Trump’s closing argument: full-throated fascism

Last week, Trump claimed that Kamala Harris

“has imported an army of illegal alien gang members and migrant criminals from the dungeons of the third world … from prisons and jails and insane asylums and mental institutions, and she has had them resettled beautifully into your community to prey upon innocent American citizens.”

On Sunday, Trump told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that the biggest problem on Election Day will “not be the people who have come in, who are destroying our country,” but, rather

“the people from within — we have some very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

On Monday, he closed his remarks to a crowd in Pennsylvania by saying his political opponents

“are so bad and frankly, they’re evil. They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elections. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even possible.”

These are echoes of the Nazism that flourished in Europe 90 years ago.

Trump’s closing argument of the 2024 election is full-throated fascism.

Retired General Mark A. Milley, whom Trump picked to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that former president Donald Trump is a “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country” in new comments voicing his mounting alarm at the prospect of the Republican nominee’s election to another term (according to a forthcoming book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward).

Former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney sees “no reason to disagree with [Milley’s] assessment,” adding that “The people that stopped [Trump] from his worst desires last time around won’t serve again.”

On Monday, Hillary Clinton posted that Trump’s rhetoric now is “blatantly fascist.”

Trump has always had fascist tendencies. But fascist thuggery has now become the core of his presidential campaign.

Fascism — different from and more dangerous than authoritarianism — has five elements,* all of which are now central features of what Trump is offering voters:

1. The rejection of democracy, the rule of law, and equal rights under the law, in favor of a strongman.

“I am your voice.” (Trump, 2016)

“The election was stolen.” (Trump, 2020)

“I am your warrior. I am your justice … I am your retribution.” (Trump, 2023)

Fascist “strongmen” are assumed to be above the law — above any legal or constitutional constraints — because they supposedly give voice to the people.

2. The galvanizing of popular rage against political opponents.

“The people from within [are] bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics.” (Trump, 2024)

“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”(Trump, 2023)

“Your enemies” are “media elites.” (Trump, 2016)

Fascists encourage public rage at political opponents for being the “enemy within” the country and seek revenge against them. In doing so, fascists create mass parties that often encourage violence.

3. Nationalism based on a dominant “superior” race and historic bloodlines.

“Migrants will ‘cut your throat’ … They have ‘bad genes.’” (Trump, 2024)

“Tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border.” (Trump, 2015)

“Jewish people that vote for a Democrat [show] great disloyalty.” (Trump, 2019)

“Getting critical race theory out of our schools is … a matter of national survival.” (Trump, 2022)

Fascism manufactures fears of groups it considers genetically inferior — based on race, ethnicity, religion, or historic bloodlines — and whom it treats as subhuman. Fascists worry about disloyalty and sabotage coming from such groups within the nation. These “others” are scapegoated, excluded, expelled, sometimes even killed.

Fascists believe schools and universities must teach values that celebrate the dominant race, religion, and bloodline, and not truths that denigrate the dominant group (such as America’s history of genocide and racism).

4. Extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.

“You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong. (Trump, January 6, 2021)

Fascists assert that a nation’s well-being depends on the leadership of the strongest and elimination of the weakest. For the fascist, war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and identifying heroic warriors.

5. Disdain of women and fear of non-standard gender identities or sexual orientation.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p-----. You can do anything.” (Trump, 2005)

“You have to treat ’em like shit.” (Trump, 1992)

“[I will] promote positive education about the nuclear family … rather than erasing the things that make men and women different.” (Trump, 2023)

Fascism is organized around the hierarchy of male dominance. The fascist heroic warrior is male. Women are relegated to subservient roles. In fascism, anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order.

Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexual, transgender, and queer people because they are thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.

These five core elements of fascism reinforce each other:

The rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman depends on galvanizing popular rage against perceived enemies, outside the nation and within.

This popular rage draws on bigotry directed against supposedly inferior, subhuman groups, who are assumed to threaten the “purity” of the dominant group.

That bigotry is supposedly justified by social Darwinist survival of the fittest, which is thought to strengthen the race or dominant group as a whole.

The dominant group maintains itself through tests of its strength, as exemplified by heroic warriors.

Strength, violence, and the heroic warrior are centered on male dominance and the subjugation of women.

All of these five core elements find expression in Trumpian fascism. All can also be found in the current Trump Republican Party.

America’s mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about Trump’s authoritarianism. But in describing what Trump is seeking to impose on America, the media should be using the term “fascism.”

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*These five elements appear in the works of cultural theorist Umberto Eco, historians Emilio Gentile and Ian Kershaw, political scientist Roger Griffin, and former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright.