Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
The word “fascism” appeared frequently in the lexicon during the U.S. presidential campaign, and “Authoritarianism” appeared frequently in the recent presidential campaign in Mexico. Both campaigns resonated with the shadow of the word “dictatorship.” Words matter, even when their users do not know their true meaning well.
What is relevant, in the U.S. case, is that those who issued the judgment of “fascist” to Trump were his former staff, both in the White House, Homeland Security, and the Pentagon. It did not come from the Democrats but from those who worked with him in his Presidency for four years.
John Kelly, a retired Marine general, was his chief of staff. He called Trump “an authoritarian” who “admires people who are dictators” and says Trump has mentioned the dictators of North Korea, China, and Russia (especially the latter) as “great leaders.” Kelly concludes by saying that he is “for sure a fascist.”
Mark Milley was the highest-ranking military officer during the last two years of the Trump administration. He confessed to journalist Bob Woodward that Trump “is a fascist to the core” and his pretension to remain in the Presidency makes him “the most dangerous man in this country”.
Trump obviously responded to these remarks by saying that Milley is a “loser.” He also suggested that he should be executed for treason because he contacted leaders of other countries to calm them down during the assault on the capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, saying that there would be “no coup d’etat….”
John Bolton, the National Security Advisor in the White House under Trump, stated categorically, “Donald Trump is going to cause enormous damage to the country and the world if he is elected again.”
James Mattis, the Secretary of Defense in the first tranche of the Trump administration, said, “Donald Trump is the first President in my lifetime who is not trying to unite the country, or even pretending to. Instead, he wants to divide us.”
Mike Pence, the United States Vice President under Trump, explained his role as presiding officer over the tally and certification of electoral college votes during the election qualification on January 6, 2021. He said, “The American people deserve to know President Trump asked me to put him over the Constitution, but I kept my oath and always will. I believe someone who places himself above the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”
Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, competed against him. She was seeking the G.O.P. presidential nomination. In previous debates, she claimed that Trump was a dangerous man and could not be trusted to be in power because of his instincts for revenge and hatred and for promoting polarization among Americans. “He tries to harass me and everyone who supports me.”
Rex Tillerson, his Secretary of State, referred to Mr. Trump in these terms: “His understanding of global events, world history, and U.S. history was extremely limited. It was very difficult to converse and agree with someone who doesn’t even understand why they are discussing a certain issue.”
National Security Advisor General H.R. McMaster said Mr. Trump lacked a basic understanding of how the government worked. His impatience with learning about everyone’s job and alternative decision-making models limited his ability to lead the nation. When there was conflict, he dodged it, provoked it, and made it bigger.
James Comey, director of the F.B.I., said, “Our President must command respect and adhere to the values at the core of what this country is all about. And the most important value is to be honest. This President is incapable of being honest.”
Tom Bossert, Homeland Security advisor, commented after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021: “This is completely contrary to being an American and is illegal. The President was deliberately attacking democracy with no real evidence for months….”
Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense under Trump: “He’s not fit to hold government office. He always goes before the country. All his actions are for his personal benefit, not the country’s.”
This rosary of accusations about Mr. Trump makes it clear how his former collaborators see him. Their judgment is withering. He is a character who will govern in the second term as he did in the first, but recharged.
However, defining him as a fascist opens a new and worrisome line of analysis. Being a fascist does mean having an idea of what you want power for and what you want to achieve with it. It is not simply personalistic, vindictive, and kleptocratic governance. It is an idea about exercising power in order to retain it without time limits.
A characteristic of fascism is the exercise of personalistic power; that is, it relies on the leader’s figure. Fascism does not create institutions. Those that exist are discarded or destroyed with any available argument. The justification is irrelevant. The purpose of institutional destruction is so that the leader can rule freely, unrestrained, and unaccountable.
Institutional fascism as such does not exist because personalistic leadership is neither inherited nor subject to the outcome of free elections. The idea that JD Vance could be the heir to the new MAGA movement is neither possible nor real. A new fascist personalist leader would have to emerge to take Trump’s place, such as Elon Musk. Musk’s cultural background is white supremacist South Africa. It would be a no-brainer for him to take on that role. But, well, let’s not advance the historical clock.
North Korea has managed to perfectly combine communism (or communalism) as an economy, which is expressed as hyper-statism, with fascist leadership inherited in the family. The current leader of North Korea is the grandson of the founder of the political model that fuses statism with fascism—an uncommon phenomenon. Cuba made significant progress along the same path (statism and royal family), but it has become a failed state for various reasons. But that is another story.
Capitalism, in many of its versions, is coupled with fascism. Private enterprise, a friend of the politicians in power, thrives with fascism, albeit with the reality of diminishing economic returns. That is why it evolved into a regime of terror and authoritarianism to exploit the labor force further, converted into an increasingly impoverished population.
The idea that capitalism needs democracy to grow may be true, but only if the intention is to live in an era of prosperity with increasing returns and a more equitable distribution of national income. Fascism cannot and will not offer that, so its natural drift is toward authoritarianism and consolidating more minor, though always more affluent, capitalist elites.
Is Trump a fascist? Everything will depend on his ability to destroy the institutions of the U.S. State. To what extent does he achieve the capture of the Legislative Branch, and as time goes by, the capture of the Judicial Branch will define whether he can get rid of the autonomous institutions that serve as a counterweight to the worst impulses of the Executive Branch? His protectionist economic strategies may force him to provoke military wars in other latitudes to impose U.S. supremacy. Thus, the reality of every fascist will be fulfilled: war economy and absolute internal political control.
@rpascoep
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