Trump is a fascist, as evidenced by his Mussolini-style effort to overthrow the U.S. government.
By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Politics Writer
Salon
One can already hear the crying and gnashing of teeth: Thursday night, President Joe Biden called the MAGA ideology “semi-fascism.”
As researcher Parker Molloy noted on Twitter, Fox News has been desperate for a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s (entirely accurate) description of Donald Trump voters as “deplorables,” and will not be able to resist the bait. The mainstream media’s gaffe obsession will likely slot this comment into a “he slipped up” framework, unable to imagine that a Democratic politician might, once in awhile, say something truthful about the red hats on purpose. Hands will be wrung. Statements will be issued. The Republican National Committee has already described this moment of truth-telling “despicable,” a word they notably did not use after Trump sent a violent mob to the Capitol to overthrow democracy.
It’s all noise. Strapped to a lie detector, everyone would have to admit the only problem with Biden’s statement is he overloaded it with caveats. First in the use of the term “semi,” but also in limiting his remarks to “MAGA,” as if that’s a separate category from Republicans in general. In reality, the number of Republicans who won’t support Trump in another run is, as the last election showed, frighteningly small.
There is no need to dance around the subject: Trump is a fascist, as evidenced by his Mussolini-style effort to overthrow the U.S. government and install himself illegally in power. Everyone who supports him is therefore also a fascist. Fascism, like punching someone in the face, isn’t one of those things that we define by examining the unknowable heart of a person. We look at the action. Are you planning to vote for a fascist? Do you give money to a fascist? Do you participate in gaslighting propaganda on behalf of fascists? Congrats: You’re a fascist!
As former Republican Max Boot recently wrote in the Washington Post, “the most apt phrase for this American authoritarianism is the New Fascism, and it is fast becoming the dominant trend on the right.”