Fascism is probably the most egregiously and frequently misused term in political discourse, certainly here in the United States. The term is irresponsibly hurled in partisan attacks and sensational headlines. Such reckless usage is to an extent understandable, given the term’s weight and the lack of complete comprehension amongst the masses. I hope to bring into the limelight, to the best of my ability, how I think the Trump administration is history repeating itself, in a textbook fashion, fascism.
The ideology cannot be holistically defined in one-sentence quips. However, experts agree fascism is a “mass political movement” with “extreme nationalism, militarism and the supremacy of the nation over the individual.” I would argue that, out of the said experts, Oxford Professor Roger Griffin’s definition is most pertinent.
“Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism,” said Griffin.
The ideology revolves around the notion of purity, a national rebirth, if you will; it thrives on fear and demands the conformity and obedience of its people to an idealized nation-state. From that, as UC Berkeley professor and former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich argues, generally, fascists can be identified by “their hate for the ‘other,’ vengeful nationalism and repression of dissent.”
Which now begs the question: what about the Trump administration? Before I answer, I would be lying if I said I do not fear what will happen to me as I articulate my thoughts into words akin to Rumeysa Ozturk. Should it come to it and my motives or loyalty be questioned, I wish to invoke this quote by James Baldwin that perfectly encapsulates this piece’s purpose,
“I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually,” said Baldwin.
To be clear: my analysis will focus on Nazi fascism as a lens, not as a claim that it is the only form fascism can take. I use that particular lens because it exposes a set of recurring mechanisms and patterns.
The Trump administration’s execution of “ultra-nationalism,” “vengeful nationalism” and “hate for the other” is displayed by topics including but not limited to his “poisoning blood” rhetoric, targeting disabled communities, targeting people on the autism spectrum, targeting people of color (e.g., labeling Mexican migrants as rapists, pledging to ban all Muslims, unconstitutional ICE raids and DEI pushback), repeated attacks on democracy (e.g., provoking political violence and election denialism) and vilification of the press. For the sake of keeping this piece short and sweet, I will address only the lesser-known and often overlooked from the aforementioned list.
In Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he warned that “blood poisoning” through mixing with “inferior races” would destroy cultures; Hitler believed in a chauvinistic, racial hierarchy that placed Aryans at the top and deemed all others as inferior. Trump’s invocation of “poisoned blood” mirrors this same biological nationalism, provoking the same chauvinistic idea that a nation’s strength is rooted in the purity of its people rather than the diversity of its citizenry.
The beauty of America lies in being a melting pot of diverse immigrants. So much so, there exists this ingrained, institutionalized and normalized etymology of the hyphen-American label (e.g., Mexican-American, Filipino-American). All the while, our friends across the pond do not have the label, let alone the hyphen. Immigrants are the beauty and backbone of our nation, yet Trump’s fascist regime seeks to villainize us in a downtrodden and cruel manner.
Through Hitler’s Aktion T4 program, Nazi Germany murdered more than 275,000 disabled people. Nazi ideology justified such killings, given that they deemed them “burdens.” In the same neglectful manner, the Trump Administration denied care to disabled students and normalized cruelty via policy by cutting funding for special education programs, including those supporting students who are deaf-blind and on the autism spectrum.
On the note of autism, Trump has framed the rhetoric that autism diagnoses are to rise to “one in 31” by 2025 and that the painkiller Tylenol is linked to autism. The Trump administration treats such falsehoods as a weapon in its propaganda machine to stir fear rather than provide care.
Akin to this, Hitler’s eugenics propaganda framed disability as a disease, making society believe that to achieve a pure “[non-]blood-poisoned” society, it had to erase disabled lives. Though Trump is not mass-killing the disabled, the same fascist philosophy of ultra nationalism still stands, as seen by devaluing people because of what and who they are.
On the other hand, concerning “repression of dissent” and “supremacy of the nation over the individual,” we saw the Trump administration capitalize on Kirk’s assassination by silencing and prosecuting political opponents, having media blame the Democratic left by connecting the shooter to their LGBTQIA+ values, controlling the press and suspending “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for supposed “anti-Trump rhetoric.” These are not the only instances; they are simply the most recent ones.
Of the handful, targeted crusades on political opponents included the Ford Foundation. A concerning facet of their campaign was the “disbandment of liberal institutions” through the revocation of their tax-exempt status. Trump intends to claim he can achieve this through an executive order by labeling them as “terrorist” organizations. Nazi Germany under Hitler saw similar purging, wherein independent organizations and media outlets were systematically dismantled through the Gleichschaltung process under the guise of “protecting national security.”
Following Kirk’s assassination, the U.S. saw media outlets promptly reporting unverified claims about the shooter’s motives. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ reports, many of the alleged ties are to “transgender and antifascist ideology,” and are based predominantly on social media chatter and rumors. Consequently, outlets like the Wall Street Journal took it to extreme lengths of asserting there was a direct connection between the shooter and the transgender community in an article that the Human Rights Campaign, the most prominent LGBTQ rights advocacy group, has since requested to be removed. Media response blaming the a minority group that is the trans community uncannily mirrors Hitler’s propaganda machine under Goebbels, who, according to experts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, implemented “antisemitic lies and stereotypes to dehumanize Jewish people and blame them for Germany’s ills” everywhere, including but not limited to “radio, posters to press—even in children’s books.”
Appalling, the targeting of minority groups has become so apparent and blatant that even government officials have openly expressed fears over the identities of those involved. During the press conference on the arrest of Kirk’s suspected shooter, Republican Utah Governor Spencer Cox stated:
“I was praying that if this had to happen here, that it wouldn’t be one of us — that somebody drove from another state, somebody came from another country,” said Cox.
Cox’s remark, perhaps made in grief, displays the fascist exclusionary, “dissent for others” mindset, given he implies that violence is somehow more tolerable when it comes from the “other,” in this case, trans people, reaffirming the dangerous belief that belonging determines moral worth.
Additionally, under Hitler’s reign, Nazi Germany saw independent newspapers shut down or co-opted, with their journalists being forced into the propaganda machine. This was done through implementing laws that criminalized independent reporting and made all the press subject to Nazi approval. All the while, via the Trump Administration’s Pentagon, they recently demanded that reporters sign pledges not to publish “certain information,” even if it’s true. This parallel is unfathomably chilling. In the exact same manner, both regimes control the narrative by restricting access to truth, blurring the line between information and indoctrination. For Nazi Germany, its censorship was credited under the guise of national unity and national security to justify persecution and war. All the while, for the present-day U.S., censorship is also credited under the guise of “national security” to justify suppressing dissent.
What is to become of the United States of America?
As much as I wish to cover more, mere words and a short Suffolk Journal opinion piece cannot cover the entirety of the administration’s fascism. All in all, we may not be historians, political science experts or legislators, but so long as we wield our strength in numbers, being revolutionarily loud, Trump’s fascist regime will not go unnoticed.
