Then, on Wednesday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee called Trump a fascist during a CNN Town Hall in Pennsylvania. In response to Kelly’s comments, a Trump campaign spokesperson said Kelly has “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated,” NPR reported.
But some local experts who study fascism agree with the sentiments of Harris and Kelly.
“If Trump isn’t a fascist, no one is,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale University philosophy professor, who last month published a book, “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.” “Trump is out of central casting.”
For Stanley, fascism is grounded in a friend vs. enemy distinction, and the idea that a group is restoring a nation to previous glory. “Traditional European fascism,” he said, focuses on a “cult of the leader who promises national restoration.”
“The idea is that there’s a mythic past where the country was great and pure and the country’s been humiliated,” he said.
For fascists, the humiliation comes at the hands of various actors: immigrants, intellectuals, feminists.
“All political opponents are Marxists and communists,” said Stanley.
Max Abrahms, an international security professor at Northeastern University, disagrees. For him, Democrats are branding Trump a fascist for political reasons. Specifically, to undermine his political support and to convince voters that he is dangerous.
A key component of a fascist, said Abrahms, is control over key institutions in a state. By that criteria, said Abrahms, Trump is the opposite of a fascist.
“There’s a real decentralization of power and a tremendous amount of dissent coming from the most powerful institutions against Donald Trump,” he said.
The media, he said, continues to be highly combative and critical of Trump. Additionally, MAGA rhetoric is anathema throughout academia, said Abrahms.
“The number of MAGA professors in political science is exceedingly small,” said Abrahms, who added that he’s never seen a dissertation that is sympathetic to Trump ideology, and that any such academic work would likely disqualify scholars from future jobs in that sector.
Corey Dolgon, sociology professor for Stonehill College, said there are various hallmarks of fascism, including the demonization or othering of a group, as well as economic centralization, violence, hyper-nationalism and anti-intellectualism.
“If you take what Trump is and you operationalize a policy and politics around it, it’s fascism,” said Dolgon, who is writing a book about the history of fascism in the US. He joked that every time he thinks he is closer to finishing the book, he has a new chapter to write because of current events.
Dolgon labeled Trump an authoritarian megalomaniac, comparing him to a “fascist Rorschach test.” Fascism, he said, often has a current of hyper-masculinity that encourages action over thought.
“Trump is kind of funny that way because he talks a big game but he’s one of the whiniest fascists you’ll ever meet,” he said.
Various experts offer historical leaders that fit their definitions of fascism. There are obvious examples, such as Hitler and Benito Mussolini, but also others, including Charles Lindbergh and Pol Pot. Some scholars offer a litany of current world leaders, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and India’s Narendra Modi. Multiple local scholars this week pointed to Jim Crow, a racist caste system that operated in the US for decades, as being inherently fascist.
“Nazi lawyers and judges turned to America’s Jim Crow laws for inspiration, and Hitler looked to America’s Indigenous reservations as a way to rid a country of ‘unwanted, people,’ ” wrote Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson on her Substack.
Kelly’s comments, said Cox Richardson in her post, constituted a “huge deal.” She also discussed the roots of fascism, saying that Mussolini, the fascist 20th century Italian dictator, “rejected the equality that defined democracy and came to believe that some men were better than others.”
“Those few must lead, taking a nation forward by directing the actions of the rest,” she said. “They must organize the people as they had during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians worked together.”
She continued, “Logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator.”
Material from the Globe wire services was used in this report.
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.