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“Fascism is a disease, and there are symptoms,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once remarked.Her statement invites the question: Is Donald Trump a fascist?Although some writers have referred to Trump & Company as a fascist regime, most mainstream commentators and historians pull that punch. Donald Trump is a right-wing populist, an authoritarian, a bigot, a xenophobe, a racist demagogue, they say, but he’s not fascist. They see fascism as the product of another time and set of conditions. Fascists, they also add, want to reshape the world to fit their own ideology, not just use it for personal gain.It’s as if applying the “F” word to the leader of the free world is too extreme. “It,” they seem to be saying, “can’t happen here.”I’m not a historian or a political scientist, but I do know how to match a set of symptoms to a disease. Do the symptoms of the Trump & Company agenda match the disease of fascism?Shall we see?I’m a psychotherapist. To arrive at a client’s diagnosis, I first draw from my past experience with clients who’ve had similar collections of symptoms. Once I have a probable diagnosis, I confirm it by consulting the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual, the oddly named encyclopedia of psychological disorders, now in its fifth edition.The DSM-5 provides descriptions of each known psychological disorder, how it usually arises, its typical symptoms, and how it tends to progress. I consult the DSM to verify whether my proposed diagnosis fits the criteria and history described in the manual. If there’s a match, I’ve found the correct diagnosis.Most mental illness diagnoses are on a spectrum. At some point, symptoms are severe enough to cross the line between, say, transient anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder, occasional mood swings and bipolar disorder, or eccentricity and schizophrenia. Once that line has been crossed, there may be varying degrees of illness, from mild to moderate to severe. The progression is cumulative; that is, if you have moderate depression, you meet the criteria for mild depression, but also meet additional depression criteria.Political systems are also psychological and also on a spectrum. At some point, they, too, can cross the line between, say, right-wing populism and fascism. Like any other disease, varying degrees of illness exist, and the progression is cumulative; early fascism, if unimpeded, develops into a more mature fascist movement.To see if Trump & Company’s political agenda is a match for the disease of fascism, let’s take a look at how fascism is defined, the circumstances under which it arises, its symptoms, and the how it typically progresses.The term fascism, like the terms terrorist or democracy, can be applied to a broad range of regimes.Since Mussolini coined the word in 1919, fascism has taken many forms, adapting to the culture of the place and time from which it emerges. But fascist regimes have a set of core characteristics, values, and implementation strategies that are essential to their growth.Historically, fascist regimes have arisen during extreme national crises, which catalyze ordinary citizens to align themselves with the fascist leaders.For Germany, Italy, and Japan, the catalytic crisis was the Great Depression. Today, in the United States, we have the pandemic and its fallout of illness, deaths, and economic chaos. Since the George Floyd murder and the rise of Black Lives Matter protests, we also have an additional catalyst, the most disruptive racial division since the 1960s.Central to fascism is the idea of a naturally superior people whose mythic greatness has been tragically destroyed by a pernicious enemy. For Hitler that enemy was the Jews. For Mussolini, the Bolsheviks. For Modi, it’s the Muslims. And for Trump & Company, in a bizarre hijacking of the term, it’s a nebulous grouping of minorities, academics, journalists, and liberals they refer to as “far-left fascism.”Fascists relentlessly cultivate division between themselves and the identified enemy, whom they demonize, using propaganda to recruit a growing body of supporters.Fascists position themselves as the heroes who will vanquish the imagined enemy. Their followers rally people behind what is presented as a dire threat by a devious “other,” against whom they will prevail only through allegiance to the regime.Fascists convince potential supporters that their existing government institutions have betrayed them, and that those institutions cannot rid the nation of this threat, and cannot restore it to that mythic greatness. Only the fascists can accomplish this heroic task.Accomplishing restoration to greatness requires total allegiance to the party, and above all to its leader, whom followers come to regard as their god-like savior. “Only I can fix it,” Trump declared in his 2016 inaugural address. “I am your voice.”Fascist leaders typically move from conventional head-of-state positions such as prime minister (Mussolini) or chancellor (Hitler) to autocratic rule as their party grows more powerful. Trump has already indicated that should he lose, he will contest the 2020 election. He has said he may refuse to leave office if defeated, and has floated the idea that, should he be re-elected, he will rule for an additional four to eight years beyond his second term.The deified leader neutralizes opposing points of view by discrediting the media and other critics. Adolf Hitler labeled the mainstream media lugenpresse (lying press). Trump’s updated version is fake news.Fascist regimes suppress dissent, often through police or military violence. Hitler had the SS, a powerful paramilitary militia that began as a small, voluntary organization. We have seen the seeds of such a militia in Trump’s calls to armed white supremacist groups to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and more explicitly, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” And we have witnessed police, the National Guard, and anonymized Federal troops attacking Black Lives Matter protesters.Extreme policies become normalized, so that what was once intolerable becomes ordinary. In Nazi Germany, most Germans knew about and eventually accepted that Jews were being sent to death camps. In the United States, police violence, abuse of executive power, and the daily count of COVID-19 deaths has been similarly normalized: “It is what it is.”Fascists use propaganda to indoctrinate the population with their own vision of reality. They manipulate feelings, rather than appealing to the intellect.In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler describes how, in 1921, he began to build what would become the Nazi party. He started with spreading the party’s ideas through propaganda, acquired followers, and from them recruited elite members who would continue to spread propaganda and acquire additional followers. On the key role of propaganda, he wrote:“In every great revolutionary movement that is of world importance the idea of this movement must always be spread abroad through the operation of propaganda. The propagandist must never tire in his efforts to make the new ideas clearly understood, inculcating them among others, or at least he must place himself in the position of those others and endeavor to upset their confidence in the convictions they have hitherto held.”To broaden and strengthen their movements, fascist propagandists use a variety of techniques to discredit opponents, displace people’s existing values, and demonize their perceived enemies. Common propaganda techniques include:Building a cult of personality (idealizing the leader, creating a heroic public image, holding euphoric rallies, flag waving)Repetition (of symbols, slogans, and accusations against the opposition and the media)Defaming (name-calling, ridicule, smears, ad hominem attacks, character assassination, stereotyping)Distortion (intentional vagueness, loaded language, denial, minimization, half-truths, disinformation, obfuscation, lies)Demonization (scapegoating, appeals to fear and prejudice, hatemongering, dehumanizing)Trump & Company employ every trick in the fascist propaganda playbook, from flag waving and name-calling to character assassination and dehumanization.During the 2016 campaign we heard endlessly about Crooked Hillary — Lock her up! For four years, we’ve been warned about Mexican rapists, illegal immigrants from shithole countries, the deep state, the radical left. Bad people. Scum. Thugs. Now it’s Sleepy Joe, the empty shell, the Trojan horse, anarchists, far-left fascists, antifa, and dark shadows. On and on.Throughout the presidency, Trump & Company have used distortion, defamation, disinformation, and demonization, along with constructing a cult-like allegiance to Trump himself, and the use of these propaganda techniques has dramatically increased since the start of the 2020 campaign.We also see a stream of specific signals to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, such as:Retweets of white supremacist videos and tweetsFacebook ads that used the Nazi’s inverted red triangle badge for political prisonersTweets, posts, and Trump & Company websites that use the numbers 88 and 14. “H” is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and among neo-Nazis, “88” is code for HH, or Heil Hitler. “14” is code for “The Fourteen Words,” a white supremacist mission statement: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”The Trump 2020 “America First” campaign logo, which is a clone of the eagle used by Hitler and by modern white supremacist groupsAnnouncing a ban on all immigration into the United States on Hitler’s birthdayScheduling Trump’s first live campaign rally in Tulsa, the site of one of the most vicious massacres of Black people, on JuneteenthScheduling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville on the 60th anniversary of a brutal Ku Klux Klan attack on Black activists in that city known as “Ax Handle Saturday”Setting major campaign speeches and events, such as Trump’s Independence Day rallies and his RNC acceptance speech, against a backdrop of majestic symbols of America, visually echoing the rallies of Adolph Hitler and other fascist leadersAnd then there is the explicit fearmongering and hatemongering of the rallies and speeches themselves. Trump’s July 3rd speech, which triggered my own pandemicide epiphany, is a textbook example of fascist rhetoric. An excerpt:“In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.“It’s not going to happen to us.“Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”In addition to the origin stories and messaging I’ve already described, fascist regimes also typically exhibit the following traits:Large urban centers are portrayed as threatening to the values of the heartland and the home through subversive ideas, pestilence, and disease.Demonized groups are seen as inherently lawless and impure, while the chosen group, by virtue of its natural superiority, can do no wrong.There is widespread fearmongering around racial mixing of the pure group with “inferior” blood from within and without.Sexism is widespread.Academics and intellectuals are discredited and eventually suppressed. Discourse is replaced with unsupported declarations by the leader and his party.Obsessions with national security and with law and order are pervasive.The military dominates, and there are ostentatious displays of military might.Regimes are backed by the conservative, wealthy elite and big business.Corporate wealth and power are enhanced, protected, and favored, while the power of labor is repressed.Government corruption and cronyism is rampantFraudulent elections ensure the continuation of the regime.Human rights of the demonized group are progressively violated, until finally the group is dehumanized, expelled, imprisoned, or eliminated.If you’ve been following the progression of Trump & Company from the start of the 2016 campaign through the present, you already know that each of these traits is either fully developed in the Trump & Company regime, or is actualizing now.From the start of the 2016 campaign, Trump & Company put forth an agenda that includes demonizing immigrants and limiting their influx into the country, representing the United States as a failed state brought to near-ruin by prior administrations, and positioning themselves as the only ones who can “drain the swamp” and Make America Great Again.Since the inauguration, Trump & Company have been advancing that agenda.For four years we have seen the steady growth of demonizing out-groups, cronyism and corruption, alliances with corporate power, and the suppression of labor found in fascist regimes of the past and in contemporary fascist states.In Trump & Company’s messaging, there is pervasive appeal to the heartland values, rejection of intellectuals, academics, and of science itself, and the discrediting of anyone in the media or in government who speaks out against them.Trump positions himself as the self-deified leader, “the chosen one.” There is the presumption of absolute power (“When the president says it, it’s absolute”), the steady erosion of the rule of law, glorification of military might, encouragement of paramilitary forces, and the deployment of Federal troops against civilians.Ominously, there is movement toward fraudulent elections, including documented Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump & Company’s current efforts to delay the 2020 election, cripple the Post Office’s ability to handle mail-in ballots, and undermine their credibility. And there is Trump encouraging North Carolina voters to test the system by voting twice — once by mail and again in person.Like Hitler, Trump is a believer in eugenics (literally, “good genes”). He is heir to his father’s dynasty and appears to envision the presidency as his own. Though Trump may not entertain hopes, as Hitler did, of a thousand-year Reich, he has already named his son Donald and daughter Ivanka as likely successors.And then there is the pandemicide. Hitler had to build concentration camps and gas chambers and force his victims to wear colored badges. Trump & Company have a much more convenient mechanism, one with plausible deniability. They just have to let the virus do its work while hundreds of thousands of the “impure” die.Although Trump may have begun his term as something shy of fascism, throughout his presidency, Trump & Company’s homegrown brand has become much more sharply defined. And since the pandemic emerged, that process has radically accelerated.Though not the mastermind Hitler was and Putin is, Trump is skilled in the art of salesmanship, and he has succeeded in selling, to a large segment of the American people, a lethal narrative.Trump & Company do not want to maintain the basic structure of our democracy. They want, to paraphrase the title of the book of Hitler’s speeches Trump kept by his bedside during his first marriage, a new order.Fascism adapts to the characteristics of the countries in which it arises. Just as the German, Italian, and Japanese fascist regimes differed in their implementations, the Trump & Company agenda is different still. But it contains the core characteristics of its predecessors, and if it continues, we are likely to see a far more blatant version in the coming years.So, is Trump & Company a fascist regime?All signs point to “yes.”I’ve been studying this pattern for a long time. For more details, please read the whole analysis (a half-hour read), including my take on the overall Trump & Company pandemic agenda, on my blog at: Pandemicide [full text]or download it as a free Kindle eBook here: Pandemicide - Kindle edition... or as a PDF, epub, or mobi file here: Download your copy of PandemicideIf you find my analysis credible, please share it. This can save lives if, even in a small way, it helps to stop Trump from being re-elected.

“Fascism is a disease, and there are symptoms,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once remarked.Is the United States becoming fascist?Although some writers have referred to Trump & Company as a fascist regime, most mainstream commentators and historians pull that punch. It’s as if applying the “F” word to the leader of the free world is too extreme. “It,” they seem to be saying, “can’t happen here.”I’m not a historian or a political scientist, but I do know how to match a set of symptoms to a disease. Do the symptoms of the Trump & Company agenda match the disease of fascism?Let’s see.I’m a psychotherapist. To arrive at a client’s diagnosis, I first draw from my past experience with clients who’ve had similar collections of symptoms. Once I have a probable diagnosis, I confirm it by consulting the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual, the oddly named encyclopedia of psychological disorders, now in its fifth edition.The DSM-5 provides descriptions of each known psychological disorder, how it usually arises, its typical symptoms, and how it tends to progress. I consult the DSM to verify whether my proposed diagnosis fits the criteria and history described in the manual. If there’s a match, I’ve found the correct diagnosis.Most mental illness diagnoses are on a spectrum. At some point, symptoms are severe enough to cross the line between, say, transient anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder, occasional mood swings and bipolar disorder, or eccentricity and schizophrenia. Once that line has been crossed, there may be varying degrees of illness, from mild to moderate to severe. The progression is cumulative; that is, if you have moderate depression, you meet the criteria for mild depression, but also meet additional depression criteria.Political systems are also psychological and also on a spectrum. At some point, they, too, can cross the line between, say, right-wing populism and fascism. Like any other disease, varying degrees of illness exist, and the progression is cumulative; early fascism, if unimpeded, develops into a more mature fascist movement.To see if Trump & Company’s political agenda is a match for the disease of fascism, let’s take a look at how fascism is defined, the circumstances under which it arises, its symptoms, and the how it typically progresses.The term fascism, like the terms terrorist or democracy, can be applied to a broad range of regimes.Since Mussolini coined the word in 1919, fascism has taken many forms, adapting to the culture of the place and time from which it emerges. But fascist regimes have a set of core characteristics, values, and implementation strategies that are essential to their growth.Historically, fascist regimes have arisen during extreme national crises, which catalyze ordinary citizens to align themselves with the fascist leaders.For Germany, Italy, and Japan, the catalytic crisis was the Great Depression. Today, in the United States, we have the pandemic and its fallout of illness, deaths, and economic chaos. Since the George Floyd murder and the rise of Black Lives Matter protests, we also have an additional catalyst, the most disruptive racial division since the 1960s.Central to fascism is the idea of a naturally superior people whose mythic greatness has been tragically destroyed by a pernicious enemy. For Hitler that enemy was the Jews. For Mussolini, the Bolsheviks. For Modi, it’s the Muslims. And for Trump & Company, in a bizarre hijacking of the term, it’s a nebulous grouping of minorities, academics, journalists, and liberals they refer to as “far-left fascism.”Fascists relentlessly cultivate division between themselves and the identified enemy, whom they demonize, using propaganda to recruit a growing body of supporters.Fascists position themselves as the heroes who will vanquish the imagined enemy. Their followers rally people behind what is presented as a dire threat by a devious “other,” against whom they will prevail only through allegiance to the regime.Fascists convince potential supporters that their existing government institutions have betrayed them, and that those institutions cannot rid the nation of this threat, and cannot restore it to that mythic greatness. Only the fascists can accomplish this heroic task.Accomplishing restoration to greatness requires total allegiance to the party, and above all to its leader, whom followers come to regard as their god-like savior. “Only I can fix it,” Trump declared in his 2016 inaugural address. “I am your voice.”Fascist leaders typically move from conventional head-of-state positions such as prime minister (Mussolini) or chancellor (Hitler) to autocratic rule as their party grows more powerful. Trump has already indicated that should he lose, he will contest the 2020 election. He has said he may refuse to leave office if defeated, and has floated the idea that, should he be re-elected, he will rule for an additional four to eight years beyond his second term.The deified leader neutralizes opposing points of view by discrediting the media and other critics. Adolf Hitler labeled the mainstream media lugenpresse (lying press). Trump’s updated version is fake news.Fascist regimes suppress dissent, often through police or military violence. Hitler had the SS, a powerful paramilitary militia that began as a small, voluntary organization. We have seen the seeds of such a militia in Trump’s calls to armed white supremacist groups to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and more explicitly, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” And we have witnessed police, the National Guard, and anonymized Federal troops attacking Black Lives Matter protesters.Extreme policies become normalized, so that what was once intolerable becomes ordinary. In Nazi Germany, most Germans knew about and eventually accepted that Jews were being sent to death camps. In the United States, police violence, abuse of executive power, and the daily count of COVID-19 deaths has been similarly normalized: “It is what it is.”Fascists use propaganda to indoctrinate the population with their own vision of reality. They manipulate feelings, rather than appealing to the intellect.In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler describes how, in 1921, he began to build what would become the Nazi party. He started with spreading the party’s ideas through propaganda, acquired followers, and from them recruited elite members who would continue to spread propaganda and acquire additional followers. On the key role of propaganda, he wrote:“In every great revolutionary movement that is of world importance the idea of this movement must always be spread abroad through the operation of propaganda. The propagandist must never tire in his efforts to make the new ideas clearly understood, inculcating them among others, or at least he must place himself in the position of those others and endeavor to upset their confidence in the convictions they have hitherto held.”To broaden and strengthen their movements, fascist propagandists use a variety of techniques to discredit opponents, displace people’s existing values, and demonize their perceived enemies. Common propaganda techniques include:Building a cult of personality (idealizing the leader, creating a heroic public image, holding euphoric rallies, flag waving)Repetition (of symbols, slogans, and accusations against the opposition and the media)Defaming (name-calling, ridicule, smears, ad hominem attacks, character assassination, stereotyping)Distortion (intentional vagueness, loaded language, denial, minimization, half-truths, disinformation, obfuscation, lies)Demonization (scapegoating, appeals to fear and prejudice, hatemongering, dehumanizing)Trump & Company employ every trick in the fascist propaganda playbook, from flag waving and name-calling to character assassination and dehumanization.During the 2016 campaign we heard endlessly about Crooked Hillary — Lock her up! For four years, we’ve been warned about Mexican rapists, illegal immigrants from shithole countries, the deep state, the radical left. Bad people. Scum. Thugs. Now it’s Sleepy Joe, the empty shell, the Trojan horse, anarchists, far-left fascists, antifa, and dark shadows. On and on.Throughout the presidency, Trump & Company have used distortion, defamation, disinformation, and demonization, along with constructing a cult-like allegiance to Trump himself, and the use of these propaganda techniques has dramatically increased since the start of the 2020 campaign.We also see a stream of specific signals to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, such as:Retweets of white supremacist videos and tweetsFacebook ads that used the Nazi’s inverted red triangle badge for political prisonersTweets, posts, and Trump & Company websites that use the numbers 88 and 14. “H” is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and among neo-Nazis, “88” is code for HH, or Heil Hitler. “14” is code for “The Fourteen Words,” a white supremacist mission statement: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”The Trump 2020 “America First” campaign logo, which is a clone of the eagle used by Hitler and by modern white supremacist groupsAnnouncing a ban on all immigration into the United States on Hitler’s birthdayScheduling Trump’s first live campaign rally in Tulsa, the site of one of the most vicious massacres of Black people, on JuneteenthScheduling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville on the 60th anniversary of a brutal Ku Klux Klan attack on Black activists in that city known as “Ax Handle Saturday”Setting major campaign speeches and events, such as Trump’s Independence Day rallies and his RNC acceptance speech, against a backdrop of majestic symbols of America, visually echoing the rallies of Adolph Hitler and other fascist leadersAnd then there is the explicit fearmongering and hatemongering of the rallies and speeches themselves. Trump’s July 3rd speech, which triggered my own pandemicide epiphany, is a textbook example of fascist rhetoric. An excerpt:“In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.“It’s not going to happen to us.“Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”In addition to the origin stories and messaging I’ve already described, fascist regimes also typically exhibit the following traits:Large urban centers are portrayed as threatening to the values of the heartland and the home through subversive ideas, pestilence, and disease.Demonized groups are seen as inherently lawless and impure, while the chosen group, by virtue of its natural superiority, can do no wrong.There is widespread fearmongering around racial mixing of the pure group with “inferior” blood from within and without.Sexism is widespread.Academics and intellectuals are discredited and eventually suppressed. Discourse is replaced with unsupported declarations by the leader and his party.Obsessions with national security and with law and order are pervasive.The military dominates, and there are ostentatious displays of military might.Regimes are backed by the conservative, wealthy elite and big business.Corporate wealth and power are enhanced, protected, and favored, while the power of labor is repressed.Government corruption and cronyism is rampantFraudulent elections ensure the continuation of the regime.Human rights of the demonized group are progressively violated, until finally the group is dehumanized, expelled, imprisoned, or eliminated.If you’ve been following the progression of Trump & Company from the start of the 2016 campaign through the present, you already know that each of these traits is either fully developed in the Trump & Company regime, or is actualizing now.From the start of the 2016 campaign, Trump & Company put forth an agenda that includes demonizing immigrants and limiting their influx into the country, representing the United States as a failed state brought to near-ruin by prior administrations, and positioning themselves as the only ones who can “drain the swamp” and Make America Great Again.Since the inauguration, Trump & Company have been advancing that agenda.For four years we have seen the steady growth of demonizing out-groups, cronyism and corruption, alliances with corporate power, and the suppression of labor found in fascist regimes of the past and in contemporary fascist states.In Trump & Company’s messaging, there is pervasive appeal to the heartland values, rejection of intellectuals, academics, and of science itself, and the discrediting of anyone in the media or in government who speaks out against them.Trump positions himself as the self-deified leader, “the chosen one.” There is the presumption of absolute power (“When the president says it, it’s absolute”), the steady erosion of the rule of law, glorification of military might, encouragement of paramilitary forces, and the deployment of Federal troops against civilians.Ominously, there is movement toward fraudulent elections, including documented Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump & Company’s current efforts to delay the 2020 election, cripple the Post Office’s ability to handle mail-in ballots, and undermine their credibility. And there is Trump encouraging North Carolina voters to test the system by voting twice — once by mail and again in person.Like Hitler, Trump is a believer in eugenics (literally, “good genes”). He is heir to his father’s dynasty and appears to envision the presidency as his own. Though Trump may not entertain hopes, as Hitler did, of a thousand-year Reich, he has already named his son Donald and daughter Ivanka as likely successors.And then there is the pandemicide. Hitler had to build concentration camps and gas chambers and force his victims to wear colored badges. Trump & Company have a much more convenient mechanism, one with plausible deniability. They just have to let the virus do its work while hundreds of thousands of the “impure” die.Although Trump may have begun his term as something shy of fascism, throughout his presidency, Trump & Company’s homegrown brand has become much more sharply defined. And since the pandemic emerged, that process has radically accelerated.Though not the mastermind Hitler was and Putin is, Trump is skilled in the art of salesmanship, and he has succeeded in selling, to a large segment of the American people, a lethal narrative.Trump & Company do not want to maintain the basic structure of our democracy. They want, to paraphrase the title of the book of Hitler’s speeches Trump kept by his bedside during his first marriage, a new order.Fascism adapts to the characteristics of the countries in which it arises. Just as the German, Italian, and Japanese fascist regimes differed in their implementations, the Trump & Company agenda is different still. But it contains the core characteristics of its predecessors, and if it continues, we are likely to see a far more blatant version in the coming years.So, is Trump & Company a fascist regime?All signs point to “yes.”I’ve been studying this pattern for a long time. For more details, please read the whole analysis (a half-hour read), including my take on the overall Trump & Company pandemic agenda, on my blog at: Pandemicide [full text]or download it as a free Kindle eBook here: Pandemicide - Kindle edition... or as a PDF, epub, or mobi file here: Download your copy of PandemicideIf you find my analysis credible, please share it. This can save lives if, even in a small way, it helps to stop Trump from being re-elected.

“Fascism is a disease, and there are symptoms,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once remarked.Is Donald Trump a fascist?Although some writers have referred to Trump & Company as a fascist regime, most mainstream commentators and historians pull that punch. Donald Trump is a right-wing populist, an authoritarian, a bigot, a xenophobe, a racist demagogue, they say, but he’s not fascist. They see fascism as the product of another time and set of conditions. Fascists, they also add, want to reshape the world to fit their own ideology, not just use it for personal gain.It’s as if applying the “F” word to the leader of the free world is too extreme. “It,” they seem to be saying, “can’t happen here.”I’m not a historian or a political scientist, but I do know how to match a set of symptoms to a disease. Do the symptoms of the Trump & Company agenda match the disease of fascism?Shall we see?I’m a psychotherapist. To arrive at a client’s diagnosis, I first draw from my past experience with clients who’ve had similar collections of symptoms. Once I have a probable diagnosis, I confirm it by consulting the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual, the oddly named encyclopedia of psychological disorders, now in its fifth edition.The DSM-5 provides descriptions of each known psychological disorder, how it usually arises, its typical symptoms, and how it tends to progress. I consult the DSM to verify whether my proposed diagnosis fits the criteria and history described in the manual. If there’s a match, I’ve found the correct diagnosis.Most mental illness diagnoses are on a spectrum. At some point, symptoms are severe enough to cross the line between, say, transient anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder, occasional mood swings and bipolar disorder, or eccentricity and schizophrenia. Once that line has been crossed, there may be varying degrees of illness, from mild to moderate to severe. The progression is cumulative; that is, if you have moderate depression, you meet the criteria for mild depression, but also meet additional depression criteria.Political systems are also psychological and also on a spectrum. At some point, they, too, can cross the line between, say, right-wing populism and fascism. Like any other disease, varying degrees of illness exist, and the progression is cumulative; early fascism, if unimpeded, develops into a more mature fascist movement.To see if Trump & Company’s political agenda is a match for the disease of fascism, let’s take a look at how fascism is defined, the circumstances under which it arises, its symptoms, and the how it typically progresses.The term fascism, like the terms terrorist or democracy, can be applied to a broad range of regimes.Since Mussolini coined the word in 1919, fascism has taken many forms, adapting to the culture of the place and time from which it emerges. But fascist regimes have a set of core characteristics, values, and implementation strategies that are essential to their growth.Historically, fascist regimes have arisen during extreme national crises, which catalyze ordinary citizens to align themselves with the fascist leaders.For Germany, Italy, and Japan, the catalytic crisis was the Great Depression. Today, in the United States, we have the pandemic and its fallout of illness, deaths, and economic chaos. Since the George Floyd murder and the rise of Black Lives Matter protests, we also have an additional catalyst, the most disruptive racial division since the 1960s.Central to fascism is the idea of a naturally superior people whose mythic greatness has been tragically destroyed by a pernicious enemy. For Hitler that enemy was the Jews. For Mussolini, the Bolsheviks. For Modi, it’s the Muslims. And for Trump & Company, in a bizarre hijacking of the term, it’s a nebulous grouping of minorities, academics, journalists, and liberals they refer to as “far-left fascism.”Fascists relentlessly cultivate division between themselves and the identified enemy, whom they demonize, using propaganda to recruit a growing body of supporters.Fascists position themselves as the heroes who will vanquish the imagined enemy. Their followers rally people behind what is presented as a dire threat by a devious “other,” against whom they will prevail only through allegiance to the regime.Fascists convince potential supporters that their existing government institutions have betrayed them, and that those institutions cannot rid the nation of this threat, and cannot restore it to that mythic greatness. Only the fascists can accomplish this heroic task.Accomplishing restoration to greatness requires total allegiance to the party, and above all to its leader, whom followers come to regard as their god-like savior. “Only I can fix it,” Trump declared in his 2016 inaugural address. “I am your voice.”Fascist leaders typically move from conventional head-of-state positions such as prime minister (Mussolini) or chancellor (Hitler) to autocratic rule as their party grows more powerful. Trump has already indicated that should he lose, he will contest the 2020 election. He has said he may refuse to leave office if defeated, and has floated the idea that, should he be re-elected, he will rule for an additional four to eight years beyond his second term.The deified leader neutralizes opposing points of view by discrediting the media and other critics. Adolf Hitler labeled the mainstream media lugenpresse (lying press). Trump’s updated version is fake news.Fascist regimes suppress dissent, often through police or military violence. Hitler had the SS, a powerful paramilitary militia that began as a small, voluntary organization. We have seen the seeds of such a militia in Trump’s calls to armed white supremacist groups to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and more explicitly, “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” And we have witnessed police, the National Guard, and anonymized Federal troops attacking Black Lives Matter protesters.Extreme policies become normalized, so that what was once intolerable becomes ordinary. In Nazi Germany, most Germans knew about and eventually accepted that Jews were being sent to death camps. In the United States, police violence, abuse of executive power, and the daily count of COVID-19 deaths has been similarly normalized: “It is what it is.”Fascists use propaganda to indoctrinate the population with their own vision of reality. They manipulate feelings, rather than appealing to the intellect.In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler describes how, in 1921, he began to build what would become the Nazi party. He started with spreading the party’s ideas through propaganda, acquired followers, and from them recruited elite members who would continue to spread propaganda and acquire additional followers. On the key role of propaganda, he wrote:“In every great revolutionary movement that is of world importance the idea of this movement must always be spread abroad through the operation of propaganda. The propagandist must never tire in his efforts to make the new ideas clearly understood, inculcating them among others, or at least he must place himself in the position of those others and endeavor to upset their confidence in the convictions they have hitherto held.”To broaden and strengthen their movements, fascist propagandists use a variety of techniques to discredit opponents, displace people’s existing values, and demonize their perceived enemies. Common propaganda techniques include:Building a cult of personality (idealizing the leader, creating a heroic public image, holding euphoric rallies, flag waving)Repetition (of symbols, slogans, and accusations against the opposition and the media)Defaming (name-calling, ridicule, smears, ad hominem attacks, character assassination, stereotyping)Distortion (intentional vagueness, loaded language, denial, minimization, half-truths, disinformation, obfuscation, lies)Demonization (scapegoating, appeals to fear and prejudice, hatemongering, dehumanizing)Trump & Company employ every trick in the fascist propaganda playbook, from flag waving and name-calling to character assassination and dehumanization.During the 2016 campaign we heard endlessly about Crooked Hillary — Lock her up! For four years, we’ve been warned about Mexican rapists, illegal immigrants from shithole countries, the deep state, the radical left. Bad people. Scum. Thugs. Now it’s Sleepy Joe, the empty shell, the Trojan horse, anarchists, far-left fascists, antifa, and dark shadows. On and on.Throughout the presidency, Trump & Company have used distortion, defamation, disinformation, and demonization, along with constructing a cult-like allegiance to Trump himself, and the use of these propaganda techniques has dramatically increased since the start of the 2020 campaign.We also see a stream of specific signals to white supremacists and neo-Nazis, such as:Retweets of white supremacist videos and tweetsFacebook ads that used the Nazi’s inverted red triangle badge for political prisonersTweets, posts, and Trump & Company websites that use the numbers 88 and 14. “H” is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and among neo-Nazis, “88” is code for HH, or Heil Hitler. “14” is code for “The Fourteen Words,” a white supremacist mission statement: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”The Trump 2020 “America First” campaign logo, which is a clone of the eagle used by Hitler and by modern white supremacist groupsAnnouncing a ban on all immigration into the United States on Hitler’s birthdayScheduling Trump’s first live campaign rally in Tulsa, the site of one of the most vicious massacres of Black people, on JuneteenthScheduling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville on the 60th anniversary of a brutal Ku Klux Klan attack on Black activists in that city known as “Ax Handle Saturday”Setting major campaign speeches and events, such as Trump’s Independence Day rallies and his RNC acceptance speech, against a backdrop of majestic symbols of America, visually echoing the rallies of Adolph Hitler and other fascist leadersAnd then there is the explicit fearmongering and hatemongering of the rallies and speeches themselves. Trump’s July 3rd speech, which triggered my own pandemicide epiphany, is a textbook example of fascist rhetoric. An excerpt:“In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.“It’s not going to happen to us.“Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”In addition to the origin stories and messaging I’ve already described, fascist regimes also typically exhibit the following traits:Large urban centers are portrayed as threatening to the values of the heartland and the home through subversive ideas, pestilence, and disease.Demonized groups are seen as inherently lawless and impure, while the chosen group, by virtue of its natural superiority, can do no wrong.There is widespread fearmongering around racial mixing of the pure group with “inferior” blood from within and without.Sexism is widespread.Academics and intellectuals are discredited and eventually suppressed. Discourse is replaced with unsupported declarations by the leader and his party.Obsessions with national security and with law and order are pervasive.The military dominates, and there are ostentatious displays of military might.Regimes are backed by the conservative, wealthy elite and big business.Corporate wealth and power are enhanced, protected, and favored, while the power of labor is repressed.Government corruption and cronyism is rampantFraudulent elections ensure the continuation of the regime.Human rights of the demonized group are progressively violated, until finally the group is dehumanized, expelled, imprisoned, or eliminated.If you’ve been following the progression of Trump & Company from the start of the 2016 campaign through the present, you already know that each of these traits is either fully developed in the Trump & Company regime, or is actualizing now.From the start of the 2016 campaign, Trump & Company put forth an agenda that includes demonizing immigrants and limiting their influx into the country, representing the United States as a failed state brought to near-ruin by prior administrations, and positioning themselves as the only ones who can “drain the swamp” and Make America Great Again.Since the inauguration, Trump & Company have been advancing that agenda.For four years we have seen the steady growth of demonizing out-groups, cronyism and corruption, alliances with corporate power, and the suppression of labor found in fascist regimes of the past and in contemporary fascist states.In Trump & Company’s messaging, there is pervasive appeal to the heartland values, rejection of intellectuals, academics, and of science itself, and the discrediting of anyone in the media or in government who speaks out against them.Trump positions himself as the self-deified leader, “the chosen one.” There is the presumption of absolute power (“When the president says it, it’s absolute”), the steady erosion of the rule of law, glorification of military might, encouragement of paramilitary forces, and the deployment of Federal troops against civilians.Ominously, there is movement toward fraudulent elections, including documented Russian interference in the 2016 election and Trump & Company’s current efforts to delay the 2020 election, cripple the Post Office’s ability to handle mail-in ballots, and undermine their credibility. And there is Trump encouraging North Carolina voters to test the system by voting twice — once by mail and again in person.Like Hitler, Trump is a believer in eugenics (literally, “good genes”). He is heir to his father’s dynasty and appears to envision the presidency as his own. Though Trump may not entertain hopes, as Hitler did, of a thousand-year Reich, he has already named his son Donald and daughter Ivanka as likely successors.And then there is the pandemicide. Hitler had to build concentration camps and gas chambers and force his victims to wear colored badges. Trump & Company have a much more convenient mechanism, one with plausible deniability. They just have to let the virus do its work while hundreds of thousands of the “impure” die.Although Trump may have begun his term as something shy of fascism, throughout his presidency, Trump & Company’s homegrown brand has become much more sharply defined. And since the pandemic emerged, that process has radically accelerated.Though not the mastermind Hitler was and Putin is, Trump is skilled in the art of salesmanship, and he has succeeded in selling, to a large segment of the American people, a lethal narrative.Trump & Company do not want to maintain the basic structure of our democracy. They want, to paraphrase the title of the book of Hitler’s speeches Trump kept by his bedside during his first marriage, a new order.Fascism adapts to the characteristics of the countries in which it arises. Just as the German, Italian, and Japanese fascist regimes differed in their implementations, the Trump & Company agenda is different still. But it contains the core characteristics of its predecessors, and if it continues, we are likely to see a far more blatant version in the coming years.So, is Trump & Company a fascist regime?All signs point to “yes.”I’ve been studying this pattern for a long time. For more details, please read the whole analysis (a half-hour read), including my take on the overall Trump & Company pandemic agenda, on my blog at: Pandemicide [full text]or download it as a free Kindle eBook here: Pandemicide - Kindle edition... or as a PDF, epub, or mobi file here: Download your copy of PandemicideIf you find my analysis credible, please share it. This can save lives if, even in a small way, it helps to stop Trump from being re-elected.