President Donald J. Trump’s racist rhetoric, using Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a federal police force, and inciting violence against political opponents, are only a few examples of fascism displayed by history’s previous fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini.
Without distinction between fascists of the past and President Trump, it’s clear that he is a fascist and is attempting to turn the United States into a dictatorship.
During his first term, President Trump laid out a policy that would shut away Mexican immigrants, blaming them for America’s problems, dehumanizing them. At the presidential announcement speech in 2015 for his first term, he targeted Mexican immigrants.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people,” he said in a transcription provided by Time Magazine.
What he failed to see was that the crime rates of illegal Mexican immigrants compared to that of native-born Americans is much lower (Landgrave et. al.). In other words, Mexican immigrants became a spacegoat to fuel his campaign. This is a tactic that fascists like Hitler and Mussolini used. Hitler mainly blamed the Jews and Mussolini blamed the socialists, driving people to vote for these leaders under the guise that they would cleanse their respective nations of Jews and Socialists. (Albano).
Hitler was also infamous for his Gestapo police, a weapon he wielded to persecute anyone he didn’t want in his country. Where would these people be sent to? Concentration camps, soon to be slaughtered. President Trump has his own iteration of Hitler’s Gestapo: ICE. Through violent raids of job sites (Neuman), people’s homes (PBS), or even immigrants during their court hearings to obtain protection (National Immigrant Justice Center), ICE has detained people for days on end with no phone calls to lawyers or family members, many of whom are U.S. citizens (Foy et. al.). Where are the detainees sent? Detention centers, most infamously, Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. Note that two-thirds of the immigrants detained at Alligator Alcatraz have gone missing from ICE’s databases (Democracy Now!). Where have they gone? Have they faced the same fate as the victims of Hitler’s regime?
Another key feature of fascism is political violence towards the opposition (Finchelstein). For example, Hitler persecuted political opponents such as communists and democratic socialists (United States Holocaust Museum). Mussolini had his fascist lackeys assassinate socialist Giacomo Matteotti, who opposed Mussolini and fascism (Encyclopedia Britannica). As for President Trump, not only does he have an extensive history of inciting violence towards Democrats and other political opponents (Giroux), he has also called for the execution of multiple Democrat veterans for telling service members that they don’t need to listen to President Trump’s “illegal orders” to practically invade and terrorize U.S. cities (Demissie et. al.).
Many argue that fascism can’t exist in the US, due to our constitution and structure of government, which prevents a single person from holding all of the government’s power. While it is true that our government was designed to uphold the Founding Fathers’ values of democracy, know that Germany was a democratic nation before Hitler came along (Bartsch). Once he did seize power, he brainwashed German citizens with promises of relief from the Great Depression, feeding him a multitude of support to allow the Nazi party to dominate Germany (The Wierner Holocaust Library). President Trump is attempting the same; he’s taking a democratic republic, gaining support through false claims and manipulating the public, and dominating all three branches of the government with his own party — the perfect recipe for a fascist dictatorship
The next time someone tells you that they voted for President Trump, just know they voted for a racist, militant, violent, fascist who couldn’t be bothered to lift a finger to help the American people.
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