Trump and the Libertarian Authoritarians
A recent article in Vox asked whether the F word, “fascist,” should be applied to Trump. The scholarly consensus is that it shouldn’t. (D. Mathews , The F. Word, Vox.com, Jan. 14, 2021) While it’s widely acknowledged that Trump is an authoritarian, contemptuous of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law, he and his movement are missing a few key fascistic ingredients. The article quotes Stanley Payne, a University of Wisconsin historian and author of A History of Fascism 1914-1945: Trump“[n]ever founded a new fascist party, never embraced a coherent new revolutionary ideology, never announced a radical new doctrine but introduced a noninterventionist foreign military policy . . . Not even a poor man’s fascist. Ever an incoherent nationalist-populist with sometimes destructive tendencies.” I agree he’s not a fascist, and would go so far as to say that labeling him as such misses what is uniquely awful about Trump and Trumpism. Fascism had an abiding faith in government. I