5.9 Trump is an amateur fascist, but a first-class nihilist
Trump is a fascist.
That’s a scary word and he’s doing scary things…
But he can be stopped.
Because…
He’s an amateur fascist.
Talk about embarrassing. We’re the most powerful nation in the history of the world but we’ve been taken over by a rank amateur.
The word “fascist” conjures up Hitler, who was a world-class, professional fascist. But Trump is not in that league.
Why does this matter?
We want people to be scared…
But not too scared, not paralyzed.
We want people to be scared because what’s happening in our country is in fact scary. That’s reality. But then we want them to be mad about how scary things are…
Fighting mad.
We want them to understand that protests are good, but organizing a mass movement is even better, and if we do that work, Trump can be beaten.
What do I mean when I say Trump is an amateur fascist? Here are six examples:
1. Trump attacks pretty much everybody.
Hitler made sure to keep the great majority of Germans on his side.
Trump has a hair trigger and attacks anyone at the least provocation. He can’t help himself. It’s a compulsion. That’s his consistent go-to strategy, attack.
He hates the majority of Americans. He even goes after his supporters. Here in his second term, he’s attacking the Supreme Court, Fox News, and a range of his Republican sycophants.
Over time, he’s making more enemies than friends. This means…
Trump cannot create a popular fascism.
Not like what Hitler did.
And the recent success of the No Kings protest on 10-18-25 is a confirmation of that. There are more people opposing Trump than supporting him.
Which is why the hard right is doing their best to gerrymander or even cancel voting, because they understand the only way for their fascism to succeed long-term is to force it on the rest of us.
2. Trump is a boring speaker.
Hitler made impassioned, riveting, emotional speeches that thrilled his followers. And he spoke always about Germans, Germans, Germans.
Trump rambles, doesn’t ever really get worked up. He gets a bit emphatic sometimes about some points, but that’s about the extent of his emotional power.
And he always speaks about Trump, Trump, Trump.
Hitler swept people into his passions. Trumps audiences are more spectators than participants.
3. Trump is not an organizer.
Hitler was first an organizer, then he attacked anyone who wouldn’t come into the fold. Trump is first an attacker and not much of an organizer. Again, something to be thankful for.
Trump is not building a militant following. Sure his followers issue death threats at the drop of a hat. But he’s not organized the right-wing militias into a focused and formidable fighting force. He’s got nothing like Hitler’s storm troopers.
ICE agents are scary, they’re thugs, but they’re not organized like they could be. They’re supposed to be catching undocumented people who are committing crimes, but their real purpose is to terrorize communities. They’re generating more resistance than compliance, and thus the majority of the public has turned against them.
4. Trump is destroying our economy.
In his second term, Trump is breaking trade relationships, hurting farmers, small businesses, big corporations, and the majority of Americans.
This is a rookie move. He’s going to end up turning who knows how many millions of his own followers against him. That’s no way to run your fascism.
Hitler by contrast, fired up the German economy. The unemployed got jobs. Most people started doing much better. Hope was in the air.
Of course it was a phony economy built on debt. And it was ultimately a war economy, so Germany would have to go to war to make it work. But during the mid-thirties, the great majority of Germans loved what Hitler was doing. Meanwhile the tide is turning against Trump.
5. Trump’s religion is Trump.
Hitler’s religion was brutality. There was nothing he believed in more. He praised brutality, he adored it.
His moral perspective was based on what the Nazis called the Kampfgesetz. Which means the Law of Struggle. Like the struggle of the fittest. And he believed that Aryan Germans were the fittest. He corrupted Darwinism to fit his own purposes.
And he believed that to win the struggle to survive, you had to be brutal. That first, last, and always. Which made him a terrible force.
Trump threatens and bullies, but when faced with determined opposition he often chickens out. So not only is he an amateur fascist, he’s always been an amateur bully as well.
6. Trump has a problematic relationship with the military.
Hitler had total control of the German military. And he had their loyalty. He was the one who broke the Treaty of Versailles to rebuild the army, navy, and air force, for which they were all in his debt.
Hitler spent years during the 30s creating hardened soldiers through his program for boys called the Hitler Youth. They engaged in physical training and were immersed in Nazi ideology, so when Hitler started WWII, he had millions of fanatical soldiers, loyal to him personally, to throw into action.
By contrast, Trump is treating our military like his plaything. Like a toy. He’s doing damage he doesn’t even understand he’s doing. There are signs that some percentage of the top leadership has turned against him.
Also, he’s got a long history of disrespecting rank-and-file troops who sacrifice themselves for their country. He calls them suckers. And he’s disrespected military heroes like John McCain, and has never apologized for this.
It’s still an open question whether, our armed services will obey illegal orders. But Trump has an iffy relationship with them which over time could generate serious resistance.
Add all these up and it’s a sad thing to have to admit that our country has been cowed by such an incompetent lightweight. America prides itself on being a nation of tough guys, you can’t push us around. Except here we are with tens of millions of people submitting to a pitiful excuse for a leader.
It seems to me that…
Trump is riding on his base more than leading them.
And perhaps the biggest advantage Trump has enjoyed is that the Democratic Party has not been much of an opposition. Back in the 90s, Bill Clinton and the Democratic leadership turned their backs on their base to go after big donors. Clinton bragged that he had killed the New Deal. And Obama didn’t fix this. His first loyalty was to the investment bankers.
It’s no wonder a lot of former Democrats, feeling abandoned, which they were, voted for Trump. And this means that Democrats created Donald Trump as much as the Republicans did.
Trump has succeeded, not because he’s a brilliant strategist or a hard worker, but because he’s the personal incarnation of the racist rage which is at the heart of the MAGA movement.
And because the opposition has been weak when we needed it to be fierce.
If everyone who hates Trump and hates fascism and hates being controlled by mean-spirited incompetents would pull together and take a determined stand, and play a fierce game of offense…
Trump would be finished.
And fast.
The big law firms and media giants that are bending the knee to him, and the pundits who are being tepid and timid in their commentaries will end up looking like foolish cowards. Instead of paying Trump millions to show him they are submissive, they should give all that money to the activists who are working so hard to build an effective, strategic, coordinated mass movement.
There’s no need for America to die in Trump’s arms. But given the number of MAGAs and the number of self-serving billionaires and corporate elites and the passivity of so many Americans right now, it’s a toss-up how the future will play out.
Still, it’s true that…
Trump can still be beaten.
That’s my nod to hope. But it’s just a nod, because in the meantime, Trump and his followers are causing permanent damage.
Look what happened to Hitler’s Germany in just twelve years. His cities were bombed to rubble. His precious Reich was divided up by his enemies. Millions had died for nothing.
So far Trump isn’t leading us into such extremes. But he is destroying the economy. He’s destroying our institutions, which we needed to improve not dismantle.
And this makes me think that even though he’s going to fail at building a top-rank, robust fascist nation…
He is going to succeed magnificently at leaving behind profound wreckage and mass suffering.
The focus of the media always seems to be on Trump, every word he utters, every stupid, obscene, or evil action he takes. And what is he going to do next.
But the real question is…
What are the rest of us going to do?
And how organized will we decide to be?
And how determined?
Trump and his top guys want to overwhelm Americans and make everyone feel hopeless and helpless and so scared they’ll submit.
But we get to counter that intimidation with the simple, mobilizing truth that while Trump and his entourage are scary…
They are not nearly as powerful as they make themselves out to be.
I would love to see millions more Americans realize this and break the spell of fear and take heart and come join us and get busy fighting.
