New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism
26th October 2024
Now I want to be clear what we’re doing here. I am not asking if the Republican Party is fascist (I think, broadly speaking, it isn’t) and certainly not if you are fascist (I certainly hope not). But I want to employ the concept of fascism as an ideology with more precision than its normal use (‘thing I don’t like’) and in that context ask if Donald Trump fits the definition of a fascist based on his own statements and if so, what does that mean. And I want to do it in a long-form context where we can get beyond slogans or tweet-length arguments and into some detail.
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Mussolini and Hitler have become such bywords for evil in general conversation, peers to the Dark Lord Sauron or Frieza, that they need to be demystified to a significant degree to be useful for understanding human affairs and our momentum because these men did not appear suddenly as the villains we now know them to be. There were plenty of signs of what these men might do once in power, before they had it, but they did not stride on to the stage dressed in spikes and black robes. These were men, not wizards with mind control powers, so it is worth asking why people were so foolish to entrust them with power – to the near universal ruin of everyone involved.
This author makes the usual mistake of interpreting Trumpian hyperbole (which he has used all his life) for serious political talk, as if Trump were your standard Establishmentarian apparatchik. The actions of both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and the public statements of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, make a much better case of them fitting this author’s definition of fascist (but of course he doesn’t go through that exercise because It’s All About Trump.
I think it’s rather plain that the American Federal government is effectively fascist and has been on course to be so since the administration of Woodrow Wilson, with a big boost from Franklin Roosevelt. Most of Trump’s ‘fascist’ statements are merely pointing out that he would do what most Democrat administrations have blatantly failed to do, their job in enforcing the law, such as acting to stop illegal immigration (rather than encouraging it) and pursuing a non-belligerent and pro-American foreign policy (remember how North Korea wasn’t a problem when Trump was President?). If you’re looking for censorship and violence against opponents, it would be hard for Trump to achieve what Obama and Biden have regularly done, whether against the January 6th demonstrators or against Trump himself.