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USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!
#78

Is Donald Trump a Fascist?




By Isaac Chotiner





[Image: 160210_INT_Trump-Fascist.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg]Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during his victory speech at his primary-night rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Feb. 9, 2016.
Jim Bourg/Reuters, Paneikon

Donald Trump's overwhelming victory in Tuesday night's New Hampshire primary makes him, according to both betting markets and many analysts, the favorite to win the Republican nomination. Trump has been written off as an entertainer and circus clown, but he has been tagged with another, much more serious label: fascist. Trump's campaign has stirred bigoted feelings in the electorate and played to voters' worst fears and prejudices. And so far, it's working. Two-thirds of New Hampshire Republicans, according to exit polls, favored Trump's ban on Muslim immigration.

[Image: isaac_chotiner-authorbio.png]ISAAC CHOTINERIsaac Chotiner is a [B]Slatecontributor. [/B]

To discuss Trump's rise and its historical echoes, I called Robert Paxton, a leading authority on the history of fascism. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and an expert on Vichy France, Paxton has written numerous books on European history. We discussed the ways in which Trump is and is not a fascist, whether Trump believes what he says, and why now, of all times, so many Americans seem to be embracing him. The conversation has been edited and condensed.



Isaac Chotiner: As a historian of fascism, what do you make of Trump's rise?

Robert Paxton: Well, it's astonishing and depressing because he's totally foreign to any of the skills that are wanted in a president of the United States. What we call him is another matter. There are certainly some echoes of fascism, but there are also very profound differences.

Start with the echoes.

First of all, let me preface it by saying that I'm very, very reluctant to use the word fascism loosely, because it's almost the most powerful epithet you can use. I guess child molester might be a little more powerful but not much.



Nazi maybe, but that's just a version of fascism.

It's the same thing. It's enormously tempting. Anyway, the echoes you can deal with on two levels. First of all, there are the kinds of themes Trump uses. The use of ethnic stereotypes and exploitation of fear of foreigners is directly out of a fascist's recipe book. "Making the country great again" sounds exactly like the fascist movements. Concern about national decline, that was one of the most prominent emotional states evoked in fascist discourse, and Trump is using that full-blast, quite illegitimately, because the country isn't in serious decline, but he's able to persuade them that it is. That is a fascist stroke. An aggressive foreign policy to arrest the supposed decline. That's another one. Then, there's a second level, which is a level of style and technique. He even looks like Mussolini in the way he sticks his lower jaw out, and also the bluster, the skill at sensing the mood of the crowd, the skillful use of media.

I read an absolutely astonishing account of Trump arriving for a political speech, somewhere out West I think, and his audience was gathered in an airplane hangar, and he landed his plane at the field and taxied up to the hangar and got out. That is exactly what they did in 1932 for Hitler's first election victory. No one had ever seen a candidate arrive by plane before; it was absolutely dazzling, the impression given, the decisiveness of power, of authority, of modernity. I suppose it was accidental, but wow, that is an almost letter-perfect replay of a Hitler election tactic. And the capacity of Trump to enlist working-class voters against the left is exactly what Hitler and Mussolini were able to do. There are definitely echoes.

Do you think that Trump is consciously using fascist tropes, or do you think that he's just sort of stumbled into this?

I doubt it's conscious. I don't think he's a bookish man. I'm sure he's never read a book about Hitler or Mussolini.

He'll read your books after this interview.

Perhaps.

When people like you and me watch Trump, I think we tend to assume he is a bullshitter who doesn't have deeply held positions and is acting to a degree.



I think a lot of people would say, Well, Hitler and Mussolini, they believed what they were doing. Fascists generally believe what they're doing. In fascism, do you think that there was more bullshit and politicking than people assume?

Totally. One of the reasons I wrote my book was that I was so tired of people interpreting fascism as the application of a program. When you read Hitler's program, his 21 points, when the party was founded in 1920, and when you read Mussolini's first program in 1919, it had very little to do with what they eventually did. Mussolini, particularly, came from the left, and his first program included things like the vote for women, the abolition of a monarchy. It was more his style than the details of the program. The details of the program were constantly changing. They say whatever seems to suit the mood of the moment.Mein Kampf is taken as a model that [Hitler] carried outwell, in Mein Kampf, he wants to make peace with the British. They are full of inconsistencies, they were very opportunistic, totally opportunistic, and there was a high degree of change in their programs.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
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USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!! - by Peter Lemkin - 12-11-2016, 05:11 PM

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