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Guardian

Guardian

Left, right, Harris, Trump: all prisoners of political nostalgia in an era few understand | Rafael Behr

Guardian
Summary
Nutrition label

54% Informative

Donald Trump ’s record of refusal to concede defeat after the last US election should have disqualified him from running in this one.

Aggressive nationalism that bristles with racism, misogyny and swaggering machismo is an old style in American politics.

But the internet culture, marked by short attention spans, narcissism and impatient consumer appetites, has a more natural affinity with shallow demagoguery than with representative democracy.

The currency of comparison with 20th-century dictators has been dulled by overuse.

Fascist’ is a label that has been applied too casually and too often as unthinking abuse to be rehabilitated as a tool with moral precision and rhetorical impact more than 100 years after it was coined.

That doesn’t mean the lessons of the 1920s and 1930s are irrelevant to the current predicament.

VR Score

60

Informative language

60

Neutral language

26

Article tone

informal

Language

English

Language complexity

62

Offensive language

offensive

Hate speech

not hateful

Attention-grabbing headline

not detected

Known propaganda techniques

detected

Time-value

short-lived

External references

no external sources

Source diversity

no sources

Affiliate links

no affiliate links