An Early Warning on Trump’s Creeping Fascism
A recent TV show recalled the tactics used by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in their rise to power. They seem strikingly similar to the tactics of Trump and his MAGA minions, codified by Project 2025.
Rick Steves is a travel writer, TV personality and activist who encourages Americans to travel and explore different cultures, partly as a way to gain new perspective on what’s happening in our own country.
Last night, PBS aired his show on “The Story of Fascism in Europe.” It offered a frightening view of how fascism rose in Germany, Italy and Spain, spurred by charismatic leaders who were able to manipulate the anger of everyday citizens by identifying “enemies from within” who they insisted were holding those countries down.
The result: Yup, World War 2.
In watching the show, I found the tactics used by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in their rise to power strikingly similar to the tactics in use by Trump and his MAGA minions right now. The phrase “history is a vast early warning system” came to mind, though I’m not sure where or when I first heard that phrase, or who may have uttered it.
In Hitler’s case, the “enemy from within” was the Jewish population, identified as “demons,” “traitors” and worse in Nazi propaganda as Hitler pushed his followers to kick out a government he referred to as nonresponsive elitists, and “restore order.” Mussolini and Franco attacked socialists as the “enemy within,” while Franco went one step further by repressing the culture of Spain's Basque and Catalan regions.
All three men offered simplistic solutions to the complex problems those countries faced at the time, while courting industrialists and businessmen who feared strikes and slowdowns.
Trump, meanwhile, labels the “enemies within” as the Democratic party, old-line Republicans who oppose him, and the media who fact checks him. His simplistic solutions include across-the-board tariffs on both friends and foes, bowing to Putin’s attacks on neighboring countries, and lowering taxes on the rich and big corporations.
He calls Kamala Harris, “dumb” and “lazy” longstanding racist dog-whistles, laughs at comments portraying her as a prostitute and speaks openly about jailing opponents, or having them shot. And legal protests, he has said, could be met with military might.
The other day, Trump insisted at a rally that “I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi” after some Democrats drew comparisons between Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and a 1939 pro-Nazi event held there. The question is, does he even know what he is. Earlier in the year, when Trump faced criticism for using rhetoric similar to Hitler’s by saying Latino immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” he insisted he had no idea Hitler used the same language.
Right.
He has described the immigration of black and brown folks as a sort of infestation, scapegoating them for all the problems of society. Hitler had the Jews; Trump talks of illegal immigrants as murderers and escapees from mental institutions, promising to put them in internment camps before sending them outside the country.
Does the words “internment caps” strike a chord here?
In Nazi Germany, government officials at all levels, legal and bureaucratic, had to declare strict allegiances to the party to stay in their jobs. Take a read on Project 2025, written by many of Trump’s closest advisers, which urges Trump to fire as many as 50,000 federal employees should he become president again, and replace them with an army of people, already identified, whose views align closely with Trump’s.
Trump’s longest-serving chief-of-staff, John Kelly, put his former boss under “the general definition of a fascist,” and Kamala Harris openly agreed with that assessment.
At its core, fascism requires loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion and often a somewhat fuzzy, unreal view of national tradition. The main principle is that “the leader” is the only one who can save the nation from turmoil and decay, helping loyal followers reclaim what they believe is rightfully theirs.
In Trump’s case, that’s white men fearful of the growing strength of American multiculturalism and the rising number of women as managers in key professions. While Trump's not at the full-blown level of Hitler and Mussolini yet, he’s using their early tactics to get what he wants.
Given that, let’s consider Trumpism and MAGA as a “creeping” form of fascism. And if he wins the election, we should ready ourselves for the real thing to come. History is, indeed, a vast early warning system.