The Anatomy of Neo-fascism - Part 2

Does the MAGA movement qualify as Neo-fascist?

“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.'” —Halford E. Luccock

Now that we've defined twenty-first century Neo-fascism, does the MAGA movement qualify as Neo-fascist? Last time I said that it does. Let's take a look at why I think the term is applicable:

Is there a cult of personality? This is difficult for anyone to deny. It's hard to see the relationship between Trump and his followers as any kind of normal one between politician and client based on rational self-interest. Instead, it looks more like a cult of personality—people see themselves embodied in the leader and the leader in them—the relationship is very personal. People fly Trump flags, festoon themselves and their children in Trump clothing and MAGA hats, hang photos of him in their house, plaster their cars with bumper stickers and other imagery, paint murals of him on the side of their barns, buy his merchandise, and so on.

Even the images circulating on the internet portray him as some sort of God-like hero savior, in a troubling parallel with previous movements. While there have certainly been charismatic politicians in America before like JFK, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, there has never been anything like this. The imagery speaks for itself:

What the leader says is true without question, even if contradicts what everyone else tells them, including friends, family, clergy, and neighbors. For example, according to a CBS News You.gov poll, among those who plan to vote for Trump, 71% feel that what he tells them is true — higher than the results for friends and family (63%), conservative media figures (56%) or even religious leaders (42%). This is more characteristic of authoritarian movements or a totalitarian state than a modern liberal democracy. Viral interviews with attendees at outdoor rallies (itself invoking previous authoritarian regimes) show people in thrall and openly declaring that they wish to see Trump installed as the nation's first dictator.

Trump is portrayed as messianic figure, especially by evangelical Christian supporters who see him as a warrior sent by God to fight against the secularization of society and the machinations of “evil.” Chillingly, he declared at a rally that, “I am your warrior. I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

Here is an academic paper arguing this: Personality Cult or a Mere Matter of Popularity?

Is it a form of palingenetic ultra-nationalism? I would argue yes. MAGA seeks to remake America in it own image. Look no further than this statement by Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation:

The leader of a conservative think tank orchestrating plans for a massive overhaul of the federal government in the event of a Republican presidential win said that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts made the comments Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, adding that Republicans are “in the process of taking this country back.”

A book by Roberts was scheduled to be released prior to the election, but its release was pushed back, presumably because its content was deemed too controversial. The forward to the book was written by Trump's vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who was at one time considered for president of the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is the originator of Project 2025, the blueprint for a second Trump presidency, which advocates, among other things, a purging of the military and civil service and their replacement with loyalists and cronies who will carry out the president's orders without question.

In 2016, one of the members of the Claremont Institute—another right-wing think tank associated with MAGA—argued that the prospect of Democrats wining the election was so dire that extraordinary measures were justified to “save” the country. The essay, entitled The Flight 93 Election, made an analogy between the 2016 election and the people who stormed the cockpit of Flight 93 on September 11 to crash the plane. This echoes the apocalyptic rhetoric from Trump's own campaign speeches where he repeatedly tells his audience that if they do not win, “They won't have a country anymore.”

As for ultranationalism, the slogan “America First” not only invokes disturbing parallels with far-right movements in America’s own history, but also Germany’s “Deutschland über alles.” Robert Paxton, the British historian who coined the term “palingenetic ultranationalism” to describe historical fascist movements, changed his initial view and now argues that MAGA is indeed a fascist movement:

I've Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. Until Now (Newsweek)

Is it anti-democratic and opposed to liberal norms? Most certainly yes. The most obvious and glaring evidence is Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, which was unsuccessful. Trump is the first chief executive in the history of the Republic to oppose the peaceful transfer of power. To this day he still insists that he won the election, as do his supporters, including J.D. Vance who refuses to provide a direct answer when questioned in debates and interviews.

This is a massive and ongoing topic, but a good overview is provided by the Wikipedia page. I have removed the references for readability, but you can go there to see the links to the sources, including government documents:

Trump loyalists, including chief of staff Mark Meadows, personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and several Republican lawmakers, attempted to keep Trump in power. At the state level, they targeted legislatures with the intent of changing the results or delaying electoral vote certification at the Capitol. Nationally, they promoted the idea Vice President Mike Pence could refuse to certify the results on January 6, 2021.

Pence repeatedly stated the Vice President has no such authority and verified Biden and Harris as the winners. Hundreds of other elected Republicans, including members of Congress and governors, refused to acknowledge Biden's victory, though a growing number acknowledged it over time.

Trump's legal team sought to bring a case before the Supreme Court, but none of the 63 lawsuits they filed were successful. They pinned their hopes on Texas v. Pennsylvania, but on December 11, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Afterward, Trump considered ways to remain in power, including military intervention, seizing voting machines, and another appeal to the Supreme Court.

In June 2022, the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack said it had enough evidence to recommend that the Department of Justice indict Trump, and on December 19, the committee formally made the criminal referral to the Justice Department. On August 1, 2023, Trump was indicted by a D.C. grand jury for conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights; he pleaded not guilty to all charges.

On August 14, Trump and 18 co-defendants, were indicted in Fulton County, Georgia for their efforts to overturn the election results in that state. Ten leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the Capitol attack.

More recently, the special prosecutor on the case unveiled evidence that Trump himself “resorted to crimes” in order to stay in office beyond his tenure. Remarkably, this has not disqualified him from seeking office again. The parallel is Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the German state and his appointment as Chancellor ten years later (although, unlike Trump, Hitler served time in prison). Another analogy might be Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Also disturbing is MAGA’s embrace of autocrats like Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. Trump cited Orbán—leader of the “illiberal state” of Hungary—as an example of his support from foreign leaders during the presidential debate, even calling him a “strong man.” Orbán has become a regular speaker at CPAC and is a frequent guest at the president’s Mar-A-Lago compound (which at least one prominent Republican has compared to North Korea).

Undermining faith in democratic elections and vote suppression is a core tactic of the MAGA movement at all levels of governance destroying the very foundational bedrock of American democracy.

Arizona election official forced to resign as threats get worse and worse (Raw Story)

Rightwing claim of ‘0% chance’ of fair US election previews effort to undo 2024 result (The Guardian)

Georgia’s MAGA elections board is laying the groundwork for an actual stolen election (Vox)

Trump's bloodlust and desire for vengeance are well-documented. During the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump repeatedly demanded that the army be used to put down the protests. He tear-gassed protesters in order to stage a photo op in front of the the White House (where he held a Bible upside-down). He also contemplated using the military to help him stay in office. All of this has been extensively documented in a book by Washington Post reporters:

How It Went Down: Authors Go Deep Into Doomed 2020 Trump White House (NPR)

More recently, Trump fantasized about suspending the law for a day to promote vigilantism in a scenario similar to the movie “The Purge.”

Does it scapegoat marginalized groups, minorities, and leftists for the nation's ills? Again, this is undeniable, and perhaps where MAGA rhetoric is most similar to the Third Reich. As even sympathetic media have noted, the terms Trump uses to describe immigrants don’t just echo words used by Hitler to describe the Jews—they are often the exact same phrases verbatim!

Trump repeatedly refers to immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. Immigrants are depicted as “subhuman,” and as “vile rapists and murderers” contaminated by filth and disease. He claims they are coming directly to the US from insane asylums abroad, apparently conflating the term “seeking asylum” with “insane asylums.” Immigrants have been blamed for all the nation's ills, from expensive housing and rent, to inflation, to crime, to unemployment. His lies about Haitians kidnapping and eating cats and dogs have become infamous, yet surveys show a majority of Republicans believe them. Fear, hatred and xenophobia have replaced economic populism as the defining feature of the MAGA movement.

The regime has already expressed the desire to herd over ten million immigrants onto concentration camps “on day one”—one of the largest movements of human beings in history. He has dubbed this “Operation Aurora” after the town in Colorado which he claimed was “invaded and conquered” by Venezuelan drug gangs. It wasn’t, of course, as even the town’s Republican mayor acknowledged, yet it makes no difference to his supporters.

If former president Donald Trump is elected for a second term, he and his advisers promise to remove from the U.S., via forced expulsions and deportation camps, as many as 20 million people—a number larger than the country’s current estimated population of undocumented residents. Put into effect, this scheme would devolve quickly into a vast 21st-century version of concentration camps, with predictably brutal results.

Concentration camps are built for the mass detention of civilians based on group identity, excluding protections normally afforded by a country’s legal system. I wrote a history of these camps that traced an arc from their 19th-century origins in Spanish-occupied Cuba through the development of death camps in Germany and their modern-day descendants around the world...

Trump’s incendiary language echoes dangerous historical precedents. He has called his political opponents “vermin,” referred to immigrants as depraved “animals” and “rapists,” and described the U.S.–Mexico border as an “open wound.” Examples abound of similar rhetoric in Nazi propaganda about Jews.

Less well known is the fact that before World War II, the Nazis framed German Jews as aliens who needed to be forced into emigration or expelled. This was the original logic for stripping Jews of citizenship: to officially render them foreigners. (It should be noted that Trump aims to end birthright citizenship in the U.S.)

Trump’s Massive Deportation Plan Echoes Concentration Camp History (Scientific American)

But immigrants are hardly the only group targeted. Homosexuals and—especially—transgender individuals have been singled out as well. The existence of transgender people has been used to whip up hysteria among the MAGA crowd, despite them being less than a fraction of a percent of the population. Far-right commentator Michael Knowles has called for “the eradication of transgenderism” at CPAC. He later claimed he was referring to ideology, not the people themselves, but this is a distinction without a difference. Once a political movement adopts the language of eliminationism, it’s not a good sign:

Let’s not overthink this. Had he said, “Judaism must be eradicated,” or had he proclaimed an “all or nothing” solution for homosexuality, nobody would mistake the murderous intent of such a message. The story would have earned a front page headline in every major newspaper in the U.S. and beyond. (Which I hope will someday be the case when it comes to threats of trans genocide from a major political party.)

Opinion: What the CPAC speaker meant when he said ‘transgenderism must be eradicated’ (LA Times)

But immigrants, gays, and transgender people are not the only potential victims. Anyone who is accused of being a “liberal” or a Democrat, or perhaps even “woke” (an ever-shifting and ambiguously-defined term) is also in the crosshairs. JD Vance has stated that, “We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program,” referring to the rooting out of loyalists in Saddam Hussein’s defunct regime. In fact, the exact same dehumanizing language has been used here, too—MAGA’s enemies have literally been declared “unhuman” in a disturbing parallel with “Untermenschen.”

The book Unhumans, by Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, is a fascist manifesto. It argues that the “Great Men of History” should take their cues from homicidal dictators like Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco, reject reason and democracy, and ruthlessly annihilate the gangs of communist “unhumans” who are currently threatening to destroy the United States.

It explicitly advocates “eye for an eye” justice, promising a new McCarthyism complete with blacklists, along with the immediate banning of all teachers’ unions. It is perhaps the most paranoid, hateful, and terrifying book I have ever picked up. (I say this as someone who has read Mein Kampf.) And it comes with a warm and supportive blurb from Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who is currently the Republican party’s vice presidential nominee.

The Horrifying Fascist Manifesto Endorsed By J.D. Vance (Current Affairs)

More recently, in an interview just this past weekend, Trump referred to “radical left lunatics” (however defined) as “an enemy within,” and pledged to use the National Guard and the military to remove them from the country.

It cannot be overemphasized that the victims of Nazi concentration camps were not strictly Jews, but also included homosexuals, transgender people, disabled people, ethnic minorities, and other so-called “deviants,” along with political opponents of the Nazi regime. Once this modus operandi becomes ensconced, it only escalates, as pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer poignantly expressed in his poem, “First They Came For."

Is it allied with militias and paramilitary groups to carry out political violence? By now there are so many paramilitary and militia groups allied with MAGA it's hard to keep them straight: The Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, Patriot Front, Patriot Prayer—the list keeps growing.

Some have tried to deny this link by arguing that there is no evidence (as yet) of a direct line of communication between Trump’s inner circle and the leaders of these organizations. While that may be true, it is setting the bar so high as to downplay even the most obvious historical parallels—a common tactic used by the media to normalize MAGA. There are clear and obvious parallels between the Squadrisiti and Sturmabteilung and today’s right-wing militias and street brawlers who hang on Trump’s every word.

These paramilitary groups have repeatedly shown a willingness to engage in extra-judicial violence to advance the interests of the MAGA movement even without direct coordination. Stochastic terror rains down anyone who defies Trump, as seen in Springfield Ohio, which had to close schools to deal with bomb threats after the claims made by Trump and Vance about Haitians eating pets went viral. Most recently, armed militias have prevented FEMA from providing hurricane aid to North Carolina, and they promise to patrol polling locations while armed in order to prevent nonexistent “voter fraud.” Many of these groups, including the Proud Boys, were instrumental in the January 6 uprising at the Capitol in Washington DC.

Does it glorify violence? Kyle Rittenhouse—a teenager who killed two people during violent protests in Kenosha and was acquitted—was immediately made a hero of the MAGA movement. Supporters of the movement fetishize guns and festoon their vehicles with decals of guns, flags, and skulls. It's rather hard not to see a love of violence at work here, along with a cult of martyrdom à la Horst Wessel. After the assassination attempt, Trump pumped his fist in the air and repeatedly yelled to the crowd, “fight, fight” (Fight who? Fight what?).

Does it have an alternative media that curates its own reality? Of course. Fox News sits as the apex of a massive media apparatus designed to keep viewers agitated and cocooned in an alternative reality. The term “Fake News” has often been compared to the Nazi term Lügenpresse, or "lying press.” These outlets constantly stoke fear, anger and grievance against a continuously rotating cast of villains allegedly causing the country’s downfall. At a CPAC convention in 2022, Viktor Orban told the conservative activists gathered there “Have your own media.”

Trump’s supporters live in alternate reality where facts don't matter. Claims that the 2020 elections were stolen, or that Haitians are eating pets, or that viable live babies are being aborted, or that children are randomly subjected to transgender surgeries without their parent’s knowledge, or that hurricane aid is going to illegal immigrants instead, are believed by a majority of Republicans, despite being totally false. Paranoid conspiracy theories are rife, including anti-vaccine conspiracies, “Great Replacement” theories, the machinations of “global elites,” and even claiming that hurricanes are caused by secret weather machines controlled by Democrats (leading to death threats against weather forecasters). These paranoid tactics used to be associated with fringe groups like the John Birch Society but are now mainstream for Republicans.

Trump deigns not to go on any media which will fact check his lies and confines himself to friendly interviewers who will not challenge his assertions. His vice-president also complained about fact-checking during the vice-presidential debate. He repeatedly demands that media not sympathetic to him be shut down.

The original fascists were far more adept at using the newest media innovations of their day such as radio to communicate with their audience, and today’s far-right movements run circles around their competition when it comes to spreading their message online via social media, videos games, streams, and podcasts. A lot of far-right radicalization takes place online, as the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service recently observed.

Machismo and hypermasculinity. The MAGA movement, like all historical fascist movements, is driven by disaffected, listless, and angry young men who form the vanguard. The “dudebro” demographic has been heavily courted by MAGA, including via alternative media such as podcasts.

Perhaps most obvious is the link with combat sports. Dana White, the owner of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a close associate of Trump who introduced him at the Republican convention. Trump was also introduced by former wrestler Hulk Hogan and is friends with the owners of the WWE, Vince and Linda McMahon, the latter of whom served in his administration (and will do so again). Trump is a frequent attendee at combat sports events (including immediately after the election with his cabinet), and many of its athletes are devoted followers. He is a member of the Wrestling Hall of Fame.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with combat sports, but this melding of politics, entertainment and bloodsport is something unique, and very deliberate. All of this reinforces Trump’s “macho” image and makes him popular with aggressive young men who see him as a role model and live vicariously through his transgression of social norms and lack of basic decency, especially those who exhibit “dark triad” personality traits.

In August the Trump campaign told reporters that they are targeting a key group of voters that makes up just over a tenth of the electorate in swing states. They’re mostly younger men, and mostly white, but the group includes more Latinos and Asian-Americans than the general population.

And they believe they can reach these often fickle voters by putting Trump on shows hosted by people like [Theo] Von, internet pranksters Nelk Boys, YouTuber Logan Paul and Adin Ross, a livestreaming gamer who has repeatedly been banned from sites for violating rules on offensive language. The Nelk Boys are reportedly spearheading a voter registration drive on behalf of Trump which they hope will reach like-minded audiences.

'He's just a bro': Trump's attempts to woo the 'manosphere' (BBC)

Is it reactionary? In political science, reactionary politics is the desire to return society to a previous state when things were supposedly better. It's hard to deny that this applies to a movement whose rallying cry is “Make America Great Again.” The phrase—which was used previously by Ronald Reagan's campaign—is stridently backward-looking. It invokes images of national decline and rebirth, which, as we've already seen, is the calling card of historical fascism. Trump paints lurid, over-the-top depictions of dilapidated American cities filled with out-of-control crime, depravity and violence and declares, "I alone can fix it."

Critics always ask for an exact year when America was “great” that Trump wishes to return to, as if this was some sort of “gotcha.” But of course this is the wrong question. Trump supporters do not desire to return to any specific year, but a specific form of social relations—men over women, white over black, rich over poor, native-born over foreigner, rural over urban, and so forth. It’s a top-down, hierarchical view of society where everybody knows their place, consistent with conservative movements and philosophy throughout time. When upward social mobility is no longer possible, people want the existing hierarchy to be ossified so they cannot fall any further down the chain. If you can’t help yourself, at least you can hurt other people.

Is it populist? Populism is defined as a political style that pits “regular people,” against the “elites.” Trump supporters claim that he is a “regular guy” who is fighting on your behalf against shadowy forces keeping people down. I personally have had people on Substack try and convince me that Trump is a desirable candidate because the “elites” supposedly hate him—a sure sign of populism (and brain rot). Of course, this is rather comical given Trump’s many billionaire backers, including the single richest person in the country.

Does it embrace racism and Social Darwinism? Without a doubt. Recently, Trump opined that murder “is in their genes” when referring to the imaginary criminal hordes descending on American cities, adding that “we've got a lot of bad genes right now.” But Trump has long been fascinated with race science and eugenics:

Trump designates his blood as superior and the blood of those he chooses to demonize as inferior. “Well, I think I was born with a drive for success,” Trump told CNN in 2010. “I’m a gene believer. Hey, when you connect two racehorses, you usually end up with a fast horse. And I really was – you know, I had a – a good gene pool from the standpoint of that.”

“I have an Ivy League education, smart guy, good genes. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believer in,” Trump informed a crowd in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2016. He had recently called for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States.

“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump told another nearly all-white rally during his 2020 campaign in a Minnesota town that had voted against accepting refugees. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory. You think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.” He compared and contrasted. “Every family in Minnesota needs to know about sleepy Joe Biden’s extreme plan to flood your state with an influx of refugees from Somalia, from other places all over the planet.”

Donald Trump’s Hitlerian logic is no mistake (The Guardian)

Scientific racism has been very popular in underground far-right circles since the 1990s, but has since gone mainstream. Steve Sailer, a vocal proponent of scientific racism, has gone from being a pariah to celebrated figure over just the past few years. Sailer, along with other prominent right-wing commentators like Richard Hanania, depict a world where all inequality is rooted in fundamental human biology rather than economic or social conditions.

I’ll rest my case here, but all of this is only scratching the surface. We’ve not even covered MAGA’s connection with the New Apostolic Reformation—a Christian dominionist group that seeks the merging of Church and State and expects the end of the world to come soon; or Vance’s connections to Neoreactionary monarchists like Curtis Yarvin and anti-democratic tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel; or his connection to Radical Traditionalist Catholics like Leonardo Leo, who is in turn connected to shadowy organizations like the Teneo Network. And I haven’t mentioned Trump officials’ many documented connections to Russia; or that he has encouraged Russia to attack our NATO allies; his mishandling of classified documents; his felony convictions, rape accusations, and longstanding association with Jeffrey Epstein. For some reason, you can't point any of this out without being accused of being “partisan,” despite all of the above things being objectively true and extensively documented.

Most recently, General Mark Milley, who was a major factor in reining in Trump's worst impulses during his chaotic first term, has called Trump “a fascist to the core.” It is extraordinary for any former government official—much less a high-ranking member of the military—to employ this kind of language. General Milley—along with many others—fear retaliation should Trump ever attain the presidency again. And due to the Supreme Court’s enabling act, any action Trump takes in an “official” capacity as president will be legal by definition—including the assassination of political opponents, as the court’s dissenting justices pointed out.

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” Milley told Woodward for the book “War,” which was previewed by The Guardian. “A fascist to the core.”

Milley, who was chair under Trump and President Biden, also fears he would be court-martialed should Trump win the presidency next month because the commander in chief has power over retired commissioned officers and can recall them to active duty and court-martial them. Such a situation is not out of the realm of possibility because Trump has often voiced his desire to take revenge on those who have spoken out against him.

“He is a walking, talking advertisement of what he’s going to try to do,” Milley warned former colleagues, according to Woodward. “He’s saying it and it’s not just him, it’s the people around him.”

Woodward cites Steve Bannon, a former senior Trump adviser, who earlier this year gave a list of people he believes Trump should go after if he is elected to a second term, including Milley, former FBI directors Andrew McCabe and James Comey, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and former Attorney General Bill Barr…

Trump has previously sought to recall and court-martial retired senior officers who have criticized him. In a 2020 Oval Office meeting with Milley and Esper, Trump’s second confirmed secretary of Defense, the then-president “yelled” and “shouted” about two former military officials, William McRaven and Stanley McChrystal, Woodward writes. McRaven, a former admiral who led the 2011 raid in Pakistan in which US special forces killed Osama bin Laden, had written a piece for the Washington Post about Trump, saying “there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.”

Milley calls Trump ‘a fascist to the core’ in new Woodward book (The Hill). After that, Trump’s former chief of staff, General John Kelly, said much the same thing. If we can't trust eyewitness accounts of the actual people who worked inside the administration, whom can we trust?

After all of this, if people do not see the clear fascist analogies, you have to wonder what it will take apart from MAGA adopting literal Nazi iconography (at least more openly). I mean, they even held a rally at Madison Square Garden filled with hatred, calls to violence, and vile, racist insults for crying out loud! You also have to wonder why so many Americans are eagerly voting for this.

While not unique to Neo-fascism in general, I think several phrases capture the unique style of the MAGA movement in the U.S. and the current political atmosphere in general:

“Post-truth.” Captures the general atmosphere of unreality and lack of agreement on basic facts thanks to social media. Politicians lie and fabricate stories with impunity yet suffer no pushback or consequences.

“Fake news.” Any negative or critical coverage or fact-checking by the media can be derided as “fake” and immediately dismissed by followers of the movement who inhabit an alternative reality.

“Politics is downstream from culture.” A phase coined by Steve Bannon indicating that the movement does not just not aim for political control but for a complete overhaul of society and that unrelenting culture war will be the preferred style of politics.

“Flood the zone with shit.” Another Bannon phrase indicating that a firehose of falsehood will make it impossible for people to tell what's true and what’s not—the perfect breeding ground for a dictatorship. According to an Axios survey, 54% of respondents agreed with the statement, “I've disengaged from politics because I can't tell what's true.”

“The cruelty is the point.” A phrase coined by Adam Serwer, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Expresses the fact that violence and brutality toward certain outgroups is a core part of the MAGA movement by design.

“He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” A statement made to a Washington Post reporter by a Trump supporter. Trump voters expected the Republicans to punish certain types of people if elected, but assumed they would be spared. Also known as “I didn’t think Leopards would eat MY face, said the person who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.”

“Every accusation is a confession.” Everything the Republicans accuse their opponents of doing is something they themselves have done or are planning to do.

“Just asking questions.” A way to make insinuations while leaving room to distance yourself from shocking or controversial statements. The “question” is, of course, actually a statement.

“The Big Lie.” The idea that if you tell a lie big and bold enough, people will believe it because no one could believe anyone could have the audacity to tell such a lie. An example is “Stop the Steal.” From an analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric by U.S. intelligence during World War Two.

“Wilhoit's Law.” A cynical, hypocritical ethos of, “rules for thee, but not for me.” Wilhoit’s Law states, “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” This is why Trump could grant citizenship to his Slovenian in-laws yet oppose “chain migration.” Or Elon Musk could work as an undocumented immigrant when he first arrived in the US, or a million other examples.

Fascism is ultimately an appeal to the limbic system; the “lizard brain”—the deepest and darkest parts of human psychology, and that’s why it keeps being resurrected over and over again. To prey on people’s fears, to whip up hysteria and moral panic, to turn people against each other and against vulnerable populations—these are tried-and-true tactics used by demagogues around the world to gain power and avoid accountability since the dawn of civilization. Until now, the United States has been spared this nightmare which has destroyed societies around the world. No longer. The United States has already begun its descent into Hell. It will not recover.

As a final note, one thing I noticed putting this together is that it’s very hard to find information that is not behind paywalls or in books, and Americans don’t read. Meanwhile, Fox News is free, and Americans are increasingly getting their information from online news sources which are designed to manipulate us like puppets on a string. I think this explains a lot.

heltonkgoins

A post shared by @heltonkgoins