In his message to veterans on Memorial Day, Donald Trump pledged to eliminate the “vermin” that his opponents and critics represented.
Yesterday, Yasmine Abdelfadel recalled that this toxic and dehumanizing rhetoric echoes Hitler’s speeches and poses a threat to democracy. She wasn’t wrong.
To be clear: Donald Trump is not Hitler. Because exaggeration sometimes leads to insignificance, some fear that if they link Trumpism and fascism they will be accused of scaremongering.
Just words?
Those who downplay the threat of Trumpism point out that Trump is talking nonsense and that his words should not be taken literally. It’s a mistake.
First, Trump’s words are being swallowed by a group of violent individuals ready to take action. This was the case of the kidnapped man who almost killed Nancy Pelosi’s husband, an incident that Trump continues to cruelly mock, each time showering his rival with demeaning epithets.
But there is more than just words. Trump’s plans for a return to power read like a handbook for authoritarian rule that would make his first term seem like a picnic.
Trump 2.0
There is no need to dig up secrets to identify the elements of Trump’s authoritarian plan. He doesn’t hide anything, he brags about it.
He has explicitly stated his intention to destroy the independence of the Justice Department and to install there followers of his sect, whose first task will be to punish his opponents. He also promises to scrap the idea of an independent civil service by replacing tens of thousands of permanent civil servants with “loyalists.”
As for the members of the president’s entourage who forced him not to deviate from constitutional rules during his first term, he will replace them with “yes-men” whose interpretations of the Constitution agree with his own.
Trump did not appreciate the massive protests following his inauguration in 2017. If it happens again in January 2025, he has promised to use the armed forces against the protesters. He also will not hesitate to use the military for any purpose, no matter what the Constitution requires, including the arrest and deportation of millions of illegal immigrants, whom he also promises to herd into “camps.”
Hyperbole?
And that’s not all. Trump is not yet finished announcing measures that will complete the picture of an authoritarian turn, be it in his government program or in his crazy speeches.
If Americans treat the 2024 election like a “normal” vote on the price of a tank of gas or the age of Joe Biden, the democratic ideal will be the big loser.
Is it too much to refer to fascism to talk about the political movement embodied by Donald Trump that risks ending the American experiment in democracy?
I’ll just quote the American poet James Whitcomb Riley: “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”
