December 31, 2024
America’s First Fascist President?
Philip Kotler
Donald J. Trump will be sworn into office as the 47th President of the United States on Monday, January 20, 2025. He will be inaugurated as one of the most controversial American Presidents. Will he follow the Constitution and rules of law or is he bent on drastically changing our system? He comes into office with many criticisms of our economy, health care system, education system, climate control system, immigration system, and our civil service system.
Trump carries a belief system and behavior that bears some resemblance to the political system called fascism. He has some beliefs about governing a country that were held by Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Spain’s Francisco Franco of Spain, and Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
Trump believes that America would be better off with a dictator. He said publicly that electing him will eliminate the need to run future elections. He said that he would be a dictator on Day One when he takes office. He clearly rejects the concept of democracy that calls for popular elections to approve or disapprove of the American President and other elected officials.
Here is a list of Trump’s beliefs:
1. Trump believes in America First. America First was a political movement of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party going back to Charles Lindbergh and later Pat Buchanan.
2. Trump believes that America is in a stage of decline. The nation is plagued by “lawlessness, poverty, and violence.” “I alone can fix the system.” He pledged Americanism, not globalism, and he would deliver “law and order”.
3. Trump favors the rich over those less well off. He fights for lower taxes for the rich rather than having the wealthy pay their full share.
4. Trump believes that there should be few limits on his executive power. Trump acts anti-Constitutionally when the Constitution would limit him. Trump shows contempt for the First Amendment, the separation of powers and the rule of law. He favors state rights for settling issues rather than federalism.
5. Trump is anti-press. Trump wants to expand defamation laws to make it easier to sue journalists.
6. Trump believes in tariffs and is anti-immigrant. Trump is a protectionist who believes in raising tariffs to keep out foreign competitors. He favors reducing immigration and he came out against more Muslims entering the United States. He wants to get rid of all illegal immigrants, including their children who were born in the U.S.
7. Trump believes that America has both foreign and domestic enemies. He wants the right to expose and even jail some of them. Foreign enemies include Iran and North Korea. Domestic enemies are liberals (“woke”), socialists, communists, and illegal migrants who bring crime and disease. He will sue his domestic enemies and cause them to bear great expense to defend themselves.
8. Trump believes in fully controlling his political party. At the end of his first term, Trump reportedly considered founding a new political party called the Patriot Party. He didn’t need to do this because the Republican Party became his new party.
9. Trump believes in appointing political officials who would have absolute loyalty to him and his ideas. He is less interested in competence than in loyalty. His appointees should never go public in disagreeing with Trump’s views. He doesn’t welcome debates. Trump said that he would purge the federal government of Obama-appointed officials. He will ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers.
10. Trump believes that he has superior knowledge in most areas. He believes he has better military judgment than his generals and better science knowledge that his health care advisors. Yet he never reads much and relies on Fox news for his information.
11. Trump wants to terminate the Obama health care system. He wants a better system but he and his Republicans have never sketched even a blueprint of the so-called better health care system.
12. Trump is against climate change action. He favors producing as much oil and gas as needed to fuel the needed energy.
How Did Trump get Elected?
A huge number of U.S. citizens voted for Donald J. Trump to be their President. The voters knew that Trump is accused of several crimes, is an inveterate liar, harbors deep hatreds and wants revenge, and is a misogynist. Did voters vote for an “absurd idea”? An absurd idea is “an idea that is completely illogical, ridiculous, or nonsensical, lacking any reasonable basis and often considered so foolish that it is laughable or unbelievable.”
To understand this election, we turn to Andy Borowitz and his book Profiles in Ignorance. Borowitz asserted that Americans have passed through three stages in their view of what constitutes an acceptable politician.
1. The Age of Ridicule. Americans agreed that politicians such as Dan Quale and Sarah Palin were so ignorant and dumb that they should never have run for office or been elected.
2. The Age of Acceptance. American voters began to agree that uneducated and uninformed persons have the right to run for election.
3. The Age of Celebration. American voters began to show a preference for ignorant politicians who would be good to drink beer with.
Fortunately most voters do not prefer ignorant politicians. Most vote on butter-and-bread issues and cultural issues. If they thought that Trump would bring down the prices of goods and service or that Democrats were too elitist, their vote for Trump is easier to understand.
Does Trump Have the Characteristics of a Fascist?
The term fascist was first used by Benito Mussolini of Italy to describe his political party in 1915. Mussolini believed Italy needed a strong state that would rule with authority. He believed that the State should be all-embracing and totalitarian and that it should define the values of the people. He said: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Fascism called for a rejection of liberalism and individualism. And it called for active opposition to the growth of socialism and communism. Among fascism’s characteristics are “extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a people’s community in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.” Fascism prioritizes the nation over the individual who exists to serve the nation. Fascism emphasizes economic self-sufficiency and is normally headed by a dictatorial leader.
Fascism usually arises when a population has undergone huge dislocations or perceives too rapid change for their taste. The dislocations are seized by demagogues who offer an enticing mixture of nationalism and imperialism that promises to produce an ideal and powerful state.
According to the cultural theorist and author Umberto Eco, there are several characteristics of fascist ideology.
1. The cult of tradition.
2. The rejection of modernism, reasoning and the Enlightenment.
3. The cult of action for action’s sake.
4. Disagreement is treason.
5. Fear of difference coming from foreigners and gay people.
6. Obsession with plots.
7. Contempt for the weak.
8. Machismo and misogyny.
9. Promoting an impoverished vocabulary to limit thinking and critical reasoning.
To the extent that Donald Trump has several of these characteristics, he leans toward fascism in his thinking and behavior.
How Did the “America First” Theme Develop
Trump is a major believer in “America First.” He did not invent this idea. This idea goes back the Great Depression of the 1930s. Both the U.S. and Germany suffered from mass unemployment. Then in 1934, Germans elected Adolf Hitler as their leader. Hitler consolidated his power and put Germany on a war footing. He launched his attack on Poland in September 1939. Britain responded by declaring war on Germany and urged the other free nations of Europe to declare war on Germany.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, starting in his third term in 1940, began to prepare for a possible war. He got the Lend-Lease Act passed in March 1941to allow supplying arms and ammunition to Britain on condition that Britain would pay back after the war’s end. The Lend-Lease Act ignited a great debate between American isolationists (“America First”) and American interventionists.
Charles A. Lindbergh acted as the leading isolationist. Lindbergh was widely admired for being the first person in the world to successfully fly solo from the U.S. across the Atlantic Ocean to land in Paris in 1927. Lindbergh went political in 1939. He used his position as an international celebrity to become a spokesperson for the America First Committee, an isolationist organization that opposed US military and financial intervention in Europe. In April 1941, Lindbergh stated why the U.S. should not get involved in a European war. He argued that remaining neutral was the best way to preserve democracy in the United States. “I do not believe that our American ideals, and our way of life, will gain through an unsuccessful war.” He asserted that the America First Committee stood for American principles. He cited that George Washington, America’s first President, believed in neutrality. Lindbergh claimed that he was the true patriot and democrat who gave voice to “ordinary, good, and hard-working” American citizens. He said that the America First Committee had been formed to give voice to the people ”who have no newspaper, or news reel, or radio station at their command; the people who must do the paying, and the fighting, and the dying, if this country enters the war.”
Lindberg claimed that 80% of U.S. citizens opposed going to war. He was grossly incorrect. Only 33% favored that America should remain neutral.
Lindbergh ignored the potential consequences of a Nazi victory if the US did not intervene. Lindbergh had visited Nazi Germany several times and stated his admiration of Germany’s aircraft and the inadequacy and lower standards of British aircraft. Lindbergh frequently expressed xenophobic and anti-Semitic views. In 1941, Lindbergh asserted: “The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration.” He said of the Jewish community: “The greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.”
Lindbergh had been an advocate of the eugenics movement. Also, in 1938, he accepted from Hemann Goring the Grand Cross of the German Eagle and praised the German military.
Lindbergh pleaded that the U.S. be left to follow our own way of life, and to develop our own civilization.
Lindbergh lost his following when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The case for isolationism again appeared years later when Patrick Joseph Buchanan, an American hyper conservative author, political commentator, and politician ran for President in 1992 and in 1996 and lost both times. His campaign centered on non-interventionism in foreign affairs, opposition to illegal immigration, and opposition to the outsourcing of manufacturing. He was a “supporter of the doctrine of disengagement”, in other words, an isolationist.
The idea of “America First” is still prevalent in today’s world. In 2016, Donald Trump gave a speech in Washington promising to put America’s needs above those of other countries. “America first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration.” Trump’s remarks were similar to Lindbergh’s earlier proclamation: “We in this country have a right to think of the welfare of America first.”
President Trump resembles Charles Lindbergh in many ways, from his lack of political background to his type of rhetoric and xenophobic beliefs. Trump could accomplish today what Lindbergh never could in the 1940s. Trump will carry on the isolationist belief in “America First”, abandoning the international leadership role that America played ever since World War Two.
