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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTwelve signs Trump would try to run a fascist dictatorship in a second term
People have debated whether Donald Trump is fascist since he announced he was running for president. In 2015, Jamelle Bouie wrote in Slate that Trump, in his campaign speeches and Twitter utterances, exhibited seven of the 14 characteristics identified by the Italian novelist Umberto Eco in his defining essay Ur-Fascism. In 2016, the Georgetown professor John McNeill assessed Trumps fascist tendencies on a scale of zero to four Benitos, after the father of fascism, Benito Mussolini. As an amateur, Trump fell short.
That was then. What about now? And, more important, what about the Trump of a potential second term in the White House?
On June 1, as demonstrators gathered and marched in Washington and around the country to protest the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, President Trump, in a brief speech in the White House Rose Garden, called for states to use the National Guard to dominate the streets and promised that if they didnt, I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. Federal forces then used tear gas and stun grenades on peaceful protesters to clear a path for him to walk from the White House to nearby St. Johns Episcopal Church for a photo op with a Bible as prop.
The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tweeted. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) noting in an opinion column three days later that the presidents attempt to use chaos to shred democratic safeguards and consolidate authoritarian power is deadly serious put it this way: This is our own Reichstag fire and, yes, Trump is playing the role of would-be Fuehrer, proclaiming a God-given signal to seize more power.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/fascist-dictatorship-trump-second-term/2020/07/10/63fdd938-c166-11ea-b4f6-cb39cd8940fb_story.html
soothsayer
(38,601 posts)Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)He already was. Read Eco's essay and tell me Trump hasn't been doing everything described in the essay.