I asked 5 fascism experts whether Donald Trump is a fascist. Here's what they said.

[AntiBank]

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/10/9886152/donald-trump-fascism

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

It's becoming a common question, and prominent neoconservative columnist Robert Kagan is the latest to lob the accusation, declaring, "This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac 'tapping into' popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him."

Kagan is wrong. Donald Trump is not a fascist. "Fascism" has been an all-purpose insult for many years now, but it has a real definition, and according to scholars of historical fascism, Trump doesn't qualify. Rather, he's a right-wing populist, or perhaps an "apartheid liberal" in the words of Roger Griffin, author of The Nature of Fascism. He doesn't want to overthrow the existing democratic system. He doesn't want to scrap the Constitution. He doesn't romanticize violence itself as a vital cleansing agent of society. He's simply a racist who wants to keep the current system but deny its benefits to groups he's interested in oppressing.

Griffin, who is a professor of history and political theory at Oxford Brookes University, puts it best: "You can be a total xenophobic racist male chauvinist bastard and still not be a fascist."

Fascism requires the rejection of democracy

But sometimes you have to keep certain parts of the state around
General Photographic Agency/Getty Images
Benito Mussolini addresses the Italian parliament in 1938, long after he'd rendered it irrelevant.
Defining fascism is a notoriously difficult scholarly task. There are enough differences between the relevant fascist regimes — Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, perhaps Francoist Spain — that identifying commonalities that do not in turn implicate plenty of clearly non-fascist regimes is tricky. But there is general agreement about some requirements.

snip


I post this to help people accurately attack Trump and not get blindsided by incorrectly labelling him.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. I tend to call him a bigot, racist, and sexist.

[AntiBank]

2. as does that article

[Fairgo]

3. Thank you for the definition

meaning matters!

[On the Road]

4. NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNN

have presented themselves as being objective news sources, while Fox is partisan. For the most part, this has been true.

With so much weight being given to the Trump = Nazi equation on those networks, it is hard to avoid being seen as liberal counterparts to Fox.

Trump's supporters obviously don't think he's a fascist, and calling him openly that has the same effect that someone calling Obama a communist has -- immediate mental turnoff.

[Moral Compass]

5. Just an asshole

He's just an asshole who is very good at manipulating our pathetic mass media.

[liberalnarb]

6. Um actually...

[shadowmayor]

7. tRump a fascist?

If you're looking for fascists, look no further than Robert Kagan and his neocon, PNAC asshole friends. Seems like he's bucking for a job with next Democratic Administration. Maybe a nice posting with his wife to stir up more crap on the "eastern front".