While Democratic strategists debate whether or not their attack ads labeling Donald Trump a fascist have been effective, experts and academics told the Guardian his campaign and the Republican party he now heads have clear autocratic sympathies and political qualities that are firmly in line with fascism movements historically.
Put together, that makes any Trump victory this week and his return to the White House for a second presidential term a clear threat to US democracy, they added.
“There couldn’t be a more obvious example of a fascist social and political movement about to take power,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor whose new book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, looks at the global playbook of fascists through the lens of America and beyond.
I’m a life long New Yorker, and I’ve watched with horror as Donald went from being a local joke to a national menace.
Beyond any political ideology, you have to realize that Trump is a thug and a bully.
He’s hated in Atlantic City because he refused to pay so many small businesses. He’d come in like a white knight, sign a great contract, then let his lawyers screw over people who couldn’t afford to keep fighting a decades long trial.
Yup. He’s well known in NY for stiffing workers from contractors to caterers.
He’s been charged in hundreds of contract dispute cases and over a thousand cases related to his casinos.
And this is not just a NYC thing, it was certainly well known in upstate NY and parts of New England. Given the stature of ridiculousness (gold plated toilets, bankrupting casinos, claiming to be good with deals while somehow getting away with outright fraud, one of the largest tax frauds ever) I always assumed this was nationally known, perhaps even globally.
This is why I never took 2016 seriously. Now we have the proof, we have so many of his own words,attempted overthrowing an election, four years of such destructive attempts at running the country, how can anyone be blind?
how can anyone be blind?
Conservatives aren’t blind. They’re fascist. They see these traits as positives, which is why they’ve chosen him as their most accurate representative for the last 10 years.
Dutch guy here. I definitely knew he was a terrible clown when it came to business, well before he ever ran for office.
I mean… he’s so bad at running a business, he had several casinos go bankrupt. And those are pretty much a license to print money if you run them halfway decent. He also failed at stuff like running his own airline and a host of other ventures. I also knew he was at one time involved with the WWE, I knew about The Apprentice, Home Alone…
Basically, if you were alive in the 90’s, you had plenty of opportunity to know about this clown of a ‘businessman’. When he ran, I figured it was a joke - a publicity stunt. Imagine my surprise when Americans actually voted for him!
trump is an amoral narcissist with racist underpinnings. the fascists are the people steering him to the stage so he can keep all eyes on him and not on them or their machinations.
Yes. And because he’s a fascist.
The background of every candidate matters. If the guy ran a casino into the ground, that’s worth reading about if you’re gonna hire him. Of he’s a misogynist, that matters too. When you’re hiring, you choose the best candidate. It ALL matters. You want to pick the best. And there’s plenty of ways for a candidate to disqualify themselves. Weird Old 34 has lots and lots of disqualifying characteristics, with fascist in the top ten.
He has repeatedly stated during the campaign that he wants to use military action on people with opposing views (or “enemies from within” as he calls it). If that isn’t fascism, then I don’t know what is.
The more important question is why the media and the political establishment and the public have allowed … for years … an obviously sociopathic, unintelligent, unsympathetic, unethical, immoral, convicted and openly supportive or suggestive fascist to lead and have a prominent role in their national politics.
This is like asking why there’s a fire in the kitchen after you’ve left the stove on high for the past 20 hours.
The problem is not that there is a person like Trump, the problem is a country that allowed it to happen.
I don’t think the media was/is equipped to deal with the quantity of bad faith arguments coming from Trump.
If you look at historic presidential primaries, one mistake can be enough to have donors pull funding and tank a candidacy. In contrast, Trump was able to bulldoze through that because he treated the primary campaign as a business to make money.
Your explanation is a continuation of the fallacy … (please don’t take this the wrong way as a personal attack against you)
Your explanation starts off by accepting that someone like Trump is a legitimate political leader. The Democrats presented legitimate candidates, who did some minor faux pas and were ridiculed for it or the Democratic leader or politician was accused of wrong doing and then hounded for it relentlessly.
Trump was the anomaly, he said and did things that any previous politician would have been ridiculed and blasted by the public media of all sides … but for whatever reason, everyone allowed him to stay in the limelight and never called him on his deranged antics … everyone enabled his behaviour … for years.
Someone like Trump doesn’t come out of thin air or through the force of their own will … if that were the case, we’d have people like him everywhere. People like him come to power because other powerful people allow him to get that position … and then a population is conditioned to allow him to stay in the public eye through constant marketing and promotion.
Your explanation starts off by accepting that someone like Trump is a legitimate political leader.
At one point, Trump became a “legitimate” political leader. He won his party’s primary three times and has won the Electoral College once. He is a convicted felon and he probably should have been one in 2016, but that is another matter.
And as for the rest, there is a combination of complicity and stupidity. Most of the Democratic Party thought he was an easily beatable joke candidate in 2016 until he wasn’t. In 2016, Trump knew how to get ratings, which got him a lot of media coverage trying to cover him. And, as my point was earlier, he didn’t have to worry about donors pulling out. And it turns out that being mask off fascist is something that a lot of Americans are willing to vote for.
I agree Trump has been enabled by a lot of people to get this far, but if Trump is anything, he is a great self promoter and knows how to stall legal action taken against him.
Right and this election campaign is so much worse: at times he seems to be just an “influencer” huckster, spending his time shilling for any product that will pay him
How does anyone think that’s acceptable behavior for a presidential candidate?
