Beware The Home-Grown Fascist, Wrapped Around The Flag
As I watched and listened to the so-called debate I had a terrifying vision that I was watching tens of thousands of Germans cheering and saluting as Hitler lied about Jews as the enemy and I thought of the banality of evil.
Just like last night, I sat in front of the television frozen in anger because I knew that millions of people were listening and swallowing trump’s lies, and I could do nothing about it but watch as the hurricane approached.
Trump’s nose grew longer and longer as he lied about the economy, claiming his years were “the best economy in history.” He lied about veterans' care, with the assertion that he passed the Veterans Choice Act when that measure passed under President Barack Obama. Trump claimed crime is skyrocketing, despite the substantiated fact that crime peaked in trump’s final year in the White House. Trump denied reality as he persisted with the absurd claim that he did nothing wrong in his handling of the violent Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. Trump said that “everybody” wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade and inventing an outrageous claim about abortion “in the ninth month and even after birth.” Lies, lies, lies.
Lying is the cornerstone of the fascist but do not expect to see a small man with a funny moustache and swastikas on his armbands. Trump is the quintessential American fascist, with his MAGA hats and his weirdly orange face and ridiculous comb over, fitting the description when the shamed Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, explained that “fascism must be home grown” and “cannot be imported but must be particularly suited to our national life.”
Mussolini knew a bit about fascism. In 1927, he and Giovanni Gentile wrote the groundbreaking, “Doctrine of Fascism” which contained a key passage that could have been written by Il Duce today.
“Granted that the nineteenth century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the twentieth century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy,” Mussolini wrote. “Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the ‘right,’ a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the ‘collective’ century, and therefore the century of the State.”
In 1936, James Waterman Wise Jr. noted that the publishing magnate, William Randolph Herst and the Catholic, anti-Semitic radio preacher, Father Charles Coughlin were the two chief exponents of fascism in America.
In a 1936 address to the liberal John Reed club, Wise said fascism can’t be described simply by its appearance. Wise warned that if fascism comes to the U.S. it will not be identified with a “shirt” movement like Hitler’s brown shirts or an “insignia” like the Swastika. Rather, it will probably be “wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.”
Fascism in the U.S. is not led by the intelligentsia but rather by the unique and powerful charisma and calculated charm of trump, a witch’s brew of ultranationalism, disinformation and Christian nationalism. Trump’s comments are intentionally outrageous as they are tailored to appeal to his base, like a pedophile grooms his victims. Trump has been very successful in portraying himself as a very acceptable fascist.
In recent days, trump has been in demonic form while many supporters are falling over themselves to bow down and win the fascist’s blessing.
One of many sycophants, Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., observed incredibly that trump represents a “return to normalcy.”
Trump has talked about building sprawling detention camps to house millions of undocumented immigrants before they are booted out of the U.S. He wants to create a “dictatorship” “at least for one day,” he would crack down on the free press and he would take over the federal appropriations process.
If that is normal, give me insanity.
Another avowed trump follower, televangelist Paula White -Cain, said she had been an intermediary between trump and God as trump sought God ‘s opinion over his run for the presidency. White-Cain previously served as trump’s spiritual advisor and helped lead the Evangelical advisory board during his presidency in 2016. She told of her experience with trump in a recent address to the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference at the Washington Hilton.
Trump “began to repeat to me almost verbatim the three sermons’ Value of Vision,’” White-Cain recalled. “At the end of it, he said, ‘You have the it factor.’ And I said, ‘Oh sir, we call that the anointing.’ At that point, I really felt that the Lord said, ‘show him who I am. So for 24 years, I’ve been in his life and have had the great privilege of really being his pastor,” White-Cain said.
She said that trump first considered a career in politics in 2011 when he told her he didn’t “like the way this country is going” and that he was thinking of running for president.
“I told him what I thought,” she said. “And then he turned around, and he said, ‘Well, what does God say?’”
White-Cain said she bowed in prayer with dozens of her friends before delivering an answer.
“I said, ‘Sir … you’re going to be president one day,’” said White-Cain.
White-Cain concluded her address by describing the ideology of the Biden administration is “against God, against our faith” and vowing to the audience that “we will put a stop to it come November.”
Former Fox News personality and trump administration official, Monica Crowley, spoke warmly of the late, dishonored Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., before the Faith & Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, D.C. Crowley drew comparisons between the so-called, trials and tribulations that trump has withstood in his crusade to rid the nation of “communists” and McCarthy.
McCarthy led a series of hearings in the early 1950s in which he railed against communists in the government. He failed to back up his claims with facts, was eventually censured by the congress and later died of alcoholism. The term “McCarthyism” was coined to refer to politically motivated witch hunts, using unsubstantiated allegations regarding patriotism. Trump has patterned his own witch hunts after McCarthy as he continues to claim that he is guilty of no crimes and that the Justice Department has been weaponized to get him.
“By the way, Senator Joe McCarthy was right, and he was trying to ring the bell in the 1950s about Communist infiltration in our government and the same deep state that is now going after Donald Trump,” Crowley said.
Crowley said that trump is trying to rid the government of “communists” and bring back religion to the nation. She said that like trump, McCarthy was “smeared and attacked…for speaking the truth about godless communism in very halls of our government. They grab control of our academia to indoctrinate all of our kids. And they started at the collegiate level and now it’s down to kindergarten, preschool, where they are indoctrinating our children.”
Crowley repeated a common trump talking point when she said the communists “grab control over the news media so that the propaganda continues to be perpetuated. And they grab control over the culture. Movies, television, music never used to be this way.”
She said the battle has been joined “by other dark and sinister forces, including the Chinese Communist Party, the globalists and the Islamists. They’re working together to undermine and destroy the United States of America and by extension, the West as well.”
The trump administration announced in 2016 that Crowley would be appointed a deputy national security advisor for the National Security Council. She withdrew a month later amid reports that she had plagiarized portions of her 2012 book “What the (Bleep) Just Happened?” and her 2000 Ph.D. dissertation that Columbia University concluded did not meet the level of “research misconduct.” In 2019, trump appointed Crowley as spokesperson for the Treasury Department. Crowley has on multiple occasions spread conspiracy theories that President Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim.
And…
Mug Shot Torture
The trump campaign sent out a fundraising email that says the ex-president was “tortured” when he had his mug shot taken on Aug. 24, 2023, while he was processed in the Fulton (Ga.) County jail for a series of allegations.
“I want you to remember what they did to me. They tortured me in the Fulton County Jail and TOOK MY MUGSHOT. So guess what? I put it on a mug for the WHOLE WORLD TO SEE!” the fundraising email said.
Trump has since raised money by promoting coffee mugs featuring the mug shot from that horrible day of torture.
Trump surrendered last August to the Fulton County Jail, after he was indicted on 13 counts stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He arrived at the jail in a presidential-style motorcade and was booked, fingerprinted and photographed in a Marqui de Sade-like process that took all of 20 minutes.
Trump has used the mug shot to sell merch including T-shirts, mugs, koozies and bumper stickers that featured his mug shot and the phrase “Never surrender.”
Slavery Free
Trump’s lack of education about American history was in full sail in two speeches on June 22 when he ignored every legitimate historian and said that President George Washington “probably” did not own slaves.
In a speech to a conservative Christian group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition, trump complained about plans to eliminate names of schools, military facilities and other places that honor slaveowners and Confederate leaders. Under President Joe Biden, the Army has renamed nine installations that had been named for Confederate generals.
Trump claimed that his opponents want to remove the name of George Washington from high schools.
“They don’t know why. You know, they thought he had slaves. Actually, I think he probably didn’t,” said trump.
According to the website of Washington’s Mount Vernon home, when Washington died in 1799, 317 people were enslaved at Mount Vernon, Washington’s home and plantation in Virginia, including 123 people owned by Washington himself.
The future president inherited 10 slaves from his father at age 11. As an adult, Washington depended on the enslaved people to build and maintain his home and plantation. The website says that “as a young man, Washington purchased dozens of enslaved people from estate sales and in private transactions” and also rented slaves from others, inherited them from siblings, and enslaved the children who were born to slaves at Mount Vernon.
The list of 317 enslaved people at Mount Vernon at the time of Washington’s death included 41 people rented from other plantations and 153 people from Martha’s first husband’s estate.
Battle Scars
Whether he was speaking in metaphors or not, trump told the same Christian group that if he bared his torso, the scars of his efforts as a martyr would be evident.
“Together, we stood up to the communists, Marxists and fascists to defend religious liberty like no other president has ever done,” he told the Faith & Freedom Coalition. “And I have the wounds all over my body. If I took this shirt off you’d see a beautiful, beautiful person but you’d see wounds all over me. I’ve taken a lot of wounds; I can tell you. More than I suspect any president ever.”
Evidently, those “wounds” are worse than the scars from gunshots that took the lives of presidents Abraham Lincoln, Willliam McKinley, who was assassinated in 1901, and John F. Kennedy. The only wounds that trump has previously acknowledged were the bone spurs in his foot that got him off from serving in the military and fighting in Vietnam.
CIA, JFK Obfuscation
If not for the CIA, trump could tell the world the real truth about the JFK assassination. Trump said he was prepared to release the top-secret files surrounding the Kennedy but the CIA had pressured to stop some information being released. In a podcast, host Chamath Palihapitiya asked trump about a promise he made during his presidency that he would release files pertaining to the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination.
Trump said he did make the promise but, in trump style, he blamed others for the lack of information he released.
“I actually did do it,” trump said. “I released a lot, as you know, but when it came to the whole thing, I was hit by some people that work for me that are great people, that you would respect, and they asked me not to do it. And I’m saying why. Tell me why. And they said, ‘Sir, I think it needs a little more time’.”
“This wasn’t CIA that asked me, but I think CIA was probably behind it. They would’ve preferred that I not release the rest of it,” he said on the podcast about the files being released.
The JFK assassination has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, alleging at various times, the involvement of the CIA, the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of the individuals and entities. Some conspiracy theories have speculated a coverup by parts of the federal government, such as the original FBI investigators, the Warren Commission, or the CIA. Former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 people had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios.
To reassure the American people, trump said that if he returns to the White House, he’ll release the secret files and damn the CIA.
I’m “just going to do it,” trump said. “It’s going to be done early on. A lot of people want to see that and whatever it may say — I won’t say it, I have an idea — but whatever it is it will be very interesting for people to see and we’re going to have to learn from it.”
Trump has been quick to embrace numerous conspiracy theories about topics from Democrats eating babies to Muslims cheering on rooftops after the Sept.11,2001, terror attacks. During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, trump offered no proof when he said the father of GOP rival Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was connected to the JFK killing. At the time, trump referred to a story in the National Enquirer that published a photo that it said showed Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” trump said. “I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?”
Cruz, who is now a strong trump supporter, said at the time that trump’s claims were “another garbage story.”
“Trump is detached from reality, and his false, cheap, meaningless comments every day indicate his desperation to get attention and willingness to say anything to do so,” the Cruz campaign said in a statement.
Assassination was again on trump’s mind when he posted about a wild claim by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene that the Department of Justice was planning to assassinate trump in 2022 while they seized stolen, top-secret documents at the Mar-a-Lago estate. Greene claimed that the Justice Department had authorized the use of “deadly force” during the search and were “planning to assassinate him.”
Greene’s claim was based on a far-fetched interpretation of standard orders related to the FBI search that “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.” The FBI responded that the statement was routine for searches.
“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force,” the statement read. “No one ordered additional steps to be taken, and there was no departure from the norm in this matter.”
Undeterred by reality, trump came out bigly against the Biden Justice Department.
“WOW! I just came out of the Biden Witch Hunt Trial in Manhattan, the ‘Icebox,’ and was shown Reports that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ, in their illegal and UnConstitutional Raid of Mar-a-Lago, AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE,” trump wrote.
Police Immunity
At campaign events in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, trump pandered to the law enforcement community when he pledged to provide “immunity to police all over the country.” He said police officers are “treated so badly” that they lose their jobs and their pension “if they do something that’s harsh to stop a crime.”
Trump didn’t specify what kind of “immunity” he planned.
Qualified immunity is a legal principle in U.S. constitutional law that grants government officials performing discretionary or optional functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
Qualified immunity does not protect officials who violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which reasonable person would have known.” Since around 2005, courts increasingly applied the doctrine of qualified immunity to cases involving the use of excessive or deadly force by police, leading to widespread criticism that it “has become a nearly failsafe tool to let police brutality go unpunished and deny victims their constitutional rights,” as summarized in a 2020 Reuters report.
Various efforts to eliminate protection under qualified immunity have failed but there have been no efforts to extend the immunity, as trump has suggested.
Iron Dome
Trump vowed that America would build its own “Iron Dome” missile defense system, similar to the vaunted Israeli mobile air defense program. The Israeli system has intercepted thousands of short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from distances of 2 to 43 miles away and whose trajectory would take them to an Israeli populated area. From 2011 to 2021, the U.S. contributed $1.6 billion to the Iron Dome defense system, with another $1 billion approved by the congress in 2022.
“Israel has it, why don’t we have it?” Trump said, promising to build a “great Iron Dome” in the U.S. if he is elected. He said construction of the missile defense system would “create jobs,” though, not surprisingly, he offered no specifics including costs.
The U.S. has invested in technology similar to Israel’s Iron Dome system. Experts have said an Iron Dome shield would be limited in the U.S. because of the size of the nation, compared with the much smaller Israel and because unlike Israel, the U.S. does not face danger from neighboring nations firing rockets. Experts also say that the U.S. has other missile defense systems in place to counter long-range threats from rogue states and superpowers.
In 2019, the U.S. Army acquired two Iron Dome batteries from Israel for specific purposes. Plans for additional Iron Dome systems were reconsidered because of difficulties with int4ergrating the system with American-made air defenses.
Migrant Fighting League
Trump said he spoke with his friend, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) President Dana White, about forming a “migrant fighting league.”
At the gathering of conservative Christians, trump suggested a new form of entertainment pitting migrants against each other in physical combat. Trump boasted that he had told White, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters. And then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.”
In further demonizing immigrants, Trump added, “I think the migrants’ guy might win, that’s how tough they are.”
Fear Mongering
Trump resorted to the worst kind of fear mongering when he told a group in Racine, Wis., that World War III will be the result if he is not re-elected.
“Under Crooked Joe Biden, the world is in flames, our border is overrun, inflation is raging, Europe is in total chaos, the Middle East is exploding, Iran is emboldened, China is on the march, and the worst, most incompetent, most corrupt president in history is going to drag us into World War III,” trump said .
It wasn’t the first time that trump donned the clothes of the prophet of doom. He presented a similar bleak image in February while speaking addressing the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), which included far right, white supremacists
“We won’t even be in World War III, we’ll be losing World War III with weapons the likes of which nobody has ever seen before,” trump said. which included far right, white supremacists. “These are the stakes of this election. Our country is being destroyed. And the only thing standing between you and its obliteration is me. It’s true.”