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Notes -
My point has nothing to do with Trump. I don’t like him anyway. My point is that pretty much any supposed “warning of authoritarianism” is so overbroad that literally any political figure doing something that the accuser disagrees with can fit into the usual definitions of fascism Or authoritarianism.
So in answer to the question, the first step would be to come up with an empirical definition of the points of fascism Or authoritarianism that even someone who agrees with the policies would say “sure I think we can agree on this point being fascist and not just using power in a way you don’t happen to like.” As it sits, this isn’t true. Eco’s 14 points are nearly as bad as Lichmann’s election keys: undefined terms, vague rules for deciding what counts, and lots of vibes-based handwringing. So I’ll answer by saying that I’ll take the cries of fascism by Trump seriously when you can explain why for example Obama’s trillion dollar bill to go around congress isn’t a fascist power grab, but Trump using Tariff funds is. Or why Eisenhower using the National Guard to arrest the governor of Arkansas for standing in the school door isn’t fascist, but tge National Guard protecting ICE agents is. I don’t like how Trump is doing things, but that doesn’t make it fascist, it means I disagree.
I have major qualms about throwing around these kinds of accusations without a lot of proof for a couple of reasons. First and most obvious is that they essentially declare the sitting government to be “outlaws” in the sense that the Western moral ethos has decided that any government that is authoritarian or fascist is to be opposed by any means necessary. It’s a declaration of war, it says that the government and anyone who supports them for any reason is evil and to be condemned. This is how you get assassination— and we’ve already had one. Second, Theres a danger that I think has already happened that so many false alarms have been issued that nobody takes such claims as literal anymore. You simply cannot because pretty much every conservative government that tries to govern like a conservative government is decried as Fascism. Reagan is fascist. Bush is fascist. Thatcher. If that’s also fascism, how do you actually raise the alarm if you get a genocidal regime who wants to actually rule with an iron fist?
Notice how I didn’t say anything about fascism. No need to quibble over definitions!
I am asking you: what would Trump have to do before you’d say “yes, that’s an unconstitutional power grab.”
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