"In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Every mainstay of fascist rhetoric is on lavish display here, from the “stab in the back” narrative about domestic political fomenters of subversion to the dehumanizing characterization of political foes as “vermin” who are worthy targets of total elimination—all packaged as a celebration of military honor. Lay this outburst alongside such recent lurches into textbook authoritarian leadership as Trump’s vow to suspend the Constitution and his ongoing courtship of the eliminationist and conspiratorial QAnon wing of the MAGA movement, and the only wonderment is that the “fascist debate” lumbered on unresolved for as long as it did.
Of course, the immediate aftermath of Trump’s fascist broadside demonstrated just why that’s been the case for these eight long years and counting. Covering the New Hampshire speech, The New York Times initially graced it with this online headline: “Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in Very Different Direction,” an exercise in counter-empirical euphemism right up akin to “Hindenburg Charts Abrupt Course Earthward.” The headline was later modified to “In Veterans Day Speech, Trump Vows to ‘Root Out’ the Left,” which was an incremental improvement (as would have been, say, “Political Story Number Seven”), but still did not name the newsworthy thing that was actually occurring. It instead encouraged readers to view Trump’s declaration as an unseemly personal lapse, as opposed to the centerpiece of a wide-ranging plan to govern that has been reported exhaustively throughout the political press, including in the Times’ own pages. The basic work of informing Americans what the leader of the Republican Party has in mind for anyone not scheduling a MAGA chest tattoo fell to other news outlets. “Trump Calls Political Enemies ‘Vermin,’ Echoing Dictators Hitler, Mussolini,” was The Washington Post’s display text. Even Forbes, the bible of investment-class consensus that has long advertised itself as a “capitalist tool,” managed to rise to the moment, with “Trump Compares Political Foes to ‘Vermin’ on Veterans Day—Echoing Nazi Propaganda.”
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POLITICS / NOVEMBER 14, 2023
The “Is Donald Trump a Fascist?” Debate Has Been Ended—by Donald Trump
The former president’s rhetoric in a recent speech and on social media veered into openly eliminationist threats.
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