How fascist is Donald Trump?

 

There’s actually a formula for that.

Grading the billionaire on the 11 attributes of fascism.

“Donald Trump is a fascist” sounds more like a campaign slogan than an analysis of his political program. But it’s true that the GOP nominee doesn’t fit into America’s conventional party categories, and thoughtful people — authors Robert Kagan and Jeffrey Tucker, among others — have hurled the f-word at him.

Fascism was born in Italy during World War I and came to power with the ex-journalist and war veteran Benito Mussolini in 1922. Since the 1950s, dozens of top historians and political scientists have put fascism, especially the Italian and German versions, under the microscope. They’ve come up with a pretty solid agreement on what it is, both as a political ideology and as a political movement, factoring in all the (sometimes contradictory) things its progenitors said as they ascended to power. As a political ideology, fascism has eight main traits. As a political movement, it has three more. So: Just how fascist is Trump? On the fascist meter, we can award him zero to four “Benitos.”

First, the ideological features:

1. Hyper-nationalism.

 This attribute is not confined to fascism, but it is central to all fascism. Trump regularly promises to put America first and extolls the virtues of ordinary Americans (by which he often seems to mean white Americans). His trade policy qualifies as economic nationalism. By the standards of American politics, he is a hyper-nationalist, but by the standards of historical fascism, he is not in the upper echelon. Two Benitos.

2. Militarism. 

Fascists routinely lionized military institutions and military virtues, and at least rhetorically sought military solutions to political issues. Trump lavishes praise on the troops, as almost all American politicians do these days, and he has proposed (in vague and vulgar terms) a militaristic solution to the problem posed by the Islamic State. He has recommend taking the oil of the Middle East, which presumably would require armed force. But by and large, Trump does not blithely recommend military action and often lambastes his rivals for allegedly incompetent military adventurism. He does not dress his followers in ersatz military garb. Two Benitos.

3. Glorification of violence and readiness to use it in politics.

 Fascists such as Mussolini thought violence could cleanse and redeem a tarnished nation. They encouraged loyal thugs to rough up, and occasionally kill, people whose politics differed from theirs. Trump scores low here. His rallies, according to many reports, have a frisson of menace to them; he has said things that could be interpreted as invitations to assassination; his followers often speak longingly of violent acts they wish to see committed against others; he has recommended using torture and killing the families of terrorists. But this still leaves him well short of the standard of Mussolini’s blackshirts or Hitler’s brownshirts, who not only called for political violence but resorted to it extensively. One Benito.

4. Fetishization of youth. 

Fascist movements, even when led by middle-aged men, always extolled the vigor and promise of youth and made special efforts to appeal to young people. Trump, as a septuagenarian, is ill-positioned here. He has no special youth organization to speak of. His most devoted followers are long in the tooth. Zero Benitos.

5. Fetishization of masculinity.

 Fascists trumpeted what they saw as masculine virtues and supported male authority within family and society, urging women to confine their sphere to home and children (the more of which the better). Trump shares much of this outlook, lauding his own stamina and accusing his female rival, Hillary Clinton, of lacking it. He mocks men whom he deems deficient in virility. But whereas Mussolini liked to hold up his own mother, devoted to home and hearth, as the feminine ideal, Trump’s vision of the proper woman seems to be a supermodel, more in line with Hugh Hefner’s ideology than Mussolini’s. Nonetheless, on swaggering machismo, he gets full marks. Four Benitos.

6. Leader cult. 

Fascists always looked to a leader who was bold, decisive, manly, uncompromising and cruel when necessary — because the parlous state of the nation required such qualities. Mussolini and Hitler, both veterans of World War I, drew their models of leadership from army officers and worked hard to polish their images as dauntless rulers beholden to no one. They encouraged their followers to idolize them as Il Duce and der Führer. They claimed special insight into the will of the people. Trump, although not a war veteran, fully embraces the cult of the leader. He offers his business experience as evidence of his decisive leadership and is very testy when his business acumen is doubted. He also claims to channel the common man, enjoying a connection all other politicians lack. Four Benitos.

7. Lost-golden-age syndrome.

 Italian and German fascism shared a strong commitment to the notion of national rebirth. Mussolini and Hitler encouraged their supporters to believe in lost (or stolen) greatness, in a glorious past. That could be long ago, as with the Roman Empire, which Mussolini liked to invoke, or only a couple of decades prior, as with the German Reich that was, according to Hitler, “stabbed in the back” in 1918. Trump makes this appeal to a golden age the centerpiece of his campaign, assuring audiences that only he can “make America great again.” Four Benitos.

8. Self-definition by the opposition. 

Fascists defined themselves as the bulwark against various evils and menaces to the nation. Those included communism, routine democratic politics, the traditional conservatism of industrial and agrarian elites (although both Mussolini and Hitler eventually made peace with these elites), and, especially in the German case, foreigners, and minorities. Communism is no longer an issue for American politics. But Trump constantly rails against politics as usual, against political correctness, against elites of all kinds (including, curiously, business elites), and he has made a habit of vilifying minorities. He does not advocate their annihilation, as Hitler did. Three Benitos.

As a political movement, fascism displayed three further important traits:

9. Mass mobilization and mass party. Both Mussolini and Hitler rode to power on tidal waves of support that were organized into new political parties. A new party might fit Trump better, but he has not created one. Instead he has made a venerable one, the Grand Old Party, into his vehicle. He likes to refer to his following as a movement, and since the GOP convention in July has rarely tried to brand himself as a Republican. Many in his party loathe him. Two Benitos.

10. Hierarchical party structure and tendency to purge the disloyal. Fascist movements, like revolutions, ate their children. Anyone who displayed only tepid loyalty to the leader or who showed the potential to outshine the leader risked being purged or killed. So did followers who outlived their usefulness. Trump’s campaign shares this tendency toward purges, but the Republican Party under his leadership does not. And violence plays no role. One Benito.

11. Theatricality. In style and rhetoric, fascism was highly theatrical. Film and audio of Mussolini and Hitler make them seem like clownish buffoons, with their exaggerated gestures, their salutes, their overheated speeches full of absolutes and superlatives. Their rallies evolved into elaborate collective rituals for loyalists. Trump does not strut across stages like a Mussolini, and Nazi-style torchlit parades are out, but his rhetoric fits the fascist style well. He constantly calls things and people the worst or the best ever. His rallies feature repetitive chants. Even his studied frown of disapproval recalls a classic Mussolini pose. Three Benitos.

Add all this up, and you get 26 out of a possible 44 Benitos. In the fascist derby, Trump is a loser. Even Spain’s Francisco Franco and Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar might score higher. While there is a strong family resemblance, and with some features an uncanny likeness, Trump doesn’t fit the profile so well on those points where the use of violence is required. Projecting an air of menace at rallies, uttering ambiguous calls for assassinations, tacitly endorsing the roughing-up of protesters, urging the killing of terrorists’ families and whatever else Trump does — while shocking by the standards of American politics — fall far short of the genuinely murderous violence endorsed and unleashed by authentic fascists.

In a more nuanced approach, we might weigh the various traits of fascism differently, but it’s not obvious how best to do so. Hyper-nationalism, for example, is more consequential than the youth fetish and perhaps ought to be taken more seriously. But it is also less distinctively fascist, being common to many types of political regimes. A longer list, too, might add refinement and complexity. But Trump does not do nuance. A crude, quick and flippant assessment is what he deserves. He is semi-fascist: more fascist than any successful American politician yet, and the most dangerous threat to pluralist democracy in this country in more than a century, but — thank our stars — an amateurish imitation of the real thing.

Even though Trump is not remotely a fascist still the American communist part continues a false flag opposition program portraying him as one even using critical race in many Fascist groups such as BLM and Antifa. Their beliefs all stem from Marxism and socialist communism and a fascist system illustrated by BLM members and other proxy groups.

Articles like the one below show the false flag opposition at its best.

It’s not over: Woodward’s “Peril” tells us why

HOME > ARTICLE > BLOG > IT’S NOT OVER: WOODWARD’S “PERIL” TELLS US WHY

 

 

BY:JOE SIMS| OCTOBER 20, 2021

 

Trump & Co. had a five-point plan to undo the presidential election and overthrow the government. They sought to:

1. Discredit and challenge state results (particularly in PA, GA, and AZ)
2. Recruit the Department of Justice
3. Draft Mike Pence
4. Subvert the January 6th vote count
5. Toss the election to the House of Representatives

The mob that stormed the Capitol on that fateful day in January was the spear’s edge of the assault.

The main features of these chilling designs are described in Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

It could have worked. And would have worked had the ever-loyal, browbeaten vice president succumbed and been “brave” as Trump had pressured him to by unilaterally declaring invalid Electoral College votes, at one point proffering a “wouldn’t-it-be-cool-to-have-that-kind-of-power” temptation. As proposed in a now-infamous how-to memo on overthrowing the government devised by Trump lawyer John Eastman, the election, then, would have been decided in the House where the GOP holds a slim margin in state delegations.

Such an action would have undoubtedly precipitated a constitutional crisis with hitherto unthinkable consequences, including the employment of the Insurrection Act, martial law, and worse — a scenario adhering closely to the communist movement’s classic description of a key element in fascism’s ascent to power — the substitution of one state form of government by another.

“The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie — bourgeois democracy — by another form — open terrorist dictatorship,” wrote Georgi Dimitrov in his United Front: The Struggle against Fascism and War.

Those who continue to think the fascist danger overblown or mask it in classless, “authoritarian,” and “white nationalist” vagaries, would do well to consider that some closest to the process, while late in sounding the alarm, had no such misgivings about terminology. Why is this important? Because in battle, it’s vital to know who you’re fighting against and on what terrain to engage them. “Authoritarian white nationalism,” a bourgeois liberal term if there ever was one, tells us nothing about the class and social forces behind the Trump counterrevolution, in other words, who is footing the bills and pulling the strings. Fascism, on the other hand, as defined in Marxist terms points to banking and other capital as the chief culprits.

With respect to understanding what’s at stake, the alarmed Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn is described in Peril as “studying up on fascist histories with a focus on Italy. He saw Trump as America’s Benito Mussolini in waiting.”

The book also relates a story told by Congressman Adam Smith of Washington State. Smith, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, enjoyed the unhappy experience of boarding a commercial flight home filled with January 6th insurrectionists, several of whom spoke openly about something called 6MWE (6 million were not enough). Smith also shared the experience with Joint Chiefs chair Mark Milley in a phone conversation on January 8th. He later told colleagues, “My fear with Trump was always that he was going to engineer a fascist takeover of the country.”

After January 6th, Milley, who later apologized after donning battle fatigues and joining Trump in the infamous Bible-toting walk across a Lafayette Square cleared by force, compiled a list of several fascist organizations that presented a clear and present danger to the Republic. On the list were 6MWE, Extreme Tea Party, QAnon, Patriot Movement, We the People Movement, Nazis, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, NewsMax, and Epoch Times. As Woodward and Costa write: “Some were the new Brown Shirts, a U.S. version Milley concluded, of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party that supported Hitler. It was a planned revolution. Steve Bannon’s vision coming to life. Bring it all down, blow it up, burn it, and emerge with power.”

Bannon himself is reported to have told Trump, “We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him.”

Even Trump’s CIA directors — people who know a thing or two about fascist coups — saw the danger. Secretary of State Pompeo, reacting to the Sidney Powell and Guiliani team’s stewardship of Trump’s post-election legal fight, said, “The crazies are taking over.” The CIA’s Gina Haspel warned Milley, “We’re on the way to a right-wing coup.”

Importantly, Woodward and Costa mention a little-reported statement by the Joint Chiefs, joining the choir of those condemning January 6th. “The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, was a direct assault on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” the statement read. ““We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that was inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition, and insurrection.”

The Joint Chiefs go on to say that the newly elected president “will” take office on January 20th.

Peril in over 400 pages relates, anecdotally, various episodes, intrigues, conspiracies, and policy debates leading up to and succeeding the 2020 election. This includes Biden’s Charlottesville-motivated decision to run against Trump, the Democratic campaign itself, and the new administration’s first months. In this regard, the book might be described as a paean to the Biden presidency and those who helped stave off a Trump coup, chief among them Milley, Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi, and even William Barr, Pompeo, and the former secretary of defense Mark Esper, the latter group of *which might be voted the most unlikely to join “The Resistance.”

Yes, after shamelessly enabling, coddling, and defending Trump, key members of his administration seem to have broken with him as, to use Dimitrov’s phrase, the soon-to-be ex-president attempted to substitute one form of state power for another. Milley, in particular, is cast in a heroic light, standing up to Trump repeatedly, on debates ranging from attacking Iran to placing active-duty troops on U.S. streets during the mass democratic people’s uprising after George Floyd’s murder.

What led up to these ruptures, however, is anyone’s guess. And that’s where Peril fails as a journalistic history of the 2020 election. By focusing almost exclusively on the GOP’s and Democrat’s high command, the well-known class and social forces acting in both background and foreground are obscured from sight. The book does not consider, for example, to what degree the Chamber of Commerce’s decision to accept the election results influenced the actors, interventions by Wall Street, or even Fox News’ role, which is given little attention save Trump’s anger at their early call of the Arizona election for Biden.

As a moment in time, January 6th was much more than as Mike Pence recently termed it “a day in January.” Birthed on that same day was also the insurrection’s antithesis and remedy: the election of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the great state of Georgia and the movement that made it happen. While mentioned in Peril, it’s done only in passing as the authors’ gaze remained fixated on high, missing almost completely what’s taking place at the grassroots — but then again that’s bourgeois journalism.

Still, there’s a lot revealed in Woodward and Costa’s treatment and many more threads to be unraveled, including an interesting tidbit about GOP strategy from House minority leader Kevin McCarthy who, when celebrating last November’s Congressional wins, remarked, “You know who I’m going to recruit? Small business owners. . . . They have a passion; they can see what abuse government can do to your own life.” Historically, small businesses, in country after country have been the mass base of fascist movements.

Thus as the country seeks to understand and defend itself against a present and ongoing fascist danger, Peril will be an important resource.

*****