Is Donald Trump a Fascist?
DEC. 3, 2015
By Ross Douthat
nytimes.com
The Republican establishment, that lumbering beast, still can’t decide on how and whether and when to go after Donald J. Trump. But last week a few Republican insiders floated an accusation that you usually hear liberals sling against the right: That the real estate magnate turned populist is actually a fascist.
The hook for this charge was Trump’s illiberal musings about Muslims and databases and his lies — or, to be charitable, false memories — about cheering throngs of Muslim-Americans after Sept. 11.
But the charge can be easily fleshed out with more examples. Writing for Slate last week, Jamelle Bouie argued that Trumpism, however ideologically inchoate, manifests at least seven of the hallmarks of fascism identified by the Italian polymath Umberto Eco. They include: a cult of action, a celebration of aggressive masculinity, an intolerance of criticism, a fear of difference and outsiders, a pitch to the frustrations of the lower middle class, an intense nationalism and resentment at national humiliation, and a “popular elitism” that promises every citizen that they’re part of “the best people of the world.”
Does this sound like Trump? Well, yes, it rather does: His bravado and performative machismo (complete with mockery of the weak, unattractive and disabled), his obsession with how we get “beat” by other nations and need to start beating them instead, his surprisingly deft exploitation of blue-collar economic anxieties, his dark references to Mexican “rapists” and other immigrant threats, and as of this week his promise to not only bomb and torture our foreign enemies into submission but to round up their families as well — no, it isn’t hard to match Eco’s list to many of the Donald’s greatest hits.
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