If you’re in Paris between now and August 21, be sure to visit the Albert Marquet exhibit at the city’s modern art museum. My Facebook feed is heavily populated by comparisons of Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The biography of Marquet (Wikipedia) presented by the museum shows a heavy price paid by the artist for dissociating himself from the Nazi movement. In 1941 Marquet withdrew from a show because of the government’s requirement to provide a certificate of “non-membership of the Jewish race.” Apparently disgusted with his fellow French citizens for their collaboration with the German during World War II, in 1946 Marquet refused the Legion of Honour. Though not Jewish, that same year he contributed work to a benefit sale for Jewish children. Partly as a result of these protests, Marquet never achieved the success that his quality of painting would have justified.
If Donald Trump actually does prove to be just like Hitler, how many of us will have the courage to reject Trumpism(?) and pay the career consequences? [And, separately, what would be the tenets of Trumpism to which Americans would have to pledge fealty?]
How can a guy with a Jewish daughter and son-in-law, and 3 Jewish grandkids, be compared to Hitler, exactly?
Anything implemented here would probably done in a particularly American way. Americans slaughtered much of the indigenous population of the continent and established slavery without requiring citizens to pledge anything. On the other hand, during the late 1940s and 1950s, government employees were often required to swear that they were not affiliated with organizations that sought to overthrow the government. This was a condition of employment.
Hitler is famous for his hatred of Jews. In Trump’s case, it Muslims. If you had to take a guess at what President Trump might do starting next year, it could involve appearing to attempt to ascertain which American Muslims seek to do harm to America. It could involve trying to pressure imams and other Muslim leaders to reject terrorism and sharia law and make statements of loyalty to America. Currently, there are no American Muslims who are famous enough to considered to be “leaders of the community”. I could imagine that the right wing media could work with Trump to identify imams with large congregations who would then be pressured to make certain statements rejecting radical Islamic whatever.
@Vince – and how exactly would imams pledging to reject radical Islamism be bad for the American society?
@philg – how sure can one be that Marquet’s relative obscurity is due to his political stance vs. just going against the grain artistically? According to wikipedia:
“Among European cities Marquet remained impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water. He adopted a technique nothing like the Impressionists’, painting water as a large area of simple tone which held the plane of the water surface without illusionistic perspective, from which the ships arise into a different plane. His views of the lagoon in Venice do this very economically. The water stays at a right angle to the picture plane and the large ships float with ease, with their reflections exactly the correct tone to project the required space. His color is much like Matisse of the 1920s”
Perhaps he stuck to Fauvism too long when the public’s preference moved on to something else? Art is fickle.
G: I’m kind of relying on the curators of the show regarding how famous Marquet ought to be. I guess there is sample bias. They wouldn’t have curated the show if they weren’t unusually big fans of this otherwise somewhat obscure painter.
paddy: How can Trump be compared to Hitler? He is compared to Hitler all the time right in my Facebook feed! Is it a useful comparison? I guess you’d have to look at Mein Kampf and try to line it up with Donald Trump’s proposals for the U.S. (not that Congress is bound to implement any of them, as with any other President).
G. Ranma: There would be no problems if some imams were to decide on their own to make statements opposing terrorism. In America we generally don’t like the idea of the government telling religious institutions how they practice their religion. Presidential pressure to make such statements would also encourage many Americans to presume that American Muslims approve of terrorism unless they state otherwise.
Trump cannot reasonably be compared to Hitler, of course. Social signaling among liberals is preposterous and intellectually hostile.
Social signaling among radical conservatives, on the other hand, is also preposterous, but it has one thing going for it: the utter lack of pretension to intellectualism.
ObPhil’sQuestion: if Trump wins, there will still be 49.9% of the population who is repulsed by any idea that could be called distinctly Trumpist. There would be zero cost (and the usual benefits, see your Facebook feed) in open opposition.
In the Facebook feed of your alter-ego, where news has broken that Hillary is actively colluding with Bernie Madoff to steal all of the guns and money kept under mattresses by Real Americans, there will be zero cost (and all of the usual benefits) from rah rahing every piece of insightful research that implicates Barack Hussein Obama in the founding of ISIS (lock him up! And make Kenyan muslins pay for it!).
And ne’er the twain shall meet.
Hasn’t he promised to deport 13 million “illegal” Mexicans? I’d expect to see a massive expansion to the American Gulag, if not actual Hitler type concentration camps, and I’d expect the net to catch a lot of *not* illegal Mexicans, like the Mexican heritage judge from Indiana who has been so *unfair* to Trump university. The US has more Spanish speakers than Spain, Trump hates therm all. It should be a lot like when the Japanese were interred in WWII—that is a vast amount of real property will change ownership at fire sale prices.
Second, it won’t be just pressuring a few imams to swear loyalty oaths. It will be much more like what happened in Iraq where many thousands were murdered and hundreds of thousands tortured all to answer the question “Where’s the WMD?” only this time the question will be “Where’s the ISIS terror cell?”.
I have to admit the mastery with which you, Phil, parlayed an off-hand remark about a 1940s French artist paying the price for non-conformance to prevailing esprit de corps, with le… je-ne-sais-quoi iconoclasm of Donald Trump. Hence all commentary is now about the latter’s image on some Fuckfacebook or other.
Well, then, quit worrying about implementation of President Trump’s far-reaching plans to expel the gardeners, the street sweepers, and the produce pickers back to Mexico – because there already are hordes of native unemployed WASP and OITNB Americans just waiting to fill that vacuum. Also, you already know how it will be implemented: Philip Roth wrote a whole book about just such an mass-expulsion policy, I mentioned it last year, and Phil himself reviewed it-sorts-of 12 years ago… only then he still was expecting the author to repeat the masturbatory feats from Portnoy’s Complaint, so he didn’t think much of its larger message (did I summarize your review by and large correctly, Phil, or have I missed it, again?)