Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

"Semifascism" and Trump

I don't know anything about this Hamid character being attacked (although he sounds "too stupid to warrant a response," to borrow Gore Vidal's famous putdown), but this is exactly right:

Shadi speaks of fascism as an ideology like Communism or liberalism, but as the highly-respected scholar Robert Paxton points out fascism is less a coherent ideology than a set of “mobilizing passions:”

• a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

• the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual

• the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

• dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

• the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

• the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny;

• the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;

• the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;

• the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.

Now obviously some of these features apply more to Trumpism than others, so “semi-fascism” seems to be right on the money.

Free college causes fascism, the dangers of an "educated proletariat"...

...and other oddities from the early days of the Republican war on higher education (with a focus on Reagan and the University of California system in the 1960s and 1970s).

(Thanks to Joshua Selby for the pointer.)

Federal judge in Florida enjoins the blatantly unconstitutional "Stop Woke" act

The opinion is here.  Judge Walker was not amused by Gov. Viktor DeSantis's outrageous legislation:

In the popular television series Stranger Things, the “upside down” describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world…..Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely

Now, like the heroine in Stranger Things, this Court is once again asked to pull Florida back from the upside down. Before this Court is a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking this Court to enjoin a host of Government officials from enforcing portions of the Individual Freedom Act—a law that prohibits employers from endorsing any of eight concepts during any mandatory employment activity.  Because the challenged provision of the Act is a naked viewpoint-based regulation on speech that does not pass strict scrutiny, Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, ECF No. 18, is GRANTED in part.

(A broader constitutional challenge [on behalf of students and teachers] to the legislation is also being mounted by the  ACLU, since the particular issue here [described in the second paragraph, above] was more narrow.)

UPDATE:  Reader Brock Sides points out to me that footnote 12 in the Court's opinion cites Kant, Nietzsche, and Merleau-Ponty on the question of what "objectivity" is and whether it is possible!

Former Delta flight attendant sues after being fired for attacking Trump as a racist on her Facebook page

The amazing part is that she has to sue on grounds of race discrimination, since private employees have no legal protection in the U.S. from being sanctioned by their employer for speech on matters of public interest.  (A public employee has some protection on this score--see the discussion of the Pickering test here.)   Faculty at most private universities are in  the unique position of enjoying the right to speak on matters of public interest without fear of sanction by their employer, thanks to the AAUP definition of academic freedom.  But there is no reason in a supposedly free and democratic society that all employees should not enjoy some version of that right.

The American system of legalized bribery of public officials

Many folks have puzzled about the behavior of the nominally Democratic Senator from Arizona, Kryrsten Synema, but I suspect in most cases the explanation involves payoffs known as campaign contributions.

India was actually the first country to ban "The Satanic Verses"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY--UPDATED

Longtime reader Ruchira Paul writes "that the Indian government led by the Congress Party banned The Satanic Verses months before Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa. Had it not been for South Asian Muslims rioting (never having read the book), the dying Iranian cleric may never have even heard of Rushdie's book."  She points me to this article, adding:

Th[is] piece is a bit biased against the Congress Party but the facts are mostly correct. The very first review of The Satanic Verses in the world most likely appeared in the leading Indian journal "India Today." The reviewer was a friend of Rushdie's who was given a pre-publication copy of the book. There were a few provocative quotes in the review (without proper context) which lit the fire among the South Asian Muslim communities in India and later in the UK and Pakistan. The reviewer claims that the quotes had been inserted into the piece by an editor without her knowledge! Who knows what actually happened. But we all know what ensued. 

UPDATE:   Another longtime reader, Dean Rowan, kindly sent along a link to the original India Today review.

Two sides to every issue: the civilized and the barbaric

From CNN:

[S]everal hardline Iranian newspapers poured praise on Matar [Rushdie's assailant] on Saturday, including the conservative Kayhan newspaper, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by [Ayatollah] Khamenei.  

 

"A thousand bravos, a hundred God blesses. His hand must be kissed... Bravo to the warrior and dutiful man who attacked the Apostate and wicked Salman Rushdie. The hand of the warrior must be kissed. He tore the vein of Rushdie's neck," the paper said.

 

Another hardline newspaper, Khorasan, published a headline, "The Devil on the Path to Hell" while showing a picture of Rushdie on a stretcher.

 

Time to remember the Revolutionary Association of Women of Aghanistan:  "Fundamentalism is the mortal enemy of all civilized humanity."

Trump's "Brownshirts" now threatening judge who signed off on the warrant to search his property

First we had the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol, and now we have threats against federal officials, including judges:

Far-right extremists on pro-Donald Trump message boards and social networks are making violent, antisemitic threats against the judge who reportedly signed the warrant that allowed the FBI to search the former president's Mar-a-Lago property in Florida.  Multiple members of these toxic online communities are even posting what appears to be Judge Bruce Reinhart’s home address, phone numbers, and names of his family members alongside threats of extreme violence.

Of course, some of these folks are just keyboard warriors, but not all are.  As long as the lawful authoriteis with the guns--the police, FBI, Federal Marshalls etc.--step up and protect the judges and others who preserve the rule of law in a democratic society, we can weather these outbursts.  The tipping point will come when the keyboard warriors also turn out to be the people charged with preserving the rule of law with force when needed.

ADDENDUM:  A timely example, alas, that the crazies are not all keyboard warriors.

On Orban and his apologists, and Hungary's history

Exactly right.

UNC-Chapel Hill adopts UChicago's "Kalven Report" principles

This is very good news for faculty there (especially given recent academic freedom violations), and I hope it signals broader adoptions of the Kalven Report.

Harry Kalven, the author of the report, was a preeminent First Amendment scholar, who had a deep understanding of academic freedom (see an earlier discussion at my law school blog).  Twenty years ago, long before I was at Chicago or even knew of the Kalven Report, I recall writing to the chemist Larry Faulkner, then the President of the University of Texas at Austin, criticizing him for his public critique of a UT Austin professor's remarks about 9/11.  President Faulkner responded courteously, although he disagreed.  His political judgment may have been sound--in an ass-backwards state like Texas with an excellent university dependent on public support, the President may have needed to say something.  But from an academic freedom standpoint, this was a failure:  Presidents, Provosts, Deans, and Chairs are to be "seen and not heard," unless they are speaking about university business.   I have written before about this at CHE, but the basic rule when complaints come in about "Professor X said Y" should be:  "Individual faculty have the right to express their views on matters of public interest, and they speak for themselves not the institution." Period.  That's it. No apologies or explanations. 

Two observations about yesterday's "midterm" elections in the U.S.

Abortion will be a winning issue for Democrats in the fall, thanks to the super-legislature's annihilation of the right.  Kansas, an extremely "conservative" (read:  religious reactionary) state, nonetheless voted by a lopdsided margin in favor of abortion rights. 

Meanwhile, Arizona Republicans nominated a fascist in-all-but-name for the Senate contest against the incumbent Democrat.   This little fascist is a protege of the oligarch Peter Thiel, whose contempt for democratic and liberal values is quite open.

Trump's plan to fill the federal civil service with lackeys in a second term

This is how fascism works at the micro-level.

On living in the midst of "gun culture"...

...in this case in Kentucky.  Quite remarkable.  (It may be behind the Washington Post firewall, however.)

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder

Many readers skeptical of the realist interpretation of events in Ukraine (which I have emphasized, since they are the correct ones, as they tend to be everywhere) have pointed me to the writings of Snyder, an historian of Central and Eastern Europe at Yale.  His writings have mostly struck me as naive (treating every bit of Russian domestic propaganda literally) and moralistic psychologizing (Putin is an evil man influenced by evil people!).  Dr. Roger Albin, a longtime reader, called my attention to this striking review of Snyder's Bloodlands by Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian:

The fundamental reason…for the book’s failure to give an adequate account of the genesis of the Final Solution, is that Snyder isn’t seriously interested in explaining anything. What he really wants to do is to tell us about the sufferings of the people who lived in the area he knows most about. Assuming we know nothing about any of this, he bludgeons us with facts and figures about atrocities and mass murders until we’re reeling from it all…

Equally anonymous [as the victims] are the men who planned and executed the atrocities. Snyder shows no interest in their character or motivation, in what turned them into torturers and killers. Nor does he have much to say about ideology, despite the fact that this was the driving force of mass murder in both the Nazi and Soviet cases. And the book gives us no sense at all of the ‘bloodlands’ as a region; its physical, social and cultural features are nowhere described; it too has no real identity here. That’s because it’s an entirely artificial construct – a label for the location of mass murder, nothing more.

The judge who presided over a successful Establishment Clause challenge to an attempt to insert "intelligent design" creationism into a public school curriculum...

...comments on the super-legislatures latest evisceration of the increasingly attenuated "separation" between church and state.

(Thanks to Glenn Branch for the pointer.)

The super-legislature's power grab in the case of environmental law

An informative analysis by a longtime Washington, D.C. lawyer.

The super-legislature's mischief this year went beyond abortion, gun control, and religion and the public sphere

Jason Steed, an appellate lawyer in Texas (and former student of mine from my time at the University of Texas at Austin), has a striking thread on Twitter compiling all the bad things the court did.

A comment on the current pathology of the U.S. legal system

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JUNE 25, SINCE BOTH BITS OF MISCHIEF HAVE COME TO PASS--ON THE ROAD, RIGHT NOW, SO DON'T HAVE TIME TO WRITE MORE

Very soon, the super-legislature of the United States is likely to decide that there is no constitutional right to abortion, and may also loosen existing gun regulations even further.   When an earlier super-legislature, the Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s, made decisions, they mostly made life better in the benighted states of America--and they were also more in sync with prevailing political opinion.   The current incarnation of the super-legislature, dominated as it is by religious reactionaries, is poised to make life much worse.

All of this results, in the U.S., from the doctrine of "judicial supremacy" in matters of constitutional law:  the Supreme Court gets to say what the Constitution means, and all other political branches must defer.  (This has no basis in the Constitution, it is purely a matter of convention.)  This is certainly one model, but it is not the only one:  in the UK,  Parliament is supreme and the Supreme Court gets to advise Parliament that laws seem to be unconstitutional, but the Court can not strike them down.

Meet Kelley Watt of Tulsa, Oklahoma...

...a damaged human being who now damages others.

UPDATE:  It  turns out Ms.Watt has done work with James Fetzer, a notorious conspiracy theorist who lost a defamation action brought by a parent of the one of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.  (Thanks to Cora Diamond for the pointer.)

Donald Trump is one of the worst human beings alive, but it's not simple to prosecute him for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election

This short essay by Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith gives a good explanation of why the decision to prosecute Trump is so fraught, contrary to various traditional and social media blowhards.

Gov. Viktor DeSantis's war on the universities in Florida

Here's what didn't make it into law, yet.

(Thanks to Thomas Nadelhoffer for the pointer.)

It's really time for the U.S. and NATO to stop arming Ukraine, and cede the Donbas region to Russia, as they have already ceded Crimea

The reason is simple:  we are sleepwalking into Armageddon:

Putin has broken a post-Cuba taboo on threatening to go nuclear. That, in itself, puts us in new territory. Without most people being aware of it, the world is entering its most dangerous period since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The majority under the age of 50 have grown up thinking the nuclear spectre is a relic of the last century. In the past few weeks, the prospect of a nuclear exchange has become the most live threat to this century’s peace...

If there were a 5 per cent chance of Putin detonating a battlefield nuclear weapon, the world would be at more risk than at any point in most people’s lifetimes. In the past few days, Moscow’s signalling has arguably raised the chances to one in 10. Putin described last week’s test of the Sarmat hypersonic intercontinental ballistic missile as giving the west “food for thought".... On Wednesday, Putin said: “We have all the instruments for this [responding to an existential threat to Russia] — ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to.” The natural response is that Joe Biden and his European counterparts have made it plain Nato will not fight in Ukraine. The west, in other words, poses no “existential threat” to Russia — its threshold for use of nuclear weapons. But that is only how the west sees it. Putin’s threats, and those of his officials, have been made in the context of claiming Russia is already at war with Nato. Russians are being told every day that they are in a fight for national survival against western-backed Nazis. This level of rhetoric exceeds anything from the cold war....

Last time I checked, this site wasn't getting many visits from the White House.  So one can only hope that sensible people in the corridors of power are weighing these catastrophic risks, but so far, there's little indication of that.

UPDATE:  More perspectives on Ukraine and the risk of nuclear war.

ANOTHER:   The original point (above) has already been made by Chomsky:

I’m not criticizing Zelensky; he’s an honorable person and has shown great courage. You can sympathize with his positions. But you can also pay attention to the reality of the world. And that’s what it implies. I’ll go back to what I said before: there are basically two options. One option is to pursue the policy we are now following, to quote Ambassador Freeman again, to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. And yes, we can pursue that policy with the possibility of nuclear war. Or we can face the reality that the only alternative is a diplomatic settlement, which will be ugly—it will give Putin and his narrow circle an escape hatch. It will say, Here’s how you can get out without destroying Ukraine and going on to destroy the world.

 

Art and offense at Vermont Law School

Historian Amna Khalid (Carleton) comments.

Florida's Gov. Viktor DeSantis strikes again!

This time it's the brazenly unconstitutional "Stop WOKE Act," described by F.I.R.E. here.  Fortunately, a law firm has already filed suit to enjoin it.

Attack on the universities and tenure in Florida accelerates...

...with Governor Viktor DeSantis (or is it Ron Orban, I get confused) leading the charge.

An interview with Chomsky about Ukraine and the risk of nuclear war

Sensible, and basically the realist perspective.

(Thanks to Torbjörn Tännsjö for the pointer.)

Close-minded intolerance on campus is largely a feature of elite U.S. colleges...

...and their well-to-do students, and not what goes on at most universities in the country.  Although I've made this point over the years, and while it's a good thing that the problem isn't widespread, that it exists at elite universities, which produce disproportionate numbers of ruling elites, is a bad thing.   Of course, none of this is as bad a thing as, inter alia, the crytpo-fascism of large swaths of the Republican Party; the continuing immiseration of the vast majority in the U.S.; the risk of nuclear war due to the mishandling of the Ukraine situation; etc. etc.

The "DOXA four" in Moscow

Editors of a student journal are facing prison sentences for opposing the war of aggression against Ukraine.  Their statements to the court are here.

NYT interviews philosopher Volodymyr...

...here (earlier coverage).

 

Trump's legal woes

This website is keeping track.

On Russia and Ukraine, the perspective of a Putin adviser

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 6--ONCE AGAIN, A PRETTY INTERESTING DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS!

This is plausible as to Russia's view of the situation and sobering; an excerpt:

For 25 years, people like myself have been saying that if Nato and Western alliances expand beyond certain red lines, especially into Ukraine, there will be a war. I envisioned that scenario as far back as 1997. In 2008 President Putin said that if Ukraine’s membership of the alliance became a possibility then there will be no Ukraine. He was not listened to. So the first objective is to end Nato’s expansion. Two other objectives have been added: one is the demilitarisation of Ukraine; the other is denazification, because there are people in the Russian government concerned with the rise of ultra-nationalism in Ukraine to the extent that they think it is beginning to resemble Germany in the 1930s. There is also an aim to free the Donbas republics of eight years of constant bombardment....

I don’t know what the outcome of this war will be, but I think it will involve the partition of Ukraine, one way or another. Hopefully there would still be something called Ukraine left at the end. But Russia cannot afford to “lose”, so we need a kind of a victory. And if there is a sense that we are losing the war, then I think there is a definite possibility of escalation. This war is a kind of proxy war between the West and the rest – Russia being, as it has been in history, the pinnacle of “the rest” – for a future world order. The stakes of the Russian elite are very high – for them it is an existential war....

Metropolitan Opera bans Russian soprano for insufficiently robust condemnation of Putin

MOVING TO FRONT FROM APRIL 6--SEE THE UPDATE, FOR A CONTRARY VIEW

What a disgrace.  All those Americans who failed to denounce the criminal war of aggression against Iraq and yet are still invited to perform in their professional roles elsewhere should be up in arms!

UPDATE:  A philosopher from one of the Baltic countries writes:

I am a philosopher from Estonia and I saw your post on Netrebko (the soprano banned from Metropolitan opera in America). I almost always agree with you, but I think you are wrong on this.

Netrebko is not just some "Russian soprano". She is most recognised singer in the world. More importantly, she is known by anyone who cares to google to have acted as a willing posterchild of the Russian government for many years. She has advocated for Putin and his policies, she has publicly donated to his reelection, paraded with the separatist Donetsk flag for a global audience for many years, said in interviews that she admires Putin ("I wish I had had an affair with him") etc. etc. Do you really find it abbhorent to ask somebody with this professed views and long history to distance themselves from a genocidal tyrant before being allowed to perform? Really? (Should Leni Riefenstahl have kept her gigs in America during the world war?)

Sanction Russian institutions, not individuals

A statement from Russian academics at the Free University of Moscow.

Adorno et al. on "The Authoritarian Personality"

An informative piece from the CBC.

More ways to support victims of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine

"Logic4Peace" is a conference raising funds for those affected by the war, partly in conjunction with this organization which provides humanitarian aid to victims.

(Thanks to Barbara Herman for the pointer.)

Our Silicon Valley overlords strike again: YouTube disappears six years worth of radical commentator Chris Hedges's programs

Amazing.

Academic freedom crisis continues at the University of Florida

Dr. Lapido, the Surgeon General for the crypto fascist Governor DeSantis, was appointed to the University of Florida medical school faculty through a rather dubious process:  Download UF Ladapo Final Report 3-30-22

Ukrainian philosopher Yermolenko Volodymyr on living in the midst of war

A lot of very striking observations on his Twitter account, including here, here, here, and here.  (More about Volodymyr here.)

(Thanks to Anthony Couture for calling this to my attention.)

Gillman & Chemerinsky: student hecklers are bad for free speech on campus, state legislatures quite a bit worse

Exactly right.  It's no surprise that the crypto-fascists in America ignore the Repug war on academic freedom and free speech; it's more disheartening when those on the putative "left" whitewash the bad behavior by students on campus (e.g.).  As Professors Gillman and Chemerinsky write:

The student protestors and their allies would undoubtedly make the case that they are opposing truly bad ideas while the Republican legislators are opposing important ideas. But that is not how censorship works. Once one grants that administrators and other officials should have the authority to censor and punish bad ideas, there is no predicting who will be the target of such repression.

"Isolating Russia won't bring Europe peace"

Political philosopher Lea Ypi (LSE) comments.

Tenured philosopher Andrew Haas resigns position at Higher School of Economics in Moscow in protest of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine

His resignation letter is here:  Download Haas Resignation from HSE.Haas.22.  He calls on his colleagues to do the same.

More on Putin and Ukraine

On the earlier thread, reader Boris Dagaev posted this:

Understandably, some readers of this blog are not completely satisfied with Stanovaya's analysis, which was written for the subscribers of her Telegram channel who are familiar with her work, and thus is limited in scope.

To provide a wider historical perspective (starting with 2007), I've translated the first part of today's article by another Russian political scientist, Kirill Shamiev. I'm hoping it would clarify some coordinated strategic considerations and tactical moves made by Putin's regime over the past few years.

You can find the translation here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oUHox2ooGCkk6g3GzB69aboqUUSHiJFgEDEM8_2I3Fk/edit?usp=sharing

By contrast, Scott Sagan, a political science professor at Stanford, here presumes (but does not argue for) the "Putin is a madman" view, and its alarming implications.  (Thanks to Jeff McMahan for the pointer.)

This is a context in which it pays, as Nietzsche says, to remember that objectivity and knowledge may emerge from having "one's pro and contra in one's power, and...[shifting] them in and out:  so that one knows how to make precisely the difference in perspectives and affective interpretations useful for knowledge."  So reading these two different perspectives on Putin and Ukraine, what can we conclude?

Librarian in Texas fired after refusing to remove book about a transgender teen

If one wants to see what the Repugs have in store for America if given the chance, see Texas.

Iranian translator of Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" refuses award in Iran in protest of censorship

Story here; an excerpt:

An Iranian mathematician and philosoph[er]...has rejected his award for the country's book of the year "in protest at censorship" in Iran.

Kaave Lajevardi said in a post on his blog on March 15 that he informed officials of his decision after being named as the joint winner of the prize for his translation of John Locke's book "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding."

Lajevardi, who studied at the University of Toronto but returned to live in Tehran, said that while his book had not been subject to censorship, that "does not prevent me from seeing the terrible dominance of censorship in publishing" and "the violation of the civil rights of translators, authors and publishers."

"By my own decision, I do not accept this particular award in order to challenge more broadly than ever before the very common and completely irrational and possibly illegal censorship routine...of which the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance is one of the main custodians," he said in his post.

The publication of any artistic or cultural work in Iran, including books and films, is done only with the permission of the ministry or other government institutions.

(Thanks to Mousa Mohammadian for the pointer.)

Nuclear war, again

This NYT article is chilling.  

Eastern Orthodox Christians reject "the Russian Teaching"

This is interesting, even if it is an intra-sectarian dispute within the Eastern Orthodox Church and even if, as everyone knows, organized religion has usually not only made its peace with tyranny, but facilitated it, as the Russian Orthodox Church is obviously doing.  Comments welcome from those knowledgeable about the relevant religious traditions.

Who will be a public school teacher in a "red" state...

...if craziness like this continues?

"Tactical Nuclear Weapons"

MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 9--SOME QUITE INTERESTING COMMENTS, MORE DISCUSSION WELCOME

Since the media chatter about their use in Ukraine continues, readers may find this 2002 piece from the Nuclear Threat Initiative informative.   More information about tactical nukes welcome in the comments.

More on "tactical nuclear weapons"...

...at The Atlantic; an excerpt:

From an American perspective, tactical nuclear weapons became less important as we closed the conventional-military gap with Russia. By the end of the Cold War, the balance of power had shifted decisively. NATO possessed overwhelming conventional strength. Russia was the inferior conventional power, as it remains today.

But it’s not inferior throughout its force. Today, Russia is the power that holds a dramatic advantage in tactical nuclear weapons. According to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report, Russia possesses close to 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons. The U.S. stores roughly 100 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. As we gained the conventional advantage, we essentially gave up on our tactical nuclear force. Russia did not.

War involves human beings

And here two of them describe their experiences, one a Ukraiinian scholar fleeig the illegal war of aggression, another from Russia, protesting that same war.  Worth reading.

(Thanks to Katalin Balog for the pointer.)