Former President Donald Trump has recently been called a "fascist" by his former chief of staff, John Kelly, his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and leading historian Robert Paxton. Kelly, a former four-star Marine general and former chief of staff to Trump, hammered his old boss as a "fascist" in a New York Times interview. "Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy," Kelly told The Times. "So, certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America," he added. But for scholars who've long studied fascism, defining fascism isn't so simple. "We're not just debating whether or not Trump fits that definition; we are not agreeing on what that definition is," Sheri Berman, a political science professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, told ABC News in an interview. There is no scholarly consensus on the term, according to both Berman and Mark Bray, a political scientist from Rutgers University. This is, in part, because fascists historically have not been tied to "rational consistency," Bray said, pointing to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Nazi Germany dictator Adolf Hitler whose policy positions changed on a variety of occasions. In a New York Times interview published on Oct. 23, Paxton said the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection eliminated his reservations about calling Trump a fascist. However, he said focusing on the leader of a movement and not the mass from which it has flourished is a mistake. “The Trump phenomenon looks like it has a much more solid social base," as Hitler and Mussolini were appointed and not elected officials, Paxton told The Times. “Which neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have had.” Bray believes there's a distinction between Trump and "Trumpism" as a political movement and the similarities to fascism. "I would call Trumpism unequivocally a kind of 21st century American fascism," said Bray, arguing that Trump's most ardent fans may see themselves as "victims who need to transcend the limit of democratic politics ... [using] redemptive violence to take their country or their nation or their society back." Bray believes Trump's relationship with his supporters has radically affected his policy: "I think that those initiatives are coming stronger and are more heartfelt from the base of Trumpism at the state level, at the county level." Bray stops short of calling Trump a fascist in the traditional sense, seeing as he does not embrace all of the ideals of a historical fascist. For example, fascists have historically rejected free market capitalism, unlike Trump. Instead, Bray calls Trump "fascistic" -- "I think the term fascist suggests that he's more of an ideologue of this than I think he really is," Bray said. Berman does not pin Trump as a fascist, calling him instead an "anti-democratic" and "authoritarian." However, she added that this does not mean his encouragement of violence -- like his comments on using National Guard troops to go after "radical left lunatics" or nativist rhetoric and plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants -- does not align with fascist tendencies. The ongoing debate also questions whether it's helpful to use the term when discussing Trump and modern politics. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fascism-term-hurled-donald-trump/story?id=115101505
The left does not believe what they say, just going through the motions. Hey Biden bet you'd like to stick it to em, come on man endorse Trump and everyone's head would spin.