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Vox
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
How Gaza's hunger crisis reached its 'worst-case scenario'
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. The 'worst-case scenario' is unfolding in Gaza. Though there are larger hunger crises in the world in terms of sheer numbers, Gaza is, in many ways, the most intense. By September, leading humanitarian groups predict, 100 percent of the population will face acute food insecurity, meaning they will be forced to routinely skip meals. Half a million people will be facing starvation, destitution, and death. There's little agriculture in today's Gaza, next to no commercial trade with the outside world, and no opportunity for people to flee. The situation has deteriorated sharply in recent weeks: Of the 74 malnutrition-related deaths in Gaza in 2025, 63 occurred in July — including 24 children under 5, according to the World Health Organization. 'The worst-case scenario of Famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,' the world's leading hunger watchdog declared on Tuesday. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), the consortium of humanitarian groups that monitors and classifies global hunger crises, warned that 'widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.' Israel has been waging war in Gaza since Hamas's deadly attack in October 2023, but the territory's suffering this month has grown even more severe, more suddenly, for more people than at any other turn in the conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to claim this week, despite all evidence to the contrary, that there is 'no starvation in Gaza.' That stance has gotten harder to maintain amid increasing media attention, with photos of emaciated children spread across the covers of newspapers around the world. The Israeli government has made some policy changes, including instituting daily 10-hour 'humanitarian pauses' in some areas, air-dropping some additional aid, and allowing in more food trucks. But aid groups say these measures don't come close to meeting the scale of the problem. So how did the situation get this bad, and what can be done, at this point, to keep it from getting worse? How a problem became a crisis Some human rights groups have accused Israel of deliberately using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, which is illegal under international law. Netanyahu has denied that this is the policy, though some politicians in Israel, and some supporters abroad, have suggested that Gaza shouldn't receive any aid until the hostages Hamas took on October 7, 2023, are released. Israeli officials have charged that Gaza's hunger crisis is either exaggerated or the result of theft by Hamas. Malnutrition was an issue in Gaza even before the war. Israel has restricted the movement of goods and people in the Gaza Strip for decades. This, in addition to taxation and stockpiling by Hamas authorities, has made vital items hard to come by, and a majority of Gazans were already dependent on food assistance before 2023. The war made this situation exponentially worse. More than a year ago, the IPC and Biden administration officials were warning that parts of Gaza were close to famine or already there. In April 2024, under pressure from the US, Israel allowed hundreds more aid trucks into the Gaza Strip, though this did not resolve the issue entirely, and access to aid fluctuated for the rest of the year. When the war stopped with a ceasefire agreement in January of this year, food briefly flooded into the territory. The situation reached a breaking point in March, though, when the 42-day ceasefire between Hamas and Israel ended. Israeli authorities cut off all aid to Gaza for two months. When Israel began allowing aid across the border in May, far less than was being delivered before. Israeli authorities have consistently derided the UN aid system in Gaza, claiming that a significant portion of aid is stolen by Hamas, though the New York Times recently reported that senior Israeli military officials say there is no evidence of aid being 'systematically' stolen. The aid is now being delivered by two competing mechanisms: the United Nations as well as the newly formed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a US- and Israeli-backed entity operating four distribution sites in southern and central Gaza. The GHF's advocates say it prevents Hamas from siphoning off aid, and the group claims to have distributed more than 97 million meals in its two months of operation, but critics are skeptical about how many people are actually receiving these meals. They also say the small number of sites means Gazans have to travel long distances on foot through war zones to get to them, and that the sites have inconsistent operating hours, leading to a situation where the most vulnerable civilians are the ones least likely to be helped. 'There is no way that a pregnant woman can walk 5 miles and manage to pick up a box that weighs 22 kilos,' said Or Elrom, a former senior officer with the branch of the Israeli military that oversees humanitarian issues in the Palestinian territories. Distribution sites have frequently been overwhelmed, and soldiers have fired on crowds trying to get food: hundreds of people have been killed in the vicinity of GHF sites. Palestinian GHF workers have also been killed by gunmen, reportedly affiliated with Hamas. UN-distributed shipments, located at different sites from the GHF aid, have also been overwhelmed by crowds. Officials say all 55 UN aid trucks that entered Gaza last Sunday were unloaded by crowds before reaching their destinations. Elrom described the mob scenes — both at the UN convoys and at the GHF distribution sites — as a 'chicken and egg' problem. When not enough aid is coming in, and it's only coming in via one or two locations, it's more likely to be overwhelmed by desperate people, Elrom said during a panel hosted by the Israel Policy Forum on Tuesday. The risk of looting then makes it harder to distribute aid. The UN-Israel blame game Israel's government blamed the UN for the failure to get more aid into Gaza, with officials posting videos of hundreds of trucks' worth of food sitting in a fenced-off area near the Kerem Shalom border crossing into southern Gaza that the Israeli officials say the UN is not delivering. The UN retorted: 'Kerem Shalom is not a McDonald's drive-through where we just pull up and pick up what we've ordered, right?' spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters. 'There are tremendous bureaucratic impediments. There are tremendous security impediments. And, frankly, I think there's a lack of willingness to allow us to do our work.' The UN and other aid groups have called for the GHF to be shut down, describing it as an inefficient and dangerous method of aid distribution with little hope of addressing the severity of Gaza's crisis. The blame game is just the latest chapter in a long history of recrimination and mistrust between Israel and the United Nations. Israel has long claimed to be unfairly singled out for criticism at the UN, and the relationship has only gotten more toxic since the start of the war in Gaza. High-ranking UN officials have accused Israel of genocide, and Israel has alleged that employees of the UN's organization for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, participated in the October 7 attacks. (The UN found the claim credible; it said nine of UNWRA's 14,000 employees 'may have' participated, and no longer work for UNWRA. UNRWA is not the UN agency coordinating food aid delivery.) What changed? Recent weeks have seen a major shift not only in the severity of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but in the public debate around it. Netanyahu may deny that anyone is starving in Gaza, but President Donald Trump does not, telling reporters in Scotland on Monday, 'Some of those kids are — that's real starvation stuff. I see it, and you can't fake that.' Trump pledged to work with allies to set up more 'food centers' in Gaza and make them more accessible. The European Union has found Israel to be in violation of its human rights obligations under their trade deal, and is debating suspending a major science research program over the situation in Gaza. France and Britain are planning to recognize Palestinian statehood in September. Even Germany's government, which has been very reluctant to criticize Israeli policy, may be shifting its stance. Some prominent academics and human rights groups within Israel are now describing their government's actions as 'genocide,' after long resisting the label. While that's far from a mainstream position within Israel, a number of prominent Israeli journalists who have consistently defended the war in Gaza are now sounding the alarm about the hunger crisis. Not all Israelis are likely to see this as a problem. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has called the airdrops of food a 'disgrace' and posted on X, 'I support starving Hamas in Gaza.' Netanyahu reportedly made the decision to boost aid last weekend without informing Ben Gvir and his other far-right coalition partners. The terms of the debate may be shifting, but Bob Kitchen, director of emergency response of the International Rescue Committee, told Vox that the additional aid being provided is still 'literally nothing compared to what's required.' He singled out the air drops of aid by the IDF, United Arab Emirates, and Jordan for particular scorn, calling them 'the most expensive, least effective way of delivering aid, and it's almost farcical that on such a small piece of land where we're having to resort to air drops when all this food is waiting to be driven across in trucks.' What can be done to help Gaza? Kitchen said the most immediate step that could be taken is for Israel and Egypt to open the crossings into Gaza and allow unimpeded humanitarian assistance. 'The NGO and the UN community have proven over the last several years that we can deliver aid at scale from within an active war zone,' he added. 'It's dangerous, high risk, but we have proven that we can do it.' At a bare minimum, it would probably also help for the IDF, GHF, and UN agencies to cooperate in facilitating safe and efficient aid deliveries rather than continuing the current blame game. But these are all stopgap measures. Actually addressing Gaza's humanitarian crisis will require an end to the war that is causing it — and that seems to be getting less likely. Last week, the US and Israel pulled their negotiating teams out of ongoing talks in Doha, blaming Hamas for a 'lack of desire to reach a ceasefire.' Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff said the US would 'consider alternative options' to end the war and bring home the remaining hostages, though it's not clear what those are. The fighting that resumed in March does not appear to have moved the needle in getting Hamas to agree to Israel's terms. And Hamas's leaders certainly don't appear to be motivated to compromise by the increasing suffering of Gaza's people. For all that Trump is disturbed by the images of starving children and frustrated with Netanyahu on multiple fronts, he has also urged Israel, in the absence of a ceasefire deal, to 'finish the job' against Hamas. He does not appear inclined to pressure Netanyahu to agree to end the war in exchange for the release of the hostages. Such a deal would be favored by a majority of Israelis but would likely bring down Netanyahu's government, which relies on far-right coalition partners who have threatened to leave his government if a ceasefire is signed. As long as the war continues, measures to address the hunger crisis — needed as they are — are likely only stopgaps.
Vox
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
Trump's new plan to install MAGA cronies as top federal prosecutors, explained
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. President Donald Trump speaks before Attorney General Pam Bondi (right) swears in Alina Habba as interim US attorney for New Jersey. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump called for Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to eliminate what Trump called the ''Blue Slip' SCAM,' a Senate tradition that gives home-state senators a veto power over some presidential nominees who wield power entirely within the senator's state. Trump posted about his opposition to blue slips on Truth Social, his personal communications platform. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The blue slip is an informal Senate tradition, named after the blue pieces of paper that senators use to indicate whether they approve of a judicial or US attorney nominee for their own state. The practical effect of a senator's decision to oppose such a nominee varies wildly depending on who serves as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But, in recent years, senators of both parties have used the blue slip process to veto people nominated to serve as top federal prosecutors and as district judges, the lowest rank of federal judge who receives a lifetime appointment. What triggered Trump's call to end the blue slip process? Trump's call to eliminate blue slips comes just one week after the temporary appointment of Alina Habba, one of Trump's former personal lawyers, as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey expired. Federal law permits Attorney General Pam Bondi to temporarily appoint US attorneys for up to 120 days. Once that clock runs out, however, the same law allows federal district judges within the same judicial district to replace the attorney general's choice. Habba's appointment expired last week, and New Jersey's federal judges picked Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor, to replace her. Bondi then claimed that Grace 'has just been removed.' So it is unclear who, if anyone, currently serves as US Attorney for the District of New Jersey. During her brief tenure in the office, Habba wielded her powers aggressively to target elected Democrats. She brought charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and US Rep. LaMonica McIver relating to the two Democrats' protest of an immigration detention facility in New Jersey. A federal magistrate judge called the charges against Baraka a 'worrisome misstep,' and Habba eventually ended that prosecution. The charges against McIver are still pending, despite a federal law that permits sitting members of Congress to enter federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight duties. Habba also opened federal investigations into New Jersey's Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, and its Democratic attorney general, Matt Platkin, over a directive limiting state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration officials. Under a line of Supreme Court decisions stretching back to New York v. United States (1992), the federal government may not compel state police to participate in federal law enforcement. Currently, Habba's nomination to lead the New Jersey US Attorney's office indefinitely is on hold due to opposition from US Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, both Democrats from New Jersey. Booker and Kim, in other words, used their blue slips to block the appointment of Habba. In his post denouncing the blue slip, Trump complained that the Senate tradition currently prevents him from installing his choices for judicial and prosecutorial jobs in the blue states of 'California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Virginia, and other places.' Given Habba's conduct in office during her brief tenure as US attorney, it is likely that Trump would install loyalists as prosecutors who would target Democrats within those states. If Trump is also able to appoint district judges without seeking home-state senators' permission, these political trials could be conducted by Trump-loyalist prosecutors and then heard by Trump judges who are likely to attempt to rig them to ensure a conviction. Imagine judges like Aileen Cannon, the Trump judge who sabotaged the Justice Department's attempt to prosecute Trump for stealing classified documents, hearing political trials in every blue state. The blue slip is one of the most abused practices in the United States Senate Habba's conduct in office makes a compelling case for leaving existing norms in place. Right now, Trump cannot install loyalist prosecutors in blue states for more than 120 days. And he will have a tougher time installing loyalist district judges. Before Trump's rise to power, however, the blue slip was often abused by senators seeking partisan control of the judiciary. For most of the Obama presidency, for example, then-Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) didn't just give home-state senators a veto over district judges and US attorneys. He also permitted them to veto more powerful appellate judges, who typically hear cases arising out of more than one state. Republican senators wielded the power Leahy gave them with brutal effectiveness. The United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which oversees federal suits out of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, is currently dominated by MAGA judges known for extravagantly reasoned decisions declaring entire federal agencies unconstitutional or permitting red states to seize control of social media platforms — among other things. (These decisions are frequently reversed by the Supreme Court, despite the Court's 6-3 Republican majority.) A major reason why the 5th Circuit is such a MAGA stronghold is that, under Leahy, Republican senators from 5th Circuit states could veto anyone President Barack Obama nominated to serve on this court. Similarly, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) exploited Leahy's expansive blue slip rule to hold a seat on the 7th Circuit open for most of the Obama presidency. It was eventually filled by a Trump appointee. Leahy's decision to let individual senators veto appellate judges was unusual, and Republicans abandoned this practice as soon as Trump took office in 2017. Since then, home-state senators have been allowed to veto district court and US attorney nominees, but not appellate judges. There is some logic to this more limited blue slip process. Because appellate judges oversee multiple states, Leahy's expansive veto rule effectively permitted senators to dictate who would decide cases in neighboring states. The 7th Circuit, for example, includes not just Johnson's home state of Wisconsin, but also the blue state of Illinois. Why should the senator from Wisconsin get to decide who interprets federal law in Illinois — or, at least, why should Johnson's vote count more than any other senator's? But the jurisdiction of district judges and US attorneys is limited to a single state. Some states, like New Jersey, are their own federal judicial district. Other states, like California, are chopped into as many as four federal judicial districts. But none of these districts cross state lines. The current blue slip practice, in other words, permits senators — who are the elected officials chosen to represent an entire state's interests in the federal government — to block nominees who would wield power entirely within their own states. Officials who wield power in multiple states are evaluated by the Senate as a whole. If Trump gets his way, however, he may not just gain the ability to override home-state senators' vetoes — he may also get to install prosecutors who will bring fabricated charges against those same senators.
Vox
18 hours ago
- Science
- Vox
See the bizarre life forms scientists discovered more than 30,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean
is an environmental correspondent at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Business Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher. Collections of microbes at the bottom of a trench in the Pacific Ocean. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail. Now imagine taking a sub nearly three times deeper. That's what an international team of scientists did last summer. Led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the researchers took a manned submersible to the bottom of deep-sea trenches in an area in the northwest Pacific Ocean, roughly between Japan and Alaska, reaching a depth of more than 31,000 feet. The researchers weren't looking for a shipwreck. They were interested in what else might be lurking on the seafloor, which is so deep that no light can reach it. It was there that they found something remarkable: entire communities of animals, rooted in organisms that are able to derive energy not from sunlight but from chemical reactions. Through a process called chemosynthesis, deep-sea microbes are able to turn compounds like methane and hydrogen sulfide into organic compounds, including sugars, forming the base of the food chain. The discovery was published in the journal Nature. This was the deepest community of chemosynthetic life ever discovered, according to Mengran Du, a study author and researcher at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Credit: Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Using a deep-sea vessel called Fendouzhe, the researchers encountered abundant wildlife communities, including fields of marine tube worms peppered with white marine snails. The worms have a symbiotic relationship with chemosynthetic bacteria that live in their bodies. Those bacteria provide them with a source of nutrients in exchange for, among other things, a stable place to live. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Among the tube worms the scientists encountered white, centipede-like critters — they're also a kind of worm, in the genus macellicephaloides — as well as sea cucumbers. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS The researchers also found a variety of different clams on the seafloor, often alongside anemones. Similar to the tube worms, the clams depend on bacteria within their shells to turn chemical compounds like methane and hydrogen sulfide that are present in the deep sea into food. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS Unlike other deep-sea ecosystems — which feed on dead animals and other organic bits that fall from shallower waters — these trench communities are likely sustained in part by methane produced by microbes buried under the seafloor, the authors said. That suggests that wildlife communities may be more common in these extremely deep trenches than scientists once thought. Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS 'The presence of these chemosynthetic ecosystems challenge long-standing assumptions about life's potential at extreme depths,' Du told Vox in an email.
Vox
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
Vox Announces Media Partnership With the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism for the Second Annual 'Liberalism for the 21st Century' Conference
Today, Vox announced a media partnership with the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA) for the second annual conference, 'Liberalism for the 21st Century.' This two-day event brings together some of the world's leading liberal thinkers, journalists, and advocates for a day and a half of programming dedicated to countering the rise of illiberalism and charting a course forward for a liberalism that can answer the challenges of the modern era. The conference will take place August 14 and 15 at the historic Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. Vox is sponsoring the panel 'Philosophical Roots of Illiberal Movements,' moderated by senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp, dissecting the diverse intellectual origins of contemporary illiberalism, and exploring ways in which liberalism can respond at the level of ideas. The panel will feature Damon Linker, senior lecturer, University of Pennsylvania; Tom Palmer, senior fellow, Cato Institute; and Laura Field, author of Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. 'Vox is proud to partner again with the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism in support of this important forum for dialogue in defense of democracy around the globe,' said Elbert Ventura, Vox's executive editor. 'We are at a dangerous moment, with the forces of authoritarianism gathering strength and threatening liberal democracy in the United States and elsewhere,' noted ISMA President and editor of The UnPopulist, Shikha Dalmia. 'These forces are aided by illiberal ideologies that deserve a forceful intellectual response. Ultimately, this is a battle of ideas, and we are very glad to have a partner like Vox with us.'
Vox
a day ago
- Politics
- Vox
What a Black fascist can teach us about liberalism
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy,, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here. American diplomat, consultant and author Lawrence Dennis (1893-1977) walks to court during his sedition trial on May 9, 1944 in Washington, DC. Getty Images It was 1935, and Lawrence Dennis was sure that fascism was coming to America. He couldn't wait. Dennis, a diplomat turned public intellectual, had just published an article in a leading political science journal titled 'Fascism for America.' In his mind, the Great Depression was proof that liberalism had run its course — its emphasis on free markets and individual liberty unable to cope with the complexities of a modern economy. With liberal democracy doomed, the only question was whether communism or fascism would win the future. And Dennis was rooting for the latter. 'I should like to see our two major political parties accept the major fascist premises,' he wrote. 'Whether our coming fascism is more or less humane and decent will depend largely on the contributions our humane elite can make to it in time.' His case for fascism, made at book length in 1936's The Coming American Fascism, felt persuasive to many at the time. A contemporary review of the book in the Atlantic wrote that 'its arraignment of liberal leadership is unanswerable'; he was well-regarded enough to advise leading isolationist Charles Lindbergh and meet with elites on both sides of the Atlantic, ranging from sitting senators to Adolf Hitler himself. On the Right The ideas and trends driving the conservative movement, from senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. I first encountered Dennis researching my feature on liberalism and its critics (which has just emerged from the Highlight's paywall). In the piece, I use him to show that liberalism's enemies have long predicted its inevitable doom. But the more I've thought about Dennis, the more I've realized how much we have to learn from him today. There are striking parallels between Dennis's fascist attack on liberalism and the arguments made by its current right-wing critics. And given that Dennis's arguments proved so badly wrong, his fate should be a warning against accepting similar predictions of inevitable liberal doom from his modern heirs. There are, I think, two central errors in Dennis's work that have direct parallels in the arguments made by contemporary illiberal radicals. I've termed them 'anti-liberal traps,' and I think many are falling into them today. What Lawrence Dennis believed Dennis came to fascism through a peculiar route. A Black man who passed for white for nearly his entire life, he was openly critical of Jim Crow and American racism — almost, his biographer Gerald Horne theorizes, as if he wanted people to know who he truly was. Horne further suggests that Dennis's embrace of fascism was motivated in part by disgust with the racism of the median American voter. Dennis, Horne intimates, may have been so disgusted with racist rule of 'the people' that he embraced rule-by-elite as an alternative. But while he did discuss race, Dennis's arguments in The Coming American Fascism were primarily economic. In his view, the Great Depression was not an isolated crisis but rather a sign of the current political order's structural failures. Dennis believed that capitalism depended on several key factors to deliver economic growth — including continued acquisition of new territory, a growing population, and debt-financed business expansion. By the 1930s, he believed that these factors had reached a dead end: that the US could not feasibly acquire new territory, that its population would level off thanks to immigration restrictionism and birth control, and that private debt had reached wholly unsustainable levels. The Depression, he argued, was a symptom of these structural failings coming to a head. In Dennis's view, American liberal democracy did not have the tools to repair the flaws in the capitalist system. Liberalism was, he believed, joined inevitably to laissez-faire economics. Its deference to private property was so total, its institutions so dominated by the interests of the wealthy, that it would be impossible for even a leader as ambitious as then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt to make serious internal adjustments. 'The features of the liberal system we are now discussing are fundamental. It is constantly forgotten that the quintessence of liberalism and liberal liberties under a constitution is the maintenance of a regime of special or exceptionally favorable considerations for private property,' Dennis writes. 'A series of majority votes arrived at by the parliamentary or Congressional methods of majority group pressures, lobbying, and the individual pursuit of reelection by hundreds of office holders, do not constitute a guiding hand. And a political system of checks and balances is not coordinated control.' This last line hints at Dennis's fascist vision: a system in which liberal democracy is replaced by the rule of a handful of enlightened elites, who develop a comprehensive plan for the economy rather than leaving things up to the whims of private owners. Only state control over economic affairs, including nationalization of the banking system, could repair the malfunctioning economy and put the United States on the pathway to prosperity. Dennis was no communist: he did not believe in the complete abolition of private property. Rather, he believed that the state should be far more aggressive in dictating to private owners — forcing them to make corporate decisions based not on the profit motive but rather on the good of the collective, as defined by the fascist governing class. This was the model emerging in Italy and Germany at the time he was writing, and one he believed would prove vastly more efficient and productive in the modern world than American-style liberal democratic capitalism. 'America cannot forever remain 17th and 18th century in its law, and political and social theory and practice, while moving in the vanguard of 20th century technological progress. The defenders of 18th century Americanism are doomed to become the laughing stock of their own countrymen,' he writes. Dennis believed that liberalism's practical failings stemmed from its philosophical essence: that 'the features of the liberal system we are now discussing are fundamental.' The liberal obsession with individual rights, be it private property or free speech, made liberal democracies ideologically incapable of taking the economic steps necessary to fix capitalism's errors. 'The fascist State entirely repudiates the liberal idea of conflict of interests and rights as between the State and the individual,' he writes. 'Liberalism assumes that individual welfare and protection is largely a matter of having active and powerful judicial restraints on governmental interference with the individual; Fascism assumes that individual welfare and protection is mainly secured by the strength, efficiency, and success of the State in the realization of the national plan.' The obvious objection is that this fascist vision would lead to terrifying mistreatment of citizens. Dennis did allow that Germany had gone too far in this direction by repressing the media and the church, but argued that 'a desirable form of fascism for Americans' could avoid such 'drastic measures.' Even Germany, Dennis believed, would not become 'a State and government…whose every act would be an abuse,' as 'such an eventuality seems most improbable in any modern State.' Though fascist ideology might define the national plan in a way that directed violence against ethnic minorities, Dennis — ever the closeted Black man — believed that such racism could be excised from the fascist project. 'If, in this discussion, it be assumed that one of our values should be a type of racism which excludes certain races from citizenship, then the plan of execution should provide for the annihilation, deportation, or sterilization of the excluded races,' he worried. 'If, on the contrary, as I devoutly hope will be the case, the scheme of values will include that of a national citizenship in which race will be no qualifying or disqualifying condition, then the plan of realization must, in so far as race relations are concerned, provide for assimilation or accommodation of race differences within the scheme of smoothly running society.' The anti-liberal traps, from 1936 to 2025 We now know that every single one of Dennis's arguments was terribly wrong. The New Deal worked; both the US and European democracy developed social models that reformed capitalism without abandoning its essence. This political-economic system proved far more effective economically than either fascist or communist central planning. And fascism in practice committed every horrible abuse that its liberal critics warned of — and some so awful that almost no one imagined their possibility in advance. Now, '1930s-era fascist was wrong' is not exactly breaking news. But what I found notable about Dennis is how closely his argument follows a general pattern of anti-liberal argument — one which many far-right intellectuals deploy today in their critiques. It is one centered on what I described earlier as the twin 'anti-liberal traps.' The first anti-liberal trap is a claim that a recent crisis is a product of unchangeable and unreformable liberal philosophical commitments. It is a belief that while liberal states still stand, the author has seen their coming doom — and its causes align, just perfectly, with the author's preferred view of the world. Such claims not only demand extraordinary evidence, but risk being embarrassed when events in the world begin to shift. Patrick Deneen, a political theorist at Notre Dame, has put this mode of argument at the center of his worldview. In two recent books, Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change, Deneen argues that the current rise of populist figures like Donald Trump augurs liberalism's collapse — a collapse that is, he believes, a necessary product of liberalism's philosophical commitments to meritocracy and individualism. 'Liberalism has careened towards its inevitable failure,' he writes in Regime Change, because 'liberalism's conception of liberty created both a new ruling class and degraded the lives of the masses.' Specifically, he argues, liberalism's commitment to freeing individuals to live the lives of their choosing has led to weakening of the ties that bind humans together — without which most will suffer so badly that the system cannot long survive. 'The advance of liberal liberty has meant the gradual, and then accelerating, weakening, redefinition, or overthrowing of many formative institutions and practices of human life, whether family, the community, a vast array of associations, schools and universities, architecture, the arts, and even the churches,' he writes. Deneen's analysis is, in argumentative structure, extraordinarily similar to Dennis's. Both take recent events, be it the rise of Trump or the Depression, as proof that liberalism's doom is not merely likely but assured. Both argue that this inevitable collapse stems from liberalism's unchangeable and unreformable philosophical essence. And both, notably, locate the failures in areas that align with their political interests. Deneen is a Catholic conservative who believes the state ought to promote conservative religious values; Dennis was a fascist who believed in a state-structured economy. Not coincidentally, they blame liberalism's inevitable doom on (respectively) its social and economic failings. In describing these similarities, I am not attempting a comprehensive rebuttal of Deneen's arguments. The content of their arguments are different enough, as are the circumstances. Perhaps Dennis was wrong and Deneen is right. But there is a tendency, among observers of all stripes, to overextrapolate from recent developments — typically in ways that flatter their own worldviews and biases. The second anti-liberal trap represents a similar kind of wishful thinking. It is an idealization of liberalism's alternatives: a comparison of actually-existing liberalism either to theoretical models or whitewashed versions of its real-life competitors. To imagine, in essence, Dennis's anti-racist fascism or less-hateful Nazism. You can see this, most obviously, in the recent right-wing vogue for Catholic integralism: a political model in which the state would be tasked with using its power to further the spiritual mission of the church. Any such project would require truly extraordinary amounts of coercion to be implemented in a country that's 20 percent Catholic (and most American Catholics are not themselves far-right). More broadly, right-wing religious regimes have a poor track record when it comes to protecting the rights of non-believers. Yet integralists respond to these claims either by deflection — liberal states coerce too! — or an assertion that their confessional state would surely be better than the others. Recalling a conversation with a Jewish colleague about what would happen to this person under integralism, Harvard's Adrian Vermeule — a leading American integralist — described his answer in two glib words: 'nothing bad.' You also see parallels to Dennis in the way that modern anti-liberals talk about contemporary Hungary, which has become to the illiberal right what the Nordic states are to the American left. Hungary is undeniably authoritarian, but its modern right-wing defenders angrily deny that its regime is anything other than a well-functioning democracy. Hard evidence to the contrary, such as its repression of independent media or attacks on judicial independence, are dismissed as liberal propaganda or else no worse than what happens here in the United States. This false equivalence, incidentally, was a favorite move of Dennis's. In dismissing charges that fascism would trample on individual rights the liberal state protects, he replied that all states coerce, just in different ways. 'The popular type of denunciation of fascism on the ground that it stands for State absolutism, or a State of unlimited powers, as contrasted with the liberal State of limited powers, is based on misrepresentation of the true nature of the liberal State,' he wrote. 'The important differences between fascism and liberalism in this respect lie between those certain things which each State, respectively, does without limitation.' Again, the point is not to suggest complete equivalence: Viktor Orbán's Hungary is not Adolf Hitler's Germany. Rather, it is to point out how similar the arguments are structurally — how easy it is, when starting from a point of hostility to liberalism, to handwave away criticisms of its alternatives through idealizations and tu quoques. Lawrence Dennis was not a dumb man. After reading much of his writing, I'm confident of that. But his arguments, which seemed so persuasive to many at the time, proved to be mistaken in nearly every particular — a shortsighted extrapolation from recent evidence that misread both the politics of liberal democracies and liberalism's philosophical adaptability to new circumstances. It's a lesson that radical anti-liberals today ought to take to heart.
