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As a former Reagan Republican it doesn’t make me happy to say that I think my former party has lost touch with reality.I had always wondered how millions of Italians and Germans could fall under the spell of the maniacal ravings of Mussolini and Hitler. But now I see it happening in my own country, and I find it deeply disturbing.Believing the lies of a two-bit con man like Trump, Mussolini or Hitler is the opposite of “thinking.” In the Bible it was called “the blind leading the blind into the ditch.”Donald Trump and Benito Mussolini: Striking ParallelsDonald Trump and Benito Mussolini have many things in common ... not the least of which is that they appear to be identical twins! The resemblance is uncanny. And there are many other striking parallels besides their looks, as we will see together. For instance, their signatures are eerily similar, as you can see on this page in the eighth image below. At the bottom of the page, I have applied Umberto Eco's 14-point checklist of fascist traits to Trump and given him a grade.Fascists of a featherflock together.—Michael R. BurchThe first striking parallel is that Mussolini and Trump appear to be identical twins, if not the same person (evidence of reincarnation, perhaps?) Please keep in mind that Trump's wispy forelock is entirely artificial. He would be as bald as Mussolini if not for cosmetic surgery. If we picture Trump without that bit of fluff surgically attached to his scalp, the resemblance is astonishing ... they both look like bald, doltish apes!The Mussolini quote about creating a spectacle "at the window" seems especially pertinent after Trump, while still infected with the coronavirus and thus a danger to everyone around him, posed for a photo-op behind the window of his armored SUV, then returned to the White House for a balcony spectacle eerily similar to those of Mussolini. As one critic noted, "To anyone with a sense of history, the echo of Mussolini on the balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia is unmistakable." It was from the Palazzo Venezia balcony that Mussolini presided over the destruction of Italy and the deaths of half a million Italians. With 215,000 American coronavirus deaths as I update this page, Trump will soon be at the quarter million mark, with no end in sight. No, Trump didn't create this modern plague, but according to different teams of epidemiologists, 84% to 90% of those lives could have been saved if Trump had acted faster and more decisively.Trump, who has been called Cadet Bone Spurs for dodging the draft and sending other young men to fight and die in his place in Vietnam, later insulted every American POW by saying he only likes soldiers who weren't captured. Of course Trump only avoided being captured by cheating. But he loves to throw salutes, as in the balcony picture above.Trump and Mussolini had the same carriage and posture, even the same chin tilt ...Please note that in the picture above George C. Scott is portraying Mussolini. However, Scott was an Oscar-winning actor who studied Mussolini's carriage and posture, and the resemblance to Trump is, indeed, striking.The second amazing parallel is their nicknames: Il Duce and Ill Douche!Such similarities have not gone unnoticed, because other popular (or unpopular) Trump nicknames include Casino Mussolini (coined by Samantha Bee), Hair Mousse-olini, Mango Mussolini, Cheeto Benito, Cheat-o Benito, Benito Cheetolini and Benito Trumpolini.Imagine Trump without the scalp reduction and hair plugs. Over and over, we see the striking resemblance between two egomaniacal madmen ...Here's another eerie similarity, in an excerpt from The New Yorker: Please keep in mind that Trump signs his name with a Sharpie, while Mussolini evidently used something less "sharp." If we allow for the difference in instruments, the likeness is even more remarkable.Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an American-born professor of Italian history at New York University, specializes in male menace. What interests her is the manufactured drama of world-historical strongmen—their mannerisms, speech patterns, stagecraft, and mythomania. Late last year, Ben-Ghiat had just published a book called Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema, about the years of Benito Mussolini, when another spectacle wrested her attention. One of the candidates for the American Presidency was looking a lot like her principal academic subject. As President Obama put it, the United States now had its own “homegrown authoritarian.” Earlier this week, Ben-Ghiat sat at a table in her office, at N.Y.U.’s Casa Italiana, on Twelfth Street, inspecting two signatures on the screen of her laptop. One of them belonged to Donald Trump, the other to Mussolini. The scrawls—loopy, cursive, steepled—looked so similar that they seemed to blur together.Will the fascist Donald Trump follow in the footsteps of Benito Mussolini, destroying the United States the way Mussolini once destroyed Italy? Benito Mussolini was once Hitler's yes-man. Donald Trump is now Putin's yes-man. What happens when nations start doing the bidding of fascists like Hitler and Putin? History suggests that subservient nations also become fascist, with citizens losing their individual freedom and most basic rights in the process.Donald Trump Coronavirus Timeline and HistoryTrump once re-tweeted a Mussolini quote: “@ilduce2016: It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.—@realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain”Other fascists to whom Donald Trump has been compared include Adolph Hitler, Hermann Goering, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Silvio Berlusconi, Leonid Brezhnev, Vladimir Putin, Ivan the Terrible, Louis XIV, Nicholas II, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-Un, Kim Jong-Il, Mao Tse Tung, Ho-Chi Minh, Chiang Kai-Shek, Papa Doc Duvalier, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Emperor Hirohito, Hideki Tojo, Koki Hirota, Rodrigo Duterte, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Augusto Pinochet, Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon, Leopold II, Francisco Franco, Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Robert Mugabe, Yakubu Gowon, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Ismail Enver Pasha, Omar al-Bashir, Yahya Khan, Genghis Khan, and Attilâ the HunAccording to Dr. Mark Bickhard, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Cognitive Robotics and the Philosophy of Knowledge at Lehigh University, the parallels between Trump and Mussolini are even stronger than those between Trump and Hitler. In fact, Dr. Bickhard has written an article called "The Scary Parallels Between Trump and Mussolini." Traits of Mussolini cited by Dr. Bickhard include: (1) "arrogant ignorance and incoherence" and only seeming to know rather than actually knowing; (2) pretending to be an expert on every subject; (3) cowing the press while being a "man of the banner" himself; (4) having pretensions to be able to "enter the hearts and minds of his subjects" in a kind of political religion; (5) "readjusting" his personal history so that he has never been wrong about anything and has never made mistakes; (6) being more of a "gangster" than a real leader; (7) responding to criticism with extreme anger; (8) combining thin-skinned ignorance with arrogant contempt; (9) being a fraud in every conceivable way; (10) and being "a vain, blundering boaster without either ideas or aims."According to the 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts who authored The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, he is like Hitler, Mussolini and other leaders with cultish followers in important respects: (1) Trump craves attention and has a "mirror-hungry" leader personality; (2) his followers perceive Trump as a superhuman who is above the law and the need for morality or even common decency; (3) his followers blindly believe Trump's wild assertion, however untrue; (4) his followers blindly comply with Trump's directives for action; (5) his followers provide Trump with unqualified emotional support (he can "feel the love" when he's surrounded by his base).For a more exhaustive analysis, at the bottom of this page I have taken Umberto Eco's essay “Ur-Fascism” (“Eternal Fascism”) and illustrated how Trump matches Eco's fourteen general properties of fascist ideology. I gave Trump 13.5 points out of 14, deducting half a point on one contestable item.As a result, like Mussolini before him, Trump has destroyed his country's reputation and standing in the world. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, with Trump in the White House, that number had fallen to shocking 16 percent.One strong parallel between Trump and Mussolini is their fear and hatred of "the other." BTW, the joke's on US (the United States) if we ever believed that Trump was going to build an "impenetrable" wall that Mexico was going to pay for. Here is proof positive ...The third parallel is how they operate. Mussolini founded the Italian version of Fascism as an "anti-establishment" outsider movement, claiming that existing political parties were "broken" and posed grave threats to the people. A "mercurial hothead," Mussolini "reveled in his role as a political disrupter." He trafficked in "contradiction and paradox." He used the media to seduce multitudes of gullible people into swallowing his nonsense and accepting his rule. Sound like anyone you know?Like Mussolini, Trump demands loyalty to his person, rather than to the nation.Like Mussolini, Trump threatens and humiliates anyone who opposes him.Like Mussolini, Trump attempts to discredit and cow the legitimate press.Like Mussolini, Trump becomes enraged when criticized.Like Mussolini, Trump exhibits "thin-skinned ignorance combined with arrogant contempt."Like Mussolini, Trump is a "man of the banner headline" who is quickly bored by details, discussions and strategy.Like Mussolini, Trump takes all the credit when things go right, but none of the blame when things go wrong.Like Mussolini, Trump is what Umberto Eco called "a beehive of contradictions."Like Mussolini, Trump lacks any philosophy: he has only rhetoric.Like Mussolini, Trump gives the impression of talking directly to the people, while presuming to speak for them.Like Mussolini, Trump pretends to be an expert on every subject while in reality being incredibly incompetent and uninformed.Like Mussolini, Trump is closer to a Mafia don or gang lord than a democratic leader.Like Mussolini, Trump has had multiple wives, several mistressses and scores of adulterous affairs.Like Mussolini, Trump is working to strengthen laws against abortions, forcing girls and women to bear children they don't want or can't afford.Here's an eerie coincidence: Mussolini appointed his son-in-law as foreign minister; Trump has appointed his son-in-law as his primary foreign minister in the Middle East, the source of 9-11 and two bloody, trillion-dollar wars.Mussolini was taken to be a sheep in wolves' clothing, until he proved to be a real wolf. Many Americans seem to believe that what Trump says cannot be taken seriously. But Ben-Ghiat disagrees about Trump: "He means everything he says. Authoritarians never pivot."According to Ben-Ghiat, Mussolini described himself as an anti-politician, coined the slogan drenare la palude ("drain the swamp") and promised to make Italy great again. Ring any bells?Other ParallelsThey both were "problem children" and bullies who were sent to boarding schools as young men.They both were megalomaniacs, obsessed with themselves.They both had books published.They both denounced military interventions, only to later advocate and order military interventions.They both had children before they were married.They both had affairs while married.They both organized disparate right-wing groups into a cohesive political force.They both blamed their nations' economic problems on other nations that acted unfairly.They both advocated an aggressive foreign policy to arrest a purported national decline.They both painted a picture of a society in crisis that needed a strong leader to save it (i.e., them).They both stoked racial animosities and grievances of the majority against minorities.They both favored the "stick" over the "carrot" in dealing with unwanted "inferior" people.They both favored deportation of "inferior" people.They both saw darker-skinned people as "inferior" to white people.They both enlisted working-class voters against the left.They both mocked people they perceived as weak.They both glorified strength, power and "winning at all costs."They both claimed that only they could restore order and "save" their nations.They both became cults of one.They both denounced legitimate presses while employing propaganda lavishly themselves.They both demanded public displays of loyalty (in Trump's case, everyone saluting the flag during the national anthem).They both called for large sums of money to be spent on public works.They both supported their nation's dominant religion and were supported in return by religious leaders and their flocks.They both used the term "love" while sowing discord, hatred and intolerance.They both were wildly inconsistent; they said whatever suited "the mood of the moment."They both had no time or use for scruples.They both were patently unfit to hold any office, yet held the highest office nonetheless.Trumpism is eerily similar to fascism.Is Trump a Fascist?by Michael R. BurchAs an editor, publisher and translator of Holocaust poetry, I am understandably very concerned about any possible resurgence of fascism in the modern world. But to be honest, I never imagined that it could happen here in the United States. That assurance, however, was shattered when I heard some of the things Donald Trump said during his presidential campaign. Knowing what happened to millions of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other “undesirables” during World War II and the Holocaust, I shuddered to think of fascism taking control of the world’s most powerful military, not to mention thousands of nukes. Is it possible that Trump is a fascist, as has been suggested by articles in New Republic, The Nation and other reputable publications? Where there is considerable smoke, may there be fire as well? But how can we tell? Socrates would tell us that before we enter into a debate, we must define our terms. So what, exactly, is fascism?In his essay “Ur-Fascism” (or “Eternal Fascism”), Umberto Eco listed fourteen properties of fascist ideology. Eco said that “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” Thus, the presence of just one fascist trait can be very dangerous. Let’s see how many of the fourteen seem to apply to Donald Trump ...(1) “The Cult of Tradition” is characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.Trump is so “traditional” that he equated homosexual marriage with new-fangled golf putters! (Never mind that odd-looking putters and gay marriage do no harm to anyone.) Trump invokes the cult of tradition when he defends discrimination against gay marriage. Trump is popular with evangelical Christians—four out of five evangelicals voted for him according to exit polls—because he embraces the “wisdom” of their received Tradition. (Never mind that the Bible endorses slavery, sex slavery, infanticide, matricide and the stoning to death of children!) Trump demands that everyone accept the tradition of standing during the national anthem. Why? Trump shows no evidence of ever questioning how he “knows” what he “knows.” He just knows, and there is no higher truth. Thus, new learning cannot occur.[Score: Trump 1.0 out of 1.0](2) “The Rejection of Modernism” views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Tribal "wisdom" trumps science, pardon the pun.Trump’s evangelical supporters reject homosexual marriage and a woman’s right to choose as “depravity.” They also claim that Islam is a “false” and “depraved” religion, while ignoring the many very similar verses in the Bible and Koran. They insist that climate change is a "hoax," perhaps because their all-powerful "god" who controls nature would never let it happen. Trump ignores the evidence-based findings of American intelligence agencies to go with his "gut."[Score: Trump 2.0 out of 2.0](3) “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake” dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.Trump’s mindless attacks on the EPA, the Climate Action Plan, the Paris Accords, NATO and the EU are cases in point. While often not seeming to have any sort of developed plan, Trump loves to be seen as a man of action, charging forth, even when he appears to be tilting at windmills (as with the Trump Shutdown over his imaginary border "wall"). Trump's "Muslim ban" is another example: "In a broad sense this reflects the cult of action for action’s sake, especially insofar as the pretense that summary discrimination against and persecution of Muslims writ large for the actions of terrorists amounts to 'doing something.'"[Score: Trump 3.0 out of 3.0](4) “Disagreement Is Treason” devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith. “In modern culture,” says Eco, “the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.”Trump did not allow peaceful protests at his political rallies and said that he longed for the days when protesters ended up in the hospital, going as far as to say that he would like to punch protesters himself. He joined in chants of “lock her up” after Hillary Clinton confronted him with intellectual and fact-based arguments that exposed the errors and contradictions in his theories and plans. As president, Trump has fired all the "adults in the room" in order to surround himself with yes-men and yes-women.[Score: Trump 4.0 out of 4.0](5) “Fear of Difference” is used to stir up racist sentiments against foreigners and immigrants.Trump shot to the top of the polls when in his first campaign speech he portrayed illegal immigrants as being “rapists” and “drug pushers” with only very limited exceptions. Of course that was far from the truth, since illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes, on a percentage basis, than the general population. Muslims of all stripes are another Trump target because they are all seen as potential terrorists: "Trump renders himself cause and cure of the problem of terrorism through binary Othering of the terrorist peril, an approach that also appeals to popular fear of difference." This fear of the Other led to Trump's infamous "Muslim ban."[Score: Trump 5.0 out of 5.0](6) “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class” who fear economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups. "Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups."One may postulate that this is how Trump won the presidential election: by focusing on Rust Belt “swing” states where the white middle-class had lost jobs and their employment prospects were less than optimal. Trump "in response to the economic problems created by the gutting of manufacturing and related industries amidst the emergence of neoliberal globalization" was able to create effective "appeals to a frustrated middle class."[Score: Trump 6.0 out of 6.0](7) “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. “The followers must feel besieged,” Eco wrote, “but the plot must come from the inside.” During the Cold War, it was “reds under the beds.” Now the interior threats include “the mainstream media” and the “deep state.”Has there ever been an American presidential candidate with more “theories” about plots against his person? Trump has also hyped all sorts of “threats” against the United States, which—according to him—only he can save us from. Trump has repeatedly referred to "the political establishment" who are variously "trying to stop him" and who are "responsible for the economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry" and have "brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs." Since becoming president Trump has, on virtually a daily basis, claimed to be the victim of “witch hunts” by rogue journalists and intelligence agencies.[Score: Trump 7.0 out of 7.0](8) Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.Trump at times portrayed Hillary Clinton as old and feeble, but at other times as so powerful that she alone was personally responsible for everything that ever went wrong in the Middle East! As president Trump has claimed The New York Times is a "failing" enterprise, while also claiming he needs to be protected from all the mean journalists who write bad things about him. Trump will claim one day that ISIS is powerless and defeated, then talk about what must be done to defeat ISIS the next.[Score: Trump 8.0 out of 8.0](9) “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” and thus there must always be an enemy to fight.Trump has exaggerated both dangers abroad and dangers at home. Those “dangers” make a “man of action” like Trump a necessity, if we are to believe him. Trump has said that only he can save Americans from immigration, terrorism, being taken advantage of by bad trade deals, etc. For Trump, life is permanent warfare. He once tweeted a Mussolini quote: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”[Score: Trump 9.0 out of 9.0](10) “Contempt for the Weak” is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the Ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.Trump frequently shows his disdain for the people around him, including his employees. For instance, a reporter noted that as a private citizen Trump called his pilots “idiots” when he experienced bumpy landings. But Trump at times lauds his followers, claiming that he “loves” them and they “love” him. There does seem to be deep tension, as one gets the impression that Trump disdains nearly everyone and only compliments people who agree with and obey him. Thus Steve Bannon is “my Steve” when he agrees with Trump but “Sloppy Steve” and someone who has “lost his mind” when he disagrees with Trump or criticizes him.[Score: Trump 10.0 out of 10.0](11) “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero” in the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “the Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”This can be seen in the Trump brand of militarism: "Trumpism also invokes the hero/death binary of militarism." Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, said the United States is engaged in a "world war" with Islam. Steve Bannon said war with China over tiny man-made islands was inevitable. Trump himself seems ready, willing and able to send many people to their deaths—including completely innocent refugee children and their parents. But I see no evidence that Trump longs for death himself, so perhaps this point does not fully apply.[Score: Trump 10.5 out of 11.0]At the time I originally graded Trump using this checklist, I didn't see anything that suggested he had a personal death wish. However, since Trump risked his own life along with many others by refusing to wear a mask and practice social distancing, I think he could be given a full point here.(12) “Machismo” sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”I cannot remember an American presidential candidate ever speaking of women with such disdain, or bragging about kissing and groping them without their consent. Nor can I remember any American politician in any sphere who bragged so publicly about his sexual conquests and the size and performance of his sexual organ.[Score: Trump 11.5 out of 12.0](13) “Selective Populism” in which the People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. Because no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (although in reality he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer representing the Voice of the People.” Thus, in effect, the Leader speaks for the people and the people become like an audience watching a play in which their only role is to applaud on cue. We can see this during World War II when Hitler's was the only German voice that mattered.Trump has been leading the American public down the dark path of racism and xenophobia. According to him, all other American politicians have been incompetent and only he can speak for the People, and lead them back to the Promised Land of American Greatness. It is Trump who defines and interprets the Common Will of the people who will "make America great again" by watching Trump and applauding. His brand of populism is very selective: "Trump’s contempt for the weak associated with his popular elitism manifests as anti-immigrant xenophobia and Islamophobia, both of which in this instance serve as convenient vehicles for moral panicking and scapegoating. In displaying little apparent interest in the welfare of Muslims and illegal immigrants, Trump’s populism appears highly selective — limited in fact to whites and those able to claim whiteness."[Score: Trump 12.5 out of 13.0](14) “Newspeak” in which Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.Trump’s tweets are a rather obvious case in point here. Also, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon have warned the American media to “shut up” and not question Trump. Trump had journalists quarantined in pens at his campaign rallies. One of Trump’s main goals seems to be forcing the media to stop criticizing him.[Score: Trump 13.5 out of 14.0 or 14.0 out of 14.0]In conclusion, according to Umberto Eco’s definition, it really does seem that Donald Trump is a fascist. I initially gave Trump 13.5 points out of 14, deducting half a point because I couldn't say that he has a personal death wish. That 13.5 rating makes Trump a very dangerous person, since he is now commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military and the nuclear codes. However, as I noted in item #11, I think Trump could be given a full point since he exhibited a personal death wish during the coronavirus pandemic when he refused to wear a mask and practice social distancing. Thus I now believe Trump has earned a perfect 14 out of 14.After I created this page, a reader observed: "I have been rereading your piece comparing Tweety to Mussolini and noted that some of the identifying marks of the fascist mentality Eco enumerates have presented more clearly in Tweety since you wrote the article. Selective populism and contempt for the weak are considerably more pronounced in Tweety's will to dominate at this stage. His relentless assaults on the press, his calling this one or that one "weak," like Trudeau or Cohen for example. There is really no doubt at all that by Eco's criteria Tweety is a fascist. But in other categories too his true colors have become much more vivid."

I was a radical feminist when they flourished — ie 1968 to 1982 or so. I found the theoretical principles useful, because the other feminist political theories I studied did not address women as the targets of oppression. I mean this literally — liberal feminism assumed the current system was normal and acceptable, and one should “just add women” to it. Socialist and marxist feminists, at least early on, were constantly being put down, shamed, and criticized by male marxists, about women not being important, let alone right, and didn’t you know it was the men who were dying in Vietnam? (which was the big issue for men till 1975, unsurprisingly) and what would women have to complain about anyway?More insulting still, neither liberals nor marxists showed sympathy with or acceptance of lesbian rights. (In those days, gay rights and lesbian rights were organized by different people and had very different agendas. People who are debating if there were lesbians at Stonewall miss the point: Stonewall, for women, was emotionally satisfying but the right to cruise in clubs and pubs wasn’t foremost on the women’s agenda.)Radical and lesbian feminism emphasized the right of women to control their own bodies in every way — and while abortion was acceptable to liberals and marxists, their theory did not make the jump to seeing sexuality as the same kind of right. (There were all sorts of soundbites in the movement then, since there were obviously lesbian and gay men among both liberals and marxists. Betty Friedan, the founder of NOW, called them the “lavender menace;” a Maoist/stalinist group pronounced that gay issues “had no revolutionary potential.” At the same time as radical feminists embraced rights for all women, lesbian feminists were moving into a separatist stance which barely welcomed radical feminists and had no use for liberals or marxists. The Campus Women’s Liberation group I was a part of, mostly radical feminists, expelled the socialist feminists because they voted their party line at a national abortion rights conference and refused to vote for a lesbian rights statement. (I’m explaining this because it is historically important for the other kinds of feminism which followed.)I’m not an egalitarian feminist, as I’ve stated in another answer. This means I’m not a liberal, unlike most American feminists (even those who think they’re something else). Being equal with men in the US is not my ambition, because I grew up poor and am poor and I know exactly which men I’d be equal to. What’s the point of that? None of us deserve to remain on the bottom. So in the ‘80s, in grad school, as marxist theory changed (ie went back to its roots) and was more open to feminism, I studied it and found it far better at explaining class, racial discrimination, and history that was real and material and had no strands of mysticism (the early radical feminism was in love with people like Mary Daly and goddesses and so forth, and I am a confirmed agnostic in the old sense: there’s no evidence either way, though I know which I’d prefer to be true).But although I then concluded I was a socialist, rather than radical, feminist, I never lost fondness for rf’s guiding principles and the writers who made my world make sense to me — de Beauvoir, Mackinnon, Firestone, Rich, Dworkin, Morgan, Redstockings, Tepper, Atwood, Walker, and many more. I think their description of the dynamics of patriarchy were and are brilliant. All of them had awareness of and commitment to ending all oppressions which I haven’t found in the modern day theories, which may pay lip service to intersectionality but haven’t even the vaguest idea of what the term means and why it has theoretical value.Radical feminism was the only theory which drew on art as well as politics, theory and practice equally, and attention to the daily lives of women, from what clothes they wore to how to address their children (once we got older and started having them). In the ‘80s, the Porn Wars ripped the radical feminist community in two between the “sex positive” advocates horrified by the ordinance banning women’s objectification in porn, and the “BDSM recapitulates patriarchy and normalizes it” feminists. Those who viewed pornography as the primary way rape culture gets normalized and passed down by men took the ideas just as personally as those who thought every sexual act was a good one if consent were included, and that there would always be “butches” and “femmes” in relationships, a dominant partner and one who gave in. (I have friends from this period who think quite differently now; they were all mothers, and it’s amazing how conversations with and about children’s tweak one’s theory.)I can’t quite describe how liberating radical feminism was to a girl who was raised to believe boys were better and needed better education, that girls who looked pretty had a better chance to get boys and that should be their main goal, and that we should just get used to the fact that not many of us would go to law school, or medical school, because the faculty didn’t like letting in women who would then just get married and have kids and never practice.You’ve got to remember that 1968 was a nearly-revolutionary year — in France, almost literally. In the US, both King and Kennedy were murdered. And it was the year that women started leaving SDS and other student political organizations in droves, fed up by being the ones running the mimeo machines and handing out the leaflets and being a speaker at a rally only if you were sleeping with one of the important males. The radical movement basically fell apart; it went in a year or so from constantly growing and being more visible to severely cut back — at about the same momentum as the women’s movement began growing. (The trouble was, women had been doing the vast majority of shit work, because of their innate ability to work copy technology. It’s not smart to piss off the shitworkers.)People who were motivated by stories and practices that were unfair went into liberal feminist organizations. People who liked theory went into radical feminism or lesbian feminism. (Some argued they were subsets of the same theory, and others that they were separate entities. But then, we argued about everything.) The latter group identified themselves as “women’s liberation” members, which was logical in a time when every “identity” group was a liberation group. (I’d argue that the big loss to real change was the conversion from seeking “liberation” to celebrating “identity;” ie radicalism became liberalism.)The main difference I saw between radical feminists and lesbian feminists was that those of us in radical feminism did not necessarily identify as lesbian, and those in lesbian feminism obviously did. But both were the women who constructed “women’s communities” — book shops, record labels, women’s festivals, restaurants, Wiccan groups, and dozens of national newspapers and newsletters at a time before the internet, to create a national conversation that just a few years earlier had been unimaginable. They coined the term “the personal is political” and Redstockings’ radical motto was, “We always believe the woman.” The lesbian feminist movement was avowedly and openly separatist; we vacillated a little, especially those who had relationships with men, but thought women’s spaces were liberating and necessary.Radical feminists debated whether lesbians who’d had sex with men were as “pure” as lesbians who never did, and if bi women could be trusted at all (quickly earning retaliatory yelling from those of us who were bi, or thought someday we might turn out to be). They criticized women for wearing makeup, wearing skirts, shaving their legs. They wrote negatively about the male dominance of the gay men’s movement, which like the peace movement before it was supposedly everyone’s movement but paid attention basically to the struggles of men. ***In short, they were undoubtedly as annoying and self righteous as every other political group I’ve ever known or associated with, but the sheer energy of inventing a world of women undefined by men took radical feminism farther than any other of the feminist-related groups; and in the long run, most of their stands got integrated into the general feminist conversation. So now those who like to challenge them will agree that rape is bad, even between husband an wife, and there need to be laws and specific ways of investigation; that men who beat their wives belong in jail, and there need to be shelters for them; that shared spaces for men and women are inevitable and necessary, that community institutions focused on the needs and interests of women are important and valuable (instead of, say, only funding the multiple “youth groups” designed to keep young men from turning into gangsters or political activists). A liberal man of the present day will say of course there should be women’s novels included among English literature courses, and of course explanations of what women were doing in history while all the men were doing the things in the textbooks should be added occasionally. Of course providing child care to working families is desirable. Like the average ahistorical American, they don’t think much about how these ideas were once intolerably radical, and only after they were integrated into meetings and rallies did they move toward acceptance in the mainstream.As you can tell, I’m nostalgic about radical feminism and the intense energy it gave us; the shared ideas, the constant awareness of issues, and the occasional cooperation with other feminist organizations to work on laws and reproductive rights, criticism of the religions which mostly at first tried to reject the idea that a family with both partners working might be a healthy family, or of course attend concerts and literary events (plays, reader’s theatre) where the ideas of radical and socialist feminism might be the underpinning of the plot.But I’m also fully aware that the things which made it flourish, particularly the willingness to engage on every single issue no matter how minor — clothes, shoes, makeup, leg shaving, heterosexual dating, monogamy, sports, midwives vs. doctors and medicine, breast feeding, radical therapy, goddess worship vs. more traditional religions, raising males — also made it collapse in on itself, as the eternal judgments burnt out much of the population as they aged and couldn’t spend all night arguing every night.I haven’t actually thought much about radical feminism myself since the ‘80s, unless I went places like a woman’s bath in San Francisco and got into conversations with the regulars. The midwest, at least, was generally a lot less entangled in the sex issues, though the University of Iowa women’s center had started the conversation on what became known as the Fat Acceptance Movement. Minnesota, of course, was debating at the time a city-wide ordinance Minneapolis ultimately passed, banning “soft porn” such as Playboy on the grounds that it oppressed women. (Definitely a radical feminist activity — the main organizers were Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin.) I started dealing more and more with class and race as primary issues. All the publications I used to read one by one quit publishing. The most famous radical feminists continued to act — Adrienne Rich and Robin Morgan never stopped writing or advocacy work, though Morgan moved on to international women’s interests. So one could keep up with the thinking as Mary Daly got tenured and so forth — but it became more of an academic pursuit, in both senses of the term. What disappeared most quickly were the absolute basics of radical feminism: non-patriarchal process. The basic theory of radical feminists, so taken for granted that it was only mentioned now and then, was that decisions were by consensus, there should be no hierarchies or designated “leaders,” and the competition which characterized men should not be a part of your group. The very distinction between women and men in radical feminism was that women would rebuild the social values of the world to not put anyone at top or bottom. And that much of radical feminism I still value, and endorse, although even a PhD. in communication and extensive practice and training in facilitation did not make consensus or positive discussions easy to do — and “no leadership” had to be redefined a little to “no permanent leaders.” However google “radical feminism” and “process” and I think you’ll find a lot even in current discussion.But many “radical feminists” that I was encountering on line were outright vituperative, did everything they could to beat down any disagreement. As I discovered the social internet (as opposed to the research internet) I began to see feminist commentary again. Most of it was what I’d call unsophisticated. They’d clearly learned their feminism in college, from teachers, which is not at all how we learned ours — there were a few women studies classes, which were a wonderful relief in a vast sea of men’s studies, but we learned mostly from each other and national publications, and constant argument and discussion.Just a couple of years ago, I happened into an “anarchafeminist” website, and discovered that they were anarchists in the specific sense of “nihilists,” rather than the sense of the anarchafeminists of the 80s, who were more syndicalist anarchists, worked by affinity group and consensus, and were happy to work with similar anarchist men, but didn’t tolerate sexism.There were self-identified “radical feminists” discussing issues, but they seemed rather different than the theory-driven perfectionists of the ‘70s. A lot of them were horrifically rude, which I slowly came to realize was just how things worked on the internet in these times; and the more time spent writing like trolls, probably the more personal time spent behaving like trolls. No-platforming, rigid definitions of “right” and “wrong,” disagreement regardless of civil argument, were all logical extensions of trashing opponents.I promised myself I’d never talk a modern “radical feminist” again. They didn’t do the reading, so to speak. And they certainly had no knowledge of material theory and practice in their cultural context, which is the worst thing I can say about anyone discussing theory. It’s like talking about race oppression in the US and not knowing what happened after slavery ended to get us all where we are today, or about sexual orientation without understanding that people have not always found same sex activity “disgusting and unnatural.”But I do not blame them; I blame their teachers. As Women Studies (or “gender studies,” as it’s now called in an apparent attempt to erase the reality that all the theories, approaches, and practices began with women trying to write and talk about their own oppression, so some theory grew organically and some grew oppositionally) expanded and became embedded within the academy, instead of within the movement. The majority of the practitioners became ahistorical: reflecting more the practice of English literature than the practice of human/cultural studies. Language became far too significant a theme, again probably a result of literary influence, and I began to understand that the vicious comments about other people’s incompetence with language (something we all knew disadvantaged people not academically trained, or who had been brought up submissive and scared to argue in public, ie women) emerged out a new theory and practice of feminism which I’d have called “academic” feminism except that scholarly practice requires discipline and clarity in thinking, and apparently neither of these skills had been included in their curriculum. **Recently — in the last year — I’ve seen more mention of radical feminist texts, and more discussion of theory again, not based as much on the victim rhetoric of even five years ago, but on a struggle to coherently build and defend a concept of what a woman is, and what gender means. I’m convinced this is a reaction to the misogyny of a particular group of young, white, privileged people, raised male and accustomed to subordinating women, and reacting to opposition with threats (and actions) of violence; a subgroup of Antifa who do not seem to have studied how one determines fascism by behavior, rather than theory. Sometimes it drives me crazy, because every generation reinvents the wheel unless they’re mentored by the previous one; and the youth of this generation seem about as ready to listen to those of us over a certain age as we, the Vietnam generation, were ready to listen to our parents, most of whom had been raised with war as the right thing to do. Still, I see certain names — Dworkin, for example — reappearing, which shows there is a new generation of radical feminists. I feel my contribution is to keep emphasizing why process matters, and why building consensus is a radical feminist concept which, in the long run, will improve our chances of getting positive change. In the trans community, at least in Britain, there’s an attempt to distinguish between “transsexuals” (the group who tend to define themselves as having been born in the wrong body) and the “transgender” activists (the group who don’t advocate surgery and want to be defined by what identity they embrace, regardless of body.)(cf Standing up for transsexual rights | Letters where a proposal by the (younger) transgender folks to recognize anyone who self-declares the identity they claim is resisted by the older group.)That was why radical feminism was enormously successful in its era, to the point no one knows that radical feminists did it; liberal feminists focused on voting and high end employment, and did not fail all that badly; but if you talk about changes in attitudes toward sex, violence toward women, divisions of labor, changes in the practice of medicine to be more respectful toward patients, not to mention changes in the percentage of women in the field, it started with crazy demands from a group of women who might break into a meeting of medical doctors or. heads of department with a fact sheet about why women were needed in patient care, or why credentials were over-rated and midwives and nurses and assistants could be trusted with doing certain medical procedures, even meeting with patients to talk about their symptoms and prescribing medications without ever having to see a doctor. Yes, you take it for granted now. Fifty years ago, these were almost unimaginable occurrences.That’s what I’m thinking about radical feminism. My opinion changes as the movement changes; but we’re living in a fluid age. Still, there are people trying to articulate distinctions in groups of people now — really getting not just intersectionality, but tactics and the evaluation of allies and enemies —- so I’m sure there’s hope.But then, there always is.Thanks for asking me! Obviously I’ve got a LOT of opinions on this subject. I also know a bit more about it than most people (except for other former radical feminists who then went on to study the history and politics of the women’s movement) so it tends to make me fear I’m saying too much without saying enough.NOTES:** Those of you who have read other commentaries of mine on theory and feminism have run into my disgust at the low level of thought and discourse in the so-called “third wave.” That is nothing to my slow realization that these unattractive traits are the result of someone, somewhere, not holding their students to the highest level of accountability; ie the professors.When I was teaching a Women Studies course, I would ask “so, who’s to blame for all these problems?” The answer was instinctive and immediate: “Men!”But it was one of those trick questions your professors sneak up on you with, asked so I could introduce the concept that when you’re talking about culture, “blame” is actually not useful. We had to reason our way through why: basically intersectionality, though I didn’t have the term then. Then of course we had to talk about men, and consider what was reasonable to expect from them, as fellow citizens, as allies, as employers and elected officials, and most of all as members of our families, significant others, children and parents. We did not spend our semester discussing identities and how they were victimized: that’s not theory; that’s a support group. We certainly asked class members their experiences and how they thought they were hurt as members of groups, but the goal was to think about how those experiences happened, and why; most of all, how they might be changed. There are no monoliths; there are just odds, stacked against you but always overcomable if you think instead of react.*** Some years later, AIDS would turn around many of the lesbians who advocated for separation from men as it ripped through the male community. But in radical feminism’s heyday, the 70s were a continuation of the 60’s sexual revolution. That sex might have any consequences other than pregnancy and the occasional STD was only a vague thought to the majority of us. It was a fact you were more likely to get orgasms, and far less likely to have bad sex or STDs, if you were a lesbian rather than a straight woman. Men in the 60s and 70s were just learning about orgasms, along with women. The running joke was that male partners ended up always asking, “Did you come?” I don’t know if they’ve figured out how to tell yet. The University of Washington Health Center ran in a class in helping women learn how to have an orgasm. The first day of orientation, I was sent to a women’s workshop where the leader said, “Never put anything in your vagina you wouldn’t put in your mouth.” As I said, sexual liberation was emphasized. High school “health” had one paragraph at the very end explaining what happened during a heterosexual sex act — which they assumed was all anyone would ever be doing, of course; missionary position, please.^^ For those interested in modern radical feminism and its concerns, this article/essay about a rejection of women of color in Canada who don’t have the politically “correct” analysis should help you see the communication problems being faced. If some of you are “free speech” advocates, don’t feel smug about the US; things are as bad or worse here. An open letter to the left regarding silence.

Things are important only in specific contexts, so the question is: important for what? Let's take "why is theology important" in the broadest sense, namely, is it important in any sense whatsoever? That is easy to answer, but one needs first to specify the sense of the term.Theology (Gk. theologia, speech/thought about the gods) was invented by Plato; it is a profound and central part of we call Western philosophy, for Plato, Aristotle, most of Hellenistic philosophy, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, and many other great philosophers, philosophy culminates in contemplation of the divine. (For a good book on the origins of theology in Greece, see Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers. I'm also writing a book on philosophy and theology, which should come out in two years or so). So, theology is important if one wishes to understand with any depth and comprehensiveness the greatest philosophical thinkers in the Western tradition.Related to this, the development of Christian theology, arising in part from philosophically educated converts to Christianity, building on a tradition of reflection on the Jewish Bible in Greek (the Septuagint), led to the profound intertwining of what we call Christian theology and Greek philosophy (they are part of the same tradition). Christian theology, in turn, is the most intellectually organized and influential cognitive dimension of the Christian faith, profoundly shaping churches and believers' practices, communities, beliefs, and prejudices. Understanding any of these things, then, relies on some grasp of (here, Christian) theology.Ascending a level, the combined influence of what we separate as "Western philosophy" and "Christian theology" on the development of Western civilization is difficult to overstate. No cultured, informed perspective on central events, persons, and ideas in European history can be attained without some knowledge of theology in the widest sense; absent such understanding, everything from Plato to the Christian Eucharist, Aristotle and the Pope's writings on the environment, become unintelligible or impossible to interpret with any depth and insight.As historical creatures, we only become fully aware of ourselves through a knowledge of our own history. Struck with total amnesia and thus complete loss of personal history, humans lose their sense of identity. Likewise, as cultures, we inherit institutions, ideas, practices, attitudes, and prejudices about everything from human dignity, the divine, the good, evil, sexuality, and commerce; without understanding the origins of these things, we become a cypher to ourselves. History is the key, and at the heart of much of history are the basic questions about the meaning of life, the divine, our relationship to purpose: fundamentally theological questions, or ones that intersect decisively with theological tradition.So, why is theology important? It is important because without some understanding of it, we lose an accurate sense of our own identity as individuals, culture, nations, and as a civilization. Goethe said, "What you have inherited from your fathers, earn anew, for only thus can you make it your own." Theology is part of our inheritance, regardless of our personal beliefs. It is part of us, and thus understanding it is one step in the journey towards self-knowledge.