Trump’s Actions So Far: Sure Looks Like Fascism

For over a year as he campaigned for the presidency, we have heard Donald Trump voice intentions that do not sound like our country's constitutional democracy. We heard about Project 2025, a 920-page treatise prescribing the harsh measures needed to transform America into a Christian conservative nation.
We learned that a central tenet was the "unitary presidency" in which the president has direct control over the entire federal government. The liberal media filled with opinion pieces about the coming autocracy. Trump quipped that he would be a dictator, but only on Day One.

But few reporting Trump's plans went so far as to apply the "fascism" label. With Trump now in office and after just a single week of action, it's time the scales fall from their eyes.

Fascism has no one definition. Its most succinct is from Mussolini himself: “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State”, and as dictator he could have added that he was the state. Fascism centralizes the government in the dictator who sets the laws. Fascists are not constrained by constitutions. It exalts the nation over the individual, the race that makes up that nation, the religion of that nation. Mussolini espoused doctrines of racial superiority, xenophobia, imperialism, and his own power. Hitler took the same manias further, ostracizing and then murdering those not of the German (Aryan) race.

Immediately he was inaugurated, Trump appropriated the law unto himself. Many in his blizzard of executive orders, although dreadfully mistaken, such as withdrawal (again) from the Paris Accords on climate and exiting the World Health Organization, are entirely within his right as president, but others tell us he thinks the Constitution is just a nuisance. He took some of these actions within hours of swearing to “preserve, protect and defend” the founding document, the oath presidents must swear to at inauguration, its words prescribed by the Constitution itself.

 In swift violation, Trump ordered U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. if neither mother nor father is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. Trump does not want citizenship to go to brown people — or Blacks, such as Haitians, whom he wanted us to believe were eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. In his zeal to preserve America for the white race, he seeks to override the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment which states,

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States."

At last count, the attorneys general of 22 states have filed suit. A federal judge in Seattle has temporarily blocked Trump’s order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”, telling the Justice Department to refrain from any enforcement.

The question is whether Trump may put his immunity to use and disobey the courts by using every means to encumber his targeted Americans, such as ordering that they not be issued passports, prevented from voting, be denied government social benefits.

 In just his first week, Trump broke yet another law, firing 18 inspector generals across the federal government, with dismissals immediate in violation of advance notice required by the statute. The law stipulates that:

""President shall communicate in writing the substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons for any such removal or transfer to both houses of Congress...not later than 30 days before the removal or transfer."

He would need 18 written explanations, yet all he has to say is "Some people thought that some were unfair or some were not doing the job". What people? Trump's imaginary "people are saying". He says of the firing, "It's a very standard thing to do". It is not. Inspectors general stay in place from one administration to the next irrespective of party switch.

Trump's spokespeople have said that they need inspectors general who agree with the president's agenda and changing priorities. That's not the role of strictly neutral inspectors general. Main Republican Senator Susan Collins called out the president's hypocrisy:

"I don't understand why one would fire individuals whose mission is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. So this leaves a gap in what I know is a priority for President Trump."

The door will now now be wide open for corruption, for kickbacks, bribes, no bid contract letting. The Brookings Institution has calculated that every dollar invested in inspectors generall has brought back thirteen dollars to the American taxpayer. No longer.

 He ordered that enforcement of the TikTok ban be delayed to allow still more time — additional to the 276 days already granted by the law — for the Chinese owning company ByteDance to find an American buyer. The law provides for an extension only if he can certify there is “significant progress" toward a sale. There is none in sight. Trump is therefore unconstitutionally undermining a law passed with bipartisan support by Congress, signed by President Biden, and even just days ago affirmed to go forward by the Supreme Court.

 In contravention of another law, the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, he directed the U.S. armed forces to provide troops, detention space, transportation, and aircraft to enforce border security. The Act restricts the use of federal troops in domestic law enforcement, a principle that dates as far back as Ninth Century England. Will the troops stay clear of that? At a time when the immigrant flow is at its lowest in years, he decreed a national emergency to justify sending 1,500 troops to the border because migrants make for an “invasion”.

 Trump asked the Justice Department to dismiss with prejudice (meaning they cannot be resumed in some future year)...

“all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at our near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

Additional to allowing possible crimes to go unprosecuted, we here have the first instance of Trump directly giving orders to the Department of Justice. Traditionally presidents do not interfere with the conduct of justice. Dictators do.

They have made seemingly impossible journeys to come here, seeking asylum from predatory regimes or murderous gangs in their home countries or to find work to support their families, but Trump has characterized them as criminals, rapists, released convicts, mental defectives, with only “some of them good people”. He speaks of migrants as “vermin” and “poisoning the blood” with direct antecedents in Hitler’s “thinking with the blood” and “community of blood”.

His racist rants legitimate comparisons as a test for fascism. As soon as they gained power in 1933, Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis) began herding into concentration camps those of the rival Communist Party, and then began isolating Jews with exclusionary laws. We will be watching, although it will probably be done secretly with access the press denied access, the parallel in the Trump regime’s plan to round up and force into detention camps undocumented migrants in the millions for deportation, or so they intend.

But Trump’s most flagrant abuse of power was to overturn the justice system by pardoning the insurrectionists who had attacked the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, more than 400 of whom were convicted of assaulting police officers — 140 of them injured and seven dead of related causes. Additional to 14 whose sentences were commuted, his order reads:

"...a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021..."

The Constitution directs the president that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”, but Trump calls them “hostages”. They are individuals convicted of crimes by juries in the United States justice system — the result of the largest federal prosecution in Department of Justice history. Trump dissolved it entirely with flamboyant strokes of his Sharpie, holding it up for the cameras to say “Look what I can do”.

The president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States” says Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution. It is safe to say the authors did not have in mind Trump’s colossal abuse of the privilege. Not only has he pardoned 1,500 convicts, but they were rewarded for committing crimes in service of Donald Trump. That’s the only reason he pardoned them.

It is a disastrous decision, an assault on the justice system. Apparently impetuous to get past the issue quickly, and without any consideration of its ramifications, Trump vacillated during an internal debate over targeted clemency vs. blanket release, Axios reports, and finally just said, "F**k it: Release 'em all". Wiping out the massive work of identifying the attackers, developing evidence, taking them to court has made enemies of hundreds of career prosecutors in the Justice Department and of judges who conducted the trials.

Trump has returned to the streets violent people who bludgeoned the Capitol Police with flag poles, bear spray, fire extinguishers, stolen riot batons, and fists on their way to find Congress members and Vice President Pence with murderous intent. The police have been getting warnings on their cell phones as each convict is released who that officer testified against. They, prosecutors, and judges have to fear violence against themselves and their families. They must be constantly vigilant; an assailant gets to pick his moment. That is what Trump has unleashed.

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, said at Miami Airport,

“I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution…but I will tell you that I’m not going to play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat.”

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes served two years of an 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy said of the pardons,

”All the wrongs are being undone. So none of these people should have been here in the first place…President Trump did the right thing…because they did not get a fair trial.”

Asked by Alex Wagner, reporting for NBC at a prison outlet, “Did you ever feel like he had landed you guys in jail?”. A woman answered,

”Absolutely not...Now why was I sitting in prison while Anthony Fauci is loose? Why am I sitting prison when Liz Cheney is loose? Why did those people get pardoned, because they're guilty and were never brought to justice, and yet me and mom made a mistake and broke a window at the Capitol. I'm sorry, but do I have to lose my whole life for it? We have these criminals running the government that now have pardons. That bothered me.”

No mention that Trump ruined their lives and served no time. One young newly-released inmate said of Trump,

”This man's been indicted, he's been attacked, he's been shot at, he's been through hell. The man is not a quitter, and so if this man really needed us to show up somewhere,…I have no right to quit on him, so I would show up."

Jake Angeli-Chansley, the “American Shaman” who was costumed in a fur hat with horns in the Capitol rotunda, tweeted (in all caps) “Thank you Mr. Trump!!! Now I am gonna buy some motha***in guns!!!”.

There was no trace of remorse from the convicts. They carry the reverse image of believing they were rescuing the country from a stolen election, that it is Biden who should be in prison. As former Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman said, “Every single person that day, whether they attacked the Capitol or not, believed in something that was false.” Donald Trump had told them they were right.

With Trump’s new best friend and influencer Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute – twice – and at the inauguration, no less, and supporting the far-right to neo-Nazi party Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) as Germany’s best hope, there is no reason we shouldn’t speculate about fascism.
Trump has apparently been doing his homework on how to be a dictator beyond Day One. The backdrop of his town hall in which he swayed to music for 39 minutes said in giant letters, "TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING". New York University professor and scholar of fascist Italy, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, says,

"This is totally fascist. Mussolini's slogan was ‘Mussolini is always right / Mussolini ha sempre ragione’".

Most of all, Trump wanted his insurrectionist horde back on the street. They are for him a private army to call on, a loyal army who owes him for their freedom. You should not think for a minute that he is unmindful of this. It’s yet another fascist parallel should Trump put this resource to use. He can summon them to act as praetorian guard when he visits a hostile city, there to break up protests and rough up protesters, much like Mussolini’s blackshirts. Far-fetched? He has already shown his inclination, having protesters tear-gassed in Lafayette Park June 1, 2020, to clear the way to go to St. John’s Church. Trump can tell them “Do whatever you want, I'll pardon you.”

We need to pay close attention. Yale history professor, Timothy Snyder, another scholar of fascism and author of "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century", warns us:

”The only thing that people can cite against [Trump wanting to be a dictator] is the idea that it can't happen here, or somehow an American couldn't do these things. Those are the very ideas that make it happen here, and if you don't think an American can do it, you're inviting an American to do it to you".