Trump Really Doesn't Want You to Call Him a Fascist
So why is he using Fascist rhetoric?


Former President Donald Trump REALLY does not want you to call him a Fascist. Being compared to old-school dictators such as Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini makes him and his handlers crazy: he even sued CNN for defamation over this issue (a Trump-appointed judge dismissed the lawsuit). So why is he using Fascist rhetoric?

If you've read the news lately, you'll know that Trump went to New Hampshire on Veterans Day and delivered a news-making speech that included a "pledge" to "root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

As I argued in a recent Lucid essay, violence is now Trump's brand. To that end, he conjures existential threats to the nation from non-White immigrants and an expanding cast of internal enemies, calls the thugs who are in prison for assaulting the Capitol on Jan. 6 "political prisoners," and praises autocrats such as Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin who depend on propaganda, corruption, and repression to stay in power.

All of this is part of his effort to re-educate Americans to see violence as justified, patriotic, and even morally righteous.

But to get people to lose their aversion to violence, savvy authoritarians also dehumanize their enemies. That’s what Trump is doing. Hitler used this ploy from the very start, calling Jews the “black parasites of the nation” in a 1920 speech. By the time Hitler got into power in 1933 and translated dehumanizing rhetoric into repressive policies, Germans had heard these messages for over a decade.

As a historian of autocracy with a specialization in Italian Fascism, the use of the "vermin" image got my attention. Mussolini used similar language in his 1927 Ascension Day speech which laid out Fascism's intention to subject leftists and others to "prophylaxis" measures to defend the Italian state and society from their nefarious influences.

By the time Il Duce delivered this landmark address, the dictatorship had been in place for two years, and opposition politicians and the press were in prison or had gone into exile. That did not stop him from talking about killing "rodents who carry infectious diseases from the East: the East that brings us lovely things, such as yellow fever and Bolshevism."

Mussolini loved to make jokes in his speeches to Parliament, and this one elicited laughter —or so says the official transcript. He is speaking about actual rats but, as the Bolshevism comment makes clear, also about Communists. “We remove these individuals from circulation just like a doctor does with an infected person,” he concluded chillingly about leftists and other targeted categories of people.

Trump's recent comment about undocumented immigrants "polluting the blood of our country" is in the same vein, as are the ideas circulating among his 2025 advance team to deport millions of immigrants and "quarantine" others in massive camps.

https://lucid.substack.com/p/trump-really-doesnt-want-you-to-call

The Case for Amplifying Trump's Insanity

We live in dangerous times — when citizens need top quality information to make informed, wise choices. But the press is failing to meet the moment. This isn’t some cheap shot at “the media.” It’s a good faith critique of a key democratic institution that hasn’t adapted enough to a dangerous authoritarian threat.

There are now two leading candidates for the American presidency.

One of them is a 77 year-old racist, misogynist bigot who has been found liable for rape, who incited a deadly, violent insurrection aimed at overturning a democratic election, who has committed mass fraud for personal enrichment, who is facing 91 separate counts of felony criminal charges against him, and who has overtly discussed his authoritarian strategies for governing if he returns to power.

The other is 80 years old with mainstream Democratic party views who sometimes misspeaks or trips. (There may be other reasons to criticize Joe Biden, but the main one discussed in the press is his age).

One of those two candidates faces relentless newspaper columns and TV pundit “takes” arguing that he should drop out of the race. (Spoiler alert: it’s somehow *not* the racist authoritarian sexual abuse fraudster facing 91 felony charges).

[...]

There’s a puzzle at the heart of Trump news and it’s this: why doesn’t the press go FULL BLOCK CAPITALS when a leading presidential candidate, yet again, incites violence?

If Joe Biden called to execute shoplifters, do you think there’d be a big headline in the New York Times, or do you think you’d have to scroll well past the articles on pumpkin spice lattes and DogTV to find out about it?

We all know the answer.

When Joe Biden didn’t trip but nearly tripped last week, it was headline news. How absurd is that? A candidate who didn’t quite fall over is a bigger news story than a candidate calling to execute shoplifters? (For the record, roughly ten percent of the US population shoplifts, so millions would face potential execution under Trump’s proposal).

This is what I call the Banality of Crazy—and it’s warping the way that Americans think about politics in the Trump and post-Trump era.

https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/the-case-for-amplifying-trumps-insanity

Calilasseia wrote:Trouble being of course, that if anything, the MAGA'l Qaeda are even more batshit insane than Trump is. Amplifying the Orange Scrotum's own clinical issues runs the risk of merely giving his base even bigger hard ons. But it's a risk I agree needs to be taken as a step toward keeping the USA from becoming Pavelic's Croatia with nukes.

THWOTH wrote:There's no such thing as a play fight with a professional fighter. Doesn't matter how lightly you tap them they're always going hit you back harder.