
Is Donald Trump a fascist? A historian of fascism weighs in - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/02/is_donald_trump_a_fascist_an_expert_on_fascism_weighs_in.single.html
======
wmil
There's a famous joke that "fascist" in politics just means "I don't like you"

It's just an ill-defined insult at this point. George Orwell had interesting
things to say.

[http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc](http://orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/efasc)

~~~
hnhg
I've seen more than a handful of presumably right-wing commentators on Reddit
of late arguing that the Nazis were actually socialists or 'communists' rather
than a right-wing group. The ensuing (typically unresolved) argument comes
down to how fascism is defined for each person. Fascism is clearly in the eye
of the beholder.

~~~
venomsnake
Nazi is national socialism. Fascism was in Italy and Spain.

~~~
djmdjm
The Nazi party was socialist in much the same way the DPRK is democratic.

~~~
gozur88
Weird that they put the word in the name of the party when they didn't know
what it means.

~~~
dang
They knew what it meant. I think putting that word in the name was a cheap way
of appealing to the disaffected working class early on.

------
vlehto
The essential difference between totalitarian state and military junta seems
to be popular support. With junta, you can trust that almost nobody is loyal
directly to the dictator, they just want money and stay alive. So you can
bribe anybody. In totalitarian state you can never be sure who will take
"cause of the party" as his own. So lives of normal people are affected in
totally different way.

There has been two types of totalitarian popular movements so far:
nationalistic and international. Fascism falls in the first category,
Communism in the second. The problem of communist is that it never has been
able to spread the revolution as originally intended. So they have fallen back
to "Socialism in one state" policies everywhere.

Given the similarities, it's not surprising that the left usually tries to
paint fascism as "far right" or "ultra nationalist". The first is simply
incorrect, the latter on the other hand is kinda misleading. Nationalism is
also the basis for all systems of _national_ governance, so you can be ultra
nationalist while supporting democracy, monarchy or pretty much anything else.
Even Stalinism when that dude was still alive.

------
dang
This is a political story, but it's also unusually interesting in HN's sense,
so we've exempted it from the usual penalties.

If you're going to comment, please be sure you're doing so out of intellectual
curiosity, the guiding value of this site. Partisan boosting and bashing is
off topic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
qrendel
Obligatory:
[http://www.alternet.org/files/story_images/bo151216.png](http://www.alternet.org/files/story_images/bo151216.png)

~~~
FrankenPC
That's genius!

------
ranko
Fascinating stuff. As ever, the answer is "it's complicated". We can see Trump
adopting (presumably unconsciously) some of the tropes of fascism; the
business with the plane, for example. This doesn't, of course, make him a
fascist in itself.

I suspect that he would qualify as an authoritarian nationalist on some level,
but whether he is interested in the kind of martial law usually associated
with fascism seems less certain to me.

~~~
codesushi42
The plane example was a weak cherry pick in a weak article overall.

Trump is a bigot, but it's too early to say whether he's a fascist.

FDR forced Japanese citizens into internment camps, but history does not
remember him as a fascist.

I'm not being an apologist for Trump's comments. But they're just not enough
to classify him as a fascist.

If he advocates for more foreign wars, additions to the Patriot Act, or
nationalizing entire industries, then we're getting warmer. Though, maybe he
can claim one or two of those.

------
venomsnake
Couple of thoughts:

The greatest relative strength of USA was right after the WWII when US GDP and
industrial capacity was more than the rest of the world combined, had
unmatched military capability and nuclear supremacy. Since then in
geopolitical terms US is in decline.

The peak of US economy looking from the point of the middle class was 1969 -
after that there were oil shocks, stagflation, outsourcing and hollowing out
of the middle class. with a short blip upwards in the late 90s when US was
reaping the benefits of winning the cold war and the computing boom.

And right now US is in a almost decade long depression if you exclude the
SV,Wall street, and some landlords.

So there is both relative and real decline for big parts of the US public.

I don't think Trump is a fascist. Or even a particularly authoritarian hard
liner.

And he has so far respected the letter of the US constitution. All of his
vitriol has been towards people that are not US citizens. And the Supreme
Court has made it clear that if you are not a US Citizen being in US is
privilege, not a right.

------
empath75
He says that he thinks trump never read a book on Hitler, but he at least
owned a book of his speeches, according to his ex wife.

~~~
onion2k
Owning a book and reading it are two different things. We all own books we've
never read.

~~~
jacquesm
Why on earth would you own a book you've never read?

~~~
onion2k
I tell myself I'll get around reading them eventually. Although the backlog
well is in to the hundreds now, so I don't imagine I actually will.

~~~
caf
There's a word for it: tsundoku

------
tomp
It's funny how many people oppose Trump on the basis of his "Mexican wall"
idea, while supporting Hillary.

Meanwhile, the "Mexican wall" already exists (Google it!), and Hillary voted
for it:

> I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a
> barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in

[http://www.latintimes.com/hillary-clinton-bragging-about-
bui...](http://www.latintimes.com/hillary-clinton-bragging-about-building-
border-wall-keeping-out-illegal-immigrants-352631)

------
tptacek
This article on the Atlantic is, I think, a bit better and more interesting:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/don...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/donald-
trump-fascist/424449/)

(Pretty much the same conclusion, though).

------
vmorgulis
He looks like the bad guy in Dead Zone:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_%28film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_%28film%29)

But he is more a populist than a facist.

------
jakeogh
Setting aside Mr. Trump...

"The trends are not downward unless you were offended by the presence of a
black man in the White House."[3]

Except we are still expected to live in a 'post-911'[1] state[2] of fear.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQu_mYI3Vxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQu_mYI3Vxs)

[2]
[https://cryptome.org/2015/09/potus-15-0911.pdf](https://cryptome.org/2015/09/potus-15-0911.pdf)

[3] Wow. Talk about painting the people you disagree with.

~~~
codesushi42
Agreed. Populist candidates like Trump and Sanders have as much clout as they
do exactly because the country is in decline. And the public is tired of the
elitist run media telling them otherwise.

The harder the media pushes their delusional reality, the harder the public
pushes back, and the stronger Trump becomes.

Not that I hope for such a thing. But it's entertaining to see the media's
propaganda continue to backfire on them. And they act totally oblivious as to
why.

------
dba7dba
Trump is not a fascist. No way

He is a narcist. He spent like first 8 minutes of his first speech after
winning New Hampshire saying things like

I love you. You love me. I have lots of money. You love me.

Actually Hitler was a narcist so maybe Trump is a fascist.

------
joesmo
Aren't racist, sexist, and xenophobic enough?

Because I'm sure I can think of plenty more adjectives that I can apply
objectively. I disagree with the article that 'fascist' is one of the worst
things to be in today's world and those three things above (as well as the
rest that could've gone there) are __much __worse.

~~~
venomsnake
Not at all. Calling something or someone racist, sexist or xenophobic does not
by itself means much or invalidate. A policy may be such and still effective
or optimal.

Lets take Europe migration crisis - 70% of the incoming people are single,
young and male - that is the demographic that is impossible to integrate and
they skew gender balance which is sure way to create social tension. A policy
to exclude them and only let women, children and families will be all of those
3 (and couple more isms), but i think it will lead to better outcome for
Europe than the current situation.

------
sbardle
Trump doesn't believe in anything, but he is mining the writing of the
paleoconservative movement (the traditional right) for popular appeal.

------
SRSposter
Hilarious

------
notliketherest
The things Donald Trump says (such as "stop Mexicans from coming into our
country illegally" or "ban Muslims from immigrating to our country until we're
confident in our terrorist screening process") offend a LOT of people. People
who don't believe such things should be said, or even talked about. People
who, when someone says these things, viciously attack them, saying they are
morally wrong for thinking those things. People that band together as a group
to silence those who dare utter what they deem "inappropriate" or "politically
incorrect" or "shouldn't be said, it's racist!"

In other words, I'd argue that Donald Trump, rather than being a fascist, is a
reaction against fascists. Liberal fascists who squash the dissent against
their group think with social media lynch mobbing.

~~~
hnhg
You're misusing the word fascist. You probably mean something more like 'hard-
liners' or 'extremist'.

