Trump is a fascist.

[jimmy olsen]

I think given everything Trump has said, that not only is it fair, but it is the responsibilty of every reasonable person and especially every other candidate to call him out as a Fascist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCQhBYEMRQI&feature=player_embedded

[DGuller]

I don't think he's a fascist.  I do, however, think that he's consciously appealing to fascists, of which there are a fair number among the right wing in US.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter that much what Trump personally believes, what matters is that he's making fascist sentiment more mainstream, and for that he should burn in hell.

[jimmy olsen]

I don't think he's a fascist.  I do, however, think that he's consciously appealing to fascists, of which there are a fair number among the right wing in US.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter that much what Trump personally believes, what matters is that he's making fascist sentiment more mainstream, and for that he should burn in hell.

Does it matter? If a populist wins power by appealing to fascists or communists, and then governs in the way his base wishes, does it matter if he personally thinks it's all a crock of shit? That person is still a fascist/communist dictator.

[mongers]

It's more complicated than that because...

The American public has more sense and will drag him back to the random right-centre. 

[MadImmortalMan]

I don't want to be the kind of person who goes around calling people fascists. They tend to be the sort I don't want to associate with.

[DGuller]

I don't want to be the kind of person who goes around calling people fascists. They tend to be the sort I don't want to associate with.

Yes, it is very unfortunate that this word has been so grossly overused in the past that when a real fascist comes around, you really can't denounce him properly.  Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that real fascists don't exist.

[jimmy olsen]

I don't want to be the kind of person who goes around calling people fascists. They tend to be the sort I don't want to associate with.

When a politician explicitly calls for the state to round up 11 million people, and they call for the state register a religious minority for government surveillance, and they call for protesters to be beaten, what else can you call him?

[mongers]

I don't want to be the kind of person who goes around calling people fascists. They tend to be the sort I don't want to associate with.

When a politician explicitly calls for the state to round up 11 million people, and they call for the state register a religious minority for government surveillance, and they call for protesters to be beaten, what else can you call him?

Errant, misguided, dumb?

[DGuller]

Errant, misguided, dumb?

But he's not dumb, he's not misguided because he knows what he's doing, and he's not errant because his falsehoods are part of maskirovka-like strategy of deliberately drowning everyone in torrent of bullshit.

[Jaron]

I've wondered about Trump.

In my heart I really really really want to believe he is just trolling America.

[alfred russel]

I think he is clearly not a fascist. Xenophobic? Yes. Populist? Big time. Absurd? Oh yeah. But--he is a capitalist, and he doesn't seem to be especially pro military or with an aggressive foreign policy. He is missing some really big elements of traditional fascism, and also I don't see any signs he wants to get rid of democracy.

When a politician explicitly calls for the state to round up 11 million people,

That is not fascism. Stupid, cruel, xenophobic, tinged with racism, counter productive? Yes. But aggressive enforcement of immigration laws does not constitute a fascist state.

and they call for the state register a religious minority for government surveillance,

He apparently didn't really call for this. To my knowledge, he ambiguously answered some vague questions that could have led people to that conclusion--and then refused to publicly back down but he refuses to publicly back down on anything. He has retweeted at least one person saying he didn't call for a muslim database and never explicitly called for one.

and they call for protesters to be beaten, what else can you call him?

I don't think he called for this. He said a protester that was mildly roughed up had it coming. That is very different from calling for protestors to be beaten, and in this case is a really low bar for fascism.

[Drakken]

Do Trump's political ideas and platform both conform with what Fascism and Falangism were?

It's a serious question; being a self-inflated jerk who spout anything over his head to appeal to both AFCs and the lowest common denominator isn't Fascism, but opportunistic populism. Totalitarian authorianism based on reactionary jingoism, nationalistic family-based values, corporatism and subservience of all individuals to the State as cogs of a war machine is Fascism, in its classical sense.

That said, nothing excludes Trump being America's own brand of "fascism" (hence called Trumpism or Donaldism).

[DGuller]

You don't have to actively want to dismantle democracy to dismantle democracy.  Russian citizens didn't want to overtly dismantle their democracy either, as flawed as it was, until long after they stopped having their say in the matter.  But they in fact did aid Putin in dismantling it by valuing their preferences for intolerance and iron-fisted action over democratic institutions.

[jimmy olsen]

Do Trump's political ideas and platform both conform with what Fascism and Falangism were?

It's a serious question; being a self-inflated jerk who spout anything over his head to appeal to both AFCs and the lowest common denominator isn't Fascism, but opportunistic populism. Totalitarian authorianism based on reactionary jingoism, nationalistic family-based values, corporatism and subservience of all individuals to the State as cogs of a war machine is Fascism, in its classical sense.

That said, nothing excludes Trump being America's own brand of "fascism" (hence called Trumpism or Donaldism).

Can't cut and paste where I'm at right now, but he checks off 5 out of 9 of Paxton's passions (he wrote The Anatomy of Fascism).

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/11/donald-trump-a-fascist.html

[alfred russel]

You don't have to actively want to dismantle democracy to dismantle democracy.  Russian citizens didn't want to overtly dismantle their democracy either, as flawed as it was, until long after they stopped having their say in the matter.  But they in fact did aid Putin in dismantling it by valuing their preferences for intolerance and iron-fisted action over democratic institutions.

It is something of a stretch to call Putin a fascist.

But I think a minimum qualification to qualify as a fascist is to replace democracy with a strong central government devoid of checks and balances and protected from bad election results. Or at least try to do so.

Putin is an a much easier state to do that--Russia never really had a democratic tradition to corrupt, so fixing elections, controlling the media, and "disappearing" opponents really just required operating the levers of power already there. The US president is distantly removed from counting votes--that is done at the state and local level--and of course can't control the media very effectively. To get Putin level power in the US would require actual legal changes that Trump isn't advocating.

So maybe Trump isn't advocating such things out of political considerations. But the rest of his agenda doesn't conform to fascism either.  Xenophobic isolationism with heavy support for capitalism is not fascism.