FLOTSAM & JETSAM: Trump's incremental fascism

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Trump's incremental fascism

Sam Smith - Radio commentator Thom Hartmann had an interesting program on which he discussed the rise of Nazism -something he knew about in part having lived in Germany in the 1980s and talked to some ex-Nazis. What struck me was his mention of the fact that Nazism didn't arrive in one swoop; it was an incremental expansion of power. And the key aspect of this was that each change didn't seem all that dramatic because it was just an alteration compared to what had already been going on. 

Donald Trump's disrespect for the law, for Congress, and for democratic decency falls into this same trend. Each step simply builds on the previous and hence does not seem as dramatic as it truly is. In fact, we have already moved far from traditional American values with the Trump regime and must bear in mind that fascism is not a one shot deal. It can happened, as it is right now, incrementally.