This article was featured in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. Sign up for free to get it delivered to your inbox. here.
CNN
—
This week, Americans and Europeans celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy, when Allied forces invaded occupied France and marked the beginning of the end of Fascist regimes in Europe.
Former President Donald Trump, who was convicted last week of falsifying business records, has advanced an unfounded conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden is behind his prosecution in Manhattan and said Americans today live in a “fascist state.”
It was an ironic refrain for Trump, as throughout his rise scholars and pundits have debated whether his personality cult leaned toward a kind of fascism, but convincing critics is a specialty of the former president.
Robert Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University who has written extensively about European fascism, had rejected the label of Trump as fascist until January 6, 2021, but the historian argued that images of Trump’s supporters storming the U.S. Capitol “erase my objections to the fascist label.”
The debate about whether Trump is leaning toward fascism has been reignited several times this year after his ardent supporters crushed worthy challengers to the Republican presidential nomination.
Trump has repeatedly used language associated with Nazis, including saying immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country. Last month, his campaign distributed then removed a video of his supporters promising a “united empire” if he was re-elected.
New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat scrutinized all the images in the video and concluded, telling CNN Opinion, that the video was “reminiscent of the fascist propaganda I have studied for years.”
There are certainly some elements of fascism in Trump’s current campaign: a charismatic leader, a nationalistic outlook fuelled by fears of immigrants, and discontent following his 2020 election defeat.
His supporters plan to use Trump’s second term to dismantle parts of the civil service and remake the government to be more amenable to his will.
His sense of persecution is even more compelling as he faces criminal charges. Trump has consistently hinted that he plans to retaliate against his political rival, Biden, for a conviction.
Pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity repeatedly said Wednesday They asked President Trump to rule out using the Justice Department as an instrument of revenge, but he gave a rambling response to the question.
“This has to stop or we won’t have a country,” Trump said, suggesting he would not weaponize the Justice Department, but said he was perfectly within his right to prosecute his political opponents.
“Look, once this election is over, I have every right to go after them based on what they’ve done, and it’s easy because it’s Joe Biden,” the former president said.
This is less definitive than the social media posts Trump made last year in which he assuredly promised to appoint a special counsel to “go after” Biden if he won, but it’s not a categorical no.
When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio about Trump’s claim that the United States is a “fascist nation,” Vance, who CNN reported was being considered as Trump’s running mate, did not deny the idea.
“I don’t care what you call it, but this is not the America that I know and love,” Vance said during the tense exchange.
look:
01:26 – Source: CNN
Trump calls America a “fascist nation.” Hear the response from the vice presidential candidate
At the moment, comparisons between the current situation and the rise of fascism are being made everywhere, even when the focus is not directly on Trump.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, penned an op-ed in The New York Times on the anniversary of Sen. Normandy’s inauguration titled “We Can’t Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s.” The op-ed made no mention of Trump.
McConnell is set to step down as Senate Republican leader in November in part because his party has moved away from the “arsenal of democracy” view of American power that he and other legacy Republicans espouse toward the isolationist, pro-Vladimir Putin view of foreign policy promoted by President Trump.
While McConnell maintained that it was right for the Senate to honor the soldiers of Normandy, he argued that we often forget why they had to fight in the first place.
“We forget that influential isolationists have convinced millions of Americans that the fate of our allies and partners has little to do with America’s own security and prosperity,” McConnell wrote. “We despise powerful political forces that have sought to downplay growing dangers, deny assistance to our allies and partners, and limit our ability to defend our national interests.”
I spoke with Daniel Steinmetz Jenkins, an assistant professor at Wesleyan University and editor of a new book that includes Paxton’s work, “Did It Happen Here? Fascism and the American Perspective.” And many more.
“The historical comparative model of looking at what happened in Germany in the 1930s and using that as a navigation device or map to understand what’s going on today is very common,” he said, but some argue that the comparison is flawed.
“Concepts do not have a timeless essence that can be applied to any phenomenon, but change depending on the political context and power structures in society,” he said.
Today, the word “fascism” It will be used to “mobilize people to overcome divisions and defeat an enemy much larger than their long-standing conflicts.”
Steinmetz Jenkins argued that there is a long history of US politicians on both sides of the political aisle trying to label their opponents as “fascists” dating back to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and that there are also examples of US lawmakers threatening to investigate their opponents.
Some agree with the comparison to fascism, but others disagree, especially as Trump’s rise to power mirrors populist and white nationalist movements closer to home in American history.
For example, Rep. Byron Donald, a black Republican from Florida and one of Trump’s running mates for vice president, has had to explain his claim that the U.S. social security system has divided black families and that they were more united during the horrors of racial segregation legalized under America’s Jim Crow laws, which were modeled on the Nazis.
“During Jim Crow, black families stayed together,” Donald said in comments first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer. He tried to explain his comments to CNN’s Abby Phillips on Wednesday, arguing that he wasn’t expressing nostalgia for the Jim Crow era, but rather trying to make the case that marriage rates were higher during that time. It was a complicated argument for him, to say the least.
05:05 – Source: CNN
Congressman Byron Donald was asked to explain his comments about Jim Crow laws. Listen to his response.
Donald tried to argue that today’s ideological divisions between the political parties should be understood as a time when some Southern Democrats opposed civil rights legislation and some Northern Republicans supported it.
Now, with the political parties becoming even more divided regionally, with Democrats losing most of their influence in the South and Republicans losing most of their influence in the North, the political parties have realigned around conservative and liberal ideologies, a process that continues today as the Republican Party realigns around Trumpism.
