askchapo

Anybody trying to define fascism based on the very specific characteristics of Italy, Japan, or Germany is going to run into reasons to call trump a fascist or not and be able to debate. Like the 14 from ur fascism. I don't think that's a useful way to spend our time. I think that the definition of "Actually Existing Fascism" from redsails is the one that is useful, and there Trump can really only be considered the current captain of a success of fascism. The US has been fascist (in expropriating from its shifting periphery) since it's inception, and managed survived the birthing pains. The "classic" fascist examples failed to become the dominant force of their own existence and thus failed. So Trump is just as much a fascist as every other American president; he just partially shifted the periphery to be an internal enemy instead of external.

Western definitions always find that shift mega-important, but I think Cesaire's famous quote ("fascism=colonialism turned inward") was dialectically supposed to mean that all the expropriation at the periphery has been fascism too, not that fascism should be defined by its inward turn. That would only make the definition of fascism be an easy way to hide the oppression of the 3rd world as better than oppression of the 1st world. We Marxists should not accept that.

So yes, his fascism aims slightly different than the democrats, but of course he's a fascist