While Democratic strategists debate whether or not their attack ads labeling Donald Trump a fascist have been effective, experts and academics told the Guardian his campaign and the Republican party he now heads have clear autocratic sympathies and political qualities that are firmly in line with fascism movements historically.
Put together, that makes any Trump victory this week and his return to the White House for a second presidential term a clear threat to US democracy, they added.
“There couldn’t be a more obvious example of a fascist social and political movement about to take power,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor whose new book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, looks at the global playbook of fascists through the lens of America and beyond.
This is the classic argument or debate I have about political figures like this in history.
They don’t appear out of a vacuum of their own will … they are not just some all powerful persuasive figure that just pushes people to do what they want. Maybe that could have happened in the distant past but not in our modern world.
Political leaders today get to their position because others with power allow them. Money is poured into them, money to promote, to advertise, to market, to manage, to manipulate … in short, the political figure of Turnip came to be because it was allowed by those with power. It didn’t have anything to do with his ability to promote, stall or politically manoeuvre around.
He came to be because he was allowed to take the lead and those with power wanted him there and kept him there.
That’s assuming one all-knowing and competent group in charge, but reality isn’t like that. Sometimes people in power don’t recognize events in having significance in the moment or they respond poorly to the situation.
It is clear that Trump’s election caught a lot of people by surprise in 2016, including Trump. It is also clear that a lot of conservative Republicans saw Trump as being willing to go along with their policies most of the time.
There isn’t a single cabal responsible for choosing Trump.