Oct.25

electoral-vote.com

Dem 50

   

GOP 50

Trump the Fascist

Here's an item we've been working on for a couple of days, and where we wish we had a couple of days more. But that's just not how it works, and so we proceed. As some readers will know, Saturday Night Live often has more sketches than can be squeezed into their 90-minute broadcast window. These sketches, which are usually on the more surreal side of the humor spectrum, are basically an insurance policy so the show doesn't end up with 5 minutes of air time with nothing to show to viewers. After all, the host can only thank so many people at the end of the broadcast. Back in the day, some of the "cut for time" sketches vanished into the ether, while others were pushed to future weeks (the infamous nude beach sketch, for example, was originally a Tom Hanks vehicle before being recycled for Matthew Broderick). These days, the "cut for time" sketches usually end up being posted to the show's YouTube channel (since the sketch did not make the show, they post the rehearsal).

We bring this up because we have a similar dynamic. Most weeks, we choose a bunch of questions for Saturday, and then sometimes we run out of time to answer them all. So it was this last weekend, where we ended up holding this question (among several):

M.S. in Groton, MA, asks: I have a childhood friend who is no fan of Donald Trump but tends to fall into the "both sides are bad" line of reasoning (he still brings up Hillary's e-mails... I know, I know). He particularly bristles at anyone—including me and some of our mutual friends—calling Trump "fascist;" this came up again when I sent him an article about Mark Milley's recent allegation in Bob Woodward's book. My friend insists on identifying specific policies that Trump put into place that qualify as fascism. From his view, Trump was president once, and we didn't become a fascist dictatorship; ipso facto, Trump isn't fascist.

Personally, I think the only reason Trump didn't implement fascist policies in his first term is because the guardrails of American democracy held up (this time). While I believe Trump is a fascist at heart, this can be relatively easily dismissed as "just an opinion" because, technically, it is.

My question is: Do you consider Trump fascist? If yes, why? If not, can you identify a better descriptor?

Note that when we hold questions, it's not based on merit or lack thereof, it's based on "we're out of time, and this one will take a pretty long time to answer."

We intended to try to get back to that question this upcoming weekend, but then someone rather prominent beat us to it. That would be John Kelly, who is not only a retired four-star Marine Corps general, but was also Donald Trump's longest-serving chief of staff. In other words, he knows something of world affairs and of history, and he also knows Donald Trump very well. On Tuesday, Kelly declared that Trump fits into the general definition of a fascist. He knows what a fascist is, including the part about the leader being a dictator. Kelly also noted that Trump spoke of his admiration for Adolf Hitler and wanted his generals to be like Hitler's generals and simply follow all orders without questioning them.

So, Kelly endorsed Kamala Harris, right? Well, no. Facing Saddam Hussein's army in Iraq was easy, but facing Donald Trump's full wrath, even when the Constitution is at stake, that's apparently a bridge too far. He merely kind of dis-endorsed Trump, but didn't suggest that maybe people should vote for Harris. His (flimsy) excuse is that he is ex-military. But although active-duty military personnel aren't allowed to join campaigns (but of course can vote), there is no law or rule prohibiting former officers, including four-star generals, from speaking out on any political topic or endorsing any candidate. All it takes is guts. And he seems to have lost his, at least at the moment, despite a stellar career in the Marine Corps.

And Kelly wasn't the only person this week who knows Trump and who weighed in on the question. The General was seconded by former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. He encouraged people to look up the definition of "fascism" and ask whether Trump fits the bill. But then he gave his own view: "It's hard to say that he doesn't, when you kind of look at those terms."

Naturally, key Democrats quickly pounced on this. That includes, at least indirectly, Joe Biden. When a reporter asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre whether Biden thinks Trump is a fascist, she gave a long, rambling answer, and then ultimately said "Yes." Kamala Harris spoke up, too, saying: "This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best, from the people who have worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and in the Situation Room."

All of this said, it is absolutely the case that some people either don't really understand what "fascist" means, or they deliberately misuse the term in order to make a point or to be provocative. A very good example is CNN talking head Scott Jennings, who is nearly always on call to deliver some Trumpy propaganda when needed. In response to Kelly's remarks, Jennings had this to say:

I don't know John Kelly, but I agree, I think he's an honorable person. His family and his son certainly made the ultimate sacrifice for the country, so he certainly earned an opinion here. And he's earned a political opinion.

But I think, like everything else with Donald Trump, opinions vary, whether you're coming out of the military or the private sector or government or anything else. And I agree that two weeks before an election will cause some people to look at this in a jaundiced way, like, you know, you're trying to drop this here at the end. And there will be people who don't believe it, there will be people who refute it, and Donald Trump himself also refutes it.

I would just humbly submit to Mr. Kelly that, if he's worried about Hitler and he's worried about fascism, he ought to pick up the newspaper. There's thousands of Hitlers running around this country right now, running around college campuses, running around New York City, chasing Jewish people around, blocking their access on college campuses. If you're worried about Hitler and you're talking about Donald Trump, maybe open your eyes and take in what's happening on the American left in this country. Those are the Hitlers I'm worried about.

It won't happen, but Jennings should be fired for this. Adolf Hitler was most certainly an antisemite. And he was most certainly a fascist. Oh, and he was also a genocidal maniac with few parallels in human history. To propose that antisemitism (or perceived antisemitism) = fascist = Hitler, as if all are one and the same, is outrageous and offensive. And ironically, Jennings could not help but out himself, at the very same time, as someone who is, at very least, fascist-tolerant. That bit at the beginning, the part that suggests that Kelly is especially entitled to have an opinion because of his military service? That is pretty much as fascist as it gets. (See the movie Starship Troopers for some biting commentary on this point.)

Of course, we still haven't answered if WE think Trump is a fascist. We will answer, but we must start by pointing out that the question is actually objectively unanswerable. Fascism is like pornography; to borrow the words of Associate Justice Potter Stewart: "I know it when I see it." What makes it so tough is that there are many different flavors of fascism, and a proper definition has to make room for all of them. As useful evidence of this, note that there are literally dozens of statements and checklists about what is, and is not, a fascist. The Wikipedia article "Definitions of fascism" has a good rundown of a bunch of those; the list from Umberto Eco tends to be particularly widely cited, since he was both a gifted observer of the human condition AND an Italian who lived through Benito Mussolini (albeit as a child). If you would like a definition of fascism tailored to Donald Trump, Will Saletan at The Bulwark had one earlier this week.

Now that we've laid that foundation, we'll give our definition. We prefer to keep it as simple as possible, so our list is nowhere near as long as Eco's (or many of the others). Here are the four defining features of fascism, according to Electoral-Vote.com:

1. Supremacy of the Nation-State: If we were going to shorten our list to just ONE item, this would be the one. The whole philosophical foundation of fascism is that it is the strength of the nation-state that matters most, and that the people are merely cogs in the machine who exist in service of that goal. "Germans may die, but Germany is forever," that sort of thing. By contrast, incidentally, the philosophical foundation of communism is that it is the strength of the people that matters, and the nation-state merely exists in service of that goal. In theory, that is the mirror image of fascism. Of course, as Joseph Stalin illustrated, a communist state can end up looking an awfully lot like a fascist state. For that reason, Soviet Russia is sometimes described as "red fascism" (and note that Karl Marx would certainly have deplored what the U.S.S.R. became).
   
   
2. Cult of Personality Surrounding the Leader: Fascist leaders do whatever they can to elevate themselves to demigod-type status, and to encourage anything from "hero worship" to "outright worship." There is a reason that the leaders of fascist states generally appear in military garb—it makes them look strong and powerful, and it reminds everyone that they are the one running the show. And that's just part of the theater; there's lots more. Did you know that there is only one recording extant of Adolf Hitler speaking in his real voice (and that one was captured surreptitiously)? Hitler wanted Germans only to hear and see the thundering, frightful Hitler. Similarly, as most readers will know, the Kims in North Korea claim/claimed all kinds of godlike feats, like playing golf and scoring 18 holes-in-one, or running a 2-minute mile, or directing every movie that is released in that nation. To take a third example, Idi Amin famously declared himself to be the King of Scotland. Guess it didn't matter that nobody in Scotland knew about their new monarch, as long as the people of Uganda believed it.
   
   Incidentally, some people think Vladimir Putin is a modern-day fascist. That argument's a bit of a leaner; it could go either way. Certainly, the criterion that the Russian leader meets the least is this one. Putin has tried to create a cult of personality, but he hasn't had the success of a Stalin or a Hitler. In our view, Putin is just an authoritarian, and not a fascist (or red fascist), but there are arguments to be made to the contrary.
   
   
3. Us vs. Them: It is not so easy to maintain a fascist system; you're basically squeezing a square body politic into a round hole. One way to mitigate that problem, at least for a while, is to identify a group of insiders (or patriots, or true [NATIONALITY], or whatever) and to encourage them to seek out (and perhaps destroy) those who are not granted that status. Scott Jennings' bit about how military service makes you more worthy fits in nicely right here. The outsiders, of course, could be people of the wrong religion, or the wrong immigration status, or the wrong political outlook, or the wrong sexuality, or the wrong race, or... all of the above.
   
   
4. Competence: Further to the problem of a fascist system being difficult to maintain, the people who have risen to power as fascists have tended to be hyper-competent (and, of course, hyper-ruthless). Readers will presumably be familiar with the old line that "Mussolini made the trains run on time." That's not factually true, but it certainly captures the general aesthetic of fascism. That fascist leaders have to be very hands-on, and very skilled, helps explain why they tend to be overthrown and/or executed when they begin to slip a little. It also helps explain why fascists are rarely succeeded by other fascists (North Korea notwithstanding). It's pretty rare that two people with the necessary skill set come along, back-to-back. And even if they do, it's pretty rare that the people are willing to tolerate the handover of power from one fascist to the next one (remember, a cult of personality is wanted, and that's not so easy to transfer).

There you have it, our definition of fascism.

So, is Donald Trump a fascist? In his approach, he most certainly is. Does a guy who celebrates military power, who hates alliances, and who wants to see all enemies—foreign and domestic—suffer believe in the supremacy of the nation-state? That's a yes. Has Trump cultivated a cult of personality? Yes (and if you doubt it, see the golden Trump statue that circulates at many Trumpublican events). He doesn't wear a military uniform in public, it is true, but he definitely does in trading cards and in other fantasy images created by members of the cult. Does he speak CONSTANTLY about who is an insider and who is an outsider? You betcha. His bit about "enemies within" could not be clearer on this point. And that's before we talk about all his railing against specific individuals and groups, from immigrants to the "deep state" to Californians to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Kamala Harris.

The rub here, and the strongest counterargument, is the one pointed out by the friend of M.S. in Groton. Donald Trump is not competent. Period. End of sentence. And, as a sidebar, let us note that we've gotten some extra-nasty e-mails this week from people accusing us of being biased, or dishonest, or fa**ots, or all of the above (sorry for the strong language, but there have been several e-mailers who hurled LGBTQ slurs, and it speaks to the mindset). Readers, both regular and one-time, may reach whatever conclusions they want about us. However, Trump's lack of competence is not an opinion, it's a well-established fact. He's gone bankrupt more times than we can count on one hand. He's had countless business ventures that failed outright, or were undermined by his fraudulent behavior. As president, he got virtually none of his legislative program implemented, despite having a Republican trifecta for half of his term. Hitler, Mussolini, Amin, the Kims, Francisco Franco and Ferenc Szálasi, among others, were/are all awful people. But from a competence standpoint, they all leave Trump in the dust.

So, if Trump is reelected, is the U.S. safe from a fascist takeover simply because he's not capable of pulling it off? It certainly helps a lot. Although some of the guardrails from his first term (e.g., Cabinet members who try to rein in the worst impulses of Trump and his fascistic underlings) will likely be missing, others will still be in place. Congress is not likely to roll over for him, nor are the courts. The military is another problem for him; most fascists rose up through the ranks (or, at very least, served in the armed forces) and seeded the upper leadership with loyalists. None of this is true for Trump, and we think the top brass is unlikely to comply with fascistic orders. It also helps that the U.S. is extremely decentralized, both in terms of sovereign power (in other words, states have a lot of the power) and in terms of geography (it's not so easy to impose the will of a person in Washington over an area of more than 4 million square miles). Another insurance policy, ironically, is Trump himself. Those who would take the country in a fascist/Christofascist direction (e.g., the Project 2025 crew) are champing at the bit as they prepare to manipulate Trump into doing their bidding. But Trump HATES to be told what to do, and if he senses he is being manipulated, he may rebel against that and go in the opposite direction, just to spite the manipulators. Lyndon Johnson had this in spades. Trump doesn't always realize when he's being played (see Putin, Vladimir), but he certainly seems to have awakened to the fact that the Project 2025 people were planning to use him as a pawn.

Here is the one scenario that, in our view, is plausible (albeit still not that likely). It's not much of a secret that Trump has declined mentally, even if it's not clear exactly how far gone he is. Let us imagine a scenario where he declines to the point of being nearly insensible, while considerably more competent and ruthless people (Stephen Miller? J.D. Vance?) keep him on as the public face (because of the cult of personality) while secretly running the show behind the scenes. This would be somewhat akin to the Japanese fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, with the Emperor as the public face, and Hideki Tojo and a military junta running the show. Note that Tojo is not always included in lists of fascists these days. All we can say to that, beyond the fact that he (with the Emperor) checks the boxes above, is that the people who watched Tojo in action thought he was a fascist, just like the European fascists of that era.

Again, the barriers to American fascism, even today, are pretty substantial. If a second Trump administration is somehow going to take thought and turn it into action, then our guess is that it would be on the Japanese model. But again, it's not too likely. That is not to say that Trump v2.0 would not result in a lot of damage, but there is a pretty big gap between "a lot of damage" and "an overtly fascist state." And note that we would not normally write an item like this, but we got the question we got, and then John Kelly said what he said, so... there you go. As a reminder, additional observations, thoughtful criticisms and hate mail all go to comments@electoral-vote.com. (V & Z)