Fascism in Fashion

I’ve never been a political animal, and never supported one party over another.  Two of my favorite modern Presidents are Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  While radically different in some ways, both Presidents were sincere patriots who offered what they felt the country needed at the time.  And big majorities of voters agreed.  Donald Trump is totally different, however, and presents a number of very serious threats to the US, its system of government, and our way of life.  This is one of many commentaries on him and the dire situation we find ourselves in under his administration.

One of the most troubling trends in American politics, and world politics for that matter, is the revival of fascism.  Before you get too upset about me insulting political leaders and their followers, let’s just take a look at what the words fascism and fascist mean, starting first with a bit of history.

Benito Mussolini was the original fascist, as he founded the Fascist Revolutionary Party (PFR) in 1915.  The party emphasized Italian nationalism, or the greatness of Italy and its destiny to regain much of the lands and power of the former Roman Empire.  Other leaders modified Italian fascism to fit their own countries, as the political system spread to Germany and Hitler’s Nazism, to Spain and Franco’s Falangism, and to various Latin American countries.

Nowadays countries like Russia are labeled as fascist by some, with Poland, Hungary, the Philippines and others moving in that direction too.  And in the United States, Donald J. Trump is accused by the left of being a fascist.  Leaving those other cases behind – are claims about Trump justified or not? 

For the purposes of our discussion, the guide to fascism we’ll use is Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, originally written by Professor Kevin Passmore in 2002, updated and printed by Oxford University in 2014.  We should note that in 2014 Donald Trump was a reality TV host and real estate developer, who nobody ever thought of as being President of the US, with few concerned about whether he was a closet fascist or not.  As such, we should be able to use Passmore’s expert definition of a fascist to fairly evaluate Trump being one or not.

According to Passmore, a fascist is ultranationalist, believing that his country is the very best, with destiny having chosen it to dominate the world, or at least the region where it is located.  President Trump frequently demonstrates that belief, with his rejection of globalism in favor of always doing whatever is best for America being just one example.  Trump's "America First" policies is another; building a wall to keep immigrants out is another example; tolerating racist, nationalist organizations “with good people on both sides” adds to the list. 

Fascist countries typically have charismatic leadership, being headed by someone whose captivating, dogmatic speeches electrify his followers.  Adolf Hitler is the classic example, as he ranted and raved to hundreds of thousands of adoring Germans throughout the country, and they answering with shouts of “Heil Hitler” and Nazi salutes.  Trump is similarly god-like to his followers, who pack his rallies to hear him viciously and with no evidence tear into anyone who disagrees with him, chanting “Lock her up!” and waving Make America Great Again signs.  Trump puts his listeners in a mad, trance-like state where they believe anything he says, just as Hitler did 80 years ago. 

Passmore includes dictatorship as a feature of fascism, meaning that one person has virtually all power in a country.  He or she runs the economy, runs the military, chooses state and city leaders, and decides who’s guilty, who’s innocent, who lives a good life and who is executed.  Fortunately, we don’t have a dictator in the US and never have.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump clearly shows that he wants to have much more power than past US presidents have had, and has taken quite a few steps to make that happen.  The most notable examples are the many disturbing steps he’s taken to hinder and actually halt the FBI’s investigation into his collaborations with Russia.  From removing - one by one - the top FBI leaders who could substantiate James Comey’s claim that Trump asked him to halt the Flynn investigation, to appointing a Supreme Court judge primarily because he said the President can’t be indicted while in office, to firing an Attorney General who protected the investigation and replacing him with a grossly unqualified fraudster who claims the FBI’s investigation is illegal.  Apart from that, we constantly hear about how he expects Congress, the courts, and the Federal Reserve to do what he wants and pressures them to do so in ways that no President has ever done.  And then there’s the admiration he’s expressed for dictators like Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte; beyond a doubt, Trump envies their power and wants to be like them.

Racism is another feature of fascist countries.  Hitler is again the best example, with his “superior race,” the Holocaust and all that.  In the US, multiculturalism and many millions of non-white citizens won’t allow things to ever go that far (we pray), yet legitimate news sources regularly report on how Trump discriminates against non-whites.  His Muslim bans, and his characterizing Latino migrants as a dangerous invasion of rapists and gang members, follow the same theme as his failure to criticize racist groups such as in Charlottesville. 

Is Trump an anti-Semite?  Not really, with a trusted son-in-law being a Jew, and with supporting Israel beyond what his predecessors had done.  On the other hand, many of his more radical supporters are anti-Semites, such as those young lads in Charlottesville who chanted “Jews will not replace us” while carrying torches.  You know – those “good people on both sides” types?  And then there was the murder of Jews in Pittsburgh by one of his supporters, inspired by Trump's vicious, hateful language.

Fascist countries really only have one political party.  The others are either eliminated through violent means, or otherwise kept powerless.  In the US, the Republican party controls the judiciary, the executive, and half of the legislative branches starting in January, 2019 (they controlled both halves before that).  The evidence strongly supports that Trump won the executive branch through fraudulent means, including help from the Russians.  There’s no doubt that the Republicans stole a key Supreme Court nomination, and blocked countless other judicial appointments until Trump was elected.  And in the legislative branch, there is plentiful evidence of dirty tricks by the Republicans, with Trump’s backing, to limit the legitimate power of Democrats.  The tide is slowly turning, but surely Trump prefers the Republicans controlling all three branches of government, and has done much more than past Presidents to make that happen, regardless of traditional constitutional and ethical restraints.

Violence, actual or threatened is another feature of fascism, says Passmore.  We know that very early in their history, the Nazis beat up or killed virtually every member of opposition parties.  By 1934, hardly anyone was left to speak up or oppose them.  Donald Trump of course doesn't go that far.  But who doesn't remember the clips of his 2016 rallies, when he urged his followers to "beat the Hell out of 'em" in regards to protestors?  "I'll pay for your legal bills, I promise you that."  He can't really do that stuff now as President, but it's pretty clear that he's a violent thug at heart and would probably do much worse if he thought he could get away with it.

Corporatism is defined as "the control of a state or organization by large interest groups."  In the cases of Germany and Italy, the large interest groups mostly referred to big business.  They supported Hitler and Mussolini, and those leaders in turn supported the businesses with big tax breaks and via other means.  Trump's belief in that policy is evident from his "historic middle-class tax cut," which every non-partisan economist has said benefited the wealthy and big businesses almost exclusively; the middle-class got a small tax break for 2 years, after which their taxes will be higher, not lower. 

Fascists also practice antiliberalism, antisocialism, and anticommunism.  Hitler was notoriously anti-communist, and wanted to totally destroy his nemesis, the Soviet Union.  In Trump's case, he hasn't expressed much of an opinion on the subject, but clearly views liberals and liberalism as his enemy.  "The radical left, an angry mob" he calls them, and his base eats it up, since they see liberalism as the nation's biggest problem.

Finally, Passmore mentions anticonstitutionalism, which we've already covered in the section on dictatorship.  The Founding Fathers built a form of government that would divide power between the states and the national (or federal) government, and furthermore divided it among the three branches of the federal government.  They expressly did so in order to prevent one person or one group from running the country – in other words, to prevent dictatorship.  So in other words, this feature of fascism is kind of redundant, with Trump's anticonstitutional actions directly aimed to give him dictator-like power.

We think of fascism as an ugly part of the far-away past, with caricatures wearing silly hats and giving silly salutes.  God willing, we'll never see those extreme versions of it again.  But it's clear that this form of governing still exists, and has gained in popularity in the last few years.  In the United States of America, where fascism makes perhaps the least sense, it has come back stronger than ever in the past.  Fashionable fascism – who'd a thunk it?

Donald J. Trump may lack the silly hat and the rigid salute (so far), but fascism surely runs deep in him.  His millions of American fans, mostly ignorant of history and sadly depending on Fox News, Breitbart News, and Infowars for their "facts," are fertile ground for Trump's manipulative methods.  Will those folks snap out of it at some point, or will their numbers simply be over-matched by Americans with common sense and an understanding of what it means to be an American?  Or will the country keep sliding down the slippery sewage pipe to saluting Der Drumpf wearing his own silly hat?  God only knows.