Reply To: Trump – Fascist Demagogue?

An op-ed from Peter Bergen:

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

To answer that question it is helpful to examine three interrelated phenomena: the history of European fascism, the rise of far-right nationalist parties around the West today and what historian Richard Hofstadter famously termed “the paranoid style in American politics.”

Let’s start with the classic 2004 study “The Anatomy of Fascism” by American historian Robert Paxton, who examined the fascist movements of 20th-century Europe and found some commonalities among them. They played on:

Trump’s ascendancy outside the structures of the traditional Republican Party and his clarion calls about America’s supposedly precipitously declining role in the world capture this trait well.

Trump’s careless regard for the truth — such as his claims that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks, or that Mexican immigrants are rapists and murders — and the trust he places in his own gut capture this well.

Many in Trump’s base of white, working-class voters feel threated by immigrants, so Trump’s solution to that, whether with Mexico (build a wall) or the Islamic world (keep them out), speaks to them.

This seems like quite a good description of Trump’s appeal.

There is no hint that Trump wishes to engage in or to foment violence against the enemies, such as immigrants, he has identified as undermining the American way of life.

One is therefore left with the conclusion that Trump is a proto-fascist, rather than an actual fascist. In other words, he has many ideas that are fascistic in nature, but he is not proposing violence as a way of implementing those ideas.

So how else might we frame the Trump phenomenon? It’s useful to view in the context of the wave of the far-right nationalist movements that have swept Europe in recent years and that are defined by hostility to immigrants and minorities.

Trump displays many of the traits of a proto-fascist, and he is also part of a wave of right-wing nationalist movements that is sweeping the West. He can also be positioned in the long, American right-wing tradition of fearing “the Other,” whether they are Catholics or Jews or, now, Muslims.

If the party of Lincoln wishes to become the party of intolerance, selecting Trump to be its presidential candidate is a good way forward.