The
Fascist Personality of Donald Trump
August
18, 2022
Former president
Donald Trump is an American fascist. I analyzed that truth back when he was
about to become president under our federal system of government though he
would lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. You’ll find that
analysis on this blog under the title “American Fascist,” posted on October 26,
2026. I want here briefly to consider the personality of Donald Trump the
American fascist. He is a very dangerous individual. We must take him and his
movement seriously, and we must make sure he never comes to power again.
Fascism is a
political system in which a state establishes strict control over all aspects
of a nation’s life. The state controls not only the country’s politics. It
controls the country’s economy, education, and cultural life. No aspect of life
is beyond its control. That control is always exercised by one dictatorial
leader. Examples include Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, Josef Stalin in Soviet
Russia, Benito Mussolini in Fascist Italy, Mao Zedong in Communist China, Kim
Jong-un in nominally communist North Korea, and many others. In a fascist state
like these, the leader, whether he be called Der Fűhrer, Vozhd, Il Duce, the
Supreme Leader, or Chairman, exercises total or at least near total control
over the country he is said to lead. The leader of a truly fascist system is
inevitably a person who craves control over the people close to him and the
people of the country over which he rules. He invariably enforces his control
over the system he has created (or inherited) through a secret police force or
other sort of organization that is loyal only to him and that terrorizes the
people of the country into obedience to his will. He demands total loyalty to
himself as if that were the same thing as loyalty to the country. In fascist
systems, the distinction between leader and state virtually disappears.[1]
Donald Trump exhibits the characteristics of the fascist personality in, among
other ways, the way he draws no distinction between himself and the United
States of America. We also see his fascist tendencies in the way he uses the
Big Lie to take and hold on to power.
As president he
recognized no difference between himself and the government of the United
States. We see this aspect of his personality in the way he took with him a
large cache of government documents that weren’t his to take when he left the
White House. When his aids told him he had to give the documents back, he said they’re
not theirs they’re mine. He wanted everyone in his administration to be loyal
to him, not to the people of the United States, nor to the constitution he had
sworn to protect and defend, nor to the rule of law as a foundational principle
of our system of government. He fired the Director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation when that man would not pledge his loyalty to Trump personally. He
wanted his Attorney General to act as his lawyer and the whole Department of
Justice to act as though it represented him not the US government it actually represents.
He fired his first Attorney General when that man recused himself from the independent
counsel’s investigation into Trump’s campaign’s ties to Russia rather than stay
involved in the investigation to protect Donald Trump from the truth. He strove
to exercise personal control over every aspect of the federal government that
he cared about. He did not have an official terror agency like Hitler’s SS,
Mussolini’s Black Shirts, or Stalin’s NKVD (a predecessor of the KGB). He did,
however, encourage violence by white supremacist terrorist organizations
(usually quite weakly called militias) that surely would gladly have taken on the
role of those institutions had he asked them to. In all of these ways, and
more, Trump demonstrated that he has the personality not of a democratically
elected representative of the people but of a fascist Supreme Leader instead.
Trump also fits
the mold of the fascist leader in his use of the Big Lie. Fascist regimes are
invariably built upon lies. Often there is one Big Lie that the regime insists
that everyone accept (or at least say they accept) as the truth. Hitler had a
couple of Big Lies on which he, nominally at least, based his regime. One was
that the German “race” was physically and morally superior to all other people.
Another was that the supposedly evil Jews were responsible for all of Germany’s
troubles and had to be eliminated. Stalin had a couple of Big Lies too. One was
that the government and party he headed were all about establishing a classless
society called socialism that would morph into an ideal age of communism in
which all people would be equal. In the communist earthly paradise, everyone
would happily gave what they could for the general welfare, and everyone would
receive everything they needed for a good life. Another of Stalin’s Big Lies
was that he was the great friend of all of the Soviet people who did nothing
but protect their interests. Never mind of course that he killed something like
twenty million or more of them before the Nazi invasion of 1941.
Donald Trump’s
fascism is seen in the way he uses lies both big and small to advance his
personal interests. He is an inveterate liar. He simply does not function
within the categories of true and false. We can’t believe a word he says
because truth just doesn’t matter to him. He told thousands of lies during his
time as president. And along with all of his smaller lies, Trump has two Big
Lies too. One is that he will “make America great again.” MAGA has become a
shorthand for the Trumpist movement. Of course, Trump doesn’t give a damn about
America, and he did nothing as president to make it great again, whatever that
is supposed to mean. He sold the Big Lie of MAGA to enough gullible Americans
to make him president in 2016. That he did hardly makes him truly be about
American greatness.
Trump’s other Big Lie, and one that is particularly
important these days, is that the American people all love him but that corrupt
Democrats rig elections against him. He insists that he won the 2020
presidential election by a landslide, but evil Democrats stole his victory from
him. All through his presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 he told his
followers that the only way he could lose the election was if the election were
rigged against him. He won the 2016 election by winning the electoral votes of
several small states that offset the Democrats’ victory in a few of the larger
ones, but he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. So he didn’t
object to the electoral vote. He did insist that he had also won the popular
vote by a large margin and that somehow his popular vote victory had been
stolen from him.
That lie of 2016,
however, pales in comparison to Trump’s Big Lie of 2020 and thereafter. In the
presidential election of that year Trump lost both the popular vote and the
electoral vote to Democrat Joe Biden. All through the 2020 campaign he kept
repeating his patently absurd claim that he could lose the election only if it
were rigged against him. He lost that election. So he claimed over and over
again, and he continues to claim to this day, that his victory was stolen from
him. He and his minions like Rudi Giuliani said again and again, and continue
to say, that the election was invalidated by massive voter fraud, never mind
that they have never been able to produce a single bit of evidence of such
fraud. Trump sent Giuliani and other hack lawyers into courts in every
so-called swing state that he had lost trying to get a court to declare the state’s
election invalid because of that alleged voter fraud. He lost that argument in
court sixty times, and courts often chastised his lawyers for bringing a
frivolous case for which there was no evidence. He pressured the Secretary of State
in Georgia, a Republican, to “find” him enough votes to reverse Biden’s narrow
victory in that state. He tried to get Republican controlled state legislatures
to declare that he had won their state though he had really lost it. Certainly
with his knowledge and consent, and perhaps at his instigation, several
Republicans in states he had lost forged documents naming them as their state’s
electors when they were in fact no such thing. Some state parties submitted
their false elector certificates to the federal government, something that
surely must be a violation of some federal law or other.
When none of
those ploys worked to keep Trump in office, he quite desperately turned to a constitutional
provision few of us knew about. The Constitution says that the Congress shall
meet in joint session to accept and tally the electoral votes of the states. As
President of the Senate, the Vice President presides over this joint session. Trump
tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into rejecting the electoral votes
of enough states that Trump would win or at least that the election would be
sent back to the states or that the House of Representatives would select the
president as the Constitution specifies.[2]
Trump told Pence that as Vice President he had the legal authority to do it.
Pence, thank God, knew he had no such authority. He refused to give in to Trump’s
demand.
So, in a last
desperate attempt to stay in office, Trump made one last use of his Big Lie. He
called on his supporters to gather in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, the
date of the joint congressional session that would finalize Joe Biden’s victory.
A huge crowd gathered that morning at the Ellipse, near the White House and
walking distance from the Capitol. Several of Trump’s minions, including Rudi
Giuliani, fired up that crowd repeating Trump’s Big Lie over and over again.
When Trump finally addressed them, the crowd had become a riled up mob. He told
them forcefully and repeatedly that he had won the 2020 presidential election
in a landslide. He said yet again that his victory had been stolen. He told
them they had to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” or they wouldn’t have
a country anymore. When he said those things he knew that some in the mob were
armed with semi-automatic rifles. Trump sent the armed mob down Pennsylvania Avenue
to the Capitol to “stop the steal.”
Trump’s mob went
to the Capitol, stormed the Capitol, overwhelmed the grossly outmanned Capitol
police, invaded the building, and very nearly succeeded in overthrowing
American democracy. The Secret Service got Pence out of the House chamber where
the joint session was taking place and to an undisclosed safe location. The
members of Congress present, and everyone else properly in the building, had to
flee for their lives. Through it all, Trump sat in the dining room near the
Oval Office watching it all on television. Members of his staff and even members
of his family begged him to go public and stop the insurrectionary riot at the
Capitol. For over three hours Trump did nothing. He said he agreed with the mob
when it chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” His inaction during these hours is
inexcusable and may one day play a part in a criminal indictment against him.
On January 6,
Trump saw what a Big Lie can do with gullible, unsophisticated, and, frankly,
quite stupid people. Hitler’s Big Lies brought him to power in Germany. Stalin’s
Big Lies enabled him to come to power in the Soviet Union and terrorize the
people of the whole country in a way that matched Hitler in Germany. Trump’s
Big Lie hasn’t yet produced an Auschwitz or a Gulag. But with it he very nearly
overthrew the government and constitution of the United States. Trump was desperate
to remain in power. He still is.
In Donald Trump
we see a classic fascist personality. He is a megalomaniac concerned about
nothing but his own status and power. Most importantly, he combines two of the
most telling characteristics of a fascist leader. He sought to use his Big Lie
to subvert the US Constitution, overturn the country’s democratic structure and
traditions, and retain the power the American system of government was legally
and fairly taking from him. In doing so he was acting not as a politician
within a democracy. His personality is not that of a democratic politician
committed to the political institutions and traditions of his country. It is
that of a would-be fascist dictator. Heaven help the United States of America
if he ever again gets the chance to impose American fascism on our country. Heaven
help us if he ever actually becomes president again. If he does, he may well
succeed in becoming the fascist dictator he really wants to be.
[1] I’ll
address one issue here briefly. I have called both Nazi Germany and Soviet
Russia fascist states. Yet of course those two dictatorships were based on very
different lies. The Nazis proclaimed the superiority of the German people and
the diabolical nature of the Jews. The Soviet Communists proclaimed the victory
of the proletariat and the creation of a socialism that would eventually turn
into communism. For my purposes here, this distinction is unimportant. Whatever
their foundational lie, all totalitarian systems are essentially identical in
the nature of their rule and the means they use to exercise it. For my purposes
here, the differences between Nazi rule in Germany and the rule of the
Communist Party in Russia make no difference.
[2]
The Democrats were the majority party in the House, but under the Constitution
the vote in this case was not done by each representative having one vote but
by each state having one vote. Though they were a numerical minority, the
Republicans controlled more state delegations than the Democrats did. If the
election had gone to the House, as it did after the 1876 election, Trump would
have been made president.
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