Benjamin had earlier already explored how modern mass media like photography and film affected the structure of memory and perception itself .
The ways we remember fascism as a mass movement , the Third Reich , and the Holocaust became a key theme for me and others in the United States in the 1970s . It shaped our journal New German Critique , dedicated to debates about 20 th -century German culture and politics . You can imagine our surprise when we discovered in the last decade how Critical Theory , in a completely mangled and distorted form , has become the bête noire of the radicals and intent on minority rule via voting rights manipulations . One of the many signs pointing to fascism is the recently discovered script of a political take-over Trump has laid down in his elaborate plan to purge the non-partisan federal bureaucracy should he be re-elected . He called it Schedule F , which reminds me of Adorno ’ s “ F scale ” in The Authoritarian Personality ( 1950 ), the fascism scale that identified key features of the potentially fascist personality . I ’ m not sure what the F stands for in the Trumpish mind . But Schedule Fascism is what it is . Under Nazi rule , it was called Gleichschaltung . alt-right in the United States . The Frankfurt School is cited as the gravedigger of American democracy . American higher education has allegedly been taken over by Cultural Marxism , which to the right wing culture warriors includes feminism , LGBTQ rights and critical race theory . You ask why ? Well , isn ’ t it always the Jews who are first targeted when things are perceived to go wrong ? ‘ Frankfurt School ’ has become a code word in anti-Semitism . The meme of “ Cultural Marxism ” in turn serves the rightwingers ’ clarion calls to purge higher education , major sites of cultural diversity struggles . Following Andrew Breitbart , they define politics as downstream from culture , thus the American Right ’ s focus on cultural issues . The ultimate goal : re-elect Trump and assert white supremacy .
3 . What tools can memory give us to combat the global growth of extreme right-wing parties and the democratic reversals they advocate ?
AH : The major focus of memory culture in past decades were the victims of state violence , their suffering and trauma , and the transmission of that trauma to the post-memory of the subsequent generation . Witness testimony , mourning , memorials , counter-monuments and Truth Commissions were central to debates about dark histories across the world . Fascism itself seemed a thing of the past . At a time , however , when fascism is resurfacing in a new guise in many parts of the world , memory work has to turn to the figure of the perpetrator , to the structural dimensions
2 . Is Trumpism one of the fascisms of the 21 st century ? Where does that leave Republican conservatives ?
AH : I think that the earlier debate whether Trumpism is a populism or indeed a 21 st century fascism is over . Trumpism as a social movement is a new form of fascism . And terms like illiberal democracy , as championed by Orban in Hungary , are just verbal cosmetics . January 6 , 2021 stands for what Hannah Arendt in her analysis of the Hitler which produce right wing radicalism grounded in everyday experience , and to the ways in which even bystanders are implicated in processes of cultural and political change they may abhor . Memory battles take a new , ever more antagonistic form . It is no longer just a question of unearthing an erased or disremembered past . It is a battle against right-wing historical falsification , illusionary nostalgias and conspiracy theories , in a word , against fake histories of past and present produced by right wing media top down , and social media bottom up . regime called “ the temporary alliance of the elite and the mob .” Traditional Republican conservatives have been totally sidelined , even censored by the Republican Party , which is dominated by right wing
36
Observing Memories Issue 6