A recent BMJ letter to the editor is so brilliant that I should show you a few sections from it:
… Whether Trump’s regime is fascist can be endlessly debated, but if you check it against the 14 characteristics of fascism described by the political scientist Lawrence Britt after analysis of seven fascist regimes it scores high. One of the characteristics is a tendency “to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested.”
… Michael H Kater, the German-Canadian historian of Nazism, writes that “As physicians became Nazified more thoroughly and much sooner than any other profession, and as Nazis they did more in the service of the nefarious regime than any of their extraprofessional peers.”
German doctors after the war unsurprisingly argued that what had happened was the result of a few rogue doctors, but the American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton argues in his book The Nazi Doctors that “as a profession German physicians offered themselves to the regime. So also did most other professions; but with doctors, that gift included using their intellectual authority to justify and carry out medicalized killing,” which meant “practicing therapy via mass murder.” …
There is an entirely understandable tendency to think that there is no parallel between what happened in the German in the ’30s and what is happening in America today, but the American Nobel prize-winner Paul Krugman writes this week: “We should be clear about what is happening. American fascism is on the march.”
Leaders in American medicine must stand up to the Trump regime, which will not be easy. Yamey and Shaffer describe how “Many physicians are now pushing back but how “a stronger and more powerful movement is sorely needed.” Now is the time to stand up before it becomes too late, as happened with the German medical profession.
These thoughts align closely with what I have been working on during the last 2 years or so (see here and here, for instance). I thank Richard Smith, the author of the above lines and former BMJ editor, for articulating our concerns so eloquently.
4 Responses to American fascism is on the march
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Current developments in the US are indeed extremely worrying, also from a healthcare perspective.
This is not only seen at the top level (academia), but also at the bottom level, where almost anyone(*) can be plucked from the streets with excessive violence, detained under often inhumane conditions, and eventually deported to countries with even worse conditions.
During all this, it becomes clear that these people are increasingly denied healthcare.
So basically, people are rounded up violently by a largely lawless paramilitary police force that resembles the Nazi Gestapo more every day, thrown into detainment centers that resemble Nazi concentration camps more every day, all while being denied even the most basic human rights, including healthcare. And as far as we now know, at least 3 dozen people have died while in custody this way, with numbers expected to rise sharply in the near future, as ICE raids still are becoming more violent, and more people are stuffed into already overcrowded detainment camps.
I find it utterly incomprehensible that there are still millions of Americans who think that this is OK. (Yes, about 40% of American voters still think that the Trump regime is doing a good job with regard to immigration crackdown.)
*: Except of course when you’re white, male, and an avowed Trump follower.
plucked from the streets with excessive violence, detained under often inhumane conditions … OR MURDERED!
Yes, there’s of course also the shooting of this poor woman – and she wasn’t even the first to be killed during a raid.
And even though the ICE guy who shot her may have genuinely believed that he was in danger himself(*), the way this was handled by the administration is truly sickening and completely inexcusable: immediately blaming the victim, exonerating the thug who shot her, and blocking an independent investigation into this killing.
*: Which of course can be expected all the more when you’re all geared up to go and violently pluck innocent strangers from the street. And of course he broke several safety rules about how to approach a possibly hostile situation, so the man is absolutely to blame.
And oh, ICE is now also plucking (pre)schoolchildren as young as 5 years old from the streets and whisking them away to detainment centres, sometimes even without their parents:
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/ice-detains-4-columbia-heights-students-including-5-and-10-year-olds-sent-to-texas
This can’t be good for their health …
I really hope that these ICE fascists are held responsible once Trump’s reign of terror ends. They should be locked up for a long time for violently destroying the lives of countless innocent people and their children, who only want to be good, hardworking citizens.