I am keeping my Washington Post subscription despite the outrage I share with the some 200,000 people who canceled their subscriptions in protest of what owner Jeff Bezos did. While I can read news articles elsewhere, in The New York Times for example, I can't read the Post opinions without a subscription.
Today in the opinion section two down from the top column of the page position (when I read it), which had the attempt by Bezos to justify his decision to not let the paper endorse a candidate, is a column by Eli Merritt, a research assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, is the author of “Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution.”
This is how he begins his column Opinion: There’s a better term for Trump than ‘fascist’ as follows:
As we approach the culmination of Donald Trump’s third bid for the presidency, I continue to be struck by how bumbling most Americans are at properly naming a breed of politicians that has bedeviled democracies since the time of the ancient Greeks.
The latest example of this linguistic disorder is the designation of the ex-president as a “fascist” by John F. Kelly, former Marine general and former chief of staff to Trump, as well as by Vice President Kamala Harris a day later.
It is not wrong to identify fascist tendencies in Trump, such as ultranationalism, ethnocentrism, cronyism, persecution of internal enemies and comfort with violence. But these traits also qualify him for classification as a dictator, despot, autocrat and authoritarian.
So why single out “fascist,” an inflammatory charge conjuring images of 20th-century mass murderers?
A far better designation, one that sums up Trump with precision, is “demagogue.”
He concludes by adding yet another word, one even more chilling than demagogue: tyrant.
What we know with confidence is that the ex-president is a demagogue par excellence, and in light of the history of demagogues transforming into tyrants, it’s indisputably ill-advised to restore him to the presidency.
But such matters are not for professors of political science to decide. If Trump prevails in the election, the question of what kind of leader he is will be put to a high-stakes test. We shall see with our own eyes.
I've thought that the word "fascist" applied to Trump wasn't having as much of an effect as it ought to. This was not only because too many Americans didn't know it's precise meaning, which I think is true, but because it didn't have an ominous enough ring to it. It seemed to me to be a soft sounding word. It didn't evoke the horrors of Hitler the way the word Nazi does.
I hadn't thought of the word "demagogue" until now. While its meaning may be more obscure than "fascist" and everyone knows what a dictator is, "demagogue" not only sounds ominous but it lends itself to alterations like "Trump is a dangerous, despotic, and demented, demagogue."
Trump, who I and other therapists, have called a malignant narcissist could also be correctly called a "malignant demagogue." Malignant is one of the most frightening word in the English language when a doctor uses it about yourself and a loved one. Everyone knows that malignant cells (like those shown below in the AI picture of Trump sitting in front of a portrait of his favorite person) can spread and kill someone.
Trump uses his attack words to demonize his enemies like he's swinging a cudgel. He's been successful in spewing lies doused in rheotical gasoline designed to inflame and incite his audience. He did this on Jan. 6th and was successful.
The Democrats have not been able to do this with their words. You'd think that their wordsmiths run whatever descriptions they think of applying to Trump by Miss Manners, who at 86 is still writing advice, columns before using them.
In the same Washington Post edition Jennifer Rubin uses the term fascism in her column: "The U.S. can learn from other countries’ encounters with fascism."
She begins her column this way:
The mainstream media — spurred by the disturbing outpouring of racism at Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden — has finally zeroed in on the stakes of this election: the preservation of our democracy against a fascist threat. (As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat pointed out: “He knows that everyone watching and attending knows that he is reenacting a Nazi show.”)
As retired general and former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly confirmed for the New York Times, Trump certainly meets the definition of a fascist: “It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.” The public has begun to catch on. (ABC News reports that half the country views Trump as a fascist.)
In the last week before the election let's see if Kamala Harris and Tim Walz can begin to make the case that Trump is a demagogue aspiring to be a tyrant.
Bonus:
Here's Trump assuring us that he's not a Nazi.
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