Trump administration 2024-2028
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Brad Sallows
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I have observed, in my time spent in my kitchen, a peculiar process wherein a chicken is placed raw in a metal box. If I press the appropriate buttons and am sufficiently patient, at a certain point in the near future, that box beeps to tell me that at that precise moment the chicken has transitioned instantaneously from ‘raw’ to ‘cooked’ and is now ready.
I have no idea what’s happening in that box in that intervening time, but I’ve also noticed this really tantalizing phenomenon where partly through the time I’m waiting, my kitchen begins to smell the way a chicken does when it’s cooked.
It’s the damndest thing.
Brad Sallows
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That pretty much summarizes the phenomenon. People ordinarily rational in their thinking are determined to squint hard and participate in internet myth-making, despite ample contrary evidence.
McG
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Corporatism was important to Fascists in Italy and Spain, but the Nazis rejected corporatism's tenants as early as the 1920s. While the Nazi regime claimed to be corporatist, it differed significantly from traditional corporatism by prioritizing state control over the autonomy of corporations and worker representation. Wikipedia doesn't even mention corporatism on its rather large fascism article (Fascism - Wikipedia).
Regardless, Trumps relationship with billionaire oligarchs does have similarities to the relationship of an authoritarian corporatist state with its "corporate groups" ... even to where employee groups interests are subordinated to government and employer group interests. But, we have seen Trump wield (or threaten to wield) the power of the state to coerce "employer group" organizations to his will. Universities, law firms, and media have all be subject to such manipulation. He signed an EO demanding pharmaceutical companies lower prices. He has also signed EOs ordering increased production of Coal and of minerals (the later leveraging emergency authorities of the Defense Production Act).
So, okay. Trump maybe more Hitler than Mussolini or Franco on the corporatism front.
Yep. Examples include a great big birthday parade, domestic deployments of Army & Marines, some of the self-congratulatory antics after a sortie to Iran, and also the "Big Beautiful Bill" has a rather massive pool of funding to expand & further militarize ICE.
Yep. The federal legislature is completely subservient to Trump. Some lower courts are still resisting, but SCOTUS is keeping them down so MAGA can do its thing.
Yes, I get that MAGA is not an identical repetition of Europe 100 years ago. But there are a lot of similarities and common warning signs, and maybe its time to say "this is not okay". Maybe it is time to stop apologizing for MAGA because maybe some policies are okay and they have not yet installed ovens in the concentration camps. Despite "Fascism" and "Nazi" having been tossed about in the rhetoric of political hyperbole, it is time to take seriously the analogy. Stop focusing on the lines he has not yet crossed, and take a moment to consider all the lines already crossed.
If the claim were pure hyperbole today, there would not be so much written on in.
Donald Trump and fascism - Wikipedia
Is Trumpism a form of fascism? Two historians debate
Marc Lazar, a specialist in Benito Mussolini's Italy, believes the American president is establishing an illiberal democracy rather than true fascism. Conversely, Olivier Burtin a historian of the United States, argues that the similarities between Trump's politics and fascism are more...
www.lemonde.fr
Fascism shattered Europe a century ago — and historians hear echoes today in the U.S. - Berkeley News
After the mass death and destruction of World War I, with their economies shredded by inflation and unemployment, Italy and Germany turned from democracy to dictatorships. UC Berkeley scholars see troubling parallels in contemporary American democracy.
news.berkeley.edu
No, Trump is not a fascist. He is a hypercapitalist and just as dangerous
Trump wants to free big capital from the constraints of democracy by dismantling it.
Brad Sallows
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Unsurprising. What Mussolini started is what fascism is. Hitler's grab-bag of bits and pieces of ideologies is sometimes (mostly colloquially) called "fascism", but it's fragmented nature is usually recognized as only "partly". I've watched the contents of the Wikipedia entry changing over the years. People are trying hard to fit "fascism" to particular circumstances rather than evaluating circumstances against a proper (original) meaning of "fascism". As with all things political, Wikipedia becomes increasingly unreliable.
It's pointless to squint at something and say, gee, that looks a bit like "X". People ought to stop trying so hard. If you're going to acknowledge in one paragraph that the Nazis weren't strictly corporatist, then it makes no sense to sound alarm bells in the next about something more tenuous. Republicans have been supposed to be the party of corporations and billionaires for decades. It isn't proto-fascism.
Hand-waving about "manipulation" is just propaganda if it isn't specific; in particularly, if there are legal questions to be resolved, it is not "manipulation" to resolve them. "But the law is being used to pursue disfavoured people!" - sure, maybe; was it a poor choice for prior administrations to open that box and use colour of law to go after corporations, or lawyers, or reporters, or any other inconvenient people/critics? Undoubtedly the usual sufficient excuse applies to all those prior instances - it looked like laws were being broken, and no-one is above the law.
The parade is one-and-done. I doubt it will be a repeated or even annual event to match what happens in actual totalitarian countries. It highlights the stupidity of pointing to single examples and crying, "Look! A mark of totalitarianism!". I doubt domestic armed forces employment will become habitual either. "Mission accomplished" antics are just posturing; it isn't mere bluster when one president does it and proto-fascism when another does. The US has habitually over-militarized its enforcement agencies for decades; again, it only seems to be proto-fascism when the Trump administration does it.
Nonsense, if you're referring to the recent ruling that the 600-odd district courts have been admonished to narrow the scopes of their orders.
No line that was crossed by any previous administration (excluding Trump's) should be on that list, so I suppose that list is really, really, short. War-making, acts of war? Renditions, detentions? Enforcing laws, and protecting the people and infrastructure responsible for enforcement? Any authority exercised by a previous president isn't "fascism" just because people disagree on policy or dislike the buffoonery and braggadocio.
In 2029 Trump will depart the WH, and all pretensions of "fascism" will have to vanish. If the next president is someone like Vance the paintbrush will still be used, but the independence of Congress, courts, military, press, academia, etc will all still exist. Elections will continue to be held; critics will still openly declare their opinions.