TheProgressivePatriot
Platinum Member
Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler, but he is a Fascist: here are an Italian expertâs reasons why
For the past 25 years, Godwinâs Law has been useful for preventing careless headline writers, commenters in article threads, and other participants in discussions from recklessly invoking comparisons to Adolf Hitler when looking for the rhetorical ace to win an argument or make a point. But what happens when one of the major-party candidates makes speeches and proclaims policies that sound familiar in ways that are so disturbing that both the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party have proclaimed their support for him? Is it okay to break Godwinâs Law then?
When Eco died, I wrote a literary tribute to him in which I took his most famous essay in English, âUr-Fascism,â originally published in the New York Review of Books in 1995, and frequently referred to as â14 ways of looking at a Black Shirt (Fascist)â and used those 14 points to examine Donald Trumpâs rhetorical style and campaign positions. Now, six months later, I grow more convinced that Eco has provided us with a blueprint for understanding that Donald Trump is a Fascist, and that a failure to recognize that connection downplays the danger that a Trump presidency would pose for a large number of Americans.
What matters to Fascists, according to Eco, is âaction for actionâs sake,â where âthinking is a form of emasculation.â Anyone who has ever tried to parse Trump sentences in order to tease out the rational thought behind them may wonder why they are so effective, but that mixture of macho swagger and âwe donât need no stinkinâ badgesâ claim to authority is working. When Trump casually mentions that perhaps Second Amendment followers will have to stop Hillary Clinton, the threat is not only clear, but the triumph of action over words is proclaimed from the podium.