What is it, exactly, that Donald Trump is selling? In substantial part, it’s himself – as my co-editor Bob puts it, Trump is trying to “feed his bloated idiot-sized ego.” Trump loves to talk about how rich he is, how much he personally “cherishes women” and other groups, about how successful he’s been in business, etc. There’s no doubt that he’s peddling, in part, a cult of personality.
But there is more to it than that. The trademarked slogan of his campaign is “Make America Great Again.” He is, of course, the GOP’s biggest purveyor of nativist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. He rails against leaders who have supposedly turned America into a “loser” (“we don’t have victories anymore,” he said recently). Also – and this is important – some of his economic proposals are intensely nationalistic and hated by big business. The NY Times reports that some conservatives are concerned about Trump’s proposals to raise taxes “on corporations that he believes do not act in the best interests of the United States” – for instance, “Mr. Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on American companies that put their factories in other countries … [a]nd he has vowed to change laws that allow American companies to benefit from cheaper tax rates by using mergers to base their operations outside the United States.”
That is a marked difference from Republican orthodoxy, which generally puts the interests of big business first and foremost. The GOP is, essentially, pro-corporation, but Trump is nationalist first, corporate second.
Trump has also adopted a surprisingly populist position on taxes. He wants to close the infamous “carried interest” loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay very low taxes. And on a flat tax:
“The one problem I have with the flat tax is that rich people are paying the same as people that are making very little money,” Mr. Trump said. “And I think there should be a graduation of some kind.”
Another part of Trump’s platform (if you can call it that), as I’ve said before, is his apparent belief that the “welfare state” is not always a bad thing. He supports Social Security and criticizes his opponents for wanting to dismantle it. He has said he opposes cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He has said that “we have to take care of the people that can’t take care of themselves,” which sounds a lot like some form of government-run health care.
Yet another departure from GOP orthodoxy is Trump’s stance on the current state of our political system. He has said repeatedly that the system is broken, and he uses his personal wealth to demonstrate that he is independent of it. This criticism applies to his own party as well as to the Democrats – he recently blasted both sides, saying “[a]ll of the money that’s going to Hillary, and Jeb, and Scott and Marco? They’re totally controlled. Totally.” Trump is saying, in effect, that the entire two-party system as we know it is corrupt, and it’s time for something else.
So. Let’s talk now about fascism – not in the pejorative sense, but in terms of what the fascist ideology actually is. There is some disagreement as to how “fascism” should be defined – the word, after all, comes from the Italian word for a bundle (fascio), which in the late 19th century came to refer to a wide variety of Italian political groups or “leagues” known as fasci. Only later, when Benito Mussolini consolidated some of these movements into the Partito Nazionale Fascista and took power in the 1920s, did fascism come to be synonymous with Mussolini’s particular ideology, and there have been other fascist movements that don’t line up exactly with Mussolini’s. But, to the extent that the Wikipedia article on fascism can be seen as authoritative, let’s see how it stacks up with Trumpism.
Nationalism. Nationalism is the main foundation of fascism. The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity that binds people together by their ancestry, and is a natural unifying force of people.
Check. This is precisely what Trump is saying. “Make America Great Again” is a fine encapsulation of the idea that America’s glory as a nation has been lost but can be regained. To that end, both individual and corporate aspects of society must be subservient to the interests of America (hence his pro-America, anti-multinational corporation taxation ideas). Those who “don’t belong” – illegal immigrants of course, but also apparently reporters for Spanish-language television – are a threat and should be removed (from the country and from the press conference, respectively). Trump also opposes birthright citizenship (the notion, ensconced in the 14th Amendment, that anyone born on American soil is automatically a citizen), presumably because it undermines the idea of a nation united by ancestry, and is therefore a threat to the greatness of America. UPDATE (11/20/15): Trump’s aggressively anti-refugee stance, and his position that American Muslims should be required to register in some sort of national database, are entirely consistent with a fascist take on American nationalism.
Totalitarianism. Fascism promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state. The Doctrine of Fascism [an essay published in the 1930s in Italy and authored in part by Mussolini] states, “The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.” … Fascism opposes liberal democracy. It rejects multi-party systems, and supports a single party state.
So far, anyway, I haven’t heard Trump talking in exactly this way. And it wouldn’t work if he did, because American nationalism is bound up with fetishizing the Constitution and the system of government it sets up. But what he has done, as noted above, is talk a lot about how American democracy has become corrupted. Both parties, according to Trump, are bought and paid for by wealthy special interests; he alone can stand up to them because he doesn’t need their money. So Trump doesn’t advocate eliminating the two-party system and adopting a single-party state, as Mussolini’s Fascismo did, but he strenuously makes the case that the two-party system as it currently exists in the U.S. is failing. In an American brand of fascism, that’s about as far as you can go.
It’s also worth noting that fascism, which conceives of the state as “all-embracing,” is in some respects the opposite of small-government conservatism. And Trump, despite identifying as a Republican, is not a small-government conservative. He believes in a robust welfare state (hence his support for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid). He believes in a strong and expanded military. He believes in higher tax rates for the wealthy, as discussed above. And he believes in using the apparatus of government – the bankruptcy laws, specifically – to help big businesses. Which leads us to…
Economics of fascism … In general, apart from the nationalizations of some industries, fascist economies were based on private individuals being allowed property and private initiative, but these were contingent upon service to the state…. Fascist governments encouraged the pursuit of private profit and offered many benefits to large businesses, but they demanded in return that all economic activity should serve the national interest.
Check. Trump of course likes large, profitable private businesses. But as noted above, some of his tax proposals would punish businesses who place private profit over his conception of the national interest.
In most cases, fascists discouraged or banned foreign trade; fascists believed that too much international trade would make the national economy dependent on international capital, and therefore vulnerable to international economic sanctions. Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.
Trump does not go so far as to advocate autarky (that is, the cessation of trade with other nations). But he routinely resorts to China-bashing in his speeches (“China’s taking our jobs. They’re taking our money…. Be careful. They’ll bring us down.”), and he has said that he favors “imposing Smoot-Hawley-style tariffs” that, according to one writer, “would precipitate a trade war and devastate exports.” Here, again, Trump differs substantially from the GOP’s pro-big-business orthodoxy, which generally favors free trade. Trump’s American brand of fascism, then, doesn’t go as far as the Italian version, but by advocating high tariffs and by stoking fears of other countries’ motivations, it moves in that direction.
Fascism was highly militaristic, and as such, fascists often significantly increased military spending.
Check. Trump (and here he is like most Republicans) professes great love for the military and for increasing military spending.
There are other aspects of traditional fascist economics that don’t line up as well with Trump’s views, such as “an economy where the government exerts strong directive influence over investment, as opposed to having a merely regulatory role.” But, again, we are not talking about recreating Mussolini’s fascism. Rather, we are talking about a new, American brand of politics that adapts the fascist ideology to American sensibilities.
UPDATE 3/12/16: Political violence.
Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its politics. Fascism views violent action as a necessity in politics that fascism identifies as being an “endless struggle”….
The basis of fascism’s support of violent action in politics is connected to social Darwinism. Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races, and societies. They say that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people, while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people, in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.
Trump rallies have become very scary places in recent days and weeks. The violent ejection of protesters, sometimes accompanied by criminal assaults on them, are now commonplace; in Chicago, the situation was so close to completely out of control that the rally was cancelled. Rachel Maddow did a nice job of putting together a string of video clips showing Trump lamenting the fact that nowadays, there are no consequences for protesting, and in the good old days, those folks were taken out on a stretcher. He is smart enough not to actually encourage violence against specific protesters (beyond a call to “get him outta here”), but he comes about as close as he can without subjecting himself to criminal liability for assaults that occur thereafter. He hasn’t assembled an army of brownshirts yet … but who knows what the future holds.
Finally, it cannot be ignored that a defining characteristic of most fascist movements is that they are “led by a strong leader” such as Mussolini. Trump, as noted above, is selling in large part himself. “Nobody can do that like me. Believe me,” said Trump in his announcement speech. He was talking about rebuilding infrastructure at that moment, but it could have been about anything. And, according to a focus group set up by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, Trump’s cult of personality is a key feature of why his supporters like him:
They view Trump as different from all the other presidential candidates. He’s not just their favorite candidate. Their tie to him is almost mystical. He’s a kind of political savior, someone who says what they think. Luntz asked them for the one word that comes to mind when they think of Trump. The word cited most was “leader.”
So. A strong, charismatic leader. Intense nationalism that takes precedence over corporate interests. Virulent anti-immigrant, nativist rhetoric that links the nation’s greatness to its ability to control who is and is not “American.” A hopelessly corrupt two-party system that is failing American interests, and that needs to be shaken up by someone independent of it. A strong national government that looks after poor citizens, that boasts a strong military, that isn’t afraid to collect taxes to fund its operations, and that aggressively represents the national interest in trade and other dealings with foreign countries. UPDATE: And tolerance, if not outright encouragement, of the use of force against political enemies.
Maybe there’s another word for it. But to me (and to some others, for somewhat different reasons), it looks like Trump is selling an updated, Americanized version of old-school Italian fascism that is quite distinct from modern Republican orthodoxy. And, at least right now, Republican voters are buying it. That’s an interesting, important, and worrisome development in American politics.
His ideology is essentially an Americanized version of the National Front.
Their similarities follow:
-support for strong immigration controls
-support for an organic or cultural view of the body politic; Rousseau’s rather than a Lockian social contract, also close to German counter-enlightenment thinkers like Herder and Fichte; the right to rule comes from the general will which emanates from a shares nationalistic, cultural and linguistic polity
-France for the French/Make America Great (eg. “American”) Again
-strong alignment with working class politics and class resentment, class solidarity in a mirror to the lefts
-strong support for a welfare state and emphasis that it belongs to real citizens and foreigners are weakening it
-strong support for martial policy and imagery/enthusiasm for an imperial past
It’s important to note that the NF is a direct successor to French fascist parties that emerged at the same as Italy’s, Spain’s, Portugal and Austrias*.
Those parties, also called the futurists, came out of socialism and merged its economic principles and hostility to the aristocracy and bourgeois with a people’s capitalism that emphasized business subservient to the national interest even if it wasn’t nationalized or confiscated like under communism or some forms of socialism. So awfully close to the Italian model-albeit they never went away.
Some backed Vichy, and they would go on to back De Gaulle, the aborted coup against De Gaulle once he “gave up” Algeria and they waged a war of terror against the FALN and the French state at the same time. Many of those ex-French Algerians came to France and came to support the NF under Le Pen. Buchanan was close to this, down to the anti semitism but Trump has followed Marine La Pens lead and embraced Judiaism as part of America and against Islam and other foreign groups. Remember Trump funded a jingoistic alternative to the ground zero memorial and opposed the Córdoba center as the “ground zero mosque”. Islmaphobia is linked to a fear of Latino immigrants in this world view.
And there were many American fascists at the same time-Charles Coughlin and Huey Long pedaled a lot of the same tripe Trump is now.
We have to re-embrace class politics and populism, but so while leaving our humanism towards every Anerican intact.
about the commonalities between Trumpism and present-day European far-right parties. What strikes me, and the reason I wrote this, is how neatly much (though not all) of Trumpism lines up not only with those parties, but also with Mussolini’s original version of Fascismo.
I thought the French fascist groups were independent of Mussolini, but further research has proved that thought wrong. He not only inspired them but gave them arms and money. It is also interesting that like Marine LePen, Trump has integrated a more mainstream view of Judaism and an almost neoconservative commitment to the goals of the Israeli right, which stands in stark contrast to most far right populists who are anti-semetic. If we had a similar system to France’s it is a certainty that Trump would make it to a runoff, which is a rather frightening thought.
Coughlin and Long were beat by the Second New Deal and a strong denunciation of racism by the mainstream media and mainstream clergy. It would be great if a similar force could do the same to Trump, yet the media has clearly abandoned it’s job and embraced the ratings.
Come on, guys. We’re giving Trump too much credit.
Really just said he was like Le Pen and showed where the NF came from, but it appeals to Ansricans sometimes in desperate times. Coughlin was all about the cross and flag intertwined on behalf of white blood, and Long felt he could subvert democracy since he was the state. You get a good combination of both in Trump, not a recipe for a healthy campaign or civil discourse. Especially since the emasculated media can’t call him out on it without being called an advocate or biased.
According to polls cited on The Rachel Maddow Show last night, the same polling groups that are backing Trump (and Carson) have a majority belief that President Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the USA.
It’s basically because people feel the system is corrupt. Top 3 (arguably) are Trump, Carson and Fiorina. For the Dems Sanders is viewed as “outside” the system. It’s not just your classic Dem/labor union vs Repub/ big business. Abortion/reproductive rights. etc.
Above all else a sense of “honesty” is what people are looking for. In the Trump package it comes across as a little too crude to last for long, but it’s not scripted. If he didn’t insult McCain (veterans are off limits) his numbers would be double what they are.
When Hillary was asked about “wiping” her server and she retorted “What with a cloth?”, she gave Bernie a 10 point jump in the polls.
If Ross Perot were running now he would be a front runner. People are “fed up” and if the time is ripe for any 3rd party to emerge (from the right or left) that time is now.
Some parallels include a base starkly divided between several similar candidates who were overwhelmed by a grassroots that championed a businessman outsider with no connections to Washington who had a popular radio show and opinion column, and zero political experience. But their ideologies couldn’t be more different.
Wilkie was a great patriot who put his country before his party on many occasions to ensure a successful war effort. I shudder to think what would have happened if a candidate backed by America First had captured the GOP nomination instead. In many respects Trump is appealing to their latter day successors, and they had many fascist sympathizers in their ranks from Lindbergh to Henry Ford.
he supported FDR’s anti-Nazi WWII policy.
Would that there be more patriotic Republicans but alas they’re all gone now.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Trump’s calling cards are in equal part his “honesty” and “authenticity” as his racism. Even this post admits…the platform “such as it is”. Trump doesn’t have a platform, what he has is an ability to be projected onto. Scott is right to point out that candidates who are almost aggressively outside the political system — Carson, Trump, and Sanders — are doing well. Together, they earn about half the electorate.
In this vein, I think Trump is as much Andreas Samaris as Marine Le Pen (for one thing, Le Pen would run circle around Trump). Samaris ran for Prime Minister of Greece by collected the electorate’s grievances and telling them they were easily solved by doing something that I don’t recognize as math. He basically said that he was such an outsider, he could rescue the country through the strength of his ideology and toughness. Problems that had bedeviled the entire spectrum in Greece he could solve because he wouldn’t back down, and Greeks could have it all — all the benefits of EU membership with none of the costs.
Then he backed down because toughness doesn’t change math. While I think Greece is getting royally screwed, Samaris found out taking on the system doesn’t change the math. On another note, I worry that Samaris was democracy’s best shot in Greece…I don’t know how much longer that system will retain legitimacy there, and nor do I suspect it’s the last such example.
I do think that the positions I’ve attributed to Trump are pretty well documented – he’s stated all of them multiple times in the last couple of months. No, there’s nothing substantial on his website outside of immigration. But just because a position isn’t on a candidate’s website doesn’t necessarily mean that attributing it to him is projecting.
Why do I see it as the worst and lowest form of pandering and thus very much the opposite of those qualities?
Regarding Greece, are you suggesting they are on the verge of becoming an undemocratic nation? If so that would be ironic and disappointing given democracy’s Athenian origins.
Notwithstanding the origins of Athens, democracy and representative government have not done well there for the last 2500 years.
The Syriza government got elected on an “anti-austerity” package, which in Greece means: we don’t need to collect taxes, and everyone gets a government job and a raise, because someone else will just give us the money.
And then, having sold that particular snake oil, they punked the electorate. Result: significantly more economic harm, and still no reform of an absurdly corrupt government and tax system.
I also think the government itself, and not just its bourse, are bound to impode eventually.
he also goes up on stage and boasts that the bible is his favorite book, as if he was making a list with his buddies in the book club, but then is completely unable and unwilling to so much as pick a favorite quote or saying from it, or even say whether he prefers the old or new testament.
In interviews, it’s pretty clear he’s never even read it, which would be fine if he didn’t boast in the crassest way possible that it was his favorite book.
He’s the ultimate panderer — the only remarkable thing about his campaign is how many people are lapping it up given how completely transparent the pandering is.
I mean, seriously, does anyone think Trump really had a problem with Mexicans and the Chinese when he’s made hundreds of millions in great part through their labor?
Perhaps he means that his 17th century KJV is one of his favorite collectibles. You know, with the lovely gilt gold cover — the one kept in a sealed and lighted case to preserve the pages and show off the gold?
would describe what Germany is doing to Greece.
Predictable would better describe the resulting rise of the worst kind of racist fascism in Greece.
The only question is if Germany will realize all of this before it’s too late, and Greece completely falls apart to some fascist dictatorship, as Germany did to Hitler when Germans were forced by the powers that be to pay bills it couldn’t afford while its people starve.
is the same thing I do to a back alley mugger by not carrying cash.
Greece’s government is fraudulent.
A closer analogy is what US banks did to middle-class homeowners after plundering trillions of dollars of home-equity. German banks knew all about the flight of Greece’s wealthy. The corruption in Greece certainly did not begin with it’s government. An even better analogy is US sharecropping during the reconstruction era.
What Germany did to Greece is first arrange a series of very lucrative and often fraudulent business deals with a handful of Greek’s wealthiest families (who were happy to commit Greek commoners to repay them), look the other way while Greek’s wealthiest fled the country with virtually ALL its wealth (I don’t remember media stories about the “migrant crisis” when the “migrants” were Greece’s wealthy), and then demand that those left behind — already in or near poverty because of the plundering by their own 0.01% — pay every cent of every fraudulently-obtained German loan.
The crisis in Greece was created by EU banks, with German banks leading the way. It was greatly exacerbated by the refusal of German banks to write off any portion of the loans they knew were bad when they wrote them.
There certainly is some mugging going on. It was not and is not perpetrated by Greece’s poor.
description of the U.S.-supported deregulation and privatization policies, accompanied by austerity demands, that have been imposed on struggling countries around the world since the 1970s. These policies haven’t worked, but they continue to be applied. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, and that seems to be what Germany wants to do with Greece.
…by what logic countries insist on applying a method that has been consistently shown not to work. Who benefits? I’m not even convinced that the rich do, at least in the long run.
as per somervilletom’s example of the wealthy Greek investors who then fled the country.
Is a culture that does all it can to avoid paying taxes.
In Greece hairdressers can retire with a full pension at 50 years old. It is considered a hazardous job because they work with chemicals.
…why given that they both are EU members this is not more of an all-in-this-together situation, especially with a single currency. Did Greece really borrow THAT much from Germany. The US owes China quite a bit too, but they don’t have us over a barrel like this, right?
The Greeks are tied to the Euro, which in turn is largely controlled by Germany.
The relationship is more akin to a homeowner facing foreclosure than a sovereign nation controlling its domestic economy.
..seems all the more reason this wouldn’t and shouldn’t happen. The US is among other things a monetary union. I can’t imagine California, which I’ve heard is the 7th largest economy in the world in its own right, trying or getting away with treating, say, Alabama or Mississippi this way.
with a single economy.
A (very rough) analogy can be made between the EuroZone and the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation.
(Or Brüderlichkeit, for that matter)
They’re perfectly willing to throw the other members of the “Union” under then bus when it’s politically expedient. As much as the States occasionally get into little tifts, we all think of ourselves as one nation and have for a good century and half now.
and in our Republic each state has two senators.
For a long time, we’ve treated democracy as providing the best for the most constituents – and as aa guarantee against totalitarianism.
But we tend to forget an inconvenient truth: Germany was also a democracy in 1933 when Hitler was elected to a Reichstag majority.
As Churchill used to say, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”
Perhaps what we should ask is what, systemically, has enabled a cheap demagogue to shoot to the top in one of the main parties in this country.
Is it lack of mass participation in actual decisions of federal policy – in other words, is it the fact that Washington has for too long decided minute things of policy behind closed door?
Is it economic problems after the Great Recession?
Is it the dumbing down of cable and on-the-air TV at the hours of maximum audience? The fact that the written press does not penetrate anymore the public at large?
The fact that few trust or even listen to the ‘elite’ punditry which makes up the political commentariat?
Or all of the above?
Here is a good thumbnail history of what happened:
It’s true that Hitler wasn’t elected in a straight up-or-down “51% for Hitler and 49% for the other guy” sense, but he did come in to power the same way any other leader of the Weimar Republic did, by building a coalition. This is the way that leaders come to power in lots of Parliamentary democracies.
You might as well say “Actually Tony Blair was not elected” or “Actually Winston Churchill was not elected.”
So it does seem odd that their leader got the Chancellorship. Von Pepin thought that by giving Hitler responsibility he would dial it back. Blair and Churchill were the leaders of the party with the most seats and Blair I know for sure governed with an outright majority.
It doesn’t really seem odd in a Weimar context. If I remember correctly, the Social Democrats won the most seats in every Weimar election until the end, yet they only had two or three Chancellors at the beginning.
I’m not really trying to criticize anyone’s position, I’m trying to say that it’s really an apples-to-oranges comparison. In the US, it is very unusual to have a leader who has lost the popular vote, it’s only happened four times. In a parliamentary system like the UK or the Weimar Republic, it happens much more frequently and can seem to become a fairly normal part of the process.
…or at least the first chance to form a government. In the last UK parliament David Cameron rather than Nick Clegg was PM because of the two parties in the coalition, Tories had more seats. If Lib Dems had more seats Clegg would probably have been PM. By that logic Hitler should have been at best Vice-Chancellor.
July 1932?
November 1932?
1933?
(Apologies, I had to wiki a bit, my Weimar history is pretty rusty).
If anything, “by that logic,” Hitler would have become Chancellor even earlier.
The real problem is that the pro Democracy parties lacked a majority, as the Nazis and KPD had a majority between them.
The centrist and center-right parties that didn’t join Hitler’s coalition did ultimately vote for the Enabeling Act that allowed the Nazis to complete their takeover. Only the SPD had the guts to vote no. (The KPD MPs had been arrested under the Reichstag Fire Decree, so were not present.)
Running to the left on economic issues and hard to the right on social issues. Dems used to win this way all the time in red states before our current climate of hyper polarization really began in the mid-1990s. I think the last Presidential candidate to really run on that platform was probably George Wallace, but William Jennings Bryan is another great example.
…on social issues Trump is all over the map: he’s voiced support for social security and medicaid and is squishy on abortion and has, to my knowledge, said nothing whatsoever regarding same sex marriage.
Trump is running on being a strongman. He’s the one who knows what needs to be done, how to do it and with the balls to get it done. If anything, Hitler analogies aside, he’s running on a Stalinist model. He’s the biggest of big brothers.
It shatters a number of myths and misconceptions held on both the left and right about Trump. If I have one quibble about the post, it has to do with the last line that Trump’s brand of fascism is a “worrisome development in American politics.” I think this goes beyond worrisome into the realm of alarming.
I’m not sure there really is an American form of fascism. Our governmental system is, of course, based on constitutional checks and balances between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. As David points out, fascism is totalitarian; and if Trump really is a closet fascist, if you will, then he must ultimately favor a totalitarian system.
There is no question but that our democratic, two-party political system has been corrupted by special interest power and money. But the answer shouldn’t be to toss out the two-party system and to move toward an all-powerful executive and ultimately totalitarianism. The answer is to address the corruption, which is what, I think, another outsider — Bernie Sanders — is trying to do. Of course, Sanders’ message is a lot more difficult to convey, especially to an equally corrupt media, than a bunch of neo-fascist slogans.
We may well have entered a period of history in which someone with a fascist agenda is able to galvanize enough political support to rise to power, even in this country. If Trump is that man, and if he is indeed a supporter of totalitarianism, then I’m more than worried.
missing what Trump is. ScottMass12 writes, “It’s basically because people feel the system is corrupt.” Bullshit. It’s worse than that. He’s not alone here in his belief, but the idea that people support him because they are angry at the establishment or the system misses the point. There’s more than that going on here. Trump encourages his people to beat up protesters. He lies and calls everyone else liars and people applaud because he “tells it like it is.” And the guy is quite likely to be the GOP candidate for president.
Something big is going on here, so big that we’re having a hard time understanding it.
This is not new, and is the the harvest of what the GOP has been planting for decades. I encourage you to read Al Gore’s 2007 book, “The Assualt on Reason. From the Amazon blurb:
I absolutely agree that this is big. I think some of us have understood it for quite a long time. I hope it is not too late to put a stop to it.
I’ll tell you that demanding “tolerance” and “empathy” for vicious thugs who beat people up because they hold a sign — or for sociopaths who cheer on such thugs — is NOT part of the solution.
would have burnt out by now. I was looking at Rubio vs Clinton, and hoping Gary Johnson would be invited to the debates. The Trump camp is being hijacked by a small group who are racist, in the same manner the Tea Party drove the Republican agenda, disproportionate to their actual numbers. Trump is not disavowing the racists like he should.
I still believe most the anger in both parties is general dissatisfaction with a view of a corrupt Washington. If he picks Mia Love as he running mate and shuns the racists he will be our next president.
are simply driven by his economic populism, why aren’t they supporting Bernie Sanders? Democrats are defecting to support Trump. Why aren’t they supporting Sanders? He’s running as a Democrat. He’s addressing the same economic concerns. His policy proposals are much more concrete than those of Trump. Why aren’t those folks supporting Bernie?
I watched Trump speaking in Dayton yesterday. Everyone else is wrong. He is right. Everyone who supports him is right. He shows little or no understanding of serious problems, casts them as simple, and provides himself as the answer. Trump supporters say the same couple of things: he’s not politically correct, meaning he says what people are thinking 2) he’s not beholden to anyone.
Trump is not going to disavow racists. He’s actively courting them. His son just appeared on “The Political Cesspool,” a white supremacist radio talk show. Not every Trump supporter is a racist, and working-class disgust with government has definitely triggered his supporters’ anger and fear, but his response to them is more than what triggered them.
It surprises me also. Couple of weeks ago I was talking to a first generation immigrant from South America (a real estate broker in Orlando) and he was as ardent a Trump guy as you could find. I go out of my way to talk to as many people as I can and the variety of Trump people surprises me.
Driving down a major street in Fort Myers yesterday and saw 10-15 Bernie people, 6-7 Trump (all with homemade signs), no one else. Trump is running some nasty commercials against Rubio down here, he’s playing to win.
If I were a Hillary supporter I would worry about Donald showing up at the first debate with some cancelled checks made out to a Clinton campaign
and playing up the “I can’t be bought” theme, that is what is playing well with many of the people I talk to.
It might also (sadly) be the dumbing down of America. Jerry Springer, any Kardashian, set them up with a single phrase slogan and they’re off to the races.
Some have said Trump or Sanders, pox on the rest. Heck, I know some who think that. But, there are also folks for whom “economic populism” means “economic populism for white male blue collar jobs.” They won’t find solace in Sanders.
and hell will freeze over before the Racist-in-Chief shuns his racist minions.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Just One disagreement with this fascinating post. Don’t miss the blog statement distributed by Kos of the two young Bernie supporters who went to a Trump rally just to listen. They overheard people saying ‘yeah we’re going to get rid of them,’ and it sounded to the two young men like they were not talking about just taking these people out of the rally but something broader.
So when you say that so far Trump has not talked about the all encompassing state, I don’t agree. What’s implied here is that these people who the Trumplings are sick of – people who are politically correct, people who talk down to them etc. etc. – we’re going to get rid of them. In my interpretation, this means they cannot be part of our state and they’re not really Americans.
You clearly agree, this is not stuff to be ignored – especially when it is reasonably easily defeated with mobilization.
Later on it might not be so easy.
Terry McGinty
This is the source of the comparisons to Hitler and Mussolini. The combination of building a personality cult and simultaneously inciting supporters to violence threatens the very fabric of any democracy.
I am more worried by the support he seems to be receiving than by Mr. Trump himself. I wonder how widespread it really is, and I wonder how accurately the mainstream media actually portrays reality.
Perhaps the Democratic nominee can turn this into the time-tested good-cop/bad-cop routine:
that his rhetoric has changed in the respect you identify from when I originally wrote this post. It’s a remarkable phenomenon, as fascinating as it is scary.