USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[Peter Lemkin]

Sorry, I disagree strongly. There are many 'definitions' and 'uses' of the term Fascism...and I would call Trump a fascist.

fascism | |faSH|izÉ™ m | (also Fascism)
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
(in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in
Italy (192243); the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist.
Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt
for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic
approach.

Many, not me!, like to keep fascism to the Axis fascists and their political/economic philosophies. I totally reject that - the term has new meaning, new definition, new adherents who would not have fit in with Mussolini nor Hitler et al. Call it neo-fascism if that makes you happier...but fascism it is. It is an ultra-right, authoritarian system of government characterized by the marriage of corporations [the BIG ONES] with the 'State'; it is marked by ultra-nationalism, propaganda, the concept of a privileged group or race, scapegoating, is anti-democratic, obedience to power, demagogic, irrational, war-like, a police-state, controlling the population by propaganda and terror, disdainful of stereotypical non-masculine qualities, women, outsiders (the other who is scapegoated), anti-justice, anti-liberal, anti-enlightenment, against equality and has other characteristics too long to mention here. I'm a student of this kind of fascism. My uncle wrote about it and spent his life fighting it. His name was Raphael Lemkin and he coined the term genocide and wrote the Genocide Convention. He was also a legal expert at Nuremburg. I have red Paxton, I have read Arndt, I have read Gross, I have read Eco. I have read perhaps 20 books on classical and modern fascism. I stand by my points and those of Giroux who knows what he is talking about. Read his book! Mussolini coined the term and made the main point about the blending of corporations and the State - but Caligula was IMO a fascist as was Genghis Khan; just as genocide existed long before my uncle came up with a term for it or defined it precisely. America is moving toward Fascism now. I'll stand by that and not be moved from that position. Play any word games you like, just because few of today's fascists would also have backed Hitler or the Third Reich. The term has changed in the modern meaning from what it was during WW2. Do you and I both see the same color when we point at something 'blue'? I don't know - but we use the term to not have to attach electrodes to our optical nerves and brain optical center.....but words such as fascism are just marker words so we can discuss a political system/structure without having to go through a long description each time. I'm happy and unmovable on Trump being a fascist and America [ totally apart from and before Trump] heading toward fascism.

While sectors of Trumpist fascism may
re-use imagery from European symbols of the 1930s, its actual roots extend directly from the
absolute white supremacy of the settler-colonial origins of the United States and its subsequent
racialized economic history of destroying and erasing Native American civilizations and
enslaving, breeding, and subordinating Africans and people of color for generations. It will take
great struggle for the American public to come to terms with the voices and narratives of this
history, and even greater struggle to overcome the ways Trumpism is giving new social
legitimacy and political form to these racist legacies today.
The danger signs are not just in the United States. Movements in North America and across
Europe are exhibiting growing support for right-wing extremist politicians and political
movements, though there was one respite with the 2017 presidential election in France with
centrist Emmanuel Macron's victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Unemployment, wage
stagnation, vision-less futures, a growing sense of precarity and insecurity for working and
lower middle classes, and an increasing sense of atomization and alienationall of it fueled by
austerity measures, a growing worldwide culture of fear, and a permanent war cultureare
undermining not only the foundations of democracy, but a belief in the value of democracy
itself.4 Many people now find themselves living in societies in which they experience a kind of
social homelessness, detached from and invisible to the policies and language of those in
power.
As Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Erich Fromm, among others, have reminded us,
rootlessness creates the conditions for an escape from freedom and social responsibility, and
finds meaning in the foundations of totalitarianism. After reviewing a number of Harvard
University reports analyzing historical and current attitudes on the part of millennials in North
America and Europe, Gwynn Guilford concludes that young people have grown weary of
democracy. Not only have many millennials lost their faith in democracy, but many are less
willing to oppose military coups and no longer view civil rights as absolutely essential; more
than a quarter dismiss the importance of free elections to democracy.5 Roberto Stefan Foa and
Yascha Mounk argue that support for authoritarianism is increasingly apparent. They write:
Citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and
Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders. Rather, they
have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less
hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express
support for authoritarian alternatives. The crisis of democratic legitimacy extends across a
much wider set of indicators than previously appreciated.