Trump would make a pretty poor Fascist
Central to Fascism's appeal in the 1930s was disgust over controversy.
Much of the popularity of Fascism between the Wars came from widespread aversion to all the unseemly squabbling in parliaments reported in the newspapers. Many Europeans worried that the the dignity and thus the power of the State was being undermined by the incessant open controversy over politics, and thus national security was threatened.
So, in 1933, American journalists began attributing a wry observation to the long-dead Bismarck:
Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.
To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.
Many Europeans at the time felt it better if their rulers issued commands from on-high and left the political sausage-making behind the scenes.
So, here’s my question about all the fevered Trump-as-Fascist talk:
Really?
Isn’t Trump by nature and long practice the American least likely to bring less controversy and more august dignity to the political process?
When I was young, baseball owner Walter O’Malley’s Los Angeles Dodgers had a front office that shut the press out from reporting on almost all controversy within the team in order to present a cohesive front to the world. The Dodgers appeared to the outside world like a Fascist utopia was supposed to work in theory.
In contrast, owner George Steinbrenner’s New York Yankees maintained a non-stop brawl waged on the back page of the tabloids, with Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson, and Thurman Munson trading rhetorical haymakers in the headlines.
Whom did the young Donald Trump see as his role model and mentor? O’Malley or Steinbrenner?
Trump is basically Silvio Berlusconi. In common:
- a property guy who got into TV
- realised how low brow most people are and profited from it
- genuinely disliked the liberal intelligentsia and made it his selling point
- said zany things on purpose to attract attention
- made politics entirely about himself
- ran a daft-but-consequence-free foreign policy
- adored controversy and needed a rotating cast of opponents
Neither of them would have remotely enjoyed being a genuine authoritarian who can lock people up for dissent. Too boring!
From a literal sense you are correct that Trump is more like George Steinbrenner than Walter O'Malley. The problem is that liberals have redefined fascist into meaning "a politician that does something I don't like". Liberals proved in 2020 that they have no problems with following orders from politicians they do like, but it was obvious even before then if you were paying attention.
Liberals are like women in that if you have any hope of ever understanding them, you should pay attention to their actions, not their words.