuss this further, I'm joined by Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of "Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future."
Professor Stanley, thank you so much for joining. Why did voters on one hand acknowledge and express fear that the country could very well tip towards authoritarianism under Trump, but then on the other hand still vote for him?
Jason Stanley, Yale University: The idea that democracy is a value upon which voters vote or place enormous priority on is false.
Voters prize a number of things over democracy, especially voters who have regularly lived in a country where you can replace leaders and parties by elections. The idea that democracy should be a value, well, that's something that schools and universities teach. That's something we try to emphasize, but it doesn't mean that people are born that way.
Laura Barron-Lopez: President-elect Trump has openly embraced a number of strongman leaders, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Trump has also said that he would be a dictator for a day. He has expressed a desire to seek revenge against his political enemies, and he's also threatened to use the military against civilians during times of civil unrest. If Donald Trump ends up governing like a strongman, what does that mean for the future of democracy?
Jason Stanley: He will end up governing like a strongman. He generally does what he says, which is why voters consider him authentic, perhaps, rightfully so.
He's appointed Pete Hegseth as his defense secretary, whose writings show that he regards leftists, political opponents, university professors as the enemy, as the real enemy. So, every indication we have is that he's going to rule like an authoritarian and maybe not step down from power, certainly adjust the levers of power in our very flawed democracy so that Trumpism remains in power for some time to come, perhaps a very long time to come.
And we know that they have been taking advice from Orban. And for a long time, people said, including me, that the United States was too large to do what Orban did. For example, Orban took over the media, forcing the media to sell to his cronies and friends. And the thought was, the United States is too large for that.
However, couldn't Elon Musk just buy the whole media?
Laura Barron-Lopez: You said before that the signs were there in terms of showing that voters may very well say yes to a strongman leader.
Are there any historical parallels, past examples that you think mirror the moment that the country is in right now?
Jason Stanley: Every authoritarian situation is somewhat different, but there's regularities of structure.
Putin, for example, is an extremely popular leader in Russia, right? I mean, people would vote for him. What we're seeing here in terms of the sort of character of Trump, the sort of self-representation, as theorists like Ruth Ben-Ghiat have correctly pointed out, is something like Mussolini.
There's lots of differences in underlying ideology, but what we have got is something similar to a fascist-supporting group. We have got billionaire oligarchs and Christian nationalists, so both sort of radical and antidemocratic.
And once those two groups — once you have a large group of Christian nationalists or ethnic nationalists, plus oligarchs, together in support, it's very hard to defeat that coalition.
Laura Barron-Lopez: What could a second Trump term mean in terms of emboldening extremists or those who hold far right views about the future of the country?
Jason Stanley: Well, I mean, those are the people he's taken into power, he's proposing to take into power. These are people who believe that this is a Christian nation, that it's being ruined by secularists, everyone who's not a Christian nationalist or a virulent Trump supporter is a Marxist.
This is fascism when you call everyone who is not a supporter of the leader a Marxist. You call your normal political opponents Marxists. You target the schools and universities and the press. You say they're controlled by Marxists. This is the dominant vocabulary of the Trumpist movement.
And what it augurs is very problematic and worrisome. But I don't think what will result is less popularity for the strongman leader. Democracy is something you have to fight for. You have to fight for its values. You have to teach its values that every citizen is important, every citizen's perspective is important. And those aren't values we're born with. And as they attack the institutions that defend those values, the press, the universities and the schools, we will see a democratic culture, what we have of a democratic culture disappearing.
