Mount Holyoke College Course Examines Fascism from ‘Mussolini to Trump’
“aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century culture in relation to Benito Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship”
Trump is not a fascist and the people at Mount Holyoke know this. They just have Trump Derangement Syndrome and this makes them feel better.
The College Fix reported:
College class studies fascism from ‘Mussolini to Trump’
A 15-year-old advanced topics in Italian class at Mount Holyoke College that studies fascism with a particular focus on the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini has updated its course content to include President Donald Trump.
Taught entirely in Italian this spring semester, “Fascisms” examines literary trends, architecture, activism and visual arts to explore “aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century culture in relation to Benito Mussolini’s Fascist dictatorship,” according to its online course description.
“From Italian Futurism to today’s Trump administration, we will follow the development of Fascism(s) with some of the authors who lived through it and who narrated their experience,” it states.
Dr. Ombretta Frau, who teaches the course at the women’s college, is the former president of the Women’s Studies Caucus of the American Association for Italian Studies.
She said the course is “not about President Trump,” in an email to The College Fix. She declined to comment further except to say “I do not normally discuss my courses with people who are not my students or colleagues. I teach literature, mostly fiction, that was published in Italy during fascist times and later.”
The course description, however, does indicate the Trump administration will be in some way likened with the reign of Mussolini. Frau would also not be the first professor of Italian studies to do so.
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Gee, President Trump is accused of being a Fascist for following the law, like
abolishing President Obama’s unconstitutional “DACA” ruling, and threw it back to Congress,
cancelling President Obama’s extra constitutional “Paris Agreement” executive decision- no treaty had been approved by Congress,
urging Congress to eliminate the unconstitutional penalty fee in the ACA for NOT buying insurance.
President Trump’s Cabinet Secretary DeVos rescinded in September the Obama-era guidelines for colleges on how to deal with campus sexual assault investigations. In its place are temporary guidelines that she said will “treat all students fairly.” DeVos and other Republicans had been critical of the Obama administration’s approach to the campus sexual assault epidemic as they said the system denied the due process rights of those accused.
So, contrary to lies spewed by Democrats suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, President Trump has been DISMANTLING unconstitutional power grabs by the PRIOR administration.
In contrast,
President Obama has frequently expressed his frustration with the freedom of the internet, calling for it to be regulated.
“Part of ways changed in politics is social media and how people are receiving information,” he griped during a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after Donald Trump was elected president. “It’s easier to make negative attacks and simplistic slogans than it is to communicate complex policies.”
In October 2016, Obama proposed “truthiness tests” for media companies online.
“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to,” he said.
Using the rhetoric in ” “1984”, (“War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”), he initiated “Net Neutrality”. Fortunately, that monstrosity was repealed recently before any harm could be done.
It was President Obama’s administration that locked up a Christian Copt, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, for exercising his first amendment right to post an anti-Muslim video. Federal Prosecuters in the Obama administration found his use of the Internet to post the video violated his terms of probation. In other words, the Obama Administration criminalized free speech.
It was President Obama’s administration that arrested Dinesh D’Souzafor violating campaign finance laws after D’Souza released 2016: Obama’s America, a movie that was critical of Obama. The first amendment is to protect political speech, which was suppressed by the fascist Obama administration.The war on media is only dangerous when the first amendment is violated, as under President Obama.
Um, no. While it’s troubling that the administration went to the trouble of tracking him down, and that it did so purely for its own political purposes, his use of the internet to post that video undoubtedly did violate the terms of his probation. How can you possibly dispute that?
Is it really your position that once a person has engaged in political speech (as most people have done at some point in their lives) the first amendment protects him forever after from being arrested, no matter what crimes he commits? Do you think D’Souza could now rob a bank and enjoy immunity simply because he once released a political movie?
Or are you dishonestly trying to make the reader believe that the charges on which he was arrested and convicted were somehow related to the movie?
The word Fascist is interesting. It’s a very slippery word, of any definition but nearly always used today with malice, as a crude cudgel. Mussolini is said to have invented the term, and certainly history, since he took power in Italy, backs up that theory. He used it with reverence. And he used it with respect! But I think even he did not fully understand what he meant by it, although his definition was far more precise and apt than most who have used it.
Today it means “bogeyman wielding the sovereign power of a mighty government”. A very evil and tyrannical bogeyman like HItler became when the Germans and many Europeans gave have hundreds of millions of Facebook likes. Each “like” meant usually that one HATED the dirty, fithy, grubbing , malevolently plotting and larcenous Jews. That was then, 1935 et seq. Up though Juilius Streicher stepped off into HELL on a long noose yelling “PURIMFEST 1946!”.
But Mussolini in his time, pre-Hitler’s rise, was very influential and his Fascism was considered a wonderful new ideal of a properly energetic government. The grand witness to that high regard that Fascism enjoyed in the West and in the East too, is found all over the world if one dares look. At Hoover Dawn, in the Federal Triangle Edifices (The FBI and DOJ buildings, the Agriculture Department) all this AMERICAN works — in the eras of Hoover, FDR, even continuing through the middle and worst of the horrible Gog-Magog wars into Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, and even unto the rest through Trump himself: the grandeur of a mighty government that is to be worshipped!
Yes, even Trump. But Trump is pulling away from it. For example today he calls for a commercialization of the International Space Station. If that were to happen it could still be under the Big Top umbrella of Mussolini’s Fascist ideal, for in that ideal both individuals and companies (whether societies anonymous. established clubs, or just mangy packs of humans met for a soccer match) only exists to serve the interests of are to worship the state.
But I do not think Trump was that aspect of Fascism, as Mussolini defined it. Trump wants men to worship the One God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Esau and Jacob. And also the honest God of Ishmael. The God who spoke for days and days with Moses.
But Trump wants that grandeur, MAGA! For a nation, America.
There was a reason that great Americans like FDR, like Henry Ford, like Charles Lindbergh respected Mussolini’s fascism. Mussolini it is said as aphorism: “Made the trains run on time.”
Well, that’s wasn’t quite true in reality — Italians are Italians, the trains will run when they run. But the idea of getting things done right, of getting things done — that is very American. Even when it encompassed Fascism.