The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - When Is A Fascist A Fascist?

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

It's certainly being thrown around a lot but is it being used well? And, Janice is here to talk Middle East and Russia-Ukraine as well.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, that means Janus Stein, and the subject for today, aside from the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine, is fascism. Is that word being used properly? It's sure being used a lot these days. That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Welcome to another week on the bridge. Good to have you with us. It's Monday and you know what that means. It means Janice Stein from the Monunk School at the University of Toronto.

Janice will discuss, as she does every week, the situation in the Middle East and the situation in Russia-Ukraine. But also today, we're going to talk about something else. I've given her no warning on this at all, so it'll be interesting to hear what she has to say. But we're going to discuss the word fascism and how it's being used a lot these days. But before we get there, a little housekeeping as we always do on Mondays, and that housekeeping involves giving you a sense of what the question of the week is for Thursday, for your turn. So this is your opportunity from coast to coast to coast to get your say in on this subject. And the subject is, it's about artificial intelligence. You know, ever since this kind of came on the scene in a much discussed way in the last couple of years, we've had a few shows on AI, but we've never kind of thrown it open to your turn.

And we are this week with kind of a double-sided question. You pick one side or the other to answer on here. Here's the question. What do you fear most about AI? What do you fear most about AI? What do you fear most about artificial intelligence? Now, you may fear nothing about AI. You may go, hey, this is an exciting new world that we have the opportunity to see. So the other side of the question is, what excites you most about AI?

So the way I want to divide this is you have to pick one side or the other. I don't want answers that say, well, you know, on the one hand or on the other hand. I actually love this question. I love both sides of it. This week, anyway, we want to just ask you to pick one of those sides. Either what do you fear most about AI, or what excites you most about AI. You pick one of those, and we're off to the races.

So here are the rules, the conditions on the question. You write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. You keep it brief, right? Paragraph or so on one of those two choices on the questions. You include your name and the location you're writing from. Pretty straightforward, right? And you have your answers in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday.

So this will be the topic for your turn this week. Your turn and, of course, the Random Renter. So that's Thursday's program. Today we'll have Janice. your turn, and of course, the Random Renter. So that's Thursday's program. Today, we'll have Janice. Tomorrow, Keith Bogue drops by with one week to go until the U.S. election. Keith, who's been guiding us throughout this year on this topic, will give his latest assessment of kind of where we are with a week to go. You know, and this kind of bizarre rally in New York last night at MSG for the Trump campaign.

Bizarre in the sense that there were a lot of very strange things said there. Well, more than strange. They're racist and insulting. Anyway, we'll deal with that in a moment. But Keith will be here on tomorrow's program. Wednesday is our encore edition. I haven't picked it yet, but I'm sure we'll have a good one. Then on Thursday, it's your turn and the Random Ranter. Friday of course is good talk with

Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson, although Bruce may be traveling on that day. If he is, I'll try and convince our old friend Rob Russo to join us, but that's still to be determined, as they say. All right. Enough already.

Let's get to our discussion for this day with the great Janice Stein. So, Janice, there's lots to talk about on our two main areas, the Middle East and Russia, Ukraine, but that's not how I'm going to start. I want to start on this because I want to get your sense of the discussion that's dominant, certainly in the U.S. right now, because of a word that's been tossed around for the last few weeks, and that word is fascism. Okay? And people were kind of using it for various purposes, but mainly to describe one of the candidates

and the direction that he wants to take the United States in. But of late, there's become this kind of sub-discussion as well what does it actually mean when you call somebody a fascist or you say fascism is on is making a returned if you want to call it that a return to u.s politics um what what do you make of this discussion that's going on because i find it fascinating it it really is fascinating you know it's an important one because there is a distinction between fascism and authoritarianism there are a lot of authoritarians around the world um but they fundamentally authoritarian stick to their knitting right and uh it has to do with the way they govern at home.

So if you're a citizen of one of those countries, you have plenty to worry about. But it's a less alarming prospect than fascism. There's an absolutely fascinating piece in yesterday's New York Times magazine about the historian Robert Paxton who did the groundbreaking work on Vichy France and fascism. It raised just a storm of controversy when it was published because he made this argument. He says fascism doesn't come from on top. It comes from the bottom.

It is this discontent that boils over and then really talented leaders join that current that's below, and that's when you get fascism. That focus is really on, you know, tends to focus very heavily on immigration, on economic discontent, on blaming elites for economic discontent and thrives on enemies. It thrives. There's always an enemy list. Trashists always have enemy lists. And Paxton has been one of the ones who was most careful.

He's 92 now. He did his work 40 years ago. He's been most careful about saying, be very careful. Don't use that word in vain. Just, you know, most leaders, when you worry about them, they're authoritarians. Well, what was so study about this article? He changed his mind about Donald Trump. He resisted it from 2016 to 2020. But then when that attack on the Capitol happened,

and he did this interview now in which he said, look, I was wrong. He's a fascist. He's responding to bubbling discontent from below. This is driven from below. He's got all the tropes that fascists have. He has an enemy left. He talks about it nonstop.

One of the really important points, Peter, I really read that piece, and it was kind of a moment for me. He said fascism is about feelings. It's not about reason. It's about feelings. And it's about peers who can connect emotionally with room and makes them feel heard for good or for bad. But that's what he does. And then, of course, his campaign has frankly, not only for the United States. out to me that when i've read these most when i i acknowledge the the piece in the times yesterday and also you know they somebody i think was robert reich brought up this you know quote of henry

wallace who was the democratic vice president in the early 1940s for fdr who described fascism through like four or five paragraphs quite detail and you you read that and it's sort of like it sort of checks off all the boxes of what trump's doing and saying yeah and the way he's acting but as always with trump you're left wondering does he actually believe that stuff or does he just say it because he thinks it's you know it's winning politics for him yeah so it is winning politics that's for sure right that is how he connects um so you're absolutely right it's winning politics i'm almost gonna say it doesn't matter if right if he believes because he knows it's winning. And it isn't the first time we've heard him talk like this.

When he was in the White House as president, he wasn't so fixated at that point on winning. He had a nanny's list. And he was directing the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Agency to go after those enemies. He wanted to use the instruments of state to go after those enemies. Now, the big worry this time if he wins is that there will

be fewer guardrails around him because he's weeded out. He's not going to any of the old Republicans that he had with him in the first couple of years. Those are gone. And it's so interesting in a sense how it fits these two stories that you've talked about, because there are lists. He's got lists ready of people to bring in with him who are loyal. And again, that's so typical of fascist leaders.

It's all about loyalty. And he has lists of people that he wants to go after. They're ready to go on day one. I mean, that's the first hundred days for Donald Trump, frankly, at this point. You know, the other thing about Trump is when he's accused of something, he turns it around by accusing his opponent of the same thing. Yeah. And so you've had him in the last week or so saying,

she's a fascist, talking about Kamala Harris, which is hard to have both ways. You can't sort of call her a communist one day and a fascist the next day, but he seems to play both sides. Anyway. You know what's so interesting, Peter, too? I mean, just before we move on to what we want to talk about, people say all the time nothing does stick to him, right?

Which is true. We would all say that. If this were any normal campaign, some of the allegations that have been made are blockbusters. They would have derailed. They don't stick to him. That's partly because he's got this emotional connection with the crowds. And those rallies, they're rallies. We saw them in the 30s.

Long, emotional, the crowd literally mesmerized by what they were seeing. Beyond listening, it's that intense emotional connection that he has. I thought that's what Robert Paxton got better than anybody else, frankly, in that piece. Okay. Just had a note from a Canadian friend just before this program, and he said, stay calm. People are freaking out. And I think that's fair to say to all our listeners, Peter.

There is an elevated anxiety as we get close to this. Yeah, stay calm seems to be the message of the day for a lot of people right now. Actually, for a lot of people yeah right now actually for a lot of people on on both sides of this debate it's interesting in that sense um you know one other one just say this one other thing because we're all mesmerized by this this is the big story of the year frankly bigger than anything else the other interesting thing is this is a female-male divide, right, of a kind that we've never seen before. And in these last days, you see each candidate doing what you would think

they're mobilizing their own base to make sure that those people go out and vote. This is a historic female-male divide, right? And fascism was all about masculinity, frankly. You know, you were at another one of your conferences that you attend with a lot of people who are experts in the same kind of fields you are over this weekend, and I think it was in Baltimore. And, you know, we're going to get to the Middle East and Russia in a second, and I'm sure there was lots on that.

But was there hallway chatter on what's happening, a lot of hallway chatter? Non-stop, non-stop. But, you know, we would talk about the Middle East. We stopped talking about the election on Friday night when the Israelis launched their attack against Iran. That shifted the conversation to one in the morning. But frankly, no matter what was on the agenda, as soon as the formal part was over, people just talked about the election.

That's all. That's all they want to talk about. Did you learn anything new, did you sense not a sort of what's going to happen, but different takes on what's going on? Did anything sort of stand out to you? Nobody, I think it's really interesting, Peter, and you know more about this than anybody else. You've watched more elections more closely than anybody I know.

The polls are useless, right? Yeah. They're useless. I agree with that. Yeah, they're absolutely useless. We're nine days out and they're useless. For technical reasons, you could say, because they're all within the margin of error. But that's a kind of technical answer. for technical reasons, you could say, because they're all within the margin of error.

But that's a kind of technical answer. I don't think any of us really have confidence. That was one big thing. That even that they're capturing, we don't know which way the errors are. That's the easiest way to say it. Big debate, which direction is the polling error? We just assume there is one, but we don't know which way. Never,

you know, we've never really been in that situation quite this way before for such an important election. And then, honestly, just huge apprehension about what this is going to mean domestically at home for the

United States, but for every single big issue globally that we would talk about. There's such divergence between the two candidates here. There will be such different administrations. Yeah. This next week is going to be quite something. Okay, now, let's get to, and you gave us a hint already here of our first topic, which is Israel's attack on Iran over the weekend. Now, that was probably, in fact, I think it was,

the largest attack Israel's ever made on Iran. Yes. By far. Yes. But here we are a couple of days after, and it's like nothing happened. Well, a lot happened. Right. A lot happened.

That was honestly, let me back up one second and say this was deliberately orchestrated to be low key. Right. Very atypical of Israel. Wow. And very self-disciplined. We've had almost nobody coming out, really. A couple of comments on Sunday, but very, very restrained. And they warned the Iranians before that was coming,

which is astounding, frankly. And the Iranians, even while it was going on, were saying, oh, this is no big deal. So if you look at this in terms of how they managed it, both of them, this is the strongest signal yet to me, Peter, that they both have concluded this is time to stop. We are getting very close to the danger line. Secondly, what that attack did is astonishing.

First, it did two big things. It took out virtually all the advanced and the aircraft defense that the Iranians have in place. frankly, don't appear to be that good. If aircraft could take them out, and they were warned. But what does that do? Russia can't replace them quickly. This is not, oh, you lose those, you make more in a local factory, and you put them in place.

It will take months for this anti-aircraft system, which guards two things. It guards all their nuclear installations, it guards all their energy as well. They're vulnerable in a huge way until those anti-aircraft systems are replaced. That was that first wave of attack. That's what that did. To take those out.

And they took them out in Iraq and Syria, too. You just think about that. Yeah. For the Iranians. The second thing they did was they struck at, the best way to describe this, if you think of a cement mixer, you know, the big things where they revolve that you see on construction sites

pulling up, they struck at the mixers that make solid fuel. That is absolutely crucial for ballistic missiles. And they struck at a lot of them. That's what most of those attacks were. That's very slow to build back. So they've depleted the number of advanced ballistic missiles. Not the missiles themselves, but the capacity to fire them up. There's no quick fix to that one.

And then they took out the anti-aircrafts around the big ports, which export oil. I would not want to be the chief of the defense staff in Tehran right now. You know, as you said, there's, you know, they warned Iran. Yeah. That they were coming. Yeah. Not just sort of the threat, but they were in more detail.

They warned Iran. Yes. You know, it's kind of like the Allies saying on June 5th, by the way, we're coming tomorrow morning. And here's where we're going. Yeah, here's where we're going. So that was remarkable enough. Now, the other thing was the way you detailed what they did take out clearly shows why it took them a couple of weeks to make this happen because that is a lot of intelligence they had to have

to be able to detail to the pilots where they wanted everything done. But also during those two weeks, you had Donald Trump, allegedly Israel's greatest ally, even had Pierre Polyev, the two of them, saying they should go after the nuclear stuff. Yeah. Now, they didn't. They didn't go after the nuclear stuff,

and they didn't go after the oil fields. No. Now, as you say, part of what they did go after protects the oil fields. Yes. So there's another way of sort of getting at the oil. Yes. But give me your sense of why you think they didn't do what some were calling on them to do. I think there's two big reasons, Peter.

One, the Biden team went for broke on this, right? And they did move a very, very advanced defensive missile system in just before. There's a quid pro quo, right? Get that for nothing. And there was a squadron of F-16s, Americans, as well, that was sent. So I think it was very, very, very intense negotiations with the Biden administration, who is desperate not to have an escalation

before November the 5th, frankly. Now, Trump would like nothing better. So I think that was a big, big piece of that. But even bigger, I think, is the worry among all the senior generals about engaging in an all-out war with Iran. Iran is a very big country with a million-person army.

There's no question that Israel has air superiority, and it has superiority. Iran has a larger number of missiles, but Israel's just more advanced and can do any air, can defend against Iran with some effectiveness. Some things will always get through, but can frankly defeat Iran in the air. But that changes. If there's any kind of ground campaign, there's no way that a country the size of Israel could succeed. So this may be the moment of maximum strategic advantage

that Israel will have with respect to Iran. So if you're going to look for an off-ramp, now is the moment to do that. And I think that's why the Biden team succeeded, because they were preaching to the choir there. Does that help them in an eye frame for Hamas and Hezbollah as well? So that's the interesting thing, because the Iran-Israel conflict is the big strategic one, the one that, if it goes badly, sets the whole region on fire.

With Hezbollah, if Iran lets this one go, which my hunch, that's all it is, is that they will, because they're just too exposed to take the risk. That has to be worrying for Hezbollah, because that then becomes, we are paying the price. We're your forward defense, but you're staying home. You've de-escalated. And so I think most of we're seeing two separate tracks now, Peter.

There is a track to arrange a ceasefire in Lebanon right now. Macron is very heavily involved in that front. What it considers a historic relationship in Lebanon. And the prime minister of Lebanon is willing, but of course, he's, you know, he's such a powerful political force inside Lebanon as well as military that he doesn't have the sway, but they are, he certainly is looking for a ceasefire.

And the big challenge for Hezbollah, they're signaling they want it, but how do they climb down? How do they come to a ceasefire deal with Israel in the absence of a ceasefire in Gaza with Hamas. And so where do we go back to all the time? We go back to the core issue here, which is seemingly local, but it's now tied into the other two. Those ceasefire negotiations are starting again. There was the tiniest, such a sliver of a move,

but it's so tiny. Hamas now has a council of five leaders that represent them until a new leader is found and they've sent back to the mediators, we want a total ceasefire. We will return all the hostages, but there must be a total ceasefire and total withdrawal from Gaza. That's been their position for months.

But they said, this is our preference. Now, that's how thin, right? The read is, this is our preference, which says, well, if you have a preference, something else comes next. And the Egyptians are pushing. I wouldn't take this to the bank, if you understand what I mean.

You're literally reading the tea leaves here. And the Egyptians are pushing. A weak ceasefire. Release some prisoners. Get some hostages back. They have to have, I think if there were a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, that would be enough now. If Iran doesn't respond, I think that would be enough for Hezbollah to find a way to back down. But I don't know. Hamas is so hard to read now.

The whole situation is so hard to read. Mind-blowing. For the last, you know, thousand days. Big picture, Peter, you know, knowing when to take the win. Yeah. Yeah, it's to take the win. Yeah. Yeah, it's such an important asset. And I think that's Netanyahu's big failure.

Since, you know, since the Mossad blew up those pagers, the strategic balance in the region shifted. There's no question about it. And now with this attack against Iran, the sense that this ring of fire that they were facing before, there's no question. The threat is so much reduced. Take the win.

Okay, we're going to move off the 400-day conflict in the Middle East and move over to the 1,000-day conflict between Ukraine and Russia. We'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode. Janice Stein is with us. We're talking, well, we're talking about quite a few things today, from fascism to the Middle East to Ukraine-Russia now for our final segment on today's broadcast.

You're listening on SiriusXM, channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. We're glad to have you with us, however you are following us. Okay. The big news, I guess, and it's been around for the last week or so, on the Ukraine-Russia story is this issue about whether or not, I think it's gone beyond the whether or not it's happening, but what they're happening, why it's happening is the question.

North Korean troops in Russia, are they there to fight in Ukraine? What are they doing? They are? Yeah, they are. Several thousand, Peter, that came in through Vladivostok and are now being flown in big Russian cargo. So where are they now? When you said Ukraine, they're deploying in Kursk, which is that salient of Russia that the Ukrainian army captured in an effort to rebalance things. So what this suggests is that Putin is going to use them to make a push now to retake that territory. Zelensky thought that was such an important piece of the bargaining table. loses that, I think, you know, it's not territory that he ever expected he would hold on to

permanently, but it will be a major setback for him. And if you have several thousand, which is what we're seeing, there are two waves coming in of North Korean troops. That's a significant amount for that piece of territory. We don't know much about North Korea's fighting ability. It's like the Chinese army. The only way you know anything about armies, and this is a sad thing to say, they have to fight. Like anything else, right?

Any athlete, you don't know anything about them until they play. And then you really know. And the North Koreans have not fought. So there's a question mark around that. But just adding thousands of troops can overwhelm the Ukrainians who don't have orders of magnitude. They have no more men that they can throw at this. So it's an important change in the battlefield, and I think we'll see fighting very shortly, really intense fighting in Kursk. The other thing this tells us,

Putin must be paying a high price for this. Kim Il-Jung is getting something for this. Kim Il-Jun is getting something for this. It tells you how thin the base is in Russia to mobilize more troops without going all out again on a large call for mobilization and how much Putin does not want to do that. The manpower problem, both in Russia and Ukraine, is really severe.

They can't keep up this pace on the battlefield. Well, I accept that, although I still find it puzzling and wonder what it says about Putin's control of his army and just how effective his army is. I mean, they are doing well in the area, the Donbass. They're doing well there in the fighting that's going on there. Yeah. But their most vulnerable spot is around Kursk

and the history that goes along with that, that they have to bring in foreign troops to make a stand there, to regain that territory? It tells you a lot, doesn't it, about the Russian army? It really tells you a lot. And I think it's mainly a manpower problem. He's thrown new recruits in on the Donbass because the way the Russians have been moving forward, really human fodder, waves of undrained troops out front who are then reinforced by more experienced soldiers in the back, but he doesn't have well-trained troops. He has no more that he can throw at this battle.

And that's why he's bringing in North Koreans. It really signals, you know, you have to wonder, because whether he read it exactly this way, it really signals we, the Russian army is at its limits. We can't do it on our own resources anymore. A lot of his weapons he's got for North Korea as well. What's he giving Kim Il-sung? Well, that's the next question. As you said a few moments ago, what is North Korea getting out of this?

What could they be getting out of this? Well, there's one big package answer, which is advanced technology, advanced military technology, which is what Kim Il-sung would want. So what could it be, Peter? The most benign answer to this question, and it's not very comforting, it's advanced missile technology, which Kim Jong-un could well want, because in order to reach the United States across the Atlantic Ocean, you need long-range ballistic missiles, and you have to have confidence in secure delivery.

That's been a struggle for North Korea. That's not very comforting. Far worse, and it would have to be a desperate Putin to do this, would be any kind of technology around nuclear submarines or any kind of technology which has nuclear components in it in order to allow North Korea to accelerate its warhead program and not only its delivery program. Outside of the principles, who's most nervous about this? South Korea? The United States.

Japanese? The U.S.? Japanese, terrified. Terrified. Because North Korea is their next-door neighbor, and there's a very hostile relationship. The South Koreans are openly speaking of sending troops to Ukraine. So, you know, I said to you,

we're watching the world being remade. There is, as a result of this, it's visible to everyone now, this link between the European theater and the Asian theater, right? You could treat those as separate before, but

we are seeing a tightening of the relationships of this alliance. And we can ask ourselves, Peter in the West, what role did we play? All those countries are sanctioned. forced out of the normal trading system, of the currency system, of SWIFT, you know, the banking clearing system. And that, you know, that's in effect what brought these countries together in trading relationships.

And there's plenty of people that argue excellent reasons for imposing sanctions on each one of them, frankly. North Korea because of its nuclear program, the host of the BRICS. Now, there's a lot of disunity in the BRICS, very, very different from what's the relationship between Iran, North Korea, and Russia. But they all came to Moscow. Remind us of BRIC. This is a group of then middle powers, and it was an economist who named them the BRICs, Brazil, Russia, India, China. First letter of each in South Africa. in the 90s because he saw them as the new emerging powers that he predicted would challenge the West,

would have a GDP that would equal the West, and he said China would be the largest economy in the world. Well, he just wrote an article saying they haven't fully lived up to their expectations for two reasons. One, because what divides them is more than what unites them. India is now a member. Iran is now a member. Ethiopia is a member. Egypt is a member. And some of them are tightly allied, whereas India wants no part of this anti-U.S. agenda, which would divide the world into two blocks. including the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guayras, who goes to a country where the head of government is sanctioned by the International Criminal Court, charged.

Something is afoot in this world. You couldn't watch that performance without saying. We are seeing the reorganization. The reorganization of the world power structure, the way the world operates. Yeah, that's right. The kind of operating system of the world, the forming of two old, here's an old-fashioned world blocks. Right? The core of the block is

Iran, Russia, increasingly China and North Korea, although China's in a slightly different position here against the G7 and the South Koreans with some of the others in the middle. But that is reminiscent of what we lived with in the 50s, the 60s, and the 70s. Warsaw Pact and the NATO world.

Yeah. The difference then was nobody cared about any economy in the Warsaw Pact. Right. They were marginal, right? That's not true. We care about India's economy and we care about China's economy. So it's a much more complicated world for the West than it was during those years.

Well, it'll be so much less complicated after the U.S. election, right? Oh, yes. Well, there is a wild card there, right? There is a wild card. There is a wild card. And we'll probably, you know, we may use our time next week to talk about what will in that case be happening It is a wild card. Very well. And we'll probably, you know, we may use our time next week.

Oh, yeah. To talk about. Oh, yeah. Although in that case, that'd be happening the following day. So. Yeah. Let's take a pause on it today after this. This has been quite the discussion, as they always are.

Thank you for your time, Janice. We'll talk to you. Oh, it's a pleasure, Peter. And see you on a Consequential week next week It certainly will be Thanks again Well there we go Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School

University of Toronto Always better informed After a Discussion with Janice Stein Makes you think right And as we've said before better informed after a discussion with Janice Stein. Makes you think, right? And as we've said before, as with so many things on this program, we don't expect you to always to agree.

In fact, you may sometimes very strongly disagree with some of the thoughts and opinions you hear on this program. But the whole idea is to provoke a discussion, and that discussion may be directly with this program or it may be at your dinner table. And wherever it is, we hope you're grateful to have that discussion. There are countries in this world where you can't have those discussions. This isn't one of them. Let's hope it never changes.

All right, that's going to be it for today. Gave you the question of the week. Very briefly, to repeat that question, what is it you fear about AI? Or you can pick the other side of the equation. What is it that excites you about AI? You've got to pick one or the other. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com is where to write.

Have it in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. Name, location you're writing from. Keep it brief. There you go. All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again tomorrow Keep it brief. There you go. All right, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today. We'll talk to you again tomorrow when Keith Bogue will be our guest on the U.S. election

one week from tomorrow. Don't miss our broadcast tomorrow. We'll talk to you then. Bye for now.