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Fascism is a dirty word in American politics, so when former President Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, retired Navy General John Kelly, says Trump meets the definition of “fascist,” it’s news.

It places Trump’s name in the same ideological space as the most notorious fascists, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Trump has dismissed the idea, calling Kelly a “degenerate.”

When asked at a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania whether she agrees with Kelly that Trump is a fascist, Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris did not hesitate.

“Yes, I do. Yes, I do,” she said.

Kelly pointed The New York Times to a definition of fascism: “It is a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, coercive suppression of opposition, and belief in a natural social hierarchy. ”

“So in my experience, these are certainly the kinds of things that he thinks would work better when it comes to governing America,” Kelly said.

Kelly added that Trump is in the “far-right area” and “admires people who are dictators,” which Kelly said puts Trump in “the common definition of fascist.”

There are current arguments in support of Kelly. Trump’s suggestion that he could use the military against an “enemy from within,” which he said includes Democrats like Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff of California, certainly sounds fascist. His Republican defenders claim it’s just an exaggeration.

Trump wanted to use the military to disrupt domestic protests when he was in power, something his top general, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, rejected, according to reporting in 2021. Milley also privately compared that of Trump. denial of the elections for Hitler’s ‘big lie’.

Even if he doesn’t plan to use the military against Democrats, he has a history of trying to use the military to put down protests in the US, creating the threat to appease dissent.

Trump recently said he would fire special counsel Jack Smith “in two seconds” if he wins the election, which seems obvious since Smith has sued Trump in cases of election interference and mishandling of classified documents.

The election interference case is postponed until after the election, and another judge dismissed the case involving classified documents, although Smith has appealed.

Trump has a history of firing officials who question him. He fired James Comey, the director of the FBI, when he was president. He fired his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, after never forgiving Sessions for appointing a special counsel to investigate possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s resulting report has been dubbed the “Russian hoax” so often by Trump and his allies that most Americans probably don’t remember that Mueller pointedly did not acquit Trump of obstruction of justice in the report. Mueller identified multiple contacts between Trump’s campaign and the Russians in 2016, a time when the Russians were actively trying to help Trump’s campaign. Mueller concluded that the contacts did not rise to the level of conspiracy.

Trump’s second attorney general, Bill Barr, delayed the release of Mueller’s report to soften its impact. Barr would later leave Trump’s administration after the 2020 election after refusing to support Trump’s unsupported conspiracy theories about election interference.

Democrats are wondering who should temper Trump’s push if he is re-elected.

If he wins the election, Trump has vowed to do more to wage war on what he sees as a “deep state” of bureaucrats at the Justice Department, FBI and Pentagon.

He has also suggested he would use the legal system to prosecute election officials.

All this points in favor of at least a thematic alignment with some elements of fascism, built around a strong leader and rejecting dissent in government. But fascism can also include more, such as complete control over the German economy and society. Trump has suggested no such thing.

While Harris is only now beginning to label Trump a fascist, he has been calling her a Marxist throughout the presidential campaign, calling her “comrade Kamala.” That’s clearly not true, since Harris supports private ownership.

In June, Trump said the US was a “fascist state” as he advanced the baseless conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden was behind his prosecution in New York for falsifying company records related to hush money payments made on Trump’s behalf to a porn star in 2016 had been paid. .

I looked into the definition of fascism and how it applied to Trump back in June when he used the term.

There are experts who consider Trump fascist. Robert Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University who has written extensively about fascism in Europe, had rejected the label for Trump until January 6, 2021, when the historian argued that the image of Trump supporters storming the U.S. Capitol “doesn’t appeal to me.” against the fascist label.”

Trump has also repeatedly used language associated with the Nazis, such as when he said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country.”

When CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Ohio Senator JD Vance in May about Trump’s claim that the US is a “fascist state,” Vance was reluctant to dismiss the idea and at least suggest a tolerance for the term.

“I don’t care what you call this, but this is not the America I know and love,” Vance, who was not yet Trump’s running mate, said in a tense exchange.

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In June, I also spoke with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, assistant professor at Wesleyan University and editor of the book “Did It Happen Here?” Perspectives on Fascism and America,” including Paxton’s writing, among many others.

“That model of historical comparison, where we look at what happened to Germany in the 1930s and then use it as a kind of navigation device or a map to understand what happened today, is very common,” he said , although there are arguments that it is a flawed comparison.

“Concepts do not have timeless essences that we can simply attach to any phenomenon, but they change given the political context, given the power structures in society,” he said.

Today, he said, the term “fascism” is used “to mobilize people to bridge their divisions, to defeat an enemy far greater than their own long-standing differences.”

Steinmetz-Jenkins argued that there is a long history, dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, of Americans on both sides of the political aisle attempting to label their opponents as “fascist,” and there are also examples of American lawmakers who threatened opponents with investigation. .

There are arguments in favor of the fascist equation, but also arguments against it – especially as there are echoes in American history of Trump’s rise in populist and white nationalist movements closer to home.

I went back to Steinmetz-Jenkins to ask if the comparisons have changed in the intervening months, and he noted that the fascism debate had simmered this summer, with Harris replacing Biden — and he noted that for most of Harris’ campaign a message of joy politics had replaced the fear of fascism.

As Democrats become fearful of losing to Trump, the threat of fascism has returned to the fore.

“What is needed is a plan to inspire people to vote for Democrats, not fear tactics that could lead to a sense of fatalism that the world is being overrun by fascism,” he said.

Enough American voters have heard the term “fascism” in the same breath as Trump. If he wins in November, it will be clear that they are at least willing to tolerate or not believe that he will go through with what he says.