WASHINGTON: Vice President Kamala Harris was asked this week if she thought Donald Trump was a fascist, and she replied,” Yes, I do”. She later claimed that voters do n’t want” a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.” She later called him the same thing.
But what exactly is a nazi? And when viewed through a traditional or political mirror, particularly so close to the conclusion of a contentious presidential race, does the meaning of the word change?
Here’s a closer search:
What is nazism? An conservative, ultranationalist political philosophy and activity. It is frequently associated with the extreme right and is characterized by a authoritarian leader who uses military force to thwart political and civil criticism.
Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in Germany and Roman tyrant Benito Mussolini were humankind’s two most well-known fascists. The National Fascist Party, which was led by Mussolini, was known as Il Duce, or” the duke,” and was represented by an eagle clutching a feathers, a pack of rod with an axe among them.
At Mussolini’s urging, in October 1922, thousands of” Blackshirts”, or” squadristi”, made up an armed fascist militia that marched on Rome, vowing to seize power. Hitler’s Nazis also relied on a militia, known as the” Brownshirts”. In the end, the two men imposed one-party law and encouraged street murder. They employed men, but they also caused unrest among civilians that trap loyalists against political rivals and larger swaths of common people.
Hitler and Mussolini censored the media and produced superior advertising. They fabricated the concerns of racism and manipulated both their regular citizens and their effective supporters.
The term fascism has a looser political definition today and is frequently used as a slam dunk for efforts to smuttle down oppression and racism as well as to criticize dictators or leaders who use autocratic methods.
The name is being used to denounce a force in the US and many other countries, but it is also used by the left. Lockdowns imposed during the coronavirus pandemic were decried as “fascist” by some liberals.
What other historical instances of authoritarianism can you name? Its two main brands, Mussolini and Hitler, are murky from it.
Does defense dictator Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year, ironfisted law in Chile qualify? What about Francisco Franco or Suharto, an Indonesian weightlifter? Were Plinio Salgado’s regimes in Brazil and Hungary totalitarian systems? Where does David Duke, the neo-Nazi leader in America healthy?
However, critics often describe current US radical groups- including movements that have cheered Trump, like the Proud Boys- as fascists or neo-fascists. These names may have more political philosophy than blatant historical parallels.
Why is Harris calling Trump a nazi? Trump has long been criticized by the vice president as being emotionally unstable and unfaithful to the country’s founding democratic principles.
She cites Trump’s suggestion to use the military to attack social critics, including those who he has described as the “enemy from within.” The former president has huge discussed attacking his rivals and said he would be “retribution” for them.
” He’s talking about the American people. He’s talking about editors, courts, democratic election authorities”, Harris said Wednesday evening at a CNN city hall.
Trump has threatened to punish news organizations and television networks for protection he finds hostile. And, when now-President Joe Biden challenged him during a 2020 argument to reject the Proud Boys, Trump replied:” Proud Boys, walk up and walk by”.
A crowd of pro-Trump followers stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, attempting to reject Trump’s defeat to Biden after Trump delivered a speech disseminating false election claims and exhorting the audience to “fight like hell.” The Proud Boys ‘ chief, who was accused of orchestrating a failed story to maintain Trump in power, was one of the people who were imprisoned in connection with January 6.
Harris has been building toward the description. Radio host Charlamagne Tha God said Trump was increasingly embracing fascism and that,” Why ca n’t we just say it” during an interview with her in Detroit on October 15. ” Yes, we can say that”, Harris replied.
Therefore, Trump’s longest-serving former chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, warned that the former chairman meets the definition of a fascist. He said Trump, while in office, suggested that Hitler “did some great points”, and that Trump valued private commitment above the Constitution.
Kelly’s campaign has accused her of lying, and Trump’s campaign has ignored Harris ‘ criticism, saying that Kamala will say anything to detract from her “open border war” and “record large prices.” Trump has described Jan. 6 as a “day of like”.
Trump himself disputed the fascist tag in a Fox News interview on Thursday.
” All knows that’s not true”, he said. They keep calling me until someone stones, they say.
What are the views of fascist authorities on Trump? They are divided.
Robert Paxton, a Columbia University professor professor who wrote” The Biology of Fascism”, has cited the Jan. 6 invasion as evidence of Trump’s authoritarianism.
Paxton told The New York Times Magazine in a bit released this week that “it’s bubbling up from the ground in pretty alarming way, and that’s very much like the classic fascisms.” ” It’s the real thing. It really is”.
Some believe that Trump is more in the way of the classic traditional explanation of a fascist, rather than a trend toward politics with fascist tendencies.
David Kertzer, a Brown University professor and Roman historian, said he was” a little frightened” to hear Harris call Trump a totalitarian given the season’s “historical frequency”. He said there are some resemblance, including “mass motion, a religion of the weightlifter”. He noted that Trump occasionally reaches out his neck, but unlike Mussolini, who is known for bareing his neck and pulling off his clothing, does so.
Kertzer said that authoritarianism involved” a one-party position, a discarding of all opposition media and jailing people who disagreed”, and that, while Trump has talked about jailing competitors, he’s not moved toward embracing other important elements of the action.
” There are certain sounds, but in terms of turning the Republican Party into a one-party condition, that seems rather farfetched at the moment”, said Kertzer, artist of” The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Fall of Nazism in Europe”.
David Clay Big, a senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies, said” the alarm bell then going off may be somewhat overstated”.
” Our political institutions, however besieged, keep significantly stronger than those of the Western nations that turned totalitarian in the’ 20s and ‘ 30s”, Big said. Also, he added, there would be” a true hazard to these organizations” in a second Trump presidential term.
The fall of far-right parties across Europe and Trump’s power of the GOP, Big said, carves out” an wholly new situation: The center don’t carry as it once did”.
Add to that mix social media, which in the digital age mirrors the use of propaganda, amping up emotions and division, he said.
” Where everyone’s an expert, we’ve lost respect for factuality, objectivity, and actual expert opinion”, Large said.
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What is fascism? And why does Harris say Trump is a fascist?
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
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