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Yes, Trump Is a Fascist
Trump disrespects rule of law, demonizes outgroups, praises authoritarians, lies continuously, and threatens to weaponize government against his enemies.
Copyright © 2024 by Ari Armstrong
October 27, 2024
"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler." That's what J. D. Vance, now Trump's running mate, said in 2016 before renouncing those comments. So people wondering if Trump is a fascist hardly is a new phenomenon.
On October 22, Jeffrey Goldberg reported that, while in office, Trump said, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had." A spokesperson for Trump denied this. But John Kelly, the retired Marine general and Trump's one-time chief of staff, confirmed that Trump positively discussed "Hitler's generals."
Kelly also recently said:
Certainly the former president [Trump] is in the far-right area, he's certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.
Kelly added:
Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.
NBC reported on October 25, "Thirteen former Trump White House officials signed an open letter backing up former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who told the New York Times that Trump fits the definition of a fascist."
Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair and retired general Mark Milley told Bob Woodward:
He [Trump] is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he's a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country . . . A fascist to the core.
On October 23, during CNN's town hall, Kamala Harris quoted Milley about Trump being a "fascist to the core."
CNN's Anderson Cooper sought to clarify: "You quoted General Milley calling Donald Trump a fascist. You yourself have not used that word to describe him. Let me ask you tonight: Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?" Harris unhesitatingly answered, "Yes I do."
On October 25, ABC News reported:
Responding to one of the more incendiary salvos, 49% of registered voters in the national survey say Trump is a fascist, defined as "a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents." Fewer than half as many, 22%, see Harris as a fascist by this definition.
More: "Among registered voters who regard Trump as a fascist, 8% support him regardless, the poll found."
It is, of course, easy to call people names. As CNN's Jake Tapper reviewed, Trump often has called Harris a "Marxist, Communist, fascist, socialist" and like labels.
The difference is that Harris not a Marxist, Communist, fascist, or socialist. She's a middle-of-the-road Democratic politician, by most accounts to the right of Joe Biden, and certainly more of a true conservative than Trump ever has been. When Trump calls her those names, he is just spewing his verbal vomit, completely unconnected from reality, like usual.
Trump, on the other hand, really is a fascist.
Remember that Trump brought up Hitler. No leading thought leader that I know of (except Vance) has compared Trump to Hitler. Such a comparison would be unjust. Hitler murdered millions of people and pushed much of the world into devastating war. But a person does not have to be like Hitler in terms of being a genocidal maniac in order to be a fascist. Trump is a fascist, but not like Hitler was a fascist. Trump and Hitler are both fascists, but Trump is no Hitler. This is basic logic; I can say that an apple is a fruit and a banana is a fruit without saying that an apple is a banana.
Trump is a fascist in the sense that he would act like a fascist to the extent that circumstances allowed. The United States, I hope, still would not allow a leader to act like a full-blown fascist, even if the leader would like to do so. Trump tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and his supporters violently invaded the U.S. capitol toward that end, but Trump was not able to remain in power beyond the legal end of his term. We still have the Congress, the Supreme Court, all the state governments, and so on. We live in a system of checks and balances precisely to prevent something like a fascist takeover. So to say that Trump is a fascist is not to say that Trump, if elected as president again, necessarily would be able to consistently act like a fascist while in office. The extent that he would be able to do so depends on how well American institutions hold.
The most plausible argument that Trump is not a fascist is that he's too shallow, narcissistic, and intellectually unserious to be much of anything in terms of ideology. I will concede that he is not a consistent fascist and rarely burns with dogmatic passion. However, to the extent that Trump does articulate an ideology, it is a fascist one. I think that even Trump's most ardent supporters would have to admit, if they're being honest, that Trump's views at least share some of the characteristics of fascism.
Taking into account those qualifiers (Trump is not like Hitler, Trump would not necessarily be able to consistently enact fascist aims, Trump is intellectually shallow), yes, Trump is a fascist. He espouses a fascist ideology, and he would, if he could, lead a fascist regime.
Incidentally, I do not believe it is a coincidence that the rise of American fascism under Trump is taking place at a time when almost all of the people who fought in World War II have left us. Few people have personal memories of life when the world was nearly consumed by fascism.
So what is the basis for calling Trump a fascist? Trump disrespects rule of law, demonizes outgroups, praises authoritarians, lies continuously, and threatens to weaponize government against his enemies. I've already written about most of these problems.
The most important issue, the issue that should, by itself, be disqualifying, is Trump refusing to concede the 2020 election. To this day he continues to lie about it. The January 6 violent assault on the U.S. Capitol, which Trump encouraged, is one of the most shameful events in our nation's history.
Trump demonizes immigrants in explicitly racist ways, saying that they are "poisoning the blood of our country" and that they have "bad genes."
Recently, Trump has routinely talked about using government to go after his enemies. For example, Trump said that people who criticize his Supreme Court justices "should be put in jail." Still lying about the 2020 presidential election, which he baselessly claims was stolen from him, Trump has promised to prosecute those supposedly involved in cheating him. NPR found "that former president Donald Trump has made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents."
Promising to turn the force of government against one's political enemies, as Trump is doing, is just straight-up fascism.
I don't know what other voters will do. I will vote against the fascist.