Most students of fascism agree that one of its hallmarks is what one scholar calls a penchant for “redemptive violence." Historians and political scientists offer myriad definitions of fascism and no one has succeeded in drafting one all-encompassing, universally accepted list of fascism’s traits. But virtually all, or nearly all, experts conclude that violence is sine qua non in any description of fascism. (See Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, Did it Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America for a comprehensive discussion of what fascism is and is not.)
Though threats of violence have always been part of Donald Trump’s political persona, some authorities believe Trump and his followers have lacked the “systemic cult of violence” that marked Italian and German fascism. Perhaps that was true when Trump occupied the White House, but Trump’s posting — on Good Friday — of a video featuring a truck with a picture of a hog-tied President Joe Biden on its tailgate should dispel any doubt about Trump’s relationship to violence as a political weapon and whether he and his movement should be called fascist. Make no mistake about it: The former president of the United States posted a video, which is still up as of this writing, calling for the physical harming — actually, I would argue, the assassination — of the incumbent president.
I would have thought the Secret Service would have taken this threat against the current president seriously and would have urged Trump to remove it from the internet. The agency, in a statement, said it “does not confirm or comment on matters of protective intelligence,” so there is no information available on whether agents discussed the matter with Trump. But, as I say, the offensive video is still up.
The Biden campaign was quick to call Trump out. “Trump is regularly inciting political violence and it’s time people take him seriously – just ask the Capitol police officers who were attacked protecting our democracy on January 6,” said Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung minimized the video’s significance with a typical turn to what-abouting. “That picture,” Cheung said in a statement, “was on the back of a pick up truck that was traveling down the highway. Democrats and crazed lunatics have not only called for despicable violence against President Trump and his family, they are actually weaponizing the justice system against him.” Really, Mr. Cheung? Which Democrats have called for physical harm to the former president?
Yes, it is true that Biden in 2018 said in reference to Trump: “If we were were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” Biden was responding to the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump admitted to physically assaulting women. Biden later said he regretted making that comment. Trump does not do “regrets.” So do not expect any mea culpas from Trump regarding the image of a hog-tied Biden.
Trump has previously threatened to harm Biden. The former president, for example, repeatedly has shared videos showing Trump pummeling the current president with golf balls. Biden has not been the only person who Trump has threatened. Last year, Trump posted a photo of him holding a baseball bat next to Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who is prosecuting the former president for a hush money payment to a porn star. (That trial begins April 15.)
Trump’s language often uses violent tropes. He referred last year to his political opponents as “vermin." This is the rhetoric Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler used in their climb to power. “There are echoes of fascist rhetoric, and they’re very precise,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University professor who studies fascism.
“I don’t know if you call them people,” Trump said last month, referring to immigrants. “In some cases they’re not people, in my opinion.” As I have written before, this kind of dehumanizing certain groups — turning them into “the other” — is how Hitler portrayed Jews. Turning the objects of scorn into something other than people makes it easier for the authoritarian leader to mobilize his followers to commit the unthinkable.
Similarly, Trump has warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses in November. Trump first used the term in a speech talking about imported cars, but he was ambiguous enough to allow his followers to interpret his remarks as they pleased. And, this week, Trump doubled down on the violent imagery of a “bloodbath.” Only this time, the “bloodbath” was, in Trump’s words, caused by Biden’s border policies, which are allowing immigrants, who he has accused of “poisoning the blood of the country,” to bring “carnage and chaos and killing from all over the world and dump it straight into our backyards.”
In photos, videos, speeches, and postings on the internet, Trump has engaged in violent fantasies and threats of harm to his political opponents. How long before some of his supporters internalize his fantasies and threats and act upon them? Many probably have and already are planning acts of violence. As Ben-Ghiat noted in a post on X: “This is an emergency. This is what authoritarian thugs and terrorists do. Trump is targeting the President of the United States.” And, I might add, it is what fascists do.
Unfortunately, the mainstream media is reluctant to make these determinations. Rather than labeling Trump for what he is — an authoritarian, fascist thug whose threats and rhetoric endanger his perceived enemies and American democracy — many persist in seeing Trump and his followers as one side of normal political discourse. Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” for example, called a recent Trump violent threat “another reminder that we are covering this election against the backdrop of a deeply divided nation.”
That is one way to look at this coming November’s election, I suppose. But the contest between Trump and Biden is not just an election in which Americans, no matter how divided, choose the nation’s next president, with one side pleased that it won and the other unhappy at the outcome, but accepting of the results because in a democracy you win some and you lose some.
No, this November will be a battle for who we are as Americans. Will the decent, democratic majority (at least I hope it is still a majority) prevail? Or will America elect as president a fascist who will demolish our democracy? Make no mistake about it: Fascism will be on the ballot.
The choice is that stark.
Posted April 5, 2024
I was shocked when I saw the decal of what was more than a kidnapped President Biden -- he looked dead. But Trump, in fact, only shared the video of the truck driving by, in which it was hard to see the horrifying image. A liberal group shared a still photo of the decal, with Trump superimposed in front of it in black and white, grinning; in other words, our side called more attention to it. For God's sake, Fellow Libs, when Trump displays something that could incite violence, let's not spread it around further. And, by the way, I wouldn't have objected if the Trump video had quickly flashed on the image and told people that it was unacceptable to display something that supports violence. But, of course, if Trump had done that, I'm sure he would have meant such an admonition against violence as an April Fool joke.