Killing anyone not of the master race is very much not inherent to fascism, see Italy, but she is at least accidentally right that Trump isn't a fascist. He likes certain superficial allusions to fascism, but I don't think there's any real difference in his mind between Hitler, Xi, and Putin (not unlike many neoliberals), he just thinks "Strong, intelligent man with power over a country" but he's also too cowardly to rock the boat as hard as Hitler did and doesn't really understand any of Hitler's ideology beyond "Aryan good, non-Aryan bad, Jew evil", something that we don't have evidence for him believing beyond the way Aryanism permeates most white American culture.

She does, at least accidentally, have the point that Trump doesn't have a paramilitary or anything like it. He has enabled death squads at the border, but, well, at least as far as I know, we don't have evidence either that they are loyal to him or that they'd be willing to turn their guns on either American civilians or on cops. The people Trump has are a huge mass of car pool cleaning equipment dealers, of whom a fraction of a percent are willing to draw blood or even fire a warning shot in his name. That's not a militia, that's just a somewhat rowdy fan base.

Also he just, like, clearly doesn't have the ambition to smash the mechanisms in place to limit presidential power. He had lots of chance to try that and the most you can really say is he abused what was already there with executive orders, something he is not alone in doing.

She's still an absurd reactionary and the accolades she cites are all equally absurd. For example, he didn't want the liability to his image of starting a new war [nor did he have a pressing reason to start one] and spun it to his convenience.

[–] UlyssesT@hexbear.net 10 points 5 days ago

She does, at least accidentally, have the point that Trump doesn't have a paramilitary or anything like it.

The "Proud Boys" wanted to be that very, very badly, and even got senpai to notice them sometimes like with that "stand by" speech.

[–] GoodGuyWithACat@hexbear.net 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Interesting point about Trump not having brown shirts, however the militarized police state makes that facet of fascism redundant. During 2020, Homeland security forces were abducting Americans in white vans. We're not at this stage yet, but I don't think it would take much for Trump (or any conservative) in power to turn the various police forces onto the people with more aggression. Any sort of fake national security threat or putsch hall event could be enough to go whole hog, but the tools are already there on the table.

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago

The point of brown shirts, at least as I understand it, is that they help you to gain control of the state, since either you don't hold office and therefore don't hold authority over the cops, etc., or you do hold office and the cops, etc., are mostly more interested in preserving the institutions that employ them than they are in a revolt. Fascism doesn't just happen when a fascist takes the highest office (if he even does), he needs a dedicated base of power to overthrow the government.

That's not the only thing brown shirts did, but it's important to note that once Hitler was sufficiently close to becoming an autocrat, the brown shirts were perceived as a liability due to their independent ambitions and were liquidated in an agreement with the actual German military, which was expedient for gaining their cooperation.

I don't have the firmest grasp on this history, admittedly, but I think this much is solid.