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I've been thinking about why some people are terrified of Trump while others, like me, are more indifferent. I mostly tune out Trump news because I assume much of it involves scare tactics or misleading framing by his detractors. When my wife brings up concerns about his supposedly authoritarian actions, my general response is that if what he's doing is illegal, the governmental process will handle it - and if it's legal, then that's how the system is supposed to work. I have faith that our institutions have the checks and balances to deal with any presidential overreach appropriately.
This reminded me of a mirror situation during 2020-2021 with the BLM movement, where our positions were reversed. I was deeply concerned about social media mobs pressuring corporations, governments, and individuals to conform under threat of job loss, boycotts, and riots, while my wife thought these social pressures were justified and would naturally self-correct if they went too far. The key difference I see is that the government has built-in checks and balances designed to prevent abuse of power, while social movements and mob pressure operate without those same institutional restraints. It seems like we each trust different institutional mechanisms, but I can't help but think that formal governmental processes with built-in restraints are more reliable than grassroots social pressure that operates without those same safeguards. Furthermore, the media seems incentivized to amplify fear about Trump but not about grassroots social movements - Trump generates clicks and outrage regardless of which side you're on, while criticizing social movements risks alienating the platforms' own user base and advertiser-friendly demographics.
People are terrified of Trump because they don't really know what 'fascism' actually means. If Trump was really fascist, the first thing he would've been doing is purging/ensuring loyalty of the military to consolidate his power base. The failing New York Times would've been shut down or put under new management, not sneered at on twitter. Party cadres in key institutions, 'coordination' of Google, Facebook, Disney... NGO LGBT centre staff brought in for police questioning until the message is made clear and they shut down, not merely cancelling funding for an LGBT suicide hotline. Boots on the ground in Greenland, not posturing and talk without action.
People are concerned about Trump doing the fake version of fascism (enforcing immigration law, banning immigration from shithole countries) because they think it's the real version of fascism (totalitarian government, military expansion overseas, active suppression of dissidents/ethnicities). They don't appreciate that there's a qualitative difference. There's no law of nature that says an administration that starts with enforcing immigration law ends up pursuing extermination of non-whites.
He kind of is purging the military, though. At least to the low key degree that presidents can. I actually almost posted this article as a top level post about how civilians are being purged from West Point, on top of other firings that have been happening.
And stuff like
The story also ends with the reporter themselves not only being denied a press pass to a West Point speech by Trump but then being harassed by the Secret Service on invented accusations.
More broadly there was the set of lawsuits settled against law firms he was annoyed with on a personal level - seen by many as dangerous overreach. I’m not sure how much stock to put in allegations of suppressing various news media outlets, especially TV ones, but that accusation has been made. Having read a few books about Hitler, one thing that struck me was a key part of his drive for control was street thuggery. Brownshirts brawling with Communists but later suppressing more general protest. Cultures of fear and reprisal. Yes, some leftists have been guilty of this, but is rightist revenge touring really the answer? Cultures of fear and their effect on free speech are bad period. FBI raids on Bolton. Harris losing secret service protection. Executive orders directly instructing DoJ to investigate treason against specific people. Leveraging honestly pretty petty mortgage inconsistencies to attack a Fed governor and a sitting state Attorney General. Trump recently called for Chris Christie to be (re)investigated over Bridgegate, conveniently right after he was on Sunday TV criticizing Trump. But it’s not just these big names, it’s the smaller governmental cogs who also are now worried.
Moreover even neutral observers can admit that the system of checks and balances is not working as it should - especially I blame Congress for this, however, not Trump directly, but he has played a role. They recently sat a federal judge, Emil Bove, who very credibly was accused of outright making plans to defy a judicial order and lie to the judge about it!
I do honestly think fascism allegations are a little overblown but they aren’t at all invented out of nothing. Trump quite literally does admire tyrants and dictators at the end of the day.
OK but has the military been made to take a personal loyalty oath to Trump?
Or for the civil service:
"I swear: I will be faithful and obedient to the leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, to observe the law, and to conscientiously fulfil my official duties, so help me God!"
Hitler would also give generals huge estates, pay off their debts informally, personally.
Not having some anti-fascist scholar show up at West Point or not giving Harris secret service protection is not the same kind of thing fundamentally as real fascism. The Secret Service are no match for random 20 year olds anyway, anyone who wants to kill her probably can if they learn how to shoot or use a drone. But under real fascism Harris would've been sent to exile, imprisoned, disappeared, Navalnyed... The anti-fascist scholar would be whisked away to a prison camp. There'd be paramilitaries under direct Party control like the Blackshirts, PAP or SS/SA muscling in on the Pentagon's domain.
Something can be unseemly, dubiously legal, illegal or authoritarian but not actually be totalitarian or fascist. And the latter is what many on the left get so hysterical about.
It's like the Trump-Russia collusion angle. Trump is slightly warmer to Russia than the Biden administration. But Trump is actively sending Ukraine munitions used to kill Russian troops in war. He's anti-Russian. He was anti-Russian in his first term too, sending Ukraine Javelins. I don't recall him providing sanctions relief, the Magnitsky sanctions remained. But the left doesn't care about this at all, they live in an alternative reality where Trump is a Russian stooge because he's not deadset on antagonizing Russia 24/7 and has other priorities besides that.
Maybe a better question then would be: if the US were to become more authoritarian (because let’s be honest that is probably the more accurate word), what would it look like? I’m puzzled as to what you think it would look like. Of course the Bayes calculation is something separate, but no country ever goes from 0 to 60 instantly
The US is becoming more authoritarian. I agree with that. But my point is that it's being pattern-matched to fascism too aggressively by libs who have these nightmare-wishmares about Trump sending LGBT to camps and implementing white supremacy. Or they go 'tariffs will crash the economy' when tariffs are bad but not beyond the usual range of terrible economic policies the US indulges in. They can't possibly do as much damage as the EU has done to Europe.
You can legitimately use troops to crack down on criminals, the US crime rate is too high by developed world standards. Send the criminals to prison, crack down on them. The US sent a bunch of criminals to prison in the 1990s but we don't necessarily consider that fascism. Trump hasn't even gotten that far. The US just blew up that boat of maybe drug smugglers and people are complaining about it. But the US blows things up all the time. Biden blew up a 'maybe terrorist' that was just an Afghan trying to get water for his family during the chaotic evacuation. Clinton blew up a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant for no good reason.
That's not necessarily fascism either. It can sound like fascism if you make the argument, it's aggressive and obnoxious behaviour. Authoritarian too. But you can go from 30 Authoritarianism to 40 Authoritarianism and stop there, it's not a slippery slope in and of itself. The situation may change and being stuck at 30 is no longer adaptive.
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