Trumpy Tabs
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, June 16, 2023
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8 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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To begin with, one doesn’t elect candidates in a primary system dominated by committed fanatics.
I’m convinced that the notion of Boris Johnson as the British Trump has always been influenced heavily by the fact that the two men just look so damn similar. I’m not saying there aren’t any other parallels: Johnson is a racist, right-wing populist who was strongly associated with Brexit, which passed in an upset the same year Trump won the presidency in an upset, both with help from Putin. But Johnson’s public persona and temperament are quite different from Trump’s–and a lot more conventional for a politician, frankly. And there are a number of other world leaders (such as Bolsonaro) who are closer analogues to Trump than Johnson.
But goddamn do they look like they hatched from the same snake egg.
I suppose with any of Trump’s offers of free food to his fans, they should take those offers seriously but not literally.
@Kylopod:
A somewhat vexing matter in 20th century history, is coming up with an ideological definition of fascism. Numerous scholars define it as a style of governance, or exercising power, rather than an ideology like Communism*.
Benito got a lot of imitators. I assume we’re all familiar with his style.
Now, I don’t know much about Johnson prior to the Orange Ass era (c. 2015-?), and I didn’t follow much of what he did in office, or more important in this matter how he did it. But his resignation performance seems pulled out of the Benito playbook, complete with ketchup stains.
*When you study the institutions, so to speak, and methods employed by both nazi Germany and soviet Russia, you may notice so many similarities (prison camps, mass executions, kangaroo courts, secret police, constant surveillance, etc.), that one might be forgiven for thinking or the USSR as primarily fascist in character.
That is, but for the fact the USSR came first, and much of the repressive apparatus was inherited from Czarist times.
Boris went full Trump after the game was up, there was a discernible change.
If Trump begins to believe the walls are closing in he might go insane. But how will we know that has happened?
@Kylopod:
Incidentally, have I mentioned that Boris Johnson has resigned as an MP?
Because, he has!
🙂
(I may just set that line to music.)
To be fair to Johnson (no matter how I reluctant I may be) he’s not actually much of a right-winger. Apart from Brexit, which itself was more a matter of calculated ambition than conviction, most of the rest of his views are more “liberal Tory” than hard Thatcherite. Again, more for easy popularity than anything strategic.
Hence his tendency to “cakeism”: more funds for the NHS and other public spending, but also tax cuts.
To his credit, he resisted the ERG-right pressure to abandon net-zero CO2, or adopt the UKIP tendency to “covid-sceptic” and anti-Ukraine stances. Or perhaps, it was just he was unwilling to push against the Cabinet/Party majority on this. Always tending to the line of least effort.
Johnson was always both smarter, and less mulish, than Trump.
@dazedandconfused:
He’ll start talking coherently.
That photo reminded me of how sick I was of photos Trump sitting at his desk while a bunch or toadies and human props stood around him.