Militarism and ‘strong regimentation of society’ are two that very obviously don’t apply to Trumpian politics. Trump was an isolationist militarily in his first term - an expansionist nationalist military is a sine qua non of fascism.
And Trump’s fetish for deregulation works against the second one.
> Fascism rejects the view that violence is inherently negative or pointless but rather views imperialism, political violence, and war as means to national rejuvenation
Trump has advocated for nationalist, North Korean style military parades and the use of the military against protesters etc. And there this myth of him being anti-interventionist but America was very active in Syria during his term.
I think you are conflating nationalism and fascism.
Nationalism has a lot of gradations, and while it can be a subset of fascism it isn't inherently fascistic. Fukuyama said: "But it is not clear that nationalism represents an irreconcilable contradiction in the heart of liberalism. In the first place, nationalism is not one single phenomenon but several, ranging from mild cultural nostalgia to the highly organized and elaborately articulated doctrine of National Socialism."
And using the military against mobs of people that are ransacking cities is not under any construction 'fascism' - property rights are after all pretty important in the Western Anglo-Saxon tradition and using force to protect property rights is not 'fascism'.
Not sure what you mean by America being active militarily in Syria, either - are you referring to Trump ordering the bombing of ISIS targets? By that logic when Obama ordered the Navy Seals to kill bin Laden the US was engaged in a fascistic military adventure in Pakistan which... would probably make you the only person in the world to think that.
Trump is a lot of things. A fascist as that word is understood by historians is not one of them.
Then why do the people he hand-picked say it is? Should I ignore the words coming out of their mouths and pens? Should I ignore the words coming out of Trump's own mouth? Then what should I use to determine whether it's fascism or not?
That is actually a pretty interesting question, fascism doesn't seem to have any actual meaning. It is very hard to outline what a "fascist" is unless they self-identify. I thought briefly in writing this comment and I can't actually rule out Trump being a fascist, based on the fact that any policy that isn't explicitly in the liberal or communist traditions may technically be fascist.
Anyway; it has reached the point where I no longer believe people who claim Trump said something negative. Back in the 2010s I spent enough time reading up primary sources to reveal it was a misquote. Possibly a malicious misinterpretation, possibly the man just makes people so emotional that they can't listen to him for a full minute and try to interpret with a neutral lens.
He appears to be close to a saint given how much time his opponents have to spend making up stuff about him to dislike. Realistically there are a lot of real problems that people should focus on; like bad policies.
Fascism has a meaning like high-level language has a meaning. Yet if I point to a language like Java, you have plenty of ways to argue it's actually low-level if you're motivated to argue that.
Within the past 24 hours, you said that "poisoning the blood of this country" is "Nazi rhetoric." Can you explain how both of Trump's recent usages of that "Nazi rhetoric" were misquoted?
Literally all the links provided were nbcnews.com. As far as I'm concerned there may as well be no evidence at all that Trump said it. They may be reliable on other topics but they aren't a credible source of reporting on what Trump says. Like I said, I followed up on that sort of thing in the 2010s and by now I'm happy to just ignore them as discredited.
As far as I'm aware Trump was running on deporting illegal immigrants. He's not planning on gassing anyone. Except maybe with all the hot air he blows, heh.
And even in 40 seconds of context, what do we get? He's not planning on gassing the Jews. He's not advocating rolling back democracy. He's not even talking about invading Russia (something of a rarity these days). He is, in fact, talking about that wall of his that has made the press so much for the last 8 years. Between that and bumping abortion from a Federal to State jurisdiction we may indeed be dealing with Hitler reborn.
He represents the faction of US politics that wants to enforce a secure border and his rhetoric is ugly. That is pretty normal for anti-migration rhetoric, by the way. It makes him nasty, maybe even cruel, but not a fascist.
This is why it is a waste of time trying to follow up NBC News articles. They're distracting from a real issue (migration, border security, what have you) with ... I don't even know how to characterise it. Abuse to try and shut people up, perhaps. Playing silly gotcha games, maybe. That quote isn't Trump trying to revive Nazi policies, as we all might have expected from the outset.
> You mentioned Russia, the wall, NBC and typed a lot but didn't really answer the question.
Fair enough, let me be direct: I think the question is stupid and I'm not going to answer it. Trump has spent 4 years in office and run multiple election campaigns that have featured potentially hundreds of hours of coverage of Trump, his policies and opportunities to evaluate them.
With that in the background, old mate wants to discuss a tweet and 40 second clip, probably bought into the conversation by institutions that specialises in lying about what Trump says and taking clips out of context given that NBC News is involved.
And like I said, back in the 2010s fair enough it is a topic to discuss because who knows? Maybe he is Hitler. But it is now 2024, there isn't anything there and the people bringing it up are looking increasingly isolated and unhinged by virtue of crying wolf. Trump says mean things about immigrants. Everyone knows. He doesn't represent a return of the Nazi party, even if a lot of people don't like him or think he is a bad candidate.
> Fair enough, let me be direct: I think the question is stupid and I'm not going to answer it.
So you can't answer it.
> probably bought into the conversation by institutions that specialises in lying about what Trump says
Nope, he said it 4 times in 2023 alone and many many times since. In an interview with a right leaning website, in a rally in New Hampshire, and quite literally in the Truth Social post linked above, straight from Trump himself. No pesky journalists or reporters to misquote.
So hopefully we can agree he has said it, not out of context, multiple times.
What did Hitler say?
"All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning"
"Whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race, the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture,"
Going back to Trump's quote, what type of blood do you think he was referring to?
Do you think he meant the immigrants were going to literally inject poison into Americans as some kind of terrorist attack?
So the goalposts moved from you no longer believe he said something negative (he very clearly did) to him not planning on gassing the Jews.
Yes, it's distracting from the real issues, but his supporters don't care that he torpedoed the bipartisan border control bill either.
These quotes aren't about his proposals to roll back democracy, and I never claimed they were. Rolling back democracy is more about his actions to gain absolute presidential immunity.
To be clear, I don't think Trump is fascist like Hitler. He is fascist like Putin. He wants autocracy for personal enrichment, not for extermination of undesirables. He uses Hitler's rhetoric because it works, and he admires Hitler for his crowds, not because Hitler would kill the man who married his favorite daughter.
In my opinion, Hitler would still be Hitler if he targeted Muslims, Algerians or redheads. The choice of target group isn't important,nor was the precise method of murder - the thing that makes Hitler Hitler was that he tried to kill a whole group.
