Behold: A Fascist!

Like a dam bursting, it has finally happened: Donald Trump is called what he assuredly is – a fascist. The press has skirted around using the term to describe Trump, as it has danced around a robust depiction of Trump as a deranged, severely disturbed, mentally ill man. Donald Trump is a flagrant liar, a pathological narcissist, a man lacking in any capacity for empathy or social caring. These characteristics are not merely descriptions of a particular personality type. They are characteristics that place Trump beyond the pale of qualification to hold any office requiring social responsibility. Beyond the psychological disqualifications, Donald Trump does not read, and he is a phenomenally incurious and intellectually small man who has never held a government position until he was elected to the presidency. I would conclude that he has not read the Constitution, and doesn’t understand or care to understand how democracies are supposed to function. Yet, there has been a sheen of normalcy placed over a condition, and a man, that is anything but normal.

I believe the media have been irresponsible in how they have depicted Trump. The stakes have become higher as the election has moved closer. Here, the media’s venerable tradition of seeking fairness and evenhandedness gets in the way, and in this case, needs to be reworked. If person “A” states that the earth is spherical, there is no requirement that equal time be given to person “B” who wishes to make the case that the earth is flat. Trump’s position with regard to the presidency and the welfare of the American state is analogous. Partisan politics conventionally has involved dispute over matters of policy tagged to articulated political philosophies. There is a framework and there are underlying fundamental principles in which political contestation and struggle are carried out, indeed, must be carried out.

The most comprehensive framework for political engagement is the U.S. Constitution. In briefest terms, it not only lays out the ground rules for how our government functions, it shapes the kind of nation we are, and even the ideals that inspire our actions. The fundamental principles our democratic practices must employ are a respect for the truth, a regard for the rules of evidence, and an appreciation for the well-being of all.

Like the flat-earther, Donald Trump lives in, and implicitly advocates for, an alternative universe. His persona and politics place him outside the consensus of how the United States has defined itself and how it functions. He might find himself better suited to a nation characterized by ingrained dictatorship, sown with vindictive violence engaged by power-hungry “strong men” without a tradition of rights and adherence to the rule of law. But such is not this country, and Donald Trump’s interests and politics are simply alien to what we are about. They are literally un-American in the fullest sense of the term. As a political figure he is off the charts and in a different category, and needs to be treated as such.

Given the commitment of the media to report the facts without bias, how could they have depicted Trump to the American public? Facts are facts, and the supervening fact of greatest consequence is Trump’s defective character. As implied, the reality of his character until relatively recently, has been ignored or soft-pedaled. I think it has behooved the media when citing Trump to preface each report with a word to the effect that what you will hear are the utterances of a severely disturbed person, and that reality needs to be factored into your evaluation of what is reported. We are simply not dealing with equals or an even playing field, but with an extraordinary actor whose aggressive disregard of the rules and norms of the game need to be taken into account.

Finally, the media seems to have come around, but to my consternation and worry, it may be too little and too late.

The New York Times, in a front-page article of October 18^th, reported that Democrats have lost their fear of calling Donald Trump a fascist. What opened the door, was a quote in Bob Woodward’s latest book from General Mark. A. Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under Trump. Milley described his former boss “as fascist to the core.” Placing this in perspective, let’s recall that Donald Trump not long ago called for General Milley’s execution. Hence Trump’s acolytes should not be too upset with Trump’s opponents merely stating the obvious.

Since Milley rendered his observation, Hillary Clinton and Liz Cheney have concurred, and so has Kamala Harris. This shift in language has attracted press of its own. But the issue made of it implicitly reveals how milquetoast the press has been in covering Trump, his utterances and behaviors. I don’t know Trump personally, but at least since he entered the political arena, and certainly since his first presidential term, Trump’s fascistic capacities have been unequivocally evident to me.

And so, I can only ask, why have they not, all along, been equally evident to others? One notable exception, whomI hold in the highest regard, is Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an authority on the rise of fascism in mid-century. In 2017, Snyder published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Considering the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, in the face of Trump’s excesses many, including experts, skirted around the question of whether it can happen here. Snyder to his credit was unequivocal. Yes, it can. Given the critical importance of the dangers we faced, I bought several dozen copies of the book which I gave to my Columbia Human Rights students.

But why has the press been so restrained in calling out Trump as he is? Beyond the reasons just cited, I think the word “fascism” comes with extraordinarily heavy historical baggage. Beyond Mussolini, what comes to mind is the rounding up of six million Jews, the concentration camps, gas chambers and crematoria. It suggests the total suppression of individualism and individual liberties, and fanaticism that led to a war in which more than 60 million people were killed.

But fascism is also an imprecise term and without a clear definition, it readily lends itself to name calling. But none of these reasons exonerates the press for failing to describe Trump as the facts have long warranted.

But we can ask what is fascism, and can we feel confident that Donald Trump meets the definition?

At first glance, the answer may not be readily at hand. Different historians and political theorists have different descriptions. One reason for the vagueness is probably because fascism. unlike conservatism, liberalism or socialism, does not have much of an intellectual genealogy. Conservatism, liberalism and socialism, which all came of age in the nineteenth century, are each rooted in rich philosophical traditions, and one can readily identify philosophers and thinkers who developed these ideas with great rigor. Fascism, which emerged in the twentieth century, lacks an intellectual tradition. In fact, it has no fixed ideology or philosophy at its center. Rather, fascism is a congeries of actions, dispositions, and political behaviors from which one can infer certain ideas, but it seems to lack a distinct, coherent philosophy at its core. According to Columbia University historian Robert Paxton in his seminal book The Anatomy of Fascism, “Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program.” That does sound a lot like Donald Trump. Speaking of fascism’s emergence in the mid-twentieth century, Paxton says the following:

Fascism…was a new invention created afresh for the era of mass politics. It sought to appeal mainly to the emotions by the use of ritual, carefully staged ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric…Fascism does not rest explicitly upon an elaborated philosophical system, but rather upon popular feelings about master races, their unjust lot, and their predominance over inferior peoples.

At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manicahean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one’s community or nation has been the victim.

Fascism, Paxton argues, is founded in what he refers to as “mobilizing passions.” In his view fascism is more a matter of the gut than the brain. Among its “mobilizing passions” are the following:

1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

2. the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right… and the subordination of the individual to it;
3. the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
4. dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
5. the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by violence if necessary;
6. the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;
7. the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.
8. the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;

9. the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law…

In the article just cited, Timothy Snyder adds to the list:

“a government framed around choosing of its enemies more than the helping of its citizens; the honoring not of an office but of a ‘capital-L leader,’ and the building of cult around him; and the creation of a Big Lie.”

I leave it to my readers to conclude whether Trump fits this definition.