A year ago, Rauch said Trump is not a Fascist, he’s a patrimonialist. Patrimonialist governments don’t follow the rule of law and bend the rules to enrich and empower the leader. They are not ideological. Later, Rauch concluded that Trump was doing too many things associated with Fascism, so decided he is best labeled as a Fascist.
He doesn’t think Fascists will fully take over the US like they did in Germany, so that should limit the extremes, but nevertheless, the actions of the administration fit Fascism. The government isn’t fully Fascist yet, but it has a Fascist leader.
There’s no one true definition of Fascism.
Trump’s demolition of norms about civility is a classic Fascist action.
Trump glorifies violence in his rhetoric. When agents of the state hurt or kill US citizens, he and his supporters make fun of the injured and killed, and lie about them and what happened. His communications revel in the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug smugglers.
Rauch discusses 16 more Fascist actions in his article.
The online ecosystem of the right includes a heavy dose of straight up anti-semitism. Trump helped break the mold from the beginning of his first political campaign when it comes to rhetoric that used to be unacceptable. Edgy jokes justified by fighting the woke censors pushed the barrier further until today where the far right ecosystem includes actual open Nazis like Nick Fuentes.
“The RICO Act allows prosecutors to define more or less anything they want as a mafia organization, and the charges are nearly impossible to defend against, partly because the government can seize the defendant’s assets before trial, making it impossible to pay a defense lawyer.”
Historically, business leaders were key to strengthening facism. Companies focus more on how they can use a leader to make money, rather than on what that leader and their cooperation is doing to democracy, society, and people.
It really looked a lot like a Nazi salute. And he did it twice. A non-troll would afterwards say ‘oops!’, my bad, I didn’t realize in the moment what that looked like.’ Instead, he just joked and claimed he’s a victim of people calling others fascist too easily. He either did it on purpose as an inappropriate joke, did it on accident and is too blind to realize it was a mistake, or did it on purpose because he’s an actual Nazi. My guess is the first one, with the second one being the next most likely…I hope it wasn’t the last one.
German middle class people tended to support Hitler’s Nazi Party. They were afraid of Communist rebellion from below and dominating wealthy elites from above.
“Over the past year, support for the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has nearly doubled to more than 20 percent in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls, a record.
The party is now in second place, just five percentage points behind the center-right Christian Democrats. Over the summer, the AfD has also succeeded in widening its lead over the Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.
Much of AfD’s recent popularity can be attributed to persistent infighting and disarray in Scholz’s coalition with the Greens and liberal Free Democrats. Alliance members have been at odds (and at times at one another’s throats) over everything from climate policy to child welfare subsidies since they took office in late 2021.
That said, the primary driver of the AfD’s success is the same issue that has defined far-right parties across Europe for a generation: migration.”