Listen to the weekend edition with Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Sami Winc. Topics include a discussion of fascism in the 1930s, the polls on Trump’s approval, Trump goads Jerome Powell, Kristi Noem’s glam, Harvard and tax exemption, and nemesis touches partisan lawyers.
Victor, you speak eloquently about the left’s romanticism with murderers, abusers, gang members etc. This isn’t new, I would love to hear your thoughts on the left’s worship of Che’ Guevara.
Hey Victor – another great show (thank you!). I have a thought when it comes to dealing with colleagues who tell you to stay in your own lane. You could easily flip the script and remind them that tariffs are a part of President Trumps overall strategy. As a Military Historian, you know a lot about strategy which apparently escapes your economist colleague. Perhaps it is he who should stay in his own lane. I suspect this would shut down the discussion in about a nanosecond.
Two topics:
Vis-a-vis Harvard wanting to keep its $2 Billion, I have read (so please correct me if I am mistaken) that Harvard charges the federal government 69% overhead on work if performs under government contracts but 0-15% to private institutions for work for them. Shouldn’t the U.S. get Harvard’s best arrangements?
Your pleasant interlocutor asked you how we could treat our allies so poorly. I have a question: If anyone ACCUSED European countries of being American allies, would there be enough evidence to convict?
A better book is ‘The Big Lie’ by Dinesh D’Souza that identifies the origins of fascism originating entirely from the Communist left. Fascism is just a different stripe of leftism based upon nation and race as opposed to class and internationalism. The right of politics is not fascism, but conservatism, just as the right of the French chamber was anti-revolutionary.
I note in passing, on this Holy Saturday, AD 2025, that Jesus of Nazareth was often told to ‘Stay in your lane!’, so you’re in good company.
I just want to let it be known that if I’m ever driving from Selma to Stanford and get cut off by VDH, I will NOT roll down my window and shout, “Hey bozo! Stay in your lane!”
I greatly enjoy your talks. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, experience, and wisdom with us. I am praying that you will recover from illness soon and have a lovely and peaceful remainder of your life. I just finished watching this program “Real Fascism of the 1930s…” and feel at peace knowing that God is in control and that He has given you to us to explain what’s happening in this day & age.
As far as Mussolini goes, he made a mistake in allying himself formally with Hitler. He didn’t have to; Hitler would have been satisfied with a benevolently neutral Italy (Shirer writes about this in “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”), which still would have threatened France and Britain in the Mediterranean. You can argue that Mussolini was succumbing to megalomania, as Hitler was, and it clouded his judgement.
It’s a counterfactual, a what-if, but you can make an argument that had Mussolini chosen the same route as Franco, he and his regime would have survived the war intact, and perhaps even handed off to a Fascist successor.
For more on fascism and its connection to the modern Leftist movement, and Progressivism here, read Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”. It’s a very good history of the origins of fascism, its relationship to other Leftists worldviews, and to our own progressive movement and the Democrat party.