Kruse: Where is Trump in his own timeline? Is he in your estimation getting weaker, getting stronger, in a holding pattern?

Trump a fascist? 8 experts weigh in. - Vox Is Trump a fascist? 8 experts weigh in. - Vox

Those who bemoan Trump’s effect on democracy complain that he did not adhere to the established norms of the presidency. That is correct; he is, at heart, a dictator. But let’s start by distinguishing between norms and institutions. Norms are different from laws; they are not enforceable and they evolve. In contrast, democratic institutions are based in law and entail real consequences. Changes in norms can in fact lead to changes in law and in democratic institutions—this has happened in many of the countries in eastern Europe and Latin America that have slipped into pseudo-democracy or autocracy. [1] But in spite of Donald Trump’s best efforts it has not happened here. At least not yet. In Guatemala, after peace negotiations put an end to its three-decade long internal war, with a blanket amnesty for human rights crime, the victors—the army, the rich, the establishment political parties—called for forgiveness. It’s time to heal. Our long nightmare has ended. Forget the past and forgive. But the Catholic Church’s preeminent human rights leader, Bishop Juan Gerardi, knew that really there can’t be forgiveness without some accountability, without justice. Standing up for that principle cost him his life. He was bludgeoned to death in his parish house garage days after presiding over the release of a Catholic Church-sponsored human rights report that exposed military officers to possible war crimes trials. In Guatemala, despite some victories, despite its at times laughable democratic facade, the only haphazardly disguised iron grip of dictatorship survives.Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist with antisocial proclivities and a core sadism. It is this combination of psychopathology that leads him to be intensely attracted to the powers of a dictator. Indeed, Trump has proven repeatedly that he wants America to be an autocracy , not a democracy. He has systemically and purposefully guided our country toward dictatorial rule during the past four years. He has frequently embraced, admired, complimented, envied and even fawned over autocratic leaders throughout the world. Trump is unfit to be president. He represents a clear and present danger to our democratic way of life. The psychopathology that underlies and fuels his wish to be an authoritarian dictator is severely malignant. Hutchinson said that after a White House meeting with Meadows on January 2, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani asked if she was excited by what was on tap for January 6. He told her, “We’re going to the Capitol. The president is going to be there. He’s going to look powerful.” She also spoke of extensive intelligence from the Secret Service, the Capitol Police and the FBI of armed paramilitary organizations such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers planning to occupy federal buildings and target Congress on January 6.

This Is How Trump Becomes a Dictator | The Nation

In other respects, Trump’s style of politics recalls portions of the career of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Like Milošević, Trump has promoted a very hierarchical, ethnically based ultranationalist vision that endorses violence against out-groups but without building up a single party the way interwar fascists did. Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky professor of philosophy, Yale University Trump isn’t a dictator, of course. He just acts like and reminds us of a dictator. Trump is like a dictator. A sub-headline in the November 10th New York Times read: “President Trump’s iron grip on his party has inspired love for him among many Republican lawmakers and fear in others.” Usually we think of dictators—“Dear Leader”—inspiring love and fear with their iron grip, not democratically-elected leaders. Trump’s circle of advisors, his supporters in government, act like the advisors and supporters in a classic dictatorship, utterly subservient, but also conniving and corrupt sycophants, fattening off the dictator’s delusions and lies. His most fanatical followers remind us of the fanatical followers of a dictator, worshipful, credulous of every lie, fevered by his rhetorical poison, because every dictatorship presumes a pact with violence and hatred of an enemy that needs to be stigmatized, subjugated, defended against, crushed. Otherwise, there would be no need for a dictator, or a dictator-like president, there would merely be an opposition, with its competing vision and ideas about how to govern; after an election, the winner would win, the loser would accept his or her defeat, and peace and civic seriousness, an essentially agreed upon common public reality, would reign. Obviously that’s not even close to what is happening in the United States of American today. We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine,” Thomas Homer-Dixon, founding director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University in British Columbia, wrote in the Globe and Mail.The Constitution distributes power between the federal government and the state government, codified in the 10 th Amendment to the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” It took Trump a long time to understand this but states have repeatedly exercised their power against Trump, especially in two areas; COVID-19 and voting.

Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Hide His Authoritarian Donald Trump Isn’t Even Trying to Hide His Authoritarian

When Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia in 1999, he did not become dictator overnight. It took him many years to crush independent media, make the oligarch class dependent on him, and suppress organized political opposition (in part through multiple assassinations and imprisonments). That process of power consolidation has accelerated since the invasion of Ukraine, as the former “hybrid regime” with some tacit limited freedoms has become a full-blown autocracy. But most experts did not even go that far, and some expressed concern that describing Trump as a fascist undermines the term and leads to a misanalysis of our current political situation. “If Trump was a fascist and we were in a situation akin to Germany in 1932 or Italy in 1921, certain kinds of actions would be justified,” Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College, says. “But we are not and they are not.”His relationship to democracy, I would really insist, is the key to answering whether he’s a fascist or not. Even in four years of incoherent and inconsistent tweets, he’s never actually done a Putin and tried to make himself a permanent president, let alone suggest any coherent plan for overthrowing the constitutional system. And I don’t even think that’s in his mind. He is an exploiter, he’s a freeloader. He’s a wheeler and dealer. And that is not the same as an ideologue. The most chilling moment of his encounter with Putin last weekend came when the two men bonded over their shared loathing of journalists: “ Get rid of them,” Trump said to his Kremlin counterpart, perhaps envious of the toll of 26 murdered journalists notched up in Russia during the Putin years.

Would-be dictator Donald Trump would be unstoppable in a Would-be dictator Donald Trump would be unstoppable in a

It’s all there, if you can bear to look at it. From the kleptocratic impulse – Trump pushing to meet foreign leaders at his hotels, so that he can profit – to his undisguised admiration for his fellow strongmen. Trump can’t get enough of Kim Jong-un, handing him another propaganda gift last weekend by setting foot in, and thereby legitimising, the slave state Kim rules so bloodily – and, once again, getting nothing in return. But in Osaka, at the G20 summit, he was also palling around with Mohammed bin Salman, even though the UN and the CIA both agree the Saudi leader was directly responsible for the violent murder of US resident Jamal Khashoggi. As for the simpering deference Trump shows Vladimir Putin, it’s a wonder Trump’s supporters describe him as a strongman at all: next to the Russian president, he looked like a teenager with a crush. This inquiry made a little sense four years ago, when Trump was still an unknown quantity, but now he has a record. Well — that’s pretty thin gruel. Nothing much to work with here. The Democrats won the first election under Trump [ the 2018 midterms], and I’m not aware of anything negative happening. Straining at gnats doesn’t really get us anywhere. Mostly these are just silly public remarks. Hitler’s place in history is not based on his remarks, nor for any temporary detention cages. Please do not trivialize. That indicates absence of an argument. Roger Griffin, emeritus professor in modern history, Oxford Brookes University

Francisco Goldman Considers What Happens Next

The Trump card game was once very popular; it was played in households worldwide. These days when you say the Trump card game, most people will think of Top Trumps. Kruse: So the answer I heard to the question — “Is America still a full democracy?” — was … maybe not? The term “fascist” regarding Trump continues to mislead rather than inform. But that cannot inure us to what Alexander Reid Ross has called the “fascist creep.” Stanley Payne, Jaume Vicens Vives and Hilldale professor emeritus of history, the University of Wisconsin Madison