Sighhh … Trumpists take offence at that name and the analogy to brownshirts by .saying Trump has not killed Jews. That is true. It is also true that Hitler had not killed any Jews in 1932 and there were Jews Nazis at that time. Nor has Trump placed immigrants on Dachau or declared war on Canada. Yet.
The protests against seeing Trump supporters as fascists dies nothing to dispel the ways Trumpism is all to similar to other fascist cults. Peron never killed Jews. Allende never made war on Brazil. Mussolini was not an antisemite, in fact some of his closest advisors were Jews.
To avoid the term “trumpist” I will call the avid acolytes “redhats.”
What the redhats and their cousins .. the brown shirts, jacobins, black shirts, and Aryan nation all share are:
1. a personality cult where the leader can provoke hate and deny facts
2. chauvinism and nationalism
3. demonization of “the other” whether that is by class, race, nationality or religion.
Trump is not the first redhat in our history. One of Trump’s few subtle acts was the decision to place a portrait of Andrew Jackson
on his wall. Jackson was a redhat. The seventh president demonized the founding fathers, attacking them as a privileged class and demeaning the values that underlay the constitution. Oh yeh, the founders were, in his view, atheists and intellectuals. Like Trump. Jackson was a Christian her, a part of the “great awakening” that still permeates the American right wing. Oh, and he Jackson gave us the trail of tears, tortured his slaves, and laid the basis for the civil war. But, Jackson never killed Jews.
on his wall. Jackson was a redhat. The seventh president demonized the founding fathers, attacking them as a privileged class and demeaning the values that underlay the constitution. Oh yeh, the founders were, in his view, atheists and intellectuals. Like Trump. Jackson was a Christian her, a part of the “great awakening” that still permeates the American right wing. Oh, and he Jackson gave us the trail of tears, tortured his slaves, and laid the basis for the civil war. But, Jackson never killed Jews.Jackson was not the only precursor to Trumpism. Andrew Johnson tried to undo the civil war. If Congress had not been in the control of the abolitionist north, Johnson would have won …, as his successors do when they turned Reconstruction into the KKK and Jim Crow.
Then we have other Trump wannabees. McArthy comes to mind. It is hardly praise of Trump to point out that Mr. Trump’s mentor and attorney was Roy Cohn, also the attorney for Joe McCarthy.
Others who come to mind .. Dick Chaney and the never to be forgotten Richard Nixon. None of these killed Jew either.
So is Trump Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolinia, Jackson. Johnson, Nixon,??? No.
WEll Trump had better get busy in getting control of the levers of power. And there does appear to be an upcoming election in 2020. After a couple of years in power fascist dictators usually have made sure there will be no elections, or at least none that they could be voted out of office. As their brown, black or silver shirts march in the streets, and take on enemies of the state. None of that is happening in Bellingham, none of that is happening in Seattle or even Washington DC. Oh and there should be dancing in the streets as the Mariners are now the number one team in all of baseball. And by the way if we were under a NAZI tyrant there would have been no Ichiro celebration in Tokyo, and the Negro leagues would be back.