By Matt Rooney
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For those of you hoping to get a rise out of Governor Murphy? By trolling him and calling him a “fascist”?
Congratulations. Mission accomplished.
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In case you missed it, Murphy let rip this completely BIZARRE three-tweet thread on Friday afternoon, presumably reacting to state house protesters (and many online) in recent weeks who’ve called him a fascist or even a Nazi:
He’s a shameless hypocrite. One of the worst I’ve ever seen.
Here’s what then-candidate Murphy said back on November 20, 2016 to an audience of 400 “progressives” gathered in Montclair, New Jersey:
“I have lived in Germany twice – once as a private citizen and once as the United States ambassador, and I’m a modest student of Germany history. And I know what was being said about somebody else in the 1920s. And you could unfortunately drop in names from today into those observations from the 1920’s, and the moves that have been made early on only aide and abet that argument.”
But Murphy’s hypocrisy is only one angle to this latest goofiness. His feigned outrage got me thinking: is Murphy a genuine fascist? Or just an elitist, far-Left megalomaniac who’s making the most of a crisis? Or can those things be one in the same?
The great dystopian writer George Orwell – whose works include Animal Farm and 1984 – wrote an essay in 1944 (when unambiguous fascists were plentiful) titled simply “What is Fascism?
“Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway,” Orwell lamented at the end of his essay. “To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.”
And that last part is the crux of it. In modern times at least, “fascist” is essentially a swearword. Something we use to signal that the authority figure we’re labeling as such is someone who is worthy of derision.
Merriam Webster’s definitions (specifically the second definition) align with the colloquial usage:
1: often capitalized: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
Murphy is clearly a fan of centralized government (all far-Leftists are, provided they’re the ones in charge of it). He’s supressing opposition (more than one anti-Murphy protester has been criminally charged in recent weeks for peaceful demonstrations). He is now, however, exalting a nation or advocating racial superiority. So definition one is a little complex to encompass Phil’s attitude.
Definition #2? Yeah. That fits. He just extended his own emergency powers for another month (without legislative approval or oversight), told a national TV audience that the Bill of Rights isn’t relevant in N.J. at the moment, and continues to make unilateral decisions – like banning ‘wave parades’ – which seem divorced from science but typical of what you’d expect from someone who likes controlling everyone’s daily lives and activites. Sounds like he’s “tending toward” and “actually exercising strong autocratic/dictatoris control” to me. Accusing critics of trivializing mass murder is a fascist tactic if I’ve ever seen one!
So would I call Murphy a “Hitler” or Nazi? Like he did to Donald Trump and his supporters (see above)?
No.
Whether he IS a “fascist” more generally may depend, to borrow a formulation from Bill Clinton, on what your defition of “is” is.
As ever, we’ll leave it to you to call Murphy what you think is appropriate. This is a free country… at least outside of New Jersey.
Undecided? That’s fine, too. Look at it this way: the very fact that this is even a discussion tells you all that you need to know about the effect Phil Murphy has had in New Jersey.
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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).
