This is the third in a series in which we show how Trump’s MAGA movement is the new American fascism. We use a template laid out in an article published in2003 by historian Lawrence Britt, which analyzed seven fascist regimes and the common threads linking them. You can read last week’s blog here.
Week 3: Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
“The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists…”
The “enemy/scapegoat” theme is one that Trump harps upon with increasing frequency and in ever more extreme language. Echoing the language of fascism, he attempts to unify his base by drawing a sharp line between “us” (MAGA) and “them” (the rest of us). Last week’s blog highlighted Trump's recent Veterans Day comments, in which he told a crowd that his political enemies are “like vermin.” He drove home the point on Truth Social:
Responding to criticism that Trump used the language of fascist dictators, campaign spokesman Stephen Cheung said: “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome …. and their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”
While the above succinctly proves the point of this blog, there’s more:
The parallels between Trump and Hitler are laid out by Will Bunch in his excellent newsletter, which included the above headline/photo. But Bunch is not alone in his analysis: much of the mainstream media picked up on it. As did Liz Cheney. And so did the left-leaning commentators “MeidasTouch,” who made a graphic comparison in a post viewed on X by over 1.4 million people:
Hyperbole? Newsweekfact checked the MeidasTouch post and concluded:
Couple that with Ivana Trump’s assertion from 1990 that her ex-husband “reads a book of Hitler's collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed,” and the report that Trump told John Kelly that “Hitler did a lot of good things,” and we have a picture of someone who pretty clearly models his speeches on The Great Dictator.
Why would he do that? Because, according to this poll:
And that includes both Democrats and Republicans.
The clock is ticking: We have a year to persuade a majority of Americans that there is a better way.
The alternative? A president who appoints an attorney general like Mike Davis, who asserted in an interview on right-wing podcast The Benny Johnson Show:
“We’re gonna deport a lot of people, 10 million people and growing—anchor babies, their parents, their grandparents [...] We’re gonna put kids in cages. It’s gonna be glorious. We’re gonna detain a lot of people in the D.C. gulag and Gitmo.”
Do we want to take the risk that this is simply right-wing bluster? We underestimate the seriousness of their rhetoric at our peril.
Next week: Supremacy of the Military.