Being civilized means being tolerant and making decisions based on reason, which in turn means self-restraint: the id must be managed by the superego. As Freud noted, this produces discontentment among many. Fascism, essentially, beneath the nationalism and authoritarianism, is a rebellion against self-restraint, reason and tolerance, and a gleeful embrace of emotions, prejudices and selfish priorities. Watch Hitler moving his audiences from staid German restraint to unleashed passion, shouting 'Deutschland!' with arms raised, and then watch Trump egging his audiences to physically attack dissenters. Yes, Trump is a classic fascist, because this is his means of gaining power: not through reason but through anti-reason, not by advocating tolerance but by justifying discrimination. Unreason must, of course, end in disaster, in lives that are 'poor, solitary, nasty, brutish and short' and in a 'war of each against all' (as Hobbes put it), and only then will reason, tolerance and civilization once again look appealing. Nothing less is at stake.
16
Going back to 2016 I thought that the only thing that differentiated Trump from Mussolini was that he lacked a private military organization. Once elected, the question was whether he would get one. Jim Mattis has stood in the the way of Trump taking over the military although it is disturbing how often the President and Commander-in-Chief are used as virtual synonyms, as if the latter is the essence of the former.
On the other hand Trump has taken control of or is attempting to take control of the FBI and turn the Department of Justice into his army.
If Mattis and Sessions go and the Republican Senate approves more compliant people, what then? One has to hope that officers and other officials remember that they take an oath to uphold the Constitution and not the President or C-in-C. And that internal resistance will grow.
It is ironic that American iconography is littered with fasces, the bundled rods of Republican Roman magistrates and their authority and their disciplinary power. Next time you watch a State of the Union address, look at the fasces behind the Speaker, or the fasces included in the Seal of Senate, or on the back of the dime, to name but three examples. Yet fascism takes its name from these symbols of a Republic. It should alert everyone to the way a Republic can slide into tyranny when the only power source a President recognizes is that of being C-in-C. In the Roman Republic a one-man C-in-C was designated Dictator.
8
Trump has all the signs of authoritarianism, perhaps even Fascism. I’m not convinced he is smart enough to say, hey the fascists had a good thing.
Either way, he is a criminal, a traitor and an existential threat to American republican democracy. He must be beaten in November.
10
NONFICTION
Is Donald Trump a Fascist?
Before reading the review, I saw that word: NONFICTION
That says it all.
4
Donald Trump is a fascist but one who has no love of country or culture or faith. He loves himself, his money and his children - in that order
Trumps lack of love for country makes him more dangerous than the average dictator because there is no Vision and their is no future. There is only now and he does not contemplate the consequences of his actions
11
We'll look back at Trump in a few decades and think of him as a rather adorable, stupid teddy bear compared to what we are likely to have as a leader then. Global warming is going to make fascism an inevitability. Millions of people will be on the move (you think we have immigration and refugee problems now? Just wait until the middle east become too hot to inhabit, and sea levels rise significantly.) And, the response to those people seeking jobs and a place to live will be as it always has been: we don't you coming here, changing our culture, stealing our womenfolk, taking our jobs, etc. Get used to the iron fist, folks. It's only just getting started.
3
My word, do we really need another drafty, scholastic screed excoriating the evils of--dare one say it?--fascism?
Don't needlessly suffer the nagging discomfort of ivory-tower altitude sickness, when there's a concise, cogent, easily comprehensible description and explanation at hand in the hustings of the hoi polloi: the condemned Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring's comments during his trial at Nuremberg, to wit:
"It’s always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship…
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
A better explanation of fascism simply can't be had, try as the scholarly wonks may.
2
A rhetorical question.
All that separates Donald Trump from full-bore fascism is his grotesque incompetence.
5
I'd like to recommend this video doc by John Romer as an addendum to this book. I had no idea the Rome we know today was largely manufactured by Mussolini destroying what was there to create his fantasy of a modern Roman Empire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFKlZyvXe4c
Lost Worlds The Story of Archaeology; 5of6 At the Service of the State
The whole series is great but this episode really does dovetail with this book.
What ever did I do?
To be forgotten from this stew.
An admix of angst and politics
Bereft of this hero’s polemics.
For me I simply say
That Trump is at the end of his days.
A spent men, with little to spend.
Preparing for incarcerated weekends.
2
Walks and talks like a duck it is probably a duck. The POTUS carries this to new extremes - acts and smells like a fascist. The total commitment to lying, denying and NEVER being at fault or accepting any criticism pretty much wrap up the package. Across the entire nation more people hate our "leader" than at any other moment in my 70 American years. Nixon, Johnson and even little Bushie never generated the amount of disgust being registered at this moment. They might have deserved it but they presented semi-human figures at least and were perceived as tragic, lost or flawed figures. Trump's "human values" seem to be greed and always being horny.
7
Those of you who are foolish enough to think President Trump is a Fascist deserve to spend just a few minutes living under the boot of real Fascism.
2
@ScottyL
None of that started immediately. Give it a few years on this track if you care to live under that boot. For me, I say, beat them all in November.
8
It’s apparent that the GOP is an umbrella for American Neo-Fascists. By implication the GOP is no longer a usual Conservative party but it is a Fascist organization. Yes, This happening in America.
13
In America ─it’s the Democrats Party’s central idea of a powerful and vast big government─ costly and massive Federal bureaucracy which runs that vast government operations─ is what naturally links it with Fascism. It’s not so much the political stalemate in Washington but, it’s the Democratic Party’s misguided politics and policies that has practically paralyzed powers of elected body of US Congress, and instead created permanent monolithic tyrannical bureaucracy—like another branch of the government. This is shockingly contrary to “hands off small government” that our founders intended. It’s the Democrats that have created this massive, unstoppable, tax-guzzling monster.
3
Imagine being this misguided
9
@ChandraPrince
"Big government?' Is the Trump administration "small government'? Perhaps get rid of FEMA, the Center for Disease Control, public schools, Medicare, Dept. of Labor Privatize them. When is the next infrastructure week?
2
I've been studying fascism and how it comes about for decades. I've specialized in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany. I made a list of 41 ways that Trump and other fascists are alike. So far, our Constitution and our institutions have tethered Trump and his supporters to a soft fascism. But all it will take is a national emergency, like the economic collapse in 2008, to unleash the beast. The real problem is not Trump--it's his supporters. I have talked with many of them online, and, to a person, they want a fascist America with only one political party. Yes, Trump is a fascist, but more alarmingly, so are tens of millions of his supporters.
20
Henry A. Wallace, a vice-president under FDR, offered a clear, concise definition in a 1944 NY Times op-ed:
"A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends."
If the shoe fits....
But do also read Wallace's grandson's thoughtful commentary in an op-ed last year: https://nyti.ms/2q87qGc
6
In answer to the title of this article: I think he'd like to be.
2
Of course Trump is a fascist. Just because he doesn’t look and sound precisely like the stereotypical models we’ve seen in the past doesn’t free him from the label. Especially in light of this: “Corruption, to the fascist politician is really about the corruption of purity rather than of law.” This is why there is a perfect marriage between Trump, White Nationalists and the Christian Fundamentalist.
The Nationalist’s fear of adulteration and the Fundamentalist’s disgust with degeneracy find a perfect target in the Liberal; and see Trump as the perfect scourge. It makes one realize that if Trump didn’t exist, these groups would surely have to invent him. The fact that this is happening all over the world is even more terrifying.
3
The USA is a fascist country, as structured by a corporate lobby mechanism and laws such as the Citizens United ruling, which have bound corporate directives and control so tightly to "elected" representatives, that it is not the people who direct the public narrative through our media, religion, education, and the financial public trust, but an unholy union that places elite corporate chiefs above the constituents of Congress, above the Judiciary, above the law, and on par with the Executive. As Putin's fascist dictator lackey, what Trumpolini does is conjoin the concept of dictator to fascism perfectly, in nearly everything he says and does.
2
Mussolini coined the term fascism. His treatise on this political/economic theory is pretty short, the revised version, the first official document of the Italian Empire is not much longer. It should be read by everyone, just so they don't use the term incorrectly, i.e., Islamofascism.
Classical fascism reads like the GOP game plan with a Trump in charge.
-One belief system.
-An infallible leader.
-No dissent. No free expression. No organizing. No unions. No free press.
-One party system.
-Corporations provide for the workers (people), along with housing, education and infrastructure, etc., not the government.
-The government is about foreign relations, the courts and the police, and the military. Perpetual or constant war is a fact of life.
-Treaties and international organizations are only tools for short term gain. Otherwise, no need to support, join or follow.
I'm probably leaving a couple of things out, but that's pretty much fascism in a nutshell. With corporations funding the slate for both parties here in the United States and ever increasing privatization, we are pretty much there with voting being as meaningful as it is in Putin's oligarchical fascist state.
1
@Carl Lee
In Fascist Italy, a "corporazione" did not refer to the private business entities we call "corporations."
Under the corporatist system, corporations were guilds, run by the Fascist Party, which administered and regulated each industry and profession.
1
Remember it was President Eisenhower, leader of the Allied forces in Europe, who saw the spectre of fascism in this country when he warned about the power of the military/industrial complex. He was afraid we were becoming the fascists we had defeated in 1945.
4
Surely I can't be the only one who has noticed that Trump has developed the Mussolini pout?
9
Few Americans could come close to defining ‘fascist’ (or ‘communst’, or ‘socialist’, for that matter). These are words loaded with intensely emotional connotations. Fascist = Hitler, period. So it’s dumb, apparently, for people who know the meanings of these words to use them publicly, given the ignorance of their neighbors and readers, an ignorance which I suppose we must respect highly. Not very encouraging, especially in a time, thanks to our Great Leader, when this is becoming true of so many words and sentences.
1
@Dagwood What? And Mussolini? Are you sure you can define fascism?
2
In 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor with a plurality support in the election of 43%. In three months, the Reichstag (congress) had given Hitler dictatorial power to make all laws for four years by a 2/3s vote. Only the social democrats opposed the vote.
The internment camps for lawful immigrants, the racist choices for judges, military adoration, voter suppression, attacks on the press, minorities, speech, rule of law, the FBI, Intelligence Agencies, political opponents, and demand for personal loyalty from all government employees are all fascist policies employed today by Trump and his subordinates.
Enablers in Congress are not much different then those in Germany on 1933. Please exercise the right to vote to end this fascism before there is no real right to vote in this Country.
42
Is Trump a racist, a fascist? They go together in the demagogue that is Trump.
9
Trump is a fascist. He's just not a very good one.
12
"Lumper," "Splitter," really?
Stanley's assertion rings true: Trump is a fascist and we don't need to mince words or distinguish between what version of fascist.
What's the difference between fascism and the Republican Party? If the goal of a political party is to force the will of a minority on the majority, is there a difference?
America is in trouble. Democracy is in trouble. The trouble is a fascist Republican Party and their fascist leader.
May Stanley's little book help sound the alarm!
11
Puhleeze! Unless you are Rip Van Winkle waking up from a long nap, you cannot have missed America’s slow drift toward fascism begun under Reagan and continued under Dems Clinton and Obama. Trump is only the logical and extreme manifestation of this trend.
11
I don’t see how you can call Obama a fascist. I never voted for the guy, but where do you see any parallels between Obama and, say, Hitler? Did Obama demonize “the other”? Did Obama have pointless rallies to boost his own image? Did Obama demand obedience to his every word?
No! Obama was a corporatist, certainly, but tell me which recent president wasn’t?
My beef(s) with Obama are: he never pushed for prosecution of the bankers that defrauded this country, he never closed Guantanamo as he promised and he was a bit wishy-washy on foreign policy (red line, ha!). Otherwise, I thought he was a thoughtful person who truly cared about the people of this country.
2
@Bruce S. Post
I'm surprised you don't see it going all the way back to Jefferson and Washington, continued by Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln (remember he suspended habeas corpus) , and indeed every American president.
1
To the extent that Hitler, Mussolini and Franco were fascists, Trump might well be a fascist, too. But basically he is just a psychological basket case whom the Russian hackers helped get into the presidency.
He appears to be doing everything he can to damage the U.S., socially, diplomatically and economically. In that sense he has become the true Manchurian Candidate.
10
He is using the word fascist to sell books to a targeted audience that already believes the premise to be true. Why is that hard to understand?
9
@Brad Hudson
He would also reach a "targeted audience" if he called Hillary Clinton "crooked." and wrote that she should be "locked up."
Lumpers and splitters might quibble over whether Trump is, or is not, a fascist. I prefer to just call him evil.
5
Yes,of course,and so are his “base”.
Now could we please stop calling them “populists”,or (even more absurdly) “conservatives”?
10
Not yet. But he definitely has thought and still thinks like one. His interest for praising and make friends with dictators says it all....
4
FYI - It was Charles Darwin who used the terms ‘lumpers vs splitters’ essentially describing the same distinction among biologist in a letter to a friend.
I teach Philosophy and sometimes Political Theory at the college level. In my understanding, Trump - and increasingly the Republican party in general - fits the textbook definition of Fascism almost perfectly: anti-intellectual and anti-science; irrational; opposition to Humanist values (e.g., "strength" is a virtue and "weakness" despised); power and obedience preferred to sympathy and compassion; openly elitist and strongly patriarchic (just look at Trump's cabinet!); blindly follows the "charismatic" leader; anti-democratic and anti-liberal; disregard for human rights; a super-nationalism that degrades and scapegoats "others;" anti-trade and pro-economic isolationism. Does any of this sound familiar?
27
"
Definition of fascism
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 "
Dishonest Don, the Mad President certainly fits this description. He is a sociopath, believing himself to be above the law. He incites his followers to demean, insult, even physicall8y attack the opposition. He believes himself to be the supreme decider, that his "Deals" can not be rejected and that his intellect is better than any others; that he has no limits and demand loyalty from all other government officers and employees.
He is a totalitarian, attacking any and all that do not treat him as Caesar. He has the mentality of Caligula and would use it if he could. He has rallied around himself a cadre like the Fascists Brown Shirts of the Third Reich. He fawns over the military, he expects it to protect him from an insurgency like impeachment or the 25th amendment.
There might be another name for him such as a novice Nazi, he is close to that. As we are seeing , "It Can Happen Here," We the people must take charge and as Ben Franklin said, Keep our Republic.
31
Donald Trump is a fascist who uses demagogic rhetoric
to scapegoat immigrants with appeals to a mythical past of American greatness . He projects the aura that he is the Great Man who magically could restore America
with his sketchy unformed simple minded slogans.
He resembles strongly the 1930s Fascists who used similar techniques and the cult of the strong leader to gain power.
It is not shocking that it was reported in the New Yorker
Magazine in the summer of 2016 that Donald Trump kept a book on the collected speeches of Adolf Hitler on his bed stand for inspiration.
He is a demagogue in that tradition and is anathema to democracy and the Office of President! Just horrible that he got people to vote for him! Obviously they ignore history at great cost to our nation!
19
@IN
He had a book????
I say no ----- " I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos," as the character Walter Sobchak said in "The Big Labowski."
3
I disagree with Stanley's definition of "fascism".
“Ultranationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, cultural) with the nation represented in the person of an authoritarian leader who speaks on its behalf.”
That was certainly not the way my professors and I discussed fascism. Don't confuse fascism with a personality cult. Fascism often goes hand and hand with authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and dictatorships. However, these are manifestations fascism, not requisite You can have a fascist government without an authoritarian leader. There is such a thing as bureaucratic fascism or, perhaps more appropriately, party fascism.
Hitler is actually a very poor example of fascism because so many other things get mixed up in the word's meaning. Hitler was a totalitarian. The German people at the time were the fascists. There's an important difference. The one couldn't work without the other. However, strictly speaking, Hitler is mostly notorious for manipulating fascism rather than actually being a fascist himself.
The best explanation of fascism I've had came from a modern history professor named Fischer. He said if you want to understand fascism, watch "When Worlds Collide." The entire point of fascism is to create a state where the entire populace is oriented towards a common goal at any cost, even human decency. If you removed individual states and considered humanity as a whole, our efforts to prevent climate change are technically fascist. We can only argue the degree.
1
Of Course He Is.
6
americans have shown themselves to be utter cowards in the face of trump fascism. The country has failed, and yet they do nothing but hold out hope that yet another rigged election will save it.
#calexit - it will be either dictatorship, secession, or civil war.
2
This is the common thread of fascistic thinking all through modern history:
Regular hard working folks, as the in-group, are being cheated by the out-groups, being the "irregular" folk; and this "evil" is done with the help of the cultural elite.
This theme repeat itself over and over. Final results vary, but Trump and his base are right there!
10
We don’t need anyone else trying to spark public alarm. Please go home and do some gardening. It’s refreshingly satisfying.
3
Yes, we do need public alarm. Trump presents a danger to the world economy and western ideals. Perhaps with more public alarm Hitler and Mussolini would not have come to power. The electorate needs to reclaim their power before our complacency and selfishness renders that impossible.
9
Fascist: some who tries to solve problems by willing solutions rather than by trying to solve the problem itself.
The fact the method is so convenient makes it seductive to many. No Analysis, knowledge, discussion, concertation required.
1
I am more interested in the thought process of Mr Beinart. From what I read I can see that he doesn't make a clear distinction between a person being a fascist an a person using fascist discourse. Perhaps that was not intended. Or perhaps that distinction was not articulated clearly in the book being discussed.
@ilya
if a leader uses "fascist discourse," as a means of setting policy, and then issues orders that implement those policies, is he/she not a fascist?
1
Fascism, autocracy, is where those in government uses political power to oppress their enemies and elevate their friends. Autocracy is as much a psychological trait as it is a political philosophy. Donald Trump definitely has an autocratic personality, we have to hope the structures within our democracy can withstand his constant assaults.
This is how fascism typically takes hold. Democratically elected politicians with a desire for power and control attack the structure of democracy and weaken or destroy them until they take full control. We can see Donald Trump doing just that to our Free Press and our "supposedly" independent Judicial branch of government.
If our democracy survives the reign of Donald Trump we need to strengthen those democratic guardrails by removing the judicial branch from being under the control of the executive branch like most of our States do now. Only a completely independent Judiciary can protect us from an autocratic executive.
5
That people in colloquial speech use fascism about things or persons they don`t like is normal and somewhat harmless. But when a professor in a book that claims to be serious, use the word in the same way, it shows that he has not read enough, before writing. Fascism is well defined historically, just see the 10 points Whats`new lists. In today`s world AFA comes closer to fascism than Trump. And a point no 11, is that in Italy, and to some extent in Gernany too, fascism was an intellectual movement, with lots of academics. Not like Trump supporters at all.
5
Fascism and Nazism cannot be isolated from the historical circumstances in which those regimes originated and developed. One strong leader does not achieve power solely as a result of personal characteristics, there has to be a general situation that moves social forces. In both Italy and Germany there was a growing socialist movement that threatened the interests of the big corporations or, in the case of Italy, also the semi-feudal rural South. Perhaps a better way of studying this phenomenon would be to put the name fascism aside temporarily and examine carefully each case. Epoche and phenomenological analysis. Let us look at similarities and differences before making generalizations.
13
Setting aside the direct risk to our democracy represented by Trump and Trumpism, a great fear of mine has been normalization of political behaviors we used to condemn. It is not that such individual behaviors have not occurred in the past. But that so many anti-democratic behaviors have clustered around this president.
A derivative fear is that, once normalized, how long will it take, if indeed it is possible, to restore the values that permit democracy to work?
This scourge must be removed root and branch from our polity. Trump is a clear and present danger to democracy. Fortunately, we still have democratic means in the Constitution available to remove him before further damage is done. That cannot happen too soon.
7
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” attributed to Benito Mussolini
So, yeah, Trump, along with most Republicans, is fascist.
14
@HapinOregon Precisely!
1
Like all good Fascists, Trump will have to run for re-election in 2 years. And if he wins, by law, he'll only be allowed to serve for 4 additional years.
Ah, yea.... JUST like a Fascist... Up for election and barred for more than 8 years by Constitution.
Uh-huh, just like 'em.....
3
@profwilliams We'll see if he has to run. He openly asked a foreign power to commit a crime against a political opponent and got away with it. Why do you expect him to submit to term limits?
3
@profwilliams
But as Trump has told us, the 2016 election was "rigged." If so, suspend them for 2020. In the meantime, eviscerate the voting rights act and make it more difficult for the elderly, the poor and minorities, to vote
2
Hitler just changed the laws in Germany to gain and stay in power, arresting opposition (Reichstag fire decree), taking away the voting rights of many(Nuremberg laws), and voter intimidation and suppression among other tactics.
The constitution is a piece of paper whose interpretation is controlled by the Courts and whose contents are controlled by politicians.
This is why Trump is so alarming to anyone who reads history.
3
Trump is a con man.
Those who control him are fascists.
10
@Van Owen Trump is a Fascist wannabe. But oh, he's trying. Our only hope is that he has a history of being an underachiever.
Trump's behavior is more or less like a fascist, but of the incompetent Mussolini type, not the more deadly and effective Hitler type. Basically Trump is a buffoon with an authoritarian bent.
9
Yes
Is Trump a fascist?
Well, let's look at a few delineaters:
- ultranationalist - yeah, check
- protectionist - yeah, check
- belief in economic self sufficiency / supremacy - check
- preoccupation of national decline/victimhood- check
- racial superiority -check
- suspicious of community, alliances, global initiatives - check
Kinda hard to argue that he is not one. The books are sounding a warning, that are like the tree in the forest. No one hears it fall.
52
@Cathy
Perfect checklist !
1
If the paid foreign agent currently occupying the White House had the capacity to identify with a political philosophy, it would probably be some form of Fascism. Since he doesn't - since narcissism isn't a political philosophy - it is neither kind nor polite to draw attention to his inadequacy.
11
The question isn’t whether Trump is a fascist but what history can teach us about his fate.
4
@N Historians are happy to teach you about the fate of fascist dictators. Mostly? Death by the hand of themselves or others. Not awfully cheerful.
2
Trump is missing a key ingredient on his march towards Donald-Land. He is a horrible speaker. Instead of grouping him in with fascists from a different era of media exploitation, can't we call him something like a "terrible-ist".
6
Why yes...yes, he is.
9
"Some More News" on YouTube has exhaustively and definitively proven exactly how Trump is acting as a fascist.
3
Left to his own designs as president, Trump is an incompetent dolt kept on his feet by a lot of cynical and very expensive hired help. It's the right-wing corporate media, his handlers and the Republicans in Congress who make him dangerous. THEY are the fascists.
28
Yes. Donald, his loyal voters and subjugate Republican Congress are fascists. Sorry folks but you deserve that brand. The founding fathers were rich, elite and own slaves that the civil war was about the abolitionist Northern elites were about opportunity to merchants, land surveyor, freed servants and slaves, lawyers and doctors. Whereas, the Southern elites clinged to economically viable slave plantations. Abraham Lincoln was aware of the political expediency to preserve his fledging party as well the economic viability of the South. He let the Civil War played out. Declared slavery out. US government annexed Texas, New Mexico and California after the war against Mexico. In this history, it was about economic opportunity and never on nativist sentiments. Sadly, American Indian tribes were irreparable collateral damage of Anglo-Saxon economic expansionism in the continental United States.
Howard Zinn's well annotated book A People's History of the United States narrates well and good. Book reviewed by Eric Foner of NYT.
4
They have (almost) the same signature:
https://qz.com/891546/donald-trump-official-signature-trump-takes-a-tedi...
https://www.fotolibra.com/gallery/1345014/signature-of-benito-mussolini-...
3
@Marcos
Well done !
If it were only the signature...
2
@Marcos
Mussolini's slogan was "Drain the swamp". I just read Madeleine Albright's book, Fascism. I had no idea and I lived in Italy for a decade
2
Fascism was a nationalist reaction to the internationalism of socialism and capitalism.
It was a hybrid of extreme left- and right-wing elements, avoiding the center.
Trump is a fascist.
7
@Alex Cody And liberalism, not a compromise between conservatism and liberalism, is the true center.
1
Is that a real question? He has always run his company as an autocrat with no checks and balances. He makes the rules for his company, his "board" is appointed by him to be sycophants to boost his ego; he ambushes any ne threatening with legal attack and backs off when confronted; he would kill them if he had powers like Putin or Kim Jong-Un. He acts like US is his private corporation with nuisance congress and wants a rubber stamp Supreme Court. He believes he has unlimited power and that has been enabled by the Republican members of the "board (congress) and Supreme Court".
8
I view Facism through the lens of a quote credited to FDR:
"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
"The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living."
This condition has been creeping up on America for years and I think more and more, much of it is with us now.
21
It is perhaps above all the pervasiveness of questions that cannot be answered, yet are the headlines over an article, that I find most dismaying. Questions about "whether X is a Y or not," where Y is some vaguely defined category, and questions about "whether or not event Z will happen in the future" are simply unanswerable. For this reason, it is ridiculous to base an article on such questions.
2
"The greater danger, he suggests, isn’t hyperbole, it’s normalization. And 20 months into Trump’s presidency, the evidence is mounting that he’s right." Odd way to end this piece, with a highly debatable assertion and no effort whatsoever to support it with evidence. That sentence, endorsing the alarmist agenda of the author of the book being reviewed, and alluding to evidence but not providing it, captures the vacuity of these superficial analyses, which currently litter our media landscape. Relax. Fascism isn't being normalized. But the hyperbole and name-calling are deepening political divisions, making compromise all the more difficult to obtain. Ironically, there are extremely troubling things -- like surveillance, or militarization of police forces -- that are becoming normalized, but they aren't linked to Donald Trump, so they get little or no pushback from those who so ostentatiously pose as the defenders of our liberties. Instead, Trump's complaints about surveillance of his campaign are treated as an assault on Truth and on hallowed American institutions.
1
Fascism is many things, but first and foremost it's wantonly cruel. Uncountable masses of people who simply want to live lives worth living are thwarted at every turn.
Sound familiar? The cruelty factor? How do we fix that?
Elections alone do not redemption make. Our American awfulness has been revealed. We have so much more work to do than we have ever understood.
7
Many years ago, sometimes in the nineties i believe, the Nw York Times Sunday Magazine ran an article entitled "A Fascist is What You call Somebody You don"t Like". I haven't been able to retrieve that article on the internet but that title surely remains relevant today.
Another consideration is whether there is any serious difference between the so called extreme right and the extreme left. i realize this is not the venue for such a discussion but all utopian idealists are equally dangerous.
Remember the book "Erehwon". It's about utopia and it spells nowhere backwards.
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This is the first time I've seen Betteridge's Law of Headlines be incorrect.
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Trump’s body language resembles Mussolini’s so vividly , it makes you wonder about other comparisons.
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The short answer is yes. His behavior and the nature and behavior of many of his followers, his political rallies, use of his power to punish enemies, etc, etc, it's all there.
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@B Windrip
Don't forget that pompous sneer.
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I agree with many of the commentators that Trump cannot be labelled a fascist. There are several reasons, including one that has not been mentioned very often. The major fascist leaders of the twentieth century (Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco) either made war a major part of their ideology and attacked other countries without cause (Hitler and Mussolini) or came to power as a result of war (Franco from the brutal civil war in Spain). So far Trump is not a war monger, beyond some blustering words.
Trump is racist, zenophobic, a common criminal, a bigot, chronic liar, corrupt, cowardly, a nihilist, and much more. The best description of him so far is gangster. He is a uniquely American gangster.
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@Historian
Mussolini was in power thirteen years before invading Ethiopia.
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Unfortunately involving us in some military adventure is likely to be the Donald’s next move, in a brazen attempt to rescue his presidency.
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I think you are being too generous to Trump. According to Woodward, the only thing stopping Trump from assassinating Assad or nuking NK are the people trying to keep Trump in power so they can keep on making huge money with the tax cuts and trade wars.
The oligarchs of our country don’t want war (right now) they just want to loot the coffers. When the government coffers run dry, then we will see...
Compared to Bush and Romney I would say Trump is fascist because of the racism and the extreme nationalism of Mr. Trump. As the article says or at least implies, you can be conservative without being racist or an extreme nationalist. Conservatives and fascists both do seem to love authoritarianism however, but I would say Trump is much more authoritarian than the other two. I don't think Trump honors any sort of individual liberty other than that of making a buck.
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That Trump has authoritarian tendencies is beyond dispute. I doubt he could be an fascist because he has no understanding of any political philosophy. (Even less than most Americans). But he does seem to admire dictatorships. And he generally despises the rule of law. What he certainly has in common with the classical fascists is that it is all about him.
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According to Ivana, Trump kept Hitler's book "My New Order" at hand in the bedroom. Presumably DJT could have picked up some fascist ideas out of there, including "the big lie" concept that Hitler had used to great effect. Essentially the bigger the lie you tell, the easier it is to pull it off, with impunity! That's definitely something Hitler and Trump have in common: massive whopper lies.
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@Andy Makar
Among Ancient Greek City-States, he would have been called a tyrant.
I found this article, in particular following two excerpts, very insightful.
"Corruption, to the fascist politician,” he argues, “is really about the corruption of purity rather than of law.
and
"... who argued that fascism flourishes when individuals are “atomized.” He explains that Hitler denounced labor unions because he feared they might create solidarity among racially and religiously diverse workers."
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There have been many attempts to define fascism, but I find them unconvincing. My attempts based on conversations in my youth (in the 60s) with fellow students that admired fascism and on read in history books. Some attributes:
(1) Strive for power. There is ambition, but there is little merit. There is no attempt to enter the elite: fascism tries to form its own elites in its own organizations.
(2) Whereas I see military uniforms and parades as means to an end (needed in an army), fascists see uniforms and parades as a goal that gives meaning to life.
(3) Use of physical violence, such as in brawling, is seen as positive, as showing 'character'. Breaking of the law is considered ok. There is a link to criminal behavior here.
(4) Fascists form groups, but these groups often fracture.
(5) Originality and creativity are absent. The thinking is banal and rigid.
(6) Leaders and submission to them are key elements.
(7) Giving long boring speeches are OK, long boring discussions are not.
(8) Myths and conspiracies are proposed that do not survive close inspection.
(9) If fascism is attractive, it can only be so in the short term. In the long term it becomes quite stale.
(10) Fascism brings suffering.
The difference between fascism and rule by a dictator is fuzzy. I consider Trump not a fascist. He has not formed organizations loyal to him that strive for power. The GOP is only opportunistic in its support.
Comments anyone?
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No one comments when you burst their bubble.
Some would argue that the fascists are the ones who tell everyone else how to think, and condemn and destroy those who dare deviate from the orthodoxy.
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The GOP is then fascist by default. A better education in history will help understand what's going on--it's frightening.
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@What'sNew
You make some excellent points, and of course you're right about the GOP. I'd propose 3 overlapping categories: Fascist, Corporatist and Conservative.
The first 2 are pretty much subsets of the 3rd. Conservatives who are not in either of the other categories include most of the church-goers and other non-rabid traditionalists and mild racists. People with neither power nor will to it, in other words.
Corporatists include the majority of elected Republicans and captains of industry, and those who aspire to join them, plus some elected Democrats. People with power, in other words.
As your list implies, Fascists' will to power is not a simple amplification of natural greed. It seems more like the religious impulse to worship divine (or natural) power, but displaced onto human power. It also incorporates common pre-adolescent gender-role policing (bullying), but again enlarged and converted to a kind of religion, whose greatest sin and shame is powerlessness.
Regarding your penultimate sentence: Trump doesn't form organizations, he rents his name to those who do. I suspect the vast majority of his current supporters will suddenly forget his name when he's carted off, as happened with Nixon 39 years ago (and as your point #9 implies). But it's certainly possible the hard core will attempt to organize and street-brawl in his name. Which will only make the Corporatists' task of rebranding that much harder.
The only thing saving us is Trump's utter incompetence. Trump's "reverse Midas touch" destroys and bankrupts all that he touches, including fascism.
The only question is: will he bankrupt the Republican Party before he bankrupts the United States as a whole?
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Trump has no political philosophy and could not care less about history nor social studies. He does not know that Mussolini was emulating Octavian's revolution which replaced the Roman Republic with Imperial Rome nor how that would change our country. Trump does not even care that his actions undermine our liberal democracy nor even what a liberal democracy happens to be nor why our government was set up that way. He just wants to be center stage and to have fun as the most powerful man on Earth. He likes that.
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There is no argument about what’s happening. We are drifting towards fascism. We are arguing semantics when we wonder if the particular line has been crossed or will be crossed soon or in the future. The point is that we are goose stepping in the wrong direction and it’s frightening
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Perhaps this is why I sometimes have the feeling that I must be living the fears of many Germans in the 1930's.
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It is clearly wrong to say that anyone sharing any element of fascist style is a fascist. It is also clearly wrong to say someone is not a fascist unless and until there are death camps.
But the parts of history that most rhyme with today, and thus most useful as lessons, are the paranoid nationalist movements of the 1930's.
We have, I agree, a better justification for withholding citizenship rights to our 12 million unauthorized immigrants than Germany did when removing citizenship from its 600 thousand Jews in 1935. But ethnicity is sadly still a big part of the political reaction. And once you leave aside why they are considered outsiders, both the rhetoric about and the treatment of both groups are scarily simular.
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@Mark R. "It is clearly wrong to say that anyone sharing any element of fascist style is a fascist. It is also clearly wrong to say someone is not a fascist unless and until there are death camps."
You fail to recognize that fascism comes in stages.
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Our president is the CEO of an eponymous company. Who has ever opposed him? Who has he to negotiate with about policy? In his gilded palace, who did he have to answer to?
He ruled then and he tries to rule now.
The key question is who will stop his assumption that he can rule unilaterally?
Mitch McConnell? Paul Ryan?
Bad things happen because bad people have collaborators.
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There's an intriguing straw man here regarding the similarities between something like Romney's traditional gender politics and the sexual fear-mongering that characterizes fascism. The author chalks this parallel up to a failure in the text, as though it's absurd to compare Romney and Mussolini. But in a broader context the similarities are also telling: fascism is an intensification of conservative politics that the author rightly links to corruption in the service of traditional forms of power and authority.
I'm also struck, however, by the way that discussions of fascism fail to link to other critical discussions about something like white supremacy or white capitalist heteronormative patriarchy. There's a lot of overlap here. And there are a lot of people that live under vaguely fascistic conditions all the time. Trump just seems to be symptomatic of a backlash against rising recognition of ordinary conditions of suffering that the right wants to stifle.
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An important and vital component of fascism is the close alliance forged between the authoritarian leadership and the critical, corporate business class. In this symbiotic relationship, that favored business class acquires monopoly control over markets, including that of the regime, while the command leadership exploits business to its own particular ends, including furthering its goals of militarization and increased societal control.
Trump's dark vision for America is certainly fascistic, even if he is non-ideological by nature. In the end, assuming there is one with this Fake President still in power, such a distinction will not matter of course. Thus, every single vote against the policies of this incipient fascist crucially counts this November, if he is to be contained and thwarted.
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Look at the gesture with the right hand. Where have you seen that before?
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Trump is not a fascist, he’s too much about him and his greedy nature, he just plays at it as long as he can make a profit. But on the other hand, the leaders of the GOP, and those who fund their cause, lean heavily towards fascism. They hate democracy. And this is where they have a problem. In order for fascism to work, you have to have more than a bunch of mindless souls following you around, i.e. Trumps Deplorable’s, you need a military force willing and capable of controlling the populace. It might have worked in the 1930s, but highly unlikely today. The American population is far too diverse, as is the military. Besides, the GOP can’t run the government as it is now. What would they do if there met with resistance at every turn?
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Trump is not only a fascist but a fascist fraud. The carnival barker huckster that he is, means there is soul or belief there.
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It's 2018! How many Americans know the definition of Fascism?
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Most millennials have no idea who or what Fascist are. They think Fascist are people who marched at Charlottesville and carried torches and shouted some slogans. Their ideas are shaped by liberal propaganda that labels anything opposing liberalism as Fascist. President Trump has been labeled as Fascist a million times in the liberal press and media. It has become a matter of crying wold too often and the word has really no meaning any more.
@bill t - Those people with torches in Charlottsville ARE Fascists. The same goes for people who use the term "liberal propaganda" to describe the media. If anything the media is being "politically correct" when it doesn't use the term Fascism to describe the white supremacists. With many notable exceptions that still remain within the party, Republicans have all but embraced Fascism. The confederacy was Fascist before Mussolini coined the term. The modern Fascists don't like the term and attack anyone who uses it.
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Many of Trump's statements concerning the judiciary and the U.S. justice system are reminiscent of the premises behind the Sondergericht in Hitler's Germany. These were courts developed by the Nazi regime to remove opposition to the regime within the German government. Trump's recent Tweet on the Justice Department's indictment of two Republican Congressmen month's before an election, and intimation that the DOJ should have acted differently to help the Congressmen win their elections, reflects a belief that the Justice System can be used to support the political purposes of the person in power in the U.S.
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The short answer to the question in your headline is YES
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"By calling Trump a “fascist” — a word that strikes many Americans as alien and extreme — Stanley is trying to spark public alarm."
The dial to spark alarm has been up to 11 since late 2015. What good has it done anyone? How convincing and persuasive has it been to draw offensive and hyperbolic comparisons between Trump and Hitler?
Yes, Mr. Trump is vulgar, a swindler, grossly uninformed, immature, impulsive, provincial, prejudiced, and likely in the early stages of dementia. But one main reason for the comparisons to Hitler, and others identified as fascists in history is that entirely too many journalists have a grossly deficient knowledge of history. Trump ran a populist campaign, yet virtually no news organization seemed to have any familiarity with populism, or populists until early 2018. Mentioning figures from the not so distant past, like William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, and Juan Peron would have elicited nothing more than silence and dumb stares from most journalists until fairly recently. So yes, Trump is unqualified, corruptible and in way over his head. However, people like Jason Stanley do us no favors by exaggerating the threat he poses. In the end, all this accomplishes is the erosion of the credibility of the press, something we've seen arise not because of Trump, but because of the press' poorly informed treatment of him.
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@Middleman MD
You are saying the same things about Mr. Trump that British officials said about General George Washington and the American colonists, during American War of Independence.
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Is the author aware that there are midterm elections coming up, which will likely stymie Trump's agenda? And that he could be kicked out in 2020? I don't believe Mussolini had to worry about this.
Call Trump a fascist. Call his supporters deplorable and ignorant. Guess what? That helps to get him reelected in 2020.
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One key box checked for fascist leaders is that most have been pretty dim bulbs.
Checked box number two is that most have been brought down as a result of their limited intelligence.
Check, and future check, for General Trumpissimo.
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Problem is Leftists accuse anyone who disagrees with them as being Fascists.
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@JW who else have liberals called a fascist? Not Bush, not Reagan, not Cheney. The label hasn't been needed until now sir.
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@JW
Regressives call anyone who's not a self-styled crypto-Fascist conservative an extremist.
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@Jo Back in the sixties it was a trope that hippie types called Nixon types fascists.
I've taken to referring to Trump as Trumpolini. Similar personalities and if not for our institutions defending freedom, we'd be much further down Mussolini's road.
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When people toss out extreme labels for other people the tendency is to be more skeptical because of the hyperbolic nature of the label... but with Trump, all the hyperbole is justified... if anything, the rhetoric isn't enough...
Of course he is a fascist... and a traitor... and a criminal... he has attacked every democratic institution he's met... he's openly sold us out to cover shady loans... and he's obstructed in front of the entire world, on national TV.
The rhetoric could actually be strong.
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I saw an alarming comment on one of his idiotic tweets by a Trump supporter calling for him to be named a king and do away with democracy. Was it a bot or a troll hard to know. I've recently seen comments in a Facebook post by a co-worker calling for the national anthem to be made into a law that you have to stand and participate in the robotic singing of the national anthem or else. Small wonder why I rarely go on Facebook anymore. I also recall my Catholic neighbor insisting that forcing public schools to recite the Lord's prayer everyday was not a violation of the separation between church and state. "It's just the Lord's prayer" he would say. He couldn't conceive that not everybody was ok with having that Christian prayer forced on them even if they weren't Christian or religious .
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@Blackcat66 I have a relative promoting Trump as emperor of the failed union of states. I don't think he's on twitter but maybe he is.
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Haven't read the book but it sounds like fine rhetoric. If you are "lumping" and drumbeating a word, even for defensive purposes, that's not truth seeking it's persuasion. Real things have exactly the qualities they have, and if you just put things in boxes because they share qualities with the other contents of that box then you have added no new information, you've just done sorting. You only start to generate new information when you look at more complex sets of boxes and sets of sets of boxes--the whole Venn diagram. When you generate new descriptive qualities you are doing something productive with that process. Not that persuasion isn't also productive in a different way.
Hummm, not sure I buy the "normalization" argument. The election in November will tell us a lot about how many Americans view Trumpism as "normal." I suspect a Trumpublican rout of epic proportions may occur.
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@Lotzapappa
If that happens, we will quickly learn just how fascist Trump is (and how deep the rot in the Republican Party goes).
A blue wave in November will inevitably lead to a red rage in December. I fully expect that any Democratic gains will be invalidated. I fully expect to see MAGA armies endorsed by President Trump. I fully expect to see people like Seth Meyers rounded up and sent to jail. I fully expect to be forced to stand and sing the national anthem.
And I fully expect that Trump WILL shoot someone eventually on 5th Avenue —probably Robert Mueller, after he’s been stripped of his powers and declared a national traitor.
We haven’t even begun to understand what’s happening, and we have years of this administration yet to go.
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If you're interested in this comparison between Trump and the fascist political leaders of the 20th Century.
I would recommend reading the early chapters of "Anatomy of Fascism" by Robert Paxton. It attempts to define fascism as category of political governance (like democracy, authoritarian-dictatorship, etc..)
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It's interesting that the people who use the term fascism so freely are almost never historians, certainly not of that period. Are they really reading history, or reading things into it?
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@Mike Livingston
Could you please provide some examples to support your case?
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Terms such as fascist and fascism are confusing for many people, and thus not so useful.
I prefer to describe Trump based on his behavior and intentions.
For example, a greedy white-collar criminal interested primarily in wealth and power who uses sales, propaganda, criminality and intimidation tactics to further his business, personal, and political interests.
Recall the Access Hollywood tape in which he bragged of trying to bed a married woman, even offering to buy furniture for her, while also confessing to grabbing women's genitals without their permission.
He may or may not be fascist, but he is a dangerous, immoral gangster who lacks conscience and has way too much power.
The people who voted for and still support him are the real problem.
Trump is just their latest alpha male leader.
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I"m more of a splitter than a lumper. And I say Trump is a straight down the middle fascist. Even if you want to make fine-point terminological distinctions, that's no excuse for the euphemisms "objective" commentators use for Trump and Trumpism.
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The fact that this is a question in a book or media site is an embarrassment to whoever is responsible. Obama was far more authoritarian than Trump - he just was more personable and had the press on his side. I didn't support either (neither should have been president), but to call either a fascist (or Bush) demonstrates either the blindness of pure partisanship or an astounding ignorance of history for a professor. Prof. Stanley could try to write a similar book about Putin or Li while he lives in their country, and, if he is around, he might notice the difference. Really, in an age where modern day brown shirts like antifa attack speakers and the press mostly turns a blind eye, where protesters disrupt Congress or riot if they don't get their way, where one party took over the floor of the House when they didn't get their way, where socialists bully gov't officials in public - he's calling Trump a fascist? He's a lot of things, but fascist? Ridiculous. Yes, I know where I'm commenting. It's still ridiculous.
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@DHEisenberg Rather than calling names, or call it ridiculous, how about disputing each individual characteristic of a fascist that he covers in his book. Please enlighten us, not just throw epithets around.
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Wow, amazing how you label the constitutional right of protest as socialists practicing fascism! I don't know if I should laugh or cry. Either way, it's just plain sad.
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We've almost become used to the countless lies promulgated by Trump, a student of Goebbels, to the point we are surprised when he tells an unmitigated truth. At this point in time, Trump is a boorish no-nothing who figures to be dangerous when he's cornered and needs the trust of the American people. I shudder to think how this will play out when the economy tanks, stocks lose their value or we are militarily challenged and a real leader whose advisers aren't loyal sycophants is needed.
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@scottso A student of Goebbels?! We are talking about Donald Trump! When he hears that name he probably thinks of George!
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@scottso
The man was a protege of one Roy M. Cohn who served as lead counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was obvious what we were getting. It's just that American's memories aren't long enough to put the pieces together.
Trump is an admirer of Goebbels. How deeply he has read him is certainly open to question, but his admiration is public knowledge.
This book review reminds me that the left also called Ronald Reagan a fascist. Sadly the left has used this term as a club for so long and so often that its started to lose any meaning or value.
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@James Well, Reagan did give a wink and a nod toward the Nazis when he visited Bitberg--the cemetery where many SS officers were buried. And some of the very creepy people who labored during his regime to support the Contras among others seemed to me very fascist. Recall Fawn Hall excusing the Iran-Contra debacle with the same sentiment as Eichmann expressed at his trial: "Sometimes you have to go above the law."
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@James
It's ironic that you depend on use of the nebulous term "the left" (with no qualifiers or supporting facts) to discredit an argument that you believe has no "meaning or value." Perhaps you should remove the beam from your eye before proceeding further.
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@JFMACC
Really, that's the best proof you can come up with?
Unlike today's majority, I remember Hitler.
Donald J. Trump is not Hitler's identical twin, but his road to power has been paved with similarities to Hitler's rise. Trump's followers have been influenced by the propaganda of fear, of the need to feel superior, of the need to blame others (often the less fortunate), the avoidance of enlightenment, the belief in the Iron Fist and the desire for a single outstanding figure to "drain the swamps" all are reminiscent of the Hitler phenomenon. Many may claim to dislike Trump's character flaws and overlook them in favor of whatever his policies seem to be. "We do not favor the killing of Jews, but we like the Fuehrer's economics."
There is nothing really new about Trumpism, and fortunately it seems many more citizens find it abhorrent than find it the path to national salvation. And yet -- bringing about the "normalization" that would infect our special democracy is not to be ignored through wishful thinking. There are serious lessons to be learned today in the rush to install Judge Kavanaugh by ignoring lies, misleading statements and the concealment of relevant documents. The Kavanaugh record of accomplishment, such as it is, reminds us that an appealing smile may disguise a villain beneath the skin.
Doug Giebel, Big Sandy, Montana
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There are parallels to Hitler and Trump, in that, both suffer from an inferiority complex. Hitler, was a lowly corporal in the army, and a frustrated water color painter. He places blame, on his predicament, on the intellectual and the wealthy power brokers. He used fear, and ingrained European prejudice (hared of Jews and Gypsies), the causes behind the Great Depression. Trump, is doing something similar, but instead of Jews and Gypsies, it is Hispanics and Muslims. However, the US, despite is past, still is a melting pot of ethic groups and religions, whose citizens descend from ancestors who escape people like Hitler and other autocrats.
Unlike Hitler, Trump lacks the oratory skills that Hitler had to convince a nation to put him into power. While "Mein Kamph" is a rambling treatise, it convinced people that Hitler had a point. Trump is incapable of writing such a treatise. His speeches are a rambling mess of platitudes. Somehow, he convinces 1/3 of the country to blindly follow him.
In 1930s Germany, the country was failing, the economy in ruins, debts from WWI was damaging the country further and hyper inflation was devastating. Trump faces none of these economic conditions. On the contrary, even from his own mouth, he says the economy is doing great.
No, Trump is not a fascist, in the mold of Hitler, or any of those named in the article. Trump, instead, is an angry, frustrated, immature, uninformed, inept, cowardly, old man.
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