Is Trump a fascist? It’s much worse

Watch FFWN with Barrie Zwicker above.  Check out the links to stories we covered. -KB

Trump Is Heralding Nazism (originally published on December 20th, 2015)

by Barrie Zwicker, Truth and Shadows

…the general public is being reduced to a state where people not only are unable to find out about the truth but also become unable to search for the truth because they are satisfied with deception and trickery that have determined their convictions, satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design… – Josef Pieper

Those who worry that Donald Trump is a fascist are behind two curves. One
is that there are valid grounds for calling him a Nazi. Too far? No, not far enough.
The second curve is the worry—now being expressed even in some mainstream media—that the USA and maybe Europe are going fascist. Again, this fear falls short. There are valid grounds for describing the direction of the USA and Europe as moving toward the worst manifestation of fascism: resurgent Nazism. Yes that far.

These valid grounds lie in evidence: accepted definitions, disturbing poll results and parallels between Hitler and Trump. Just two of 27 parallels:

√ Hitler early on was seen as a buffoon. Writes Michael Berumen:[1]

Throughout most of the 1920s and up to 1933, Adolf Hitler was a laughing stock and a figure of derision among the elites on both the conventional right
and left, including the governing and military classes. He was thought to be a comical buffoon by the political cognoscenti; a crass vulgarian by the upper classes; a semi-literate theorist by the professoriate; and as a silly erstwhile corporal and martinet by the senior officers of the Reichswehr…

For months until his lead in the polls became worrisome even to some leading figures on the U.S. right, Trump was written off as a lightweight. The Huffington Post famously announced back in July that it would categorize all Trump stories as “entertainment” rather than “politics.”

√  Hitler masterminded false flag “terror” operations, creating public fears so great that Germans welcomed a strong leader, a führer, to protect them from foreign elements. William L. Shirer in his monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, writes:

For months prior to July 1934 the Austrian Nazis, with weapons and dynamite furnished by Germany, had instituted a reign of terror, blowing up railways, power stations and government buildings and murdering supporters of the Dollfuss clerical-fascist regime.[2]

Killing fascists was particularly clever. Who else would assassinate fascists other than anti-fascists? Indeed all the incidents were blamed on communists and socialists, the traditional enemies and scapegoats of capitalism. This laid much of the psychological groundwork for Germany’s launching World War II.

In the case of Trump, a “reign of terror” has brainwashed the public with fears that he exploits. Starting with 9/11, powers within the American Empire in collusion with elements of “America’s allies” have deployed agents to mount a series of false flag operations that fuel Trump’s base. A groundwork has been laid.

Hitler went on to start World War II. Can anyone guarantee that Trump, if he reaches the Oval office, would not somehow start World War III? Or should it be said, escalate it? Pope Francis has observed that World War III is underway “piecemeal.”

Back to the curves. Some alternative media since at least the 1990s haven’t shrunk from using the f-word. Adbusters asked in its Sept/Oct 2003 issue: “Is America Becoming Fascist?”[3]

Sure it’s welcome that mainstream media are finally permitting discussions of fascism, but only as a byproduct of them being unable to avoid discussing the phenomenon of Trump. One of a plethora of instances: on Nov. 30, 2015 The Globe and Mail published an opinion piece under the headline “Is Trump a Fascist?” Other opinion pieces and letters followed.

The larger question is to what extent the USA and Europe are going down a Nazi path, arguably risking World War III, exactly when the world instead should be mobilizing for a just war—if ever there was one—the war to save the planet from destruction caused by global warming.

Where have the mainstream media been in the 35 years since the time of Reagan, during which the political and ideological goal posts in the USA have been moved so far to the right that it’s a different playing field from the one that existed for the 35 years from 1945 to 1980?

America has been edged, then pushed, then hurtled past the sign reading “Fascism Lives Here” on the road to what should rightly, technically, and morally be called Nazism.

This prolonged lurch to the right has not been a natural evolution, what Alexander Zinoviev calls elemental, meaning unplanned and uncontrolled. It has been, rather conscious-volitional, planned and controlled, specifically by what Zinoviev calls the Global Suprasociety.

In the USA members of the Suprasociety are extremely right-wing and often immensely rich such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson. A gambling billionaire and mega-donor to right-wing causes, Adelson met with Trump and called him “charming.” They direct the hired brains of their think tanks. In his book Blinded by the Right,[4] David Brock, former fellow of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, writes that the “major corporations” and “the Wall Street venture capital class” team up to promote right-wing ideology through a network of think tanks, issue lobbies and publications…”
These oligarchs are cunning, well informed on how to manipulate the public, and possess increasingly sophisticated Big Data and other tools. They’re powerful. They were preceded by the likes of Hitler-admirer Henry Ford. But I must rule out here the exploration of the American Empire from its inception. Professor Anthony James (Tony) Hall, a 9/11 truth activist and professor of globalization studies at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, has done so at length in his books[5] and concisely in his letter to the Iranian leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, posted on this site recently.

Adequately recognizing the shift of the USA since around 1980 to the far right, and identifying the masterminds of the shift, are necessary steps in deflecting the juggernaut and creating the possibility of more peaceful tomorrows. This presents a steep learning curve even for most of those calling Trump out. The curve requires facing the single most insidious, unrecognized and dangerous contributor to today’s toxic political atmosphere—false flag operations.

These are the basis for unreasonable fear of terrorists, specifically “jihadi extremist terrorists,” now being inflated to fear of all Muslims. False flag ops have created this atmosphere in which Trump and his admirers alone breathe easily. This is because widespread public fear is their friend. It’s the wind in their sails.
Now let’s correctly invoke the power of naming, which can help us get around the seemingly far-fetched idea that Nazism, rather than Jesus, may enjoy a second coming.
Characteristics agreed in standard dictionaries as inherent in Nazism can be seen as a pattern. We then can ask: has that pattern emerged again?

In my preferred dictionary, Collins Third Edition, fascism [my numbering] is “any 1 rightwing 2 nationalist ideology or movement with 3 an authoritarian and 4 hierarchical structure that 5 is fundamentally opposed to democracy and 6 [opposed to] liberalism.” Add 7 racism and 8 brutality and you have Nazism, Hitler style. [6]

What now must be considered a movement with these characteristics has coalesced around Donald Trump’s demagogic racist ravings and bald lies. According to conventional mainstream media this has happened suddenly. But has it? Consider, one by one, the above characteristics that beginning in the 1980s increasingly should have been recognized as describing the U.S. political scene overall.

Before we continue exploring the increasingly ugly nature of the most powerful nation on Earth, a caveat: I am soulfully aware of the tremendous numbers of Americans ashamed, appalled, angry and even afraid about the directions of their country and too many of their fellow citizens. These are Americans who have been able to escape to one extent or another the cocoon of self-absorbed American mythology and see through the “maximum illusion” discussed in Part 2 back in 2013.
By the numbers, then:

1) Any sober analysis recognizes that the USA has become increasingly right-wing.
The unusualness of the Bernie Sanders run for the presidential nomination by the Democratic Party simply highlights the shift to the right. It is an anomaly. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, in their runs for the presidency, for instance, never breathed the words socialist or socialism. A self-described socialist, Sanders has always been an outlier federally and treated as such except in his home state. He’s now a serious populist figure benefitting politically, as does Trump, the right-wing populist, from widespread grievances over lack of decent jobs, outright unemployment, lack of opportunities, a corrupt political culture, poverty, and a general malaise.

The history of 1930s Germany does not bode well for Sanders and socialism, however. If the ’30s experience repeats itself, socialists in the USA let alone communists, if there are any real ones left, will be dealt with harshly. Hitler simply rounded them up and jailed or executed them—a fact that tends to be overlooked with the emphasis usually and understandably made on the Nazis’ genocidal treatment of Jews.

2) The nationalism of the USA is clear. It has for some time been a present danger to non-Americans, who can see it more clearly than most Americans living within the bubble of their nationalist culture. Just one manifestation is the invasion of militarized nationalism into the spectacles of professional sports. Karen Armstrong, author of Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence argues that violence and war have as much to do with inequality and nationalism as with religion. On a recent interview on “That Agenda” on TV Ontario, she said she sees nationalism essentially as a religion. Some people make sports their religion. In his 1987 book Television and Religion,[7] William Fore writes: “In America we are developing a new kind of liturgical year to mark the passing of the seasons, which includes the Rose Bowl Parade, Super Sunday baseball … and that key religious festival, the Super Bowl. Joseph Price suggests that the Super Bowl now signals a convergence of sports, politics, and myth.” To this has been added militarism, which has crept up into Canada, with Canadian Armed Forces personnel from time to time now lionized uncritically at major league sports events.

3) Signs of growing authoritarianism in the USA have been clearly evident for many years especially to those outside the thick cocoon of American fictional legend. The psychological makeup of authoritarian leaders and followers has been extensively studied by retired University of Manitoba Professor of Psychology Bob Altemeyer. He produced the test and scale for “RWA” or Right-wing authoritarianism. His book The Authoritarians is freely available online.

One sign of authoritarianism is the supine attitude toward authority of most of the mainstream media. Most especially seen in the cover-up, rather than coverage of, the most overarching crimes of the power elite. For instance, an objection by those who deny there could be top-level fascistic conspiracies is that “surely the media would have a lot to gain from blowing the lid off such operations.” This betrays a lack of understanding of the essentially subservient place of the media in this society. On pages 303 and 304 of The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease,[8] Walter Karp of Harper’s magazine is quoted on the hazards for journalists who engage in “source journalism.” These are the top journalists, who live by their relationships with high authorities. For them, Karp writes, the hazards of challenging the official story on JFK’s assassination include “lost access, complaints to editors and publishers, social penalties, leaks to competitors, a variety of responses no one wants.” Karp continues: “It is a bitter irony of source journalism that the most esteemed journalists are precisely the most servile. For it is by making themselves useful to the powerful that they gain access to the ‘best’ sources.”

4) Contrary to incessant rhetoric about democracy, the U.S. power structure is considerably hierarchical. Money power comprises the main rungs of the hierarchy. Even back in 2004 the Republicans, according to the New York Times,[9] were confident of raising at least $170-million for George W. Bush’s election campaign, redefining what the Times called “standards” for fund-raising. Standards now are quaint.

5) Both the hierarchy of money and the antagonism to democracy are spelled out in Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Truth About Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters and many other books by investigative reporters and authors such as Howard Zinn.

6) That the U.S. establishment is opposed to liberalism—no matter how you define liberalism—is beyond debate. This is especially clear from north of the Canadian-U.S. border, or as Margaret Atwood calls it, “the longest undefended one-way mirror in the world.” Creating an interesting and even worrying contrast, Canada now has a progressive liberal Liberal government. The gap seems to be growing between conventional (that is, right-wing) stances in the USA and conventional (that is centre-left) stances in Canada on immigration, war and militarism, social benefits and multilateralism, to name five. If the extreme right continues to grow in the USA, calls already heard for building a wall along the Canadian border may multiply and morph into something quite dark and unpredictable, rather than silly and humorous.

7) Racism. Most of the Fourth Reich’s victims have been Asians (Vietnam War), indigenous peoples of Latin America (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile et al) and historically Arabs. During the American-led aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq the epithet was “towelheads.” The racism is clear. With the so-called “war on terror” ramping up from its launch pad on 9/11, the increasingly defined enemy out-group has morphed from (the CIA-created) Al-Qaeda to “extremist jihadis” to Muslims in general. Muslims comprise a quarter of the world’s population. By the conflation of racism, religious and cultural intolerance, and identification with terrorism, they have become the largest scapegoated group in history.

8) Brutality. The number of people slaughtered by military and paramilitary actions in both the Third and Fourth Reichs is in the millions. Hitler reigned over the slaughter of more than 60-million souls. Backdate the Fourth Reich to the end of the Second World War and the number murdered by U.S. forces equals or outnumbers the toll in the Holocaust. Three million in Vietnam alone. The brutality is a matter of record for those who are willing to look at it. See William Blum’s Killing Hope[10] for one researcher’s record of countries invaded and despoiled. As to the leaders’ styles, the treatment of hecklers by Trump and his supporters is eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s goons.

We already have eight grounds for applying the term Fourth Reich. There are another 19 parallels between Hitler’s Germany and the USA today, here reduced to one line each, to be explored in the next Part of this series:

9) The ambition of world domination.
10) Glorification of militarism.
11) A fundamentalist faith in capitalism.
12) Anti-socialism, anti-communism, anti-Marxism.
13) Corruption at the top endemic.
14) In the case of Hitler on January 30, 1933 and of George W. Bush on January 20, 2001[11] the leader was illegally installed into power.[12]
15) Seizure of other countries’ oil.
16) The “pitiful giant” syndrome is invoked.
17) Pre-emptive or “preventive” war is policy and practice.
18) Use of religion, invocations of God’s approval.
19) Preoccupation with secrecy.
20) Highly orchestrated propaganda campaigns.
21) Censorship and intimidation of selected media.
22) An ever-encroaching police state.
23) International and domestic laws breached, resisted and undermined.
24) The use of actual terrorism—wholesale and retail[13]—is central to a Reich’s operation.
25) The use of the terms “terrorism” and “terrorists” ascribed unfairly to resisters against the Reich, to sow fear and loathing.
26) Deception, above all, is the key to everything for a Reich.
27) Stunningly effective deployment of the masterwork of deceptions: false flag operations.

I recognize and appreciate that my definitions and criteria can be challenged individually or overall. The most relevant article I’ve encountered so far in this regard appears on a website new to me named VOX. A well written piece by Dylan Matthews appeared there on December 10. It also begins with the question “Is Donald Trump a fascist?” Matthews did something simple but too seldom attempted. He interviewed four authors who have written a book on fascism and one, Roger Griffin, who has written two. The article can be found at http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/10/9886152/donald-trump-fascism

Summarized, the drift of these authors’ answer to whether Trump is a fascist (and by extension whether his supporters are) is that he’s getting there but still doesn’t qualify, for various reasons. These authors can fairly be described as “fascism experts.” Matthews himself writes: “To be blunt: Donald Trump is not a fascist.” The experts’ collective stance is fault-laden. Matthews simply condensed it.

First, the authors’ comparisons of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s trajectories, impacts and potential impacts are not properly related to the potential impacts of a USA gone fully fascistic. To take just two examples: Hitler did not have nuclear weapons at his command, nor did he have the capacity—as arguably do giant U.S. oil, armaments, and other corporations—to stall or thwart the battle to save all life on the planet, threatened by global warming.

Second, the authors are far too sanguine about, or seemingly even oblivious to, the damage already inflicted on the world by the American Empire.

Third, as a result, they fail to appreciate the threat to the world that the USA represents, with potential outcomes that would make even Hitler’s bloody successes pale.

Michael Berumen wrote an analysis of the Vox piece. A few of his comments:

I shall have to say that the article is almost wholly incorrect, both in its historical analysis and attempts to arrive at a single definition.
The “experts” cited, chiefly Griffin, seek to invent or consolidate a definition that is at best wobbly from a historical perspective, indeed, in several critical respects, his definition is ahistorical.

Here are the real “experts” on the matter, though: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Goebbels, Gregor and Otto Strasser, Ernst Rohm, Giovanni Gentile, just to name some. One need only read these folks extensively, as I have, to reach a full understanding of Fascism from an ideological perspective.

What is more important, I think, is that the article is very wrong in its analysis of Trump the man, for it seeks to reduce him to a populist, racist, demagogue. He is certainly those things.  But he is much more. The essence of Fascism is its authoritarian leadership, which is   inherently anti-democratic, but not just any kind of authoritarianism, for it is an authoritarianism whereby the leader’s personality becomes emblematic of and inextricably identified with the state and vice versa.
Nazism was of course an unholy alliance between both cartel-capitalism and socialism.  And he is a self-proclaimed militarist … he himself says he is more militaristic than anyone!  He obviously relishes the tough-guy, bully approach in campaigning, and with this constant talk about who is weak, who is tough, etc., which is not at all dissimilar to Hitler or Mussolini.

When I wrote, in 2004, the precursor version of this piece, my opinion was that revealing the fraud of 9/11 “is the single most important task faced by civilization today.” That 9/11 was dared, I wrote, was the supreme Achilles heel of the Fourth Reich. Or would be, should it be exposed as a Reichstag Fire 2001.

But this would require the mainstream media to become born-again courageous investigative agencies with moral backbone and a sense of history, or even just of danger. I see no signs of such a conversion from their ongoing supine megaphoning of official narratives.

Now, with a would-be Hitler 2016 on the hustings, my opinion has changed. It now seems to me that the single most important task is to reveal the big picture, the master illusion, the expansion of Operation Gladio into a global integrated false flag blanket fraud called “the war on terror” that now is being crystallized by Trump and his supporters into a war on all Muslims. Operation Gladio2 is comprised of a series of false flag ops arguably beginning with 9/11 plus all the ones that have followed, including the Madrid train bombings in 2004 and London 7/7 and Bali 1 and Bali 2 and the Mumbai bombings, and Charlie Hebdo—and so many others.

If enough people can be awakened to the enormity of the crime of manufacturing a threatening illusion, they could become a politically relevant constituency to slow down a stampede. Then the possibility of a cleansing transformation would emerge. Every worthwhile initiative you can name, be it environmental, social, political or economic, would benefit from a highlighted and hammered expose of the maximum illusion that continues to be buttressed by false flag op after false flag op.

In America there’s a community of peace and environmental and justice activists, that includes theists, atheists, artists, workers, intellectuals and plain folk, old and young. This community is unidentified, unrecognized and therefore disenfranchised by the mainstream media. It may number 30-million, equal to the population of Canada. It appears to be the responsibility imposed by history on this community to recognize its own existence, importance, and power and to exercise that power non-violently before it’s too late, to save their country and the world from the black blossoming of a full-fledged Fourth Reich.

Many Americans have told me they’re aware of the possibility of the suspension of the U.S. Constitution. There likely would be a startling false flag pretext, although their constitution might just continue to be whittled away. “Trump has said on any number of occasions,” Berumen writes, “things that would be in obvious contravention to the US Constitution, specifically, the 1st, 5th, and 14th Amendments and Article Two.  Probably more.

The Fourth Reich and its outposts, including the ones within each of us, is perhaps humanity’s last major challenge. Its vast military machine undermines a war truly worth fighting, the war to save the planet from global warming. The fake “war on terror” distracts millions from the reality and enormity of the climate change threat. Even the beginnings of dismantling the American Empire would probably lead to a period of chaos. But from that could emerge a safer and saner world, still imperfect, but one less in imminent danger of Armageddon. In it we might finally face a reasonable future.

Footnotes:

1 A member of the Bertrand Russell Society (BRS). writing on the Society’s listerv on Dec. 5, 2015
2 See The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer, Touchstone Press, 1990, ISBN (paperback) 0-671-72868-7 (p 280)
3 p. 33
4 Crown Publishers, New York, 2002
5 The American Empire and the Fourth World (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003) and Earth Into Property: Colonization, Decolonization and Capitalism (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010)
6 p. 561
7 Augsberg Publisher House, Minneapolis MN. 1987
8 Feral House, 2003, ISBN 0-922915-82-2 (www.feralhouse.com)
9 June 15, 2003
10 Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 2004
11 See Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore, Regan Books, 2001, ISBN 0-06-039245-2, chapter 1
12 Strictly speaking Hitler was invited to take over, but only after a series of supremely undemocratic moves on the part of the führer.
13 To my knowledge the terms “wholesale terrorism” (meaning state-sponsored) and “retail terrorism” (meaning acts of terror committed by non-government-sponsored individuals or groups) were originated by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman in the 1970s.

Kevin Barrett, Senior Editor

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard-driving weekly radio show funded by listener subscriptions at Substack and the weekly news roundup FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN).

He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

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