Stop Making Excuses: Trump is Definitely a Fascist And Here is the Evidence

Editor’s note: so this article was definitely originally part of another much larger article I’m working on, and it started out as a paragraph designed to silence disingenuous crypto-fascists who seek to waste all your time and energy online by repeatedly playing dumb and asking “how anyone could possibly think Trump is a fascist?” Personally I tend to believe that rewarding the mendacious with an audience is crappy praxis but since I was already going to prove the point anyway, I thought I might include the discussion in its own handy reference post so I can throw a link to it at time wasting vidya nazis and be done with the discussion – perhaps that’s why you’re here? If so, feel free to kindly get in the f*cking sea Fritz. 

 

Myth Busting Against Mendacity

Although at this point I have grown weary of arguing with disingenuous libertarians and outright crypto-fascists about whether or not the Klepto Kaiser is in fact a fascist, let’s all stop for a moment here and belabor the point just one more time before we move forward towards the impending fascist coup in America. First however, I’d like to establish some ground rules.

For starters I’m going to have to insist you click on the links in this article and at least scan the headlines of the evidence I’m presenting, as you go along; which is pretty good advice for all of my articles frankly. Second, I am going to require that you read all of the (mostly short) articles linked in this sentence because I really don’t have the time for several thousand extra words to teach you what fascism is, how to recognize it and why it doesn’t matter that Donald Trump isn’t exactly Hitler. Please also be advised that it is utterly irrelevant if some previous Presidents of the United States have also done some of the things on this list; none of them have done all of the things on this list together, Trump has had every opportunity as president to alter existing practices and thus is responsible for all of the fascism his government engages in, and I will be the last person on earth to try to pretend the U.S. hasn’t adopted many principles of fascist ideology throughout its existence – that is after all why we elected a fascist like Trump. Finally let me remind you that this list is by no means exhaustive, nor can fascism be identified by any one single characteristic, but taken as a whole, the following list is by any reasonable measure demonstrative of Trump’s objective fascism.

Now keeping in mind that this list is being formed pretty much off the top of my head because I haven’t had to ask myself “is Donald Trump a fascist” in four years, let’s see if we can shoot for a symbolic number; say fifty-two, or one for each place that should be a state in Amerikkka:

 

1. The swine emperor is a life-long vociferous racist, a white supremacist and his profound anti-blackness has caused him to expend political capital on causes that have nothing to do with his office; repeatedly fighting professional athletes during the Colin Kaepernick-inspired “Take a Knee” protests against racialized police violence, defending statues and monuments devoted to treasonous slaver generals who fought for the cracker Confederacy, and blocking the previously-scheduled replacement of (extremely racist) President Andrew Jackson with Harriet Tubman on the U.S. twenty dollar bill. Special attention must also be devoted to his infamous (and racist) involvement with the Central Park Five sexual assault case in 1989, which saw him take out a full page ad calling for the death penalty against five non-white young men accused of the crime; DNA evidence would later exonerate all five men but as recently as 2019, the president continued to insist they were still guilty.
2. Trump propagates traditionalist (read: misogynist) attitudes towards women, has repeatedly been accused over multiple decades of sexual assault and harassment and has incessantly singled out trans people for attempted “de-personhood” as part of a broader anti-gay agenda and an objectively revanchist war on LGBTQ rights as a whole.
3. As for himself, Trump attempts to project a hyper-masculine, warrior king persona that borders on caricature; the president enthusiastically exalts the military and in the past, has preferred to surround himself with military generals in key advisory roles. To further his tough guy image, Trump threw himself a highly irregular 4th of July military display party. Trump is also an open admirer of repressive autocrats and their odious ideological rantings.
4. He has openly called himself a nationalist, engages in dangerously reactionary nationalist politics, and encouraged nationalism among his political followers; while demonizing “globalism” (as opposed to globalization), which is commonly considered an antisemitic dog-whistle by experts who study far right propaganda. When it comes to the racist Obama “birther” conspiracy Trump used to launch his political career and now appears to be reviving to target a current political opponent (Kamala Harris) there’s no need to try and separate Trump’s white supremacy from his nationalism, it’s both.
5. Virtually all of Trump’s most famous speeches are explicitly fascist, white nationalist, or nativist in nature; including “The American Carnage” speech, the “I Alone Can Fix It” speech, the “Mount Rushmore” speech, the “Nationalism over Globalism” speech at the UN, and the “Snake Story & MS-13” speech at CPAC, among others.
6. Even many of those afraid to acknowledge that Trump is a fascist, acknowledge he engages in fascist politics and uses fascist rhetoric as well as symbology. Many of Trump’s campaign slogans, public proclamations and catchphrases are also unarguably nativist, nationalist or reactionary and explicitly understood as such by his adoring followers.
7. He mercilessly despises the disabled and has publicly mused about the involuntary confinement of innocent Americans with a mental illness. Trump has on multiple occasions also openly expressed a callous disregard for lives lost as the result of his policies or decisions; it is no longer hyperbolic to call his presidency a death cult.
8. Downmarket Mussolini, his political party and key surrogates have purposely weaponized dangerous and reactionary conspiracy theories, the revanchist politics of white grievance heavily infused with a type of demographic social Darwinism, and a modernized, ever-shifting “stabbed in the back” myth about coups and attempted coups against Trump to demonize, de-legitimize, intimidate and threaten his political opposition and critics with imprisonment, expulsion or on one memorable occasion, assassination.
9. While the American media is certainly not above criticism, Trump’s attacks on individual journalists, mediocre late night sketch comedy and the press as a whole go far enough to warrant the descriptor “Nixonian” and even direct comparisons to Nazi Germany.
10. Trump allies have conducted opposition opposition research and smear campaigns against individual reporters, while the swine emperor has threatened to pull broadcast licenses from media who treat him “unfairly” and his campaign has threatened to revoke broadcast licences from TV stations that run an ad critical of his COVID-19 response.
11. Trump himself has also mused about expanding libel laws, referred to journalists as “scum” and “slime,” explicitly referred to the press as “the enemy of the people,” offered implied support for assaulting a journalist, and popularized the phrase “fake news” which has specific Nazi undertones.
12. By virtually any standard of measurement, even that of the aggressively anti-whistleblower Barack Obama government, the Trump administration’s attempted prosecution of Wikileaks founder and publisher Julian Assange is a direct and terrifying assault on freedom of the press and investigative journalism.
13. Trump has actively worked to undermine confidence in the election process for his own political advantage by spreading false voter fraud conspiracies, attacking the validity of mail in voting during a global pandemic and openly telling his followers that a Trump loss would mean the election was rigged.
14. Trump has also repeatedly suggested he may simply refuse to accept the results of the election if he considers them somehow “rigged.”
15. Together with the Republican Party, the Klepto Kaiser is also just straight up rigging the 2020 US elections through targeted voter suppression, illegal voter intimidation, and an unprecedented number of ballot challenges; Trump also openly admitted that he’s coring out the post office to rig the election by preventing mass mail in voting.
16. Trump has repeatedly argued that he is above the law (which he clearly doesn’t rate as being worth much), while actively engaging in behavior that would be criminal if there were any legal mechanism for charging (as opposed to impeaching) a president.
17. Herr Donald has also openly engaged in multiple public instances of obstruction of justice, including firing several officials who were investigating his abuses of power without making much of a secret that he was doing it to stop or discourage all investigations into his abuses.
18. As president, he’s also encouraged his subordinates and public servants to openly flout the law and ignore oversight requests from other branches of government.
19. The president displays complete contempt and disregard for the U.S. Constitution, which he has worked to violate willfully and repeatedly; one such act actually caused him to be successfully impeached in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.
20. Trump frequently (and falsely) claims vast, objectively unconstitutional powers and unsupported dominion over other elected officials under the auspices of presidential authority and has repeatedly suggested that he may ignore legal term limits to remain in the White House for twelve more years because “they spied on me.”
21. Trump demands near-absolute personal loyalty from his subordinates regardless of their legal and professional obligations to their office, but will sacrifice his officials like pawns to save his own skin at the first sign of trouble. The swine emperor has also argued that it’s his Attorney General’s job to protect him from his own Department of Justice, before firing his (then) current AG Jeff Sessions and replacing him with noted cover-up artist and fundie bootlicker, William Barr.
22. During his first election campaign (and immediately after a terrorist attack in France), Trump suggested “looking at” closing down American mosques and instituting mass surveillance of Muslim communities. The swine emperor has also accused Syrian refugees who are young and male of being too great a security risk to allow into the country because “they might be ISIS,” and peddled a racist (and categorically false) urban legend about Muslims in New York publicly celebrating the World Trade Center attacks on 9/11. Trump closed that interview by openly musing about the possibility of instituting an objectively fascist “Muslim registry” in the US, and continued to peddle that idea until well after he’d already been elected.
23. Once inaugurated the swine emperor attempted to ban all Muslims from entering the United States and ultimately was at least partially successful; later he would use his gargantuan Twitter platform to share racist, anti-Muslim videos from a far-right, British nationalist group with longstanding and odious Islamophobic views.
24. Additionally, Trump has repeatedly hired unhinged fundamentalists, War on Terror generals guilty of war crimes in the MENA, and obsessed Islamophobic warpigs to serve in his administration.
25. Trump has repeatedly denigrated Mexicans and Latino migrants using reactionary, dehumanizing language right out of the Nazi playbook. In one particularly terrifying example, the president managed to combine racism, with nativism and his flagrant self-serving disrespect for the rule of law by questioning the loyalties and impartiality of an American judge, born in Indiana because he was of Mexican descent.
26. Trump’s immigration policy and its chief architect have been described as blatantly white nationalist by knowledgeable observers; some have gone even further.
27. The president has frequently referred to migrants at the southern US border as an invasion; even going so far as to deploy the US military to fight a purely imagined invasion by “migrant caravans” that Trump also managed to wrap into an antisemitic conspiracy theory about George Soros that itself, vaguely alludes to the ethno-nationalist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement.”
28. Once again borrowing a tactic from Nazi Germany, the Trump administration has published a regularly updated list of crimes committed by migrants; an action that serves no purpose except to demonize migrants and foster nativist attitudes in America.
29. The president has openly encouraged the militarization and radicalization of ICE into an objectively racist, frequently white nationalist, paramilitary secret police force that engages in wholly unethical behavior to terrorize and round up migrants. Under Trump, ICE and the Border Patrol have also been frequently observed collaborating with (sometimes violent) far-right border militia groups that are operating with absolutely no legal authority, to round up migrants.
30. The swine emperor has continued to operate and expanded the number of migrant concentration camps built by the previous administration; his government has also purposely undertaken policy changes actively designed to increase overcrowding and make the horrifying conditions in the camps worse as a deterrent to future migration attempts. Additionally, the Trump administration has begun collecting DNA samples from detained migrants.
31. The Trump administration’s treatment of imprisoned migrant children (including toddlers and infants) stands out as particularly cruel, inhumane and fascist; known systemic abuses include the administration’s constantly evolving and only recently (and reluctantly) suspended “family separation” policy, a lack of basic necessities and unhygienic conditions inside the child prison camps and thoroughly inadequate access to medical care, legal representation or mental health resources.
32. Downmarket Mussolini has recently taken to treating ICE and the Department of Homeland Security like his private militarized Gestapo in a war against urban areas run by Democrats. Using a farcical definition of “protecting federal property” to provide the barest of legal justifications, Trump deployed unmarked paramilitary DHS officers to Portland to kidnap, interrogate and intimidate peaceful protesters because of “violent anarchist graffiti.” The Trump administration has also deployed federal agents to Seattle and Kansas City, followed by Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee, while threatening to send militarized thugs to Chicago and Albuquerque, although it remains unclear at this time if these feds were ever deployed. Incredibly, the government has brazenly threatened to send paramilitary DHS forces to Democrat-run cities in advance of the 2020 US Presidential election; a move many consider to be voter intimidation and potentially even armed voter suppression.
33. Trump has inspired (likely intentionally), elevated and defended a violent, reactionary conspiracy cult devoted to defending his presidency and allowing Trump to purge his political enemies, who are believed by QAnon adherents to be satanist, pedophile, cannibals who drink baby brain juice and are in league with (((George Soros))) who, in turn, is running both “Antifa” and the Black Lives Matter movement against the swine emperor and the (white) Americans who matter. Many QAnon followers swear a pledge to defend Trump from this supposed coup at all costs and Trump in turn has repeatedly signaled to his followers that the entire (extremely fascist) conspiracy theory is true; some adherents of this dangerous, increasingly global and objectively reactionary conspiracy movement (which is being increasingly embraced by the GOP) are now poised to enter public office themselves.
34. Donald Trump has also repeatedly and often quite publicly encouraged his supporters and law enforcement officers to engage in violence against undesirables and protesters; additionally he low-key threatened to use biker gangs and the US military to crack down on his political opposition and “the left.”
35. Downmarket Mussolini has also actively supported, offered excuses for, and provided the underlying ideological argument for the American far right’s fascist war of extermination against the left for the high crime of exercising their First Amendment right to protest.
36. He has repeatedly threatened to name “Antifa” (a group that doesn’t even really exist, but is rather a loosely organized protesting tendency on the left, where it is simply synonymous with anti-fascism) a terrorist organization and has worked hard to equate antifascists and anarchists with terrorists in both a colloquial and legal sense to justify persecuting his critics.
37. Trump or people working under him have also called racial justice protesters and the Black Lives Matter movement terrorists for the act of exercising their first amendment rights and frequently seeks to purposely conflate all types of protesters or dissenters with “anarchists”  or “antifa” who he says “hate our country.”
38. During the height of the anti-police violence protests in response to the extrajudicial police murder of George Floyd, president Trump deployed U.S. military forces in a city on American soil to teargas and shoot peaceful protesters with rubber bullets in order to clear a path to St. John’s church for a fascist theater photo opportunity with unnerving Christian authoritarian overtones.
39. Timed simultaneously with teargassing of nearby protesters , the President held an unhinged press conference in which he insisted mayors and governors must “quell” the protests and then threatened to deploy the U.S. military to “quickly solve the problem for them” if they refused; although Trump stopped short of officially invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act to justify doing so, his threat to do so was clearly articulated.
40. Earlier in the same day Trump ordered Lafayette Park cleared of protesters, Herr Donald also publicly chastised Governors as “weak” and encouraged them to deploy National Guard units to “dominate” protesters lawfully exercising their Constitutionally-protected rights.
41. He has now twice pardoned infamous racist murderers over widespread criticism, just to fire up the (fascist) base and signal support for atrocities against the “right sort” of people. Trump also frequently tells outrageous lies to help protect and support law enforcement figures who engage in violent or abusive activities against the president’s perceived “enemies.”
42. Trump has populated his administration and the civil service with fascists, white nationalists and reactionary fundamentalists while enacting objectively white nationalist policies.
43. He has employed fallen fascist guru Steve Bannon and noted cracker reactionary Jeff Sessions; Trump also continues to employ outed white nationalist Stephen Miller.
44. He’s hired sworn fascist (no really, he took an oath) and literal neonazi Sebastian Gorka, twice.
45. Trump and the Republican Party have openly and repeatedly signaled support for, accepted volunteer work from, offered excuses on behalf of and acted in various ways to protect violent reactionary mobs, white supremacists and bigoted right wing extremists.
46. Trump and his campaign also habitually and rather artlessly dog-whistle fraternal support for literal f*cking nazis.
47. If the swine emperor isn’t a fascist, you might want to tell the fascists; numerous fascist, white nationalist and neonazi groups and figures have all celebrated several of Trump’s actions in the open and many of them have noted that Herr Donald’s rhetoric and actions explicitly helps further *their* reactionary agenda – even if Trump rarely goes far enough for motivated American nazis.
48. Overall, the Trump presidency has coincided with a massive spike in hate crimes (including a 16-year high in 2019); the swine emperor and his fascist conspiracy rhetoric is also widely regarded as partially inspiring the murderous actions of prolific racist mass shooters in New Zealand, Pittsburgh and El Paso as well as a host of other violent crimes in which the perpetrator specifically claimed inspiration from or allegiance to Trump.
49. A significant number of people who survived Nazi Germany or the Holocaust have also come forward to directly call Trump a fascist, identify significant parallels with early Nazi Germany, or suggest the swine emperor’s behavior is reminiscent of Hitler’s.
50. Numerous respected political observers, expert historians and media commentators have blatantly warned that Trump is a fascist; including Masha Gessen, Timothy Snyder, and Jason Stanley, among others.
51. Numerous respected figures from multiple backgrounds in Pig Empire political life with enough knowledge not to toss around the word “fascism” recklessly have directly and more or less openly, called Trump a fascist; including former US president (D) Barack Obama, former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson, former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Democratic Party congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and Democratic Party congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
52. Bonus Atrocity Round: the ongoing Yemen genocide, aiding and abetting Israeli genocide in Gaza, continued and escalated the U.S. drone assassination program, a coronavirus response that amounts to mass murder, assassinating an Iranian general to bait Iran into starting a war, the entire “Prince Bone Saw” WaPo journalist murder saga, threatening to nuke a whole country on Twitter to win a dick-measuring contest, allowing migrant children to die in his concentration camps, gross negligence leading to thousands of deaths in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and green-lighting Turkish atrocities in Northern Syria.

 

Checkmate.

 

• Nina Illingworth

 

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”