'I'm not sure I would say it's novel' - this is, I think, where Robin's argument tends to lose some of its force, because he elides what he means by 'conservative' through some strange stubbornness. If you read his arguments about Trump and fascism as a part of his entire body of work it's pretty clear that his point is that conservatism has always been like this and Trump is more of a revelation of what conservatism is (and always has been) than a break from the past or representation of something novel; however if you read them on their own in a twitter thread or New Yorker article that point gets lost. I understand why he chooses not to repeat himself on this point, but the end result reads as somewhat glib.
Anyway, very good post. I'm glad you decided to respond, as your journalistic beat is adjacent to Robin's and I was interested to see if you would at length. I think you get at here what I find dissatisfying in his arguments about fascism and Trump: it's right to treat Trump in continuity with the history of conservatism, and to note the slipperiness of the dividing line between conservatism and fascism. It's bizarre to point out that you shouldn't fence him entirely on the fascist side of that permeable boundary only to then fence him entirely on the conservative side. The whole point is the permeability and contingency, and I think your examples from the Third Republic illustrate that well. A flower that fails to bloom is still a flower.
'I'm not sure I would say it's novel' - this is, I think, where Robin's argument tends to lose some of its force, because he elides what he means by 'conservative' through some strange stubbornness. If you read his arguments about Trump and fascism as a part of his entire body of work it's pretty clear that his point is that conservatism has always been like this and Trump is more of a revelation of what conservatism is (and always has been) than a break from the past or representation of something novel; however if you read them on their own in a twitter thread or New Yorker article that point gets lost. I understand why he chooses not to repeat himself on this point, but the end result reads as somewhat glib.
Anyway, very good post. I'm glad you decided to respond, as your journalistic beat is adjacent to Robin's and I was interested to see if you would at length. I think you get at here what I find dissatisfying in his arguments about fascism and Trump: it's right to treat Trump in continuity with the history of conservatism, and to note the slipperiness of the dividing line between conservatism and fascism. It's bizarre to point out that you shouldn't fence him entirely on the fascist side of that permeable boundary only to then fence him entirely on the conservative side. The whole point is the permeability and contingency, and I think your examples from the Third Republic illustrate that well. A flower that fails to bloom is still a flower.
In the title of this essay, did you mean, Sisyphus unbound? Syphilis is a venereal disease.