We asked the question for you | Is Trump a fascist?

You may have noticed that in the United States, we are less and less shy about using the word “fascism” when referring to Donald Trump or his comments.

We read and heard this word and its derivatives recently following new inflammatory statements from the former Republican president on immigration.

“They are poisoning the blood of our country,” he – among other things – declared about irregular migrants.

The response from the White House, which also denounced Donald Trump last month when he called some of his opponents “vermin” (a word once used by Adolf Hitler to designate Jews), was rapid and scathing.

He was accused of “echoing the grotesque rhetoric of violent fascists and white supremacists, and threatening oppression to those who disagree with the government.”

This is not the first time that Donald Trump has denounced and demonized immigrants.

His most recent statements are certainly crude, obnoxious and hateful. But is it legitimate to call them “fascists”?

More generally, can the former president himself be called a fascist?

I asked these questions to Luca Sollai, research fellow for Europe at the Center for International Studies and Research (CERIUM) at the University of Montreal.

To answer it accurately, we must first agree on what fascism is.

The word is particularly associated with the regime of the Italian Benito Mussolini. This dictator was at the head of his country for around twenty years, in the first part of the 20th century.^e century.

Luca Sollai is also a lecturer specializing in Italian history, particularly the Fascist period. He explained to me that historians believe that each regime described as fascist – that of Hitler in Germany or that of Franco in Spain, for example – has its own characteristics.

But other historians agree to “give a more universal character to fascism”. There is, therefore, a general definition which includes a whole series of traits specific to a fascist political regime.

Here is the list…

We generally speak of a “right-wing movement” which advocates “the progressive reduction of opposition to silence” and for which “violence is used as a legitimate means”, first summarized the expert.

We also speak of a regime “which aims at a sort of economic autarky and where there is a cult of the personality of the leader”. Added to this is a “very tight control of society with propaganda”, where the values ​​of fascism are transmitted in particular via the education system.

Finally, “there is also a tendency to promote the nation on an international scale”. A fascist regime seeks “to put the country back at the center of the international arena as a power”.

I’m writing these lines and I have a feeling you’re going to frown as you read them. Can we call Donald Trump a fascist if he doesn’t check all these boxes?

“If we take the word from a more historical and semantic point of view, it’s no,” confirms Luca Sollai.

But, there is a but. And it is crucial.

Over time, the definition of the word “fascism” has transformed. Its application has expanded.

Nowadays, the words “fascist remarks” are “applied more widely to particularly reactionary remarks”, specifies the historian.

It therefore depends on the analysis grid that we use.

I would also add that it depends… on Trump!

It is clear to me that he has become further radicalized over the past year. Both by his statements and by the ideas he puts forward.

And I’m not the only one to notice this.

A few months ago, American historian Christopher Browning, a specialist in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, said he was concerned.

This historian, who has long refused to compare Trumpism to fascism, is in the process of reviewing his position.

“I continue to deny that Trump’s presidency was fascist, but I fear that if he wins another term in the White House, he may not deserve that label,” he wrote in a text published by the magazine The Atlantic.

Journalists from major US media outlets have reported that an imperialist vision of presidential power will likely be unabashedly put forward if Trump wins the election next November.

“The government agencies and civil service he denounced as the ‘deep state’ would be purged or politicized, and the ‘revenge’ he promised against his enemies would also be carried out,” the statement summarized. historian.

Donald Trump finds himself in the spotlight despite himself these days because he was excluded from the presidential primary vote in Colorado by the Supreme Court of that state.

But the former president is like a cat: he has nine lives.

And it is not excluded that he could defeat Joe Biden.

If so, I predict that the use of the word “fascism” will intensify.

Because Donald Trump is now promising Americans, as Christopher Browning aptly described it, “something much closer to dictatorship”.