The week when the transition team of President-elect Donald Trump named a TV journalist as defence secretary and revealed that the world’s richest man would be heading up a new department of governmental efficiency felt like a harbinger of regime change. Joe Biden was hailed in 2020 by relieved liberals as a course correction after the first Trump presidency. He now looks less like the upholder of America’s eternal mission to spread freedom around the globe, and more like the end of its ancien régime.
当选总统唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的过渡团队任命一位电视记者为国防部长，并透露世界首富将领导一个新的政府效率部门的那一周，感觉像是政权更迭的前兆。2020年，乔•拜登(Joe Biden)被如释重负的自由派誉为特朗普第一个总统任期之后的方向修正。他现在看起来不像是美国在全球传播自由的永恒使命的支持者，而更像是其旧制度的终结。
Yet today’s ancien régime once promised the world its future. The French writer and politician François-René de Chateaubriand spoke for many in 1825 when he described the invention of representative republicanism in the US as “the greatest political discovery” of modern times. “The formation of this republic,” he wrote, “has resolved a problem that was thought to be insoluble”: how to allow millions of people to live together under democratic institutions. The New World presented an ideological alternative to the Old World of bewigged monarchs and reactionary aristocrats, one that showed Europe’s masses an alternative and more inclusive path forward.
然而，今天的旧制度曾经向世界承诺过它的未来。1825年，法国作家和政治家弗朗索瓦-勒内•德•夏多布里昂(François-René de Chateaubriand)将代议制共和政体在美国的发明描述为现代“最伟大的政治发现”，这代表了许多人的心声。他写道：“这个共和国的成立，解决了一个被认为无法解决的问题”：如何让数百万人在民主制度下共同生活。新世界在意识形态上提供了一个替代旧世界的选择，旧世界的君主和贵族反动，新世界向欧洲大众展示了一条替代性的、更具包容性的前进道路。
From the time when Europe’s Great Power system collapsed in war in 1914-18, grand claims were made for the transformative international power of America. Woodrow Wilson pledged to make the world “safe for democracy”. Hitler warned Europeans that Nazi ideas of racial purity were all that stood between them and godless transatlantic degeneracy. Cold war America aspired to forge a Free World of prosperous mass democracies and President Ronald Reagan famously extolled the US as a shining city on a hill — an open sanctuary at the centre of a world thriving in commercial and cultural exchange.
自从欧洲大国体系在1914至1918年的战争中崩溃以来，人们对美国作为国际变革力量提出了宏伟的主张。伍德罗•威尔逊(Woodrow Wilson)承诺要让全球“为民主而安全”。希特勒警告欧洲人，纳粹的种族纯洁观念是他们与无神论的跨大西洋堕落之间的唯一屏障。冷战时期的美国渴望建立一个由繁荣的大众民主国家组成的自由全球，罗纳德•里根(Ronald Reagan)总统曾赞美美国如同一座山顶上的闪耀之城——一个位于商业和文化交流中心的开放庇护所。
The American century ended much as it had begun, with Clinton advisers hailing the US as “the worldwide symbol of opportunity and freedom”. Many believed that the Washington Consensus would set the new rules of the economic game and liberal democracy would flourish even in the birthplace of Bolshevism. Today that looks like hubris. Since the 2007-08 financial crisis, the number of democracies around the world has fallen, and the backlash to globalisation has gathered pace. American voters themselves this time round welcomed a programme based around trade protectionism, immigration controls and opposition to multiculturalism.
美国世纪的结束与开始如出一辙，克林顿的顾问们称赞美国是“全球机会和自由的象征”。许多人相信，华盛顿共识(Washington Consensus)将制定经济游戏的新规则，自由民主甚至会在布尔什维主义的发源地蓬勃发展。如今看来，这种想法是狂妄自大。自2007-08年金融危机以来，全球民主国家的数量下降，对全球化的反弹也在加速。这一次，美国选民自己也欢迎以贸易保护主义、移民控制和反对多元文化为基础的方案。
Yet even in these very changed circumstances, it is hard to break the habit of seeing the US as a kind of precursor. If the US was once a beacon of liberty and hope to the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (in the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty), does the 2024 election imply that a different, perhaps more authoritarian future lies ahead for everyone? Naturally people interrogate the past to try to figure such questions out and ask history to help them make sense of what is happening. In particular, they look for analogies.
然而，即使在这些变化巨大的情况下，要改变将美国视为某种先驱的习惯仍然很困难。如果美国曾经是世界上“渴望自由呼吸的拥挤人群”的自由和希望的灯塔（引用自由女神像上的刻字），那么2024年的选举是否意味着一个不同的、或许更加专制的未来在等待着每个人？人们自然而然地回顾过去，试图弄清这些问题，并请求历史帮助他们理解正在发生的事情。特别是，他们寻找类比。
The fascist label skates over the fact that the world has changed enormously since 90 years ago
法西斯主义的标签忽视了这样一个事实，即自90年前以来，世界已经发生了巨大的变化
The analogy of choice these days is fascism, not surprisingly perhaps in an era of strongmen in countries such as India, Russia, Turkey and Hungary. Some see fascist dictators between the two world wars as their forerunners. Historian Timothy Snyder posits much more than mere resemblance, asserting that Trump is “the presence of fascism”. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly has said that his ex-boss falls under “the general definition of fascist”. The prospect may be alarming; but it has the merit of familiarity.
如今，人们选择的类比是法西斯主义，这或许并不奇怪，因为在印度、俄罗斯、土耳其和匈牙利等国家出现了强人。一些人将两次世界大战之间的法西斯独裁者视为他们的先驱。历史学家蒂莫西•斯奈德(Timothy Snyder)提出的不仅仅是相似之处，他断言特朗普是“法西斯主义的存在”。前白宫幕僚长约翰•凯利(John Kelly)表示，他的前老板符合“法西斯主义的一般定义”。这一前景可能令人担忧，但也有其熟悉的优点。