Many people scoff at the idea that Donald Trump could be moving the USA toward fascism. But just add it all together and see what pattern emerges:
- He calls the press the “enemy of the people”
- He says “I alone can fix it”
- He personalizes the military as “my military”
- He repeatedly calls for the previous president (Obama) and his previous opposition candidate (Clinton) to be arrested and put in jail
- He is systemically attempting to create doubt about the legitimacy of democratic elections
- He “jokes” about being president for life
- He “jokes” about his children being president directly after him
- He praises dictators like Duterte, Putin and MBS
- He congratulated President Xi Jinping upon becoming president for life
- He promotes isolationism and attacks international agreements and institutions like NATO and the G7
- He believes the Department of Justice and Attorney General exist to serve and protect him rather than the People and the Laws of the United States
- He has a white supremacist (Stephen Miller) in the White House
- He frequently promotes conspiracy theories and perpetuates fake news
- He promotes the use of violence against his enemies/critics
- He demands fidelity from the Republican party and seeks to destroy any critics
- He solicited a foreign power (Ukraine) to intervene in the upcoming election by acquiring information on his opponent
- When the Turkish secret police assaulted peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. he remained silent
- When MBS had a journalist from America killed and dismembered he defended MBS
- He demands fidelity from the Republican party and seeks to destroy any critics
- He calls himself the greatest president since Lincoln, if not ever
- He just deployed the military to attack peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. so that he could stage a propagandistic photo event
That’s just off the top of my head. Trump is a fascist. Resist him.
(Three years ago, I posted a review of Timothy Synder’s On Tyranny. It is disturbing to see how far we’ve come.)