1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism -- Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights -- because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to 'look the other way' or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc. In country political enemies are often at the top of hit lists.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause -- The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc. These groups are often denigrated as "vermin, cockroaches, rats" and other unseemly epithets denoting an unwanted "otherness."
4. Supremacy of and misuse of the Military -- Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. Fascist leaders are also prone to deploy military forces against their own people to quell protests in often bloody ways.
5. Rampant Sexism -- The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, and homophobia and antigay legislation dominate national policy. Misogyny is also often used to keep women in their place.
6. Controlled Mass Media -- Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or through sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in wartime, is very common. Peculiar to almost all fascist regimes, however, is one major outlet which generates propaganda to prop up such regimes or try enable them to retain power.
7. Obsession with National Security -- Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. "They are coming for you!" "There are millions of them!"
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined -- Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions. In the U.S. the manifestation is for Christian Nationalists to destroy church-state separation:
9. Corporate Power is Protected -- The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed -- Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts -- Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment -- Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses, and even forego civil liberties, in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption -- Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions, and who use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections -- Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against (or even the assassination of) opposition candidates, the use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and the manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
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As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is:
"A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
*(Based on a feature article by Dr. Lawrence Britt, appearing in Free Inquiry magazine, Spring 2003 )
The conclusion that Donald Trump is a fascist has gone mainstream, gaining wide publicity and affirmation in recent weeks. Such understanding is a problem for Trump and his boosters. At the same time, potentially pivotal in this close election, a small proportion of people who consider themselves to be progressive still assert that any differences between Trump and Kamala Harris are not significant enough to vote for Harris in swing states.
Opposition to fascism has long been a guiding light in movements against racism and for social justice.
Speaking to a conference of the African National Congress in 1951, Nelson Mandela warned that “South African capitalism has developed [into] monopolism and is now reaching the final stage of monopoly capitalism gone mad, namely, fascism.”
Before Donald Trump was considered nothing more than a circus sideshow, some of us noted during the 2015 GOP presidential primaries that his rhetoric and agenda bore all the hallmarks of the "f" word: fascism. Historian Rick Perlstein wrestled with it as early as September of that year. I wrote about it just a couple of months later. At the time, Trump was extolling the virtues of torture, talking about a massive surveillance program to be used against American Muslims and promising to send Syrian refugees, including children, back to their war-torn country. He hadn't yet declared his intention to ban all Muslims from coming to the U.S. but it was easy to see the writing on the wall. It was also very easy to see that fascism was on the menu in the United States of America if Trump won the election.
That was nine years ago and a zillions of words have since been written about Trump's dishonesty, corruption, unfitness and authoritarian philosophy. We've learned over the years, through many reports, memoirs and tell-all books that Trump tried to govern in a dictatorial fashion at every turn but was either too mentally undisciplined to follow through or was held back by people around him who kept him from acting on his worst impulses.
The first Germans Hitler sent to the Dachau concentration camp near Munich were labor organizers and social activists. If you think you are immune from a similar fate at a concentration camp established by Donald Trump, you are deluding yourself.
Dachau’s ovens mass-burned the corpses of countless political prisoners. Many were Jews, but many were not… including gays, non-Christians, cultural “sub-humans,” feminists, gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Social Democrats, Communists, democracy activists and “others” very possibly similar in some ways to you yourself. Likewise, Bergen-Belsen, where over 35,000+ dissident bodies lay lifeless (including that of Anne Frank).
In case you were wondering these are the camps where Hitler exterminated people:
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