Clinton or Trump: Who's the Real Fascist?
After reading yet another WaPo hit piece of Trump, this time clumsily trying to compare him with Mussolini (who was making a speech praising immigrants to the USA), I was thinking about which of the two main Presidential contenders demonstrate the more Fascist leanings.
Clearly Trump is the most patriotic, nativist, nationalistic... however you want to frame it. I think both his supporters and detractors will agree on that. Without equating patriotism with Fascism, it is certainly fair to say Fascists are nothing if not patriotic. So on this score Trump out-Fascists Clinton.
On the other hand it seems that Clinton would be the more likely President to lead the U.S. down the path to war. Trump has been out of step with most Republicans with his isolationism, and his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is positively European. Clinton's record as Secretary of State leaves little room to believe four years under her would be anything other than business as usual. Score one for Clinton.
The rhetoric and record of the two candidates with respect to Wall Street is a tricky one to parse. While both of them have been bashing this pinata pretty hard, Clinton is a latecomer to the party. On that basis I assume Trump is the more sincere in his views (a risky position on my part, I agree). So in terms of Fascist rhetoric about 'big capital' and 'big finance' and 'looking out for the little guy', Trump gets the point for Fascist here. However Clinton has a long record of entwining Corporate power with political power. This Third Way economics is a key tenet of Fascist doctrine so Clinton has big Fascist bona fides on this issue. So score one for her. That leaves us with a tie when it comes to the marketplace. You'll have to vote for Gary Johnson this November if you want a candidate loudly supporting the free market.
On the issue of censorship, surveillance and overall big-brotherism it is hard to find daylight between these two candidates. It's hard to see a scenario where Edward Snowden gets on a plane back to the States no matter who is elected. We'll call this one a draw and declare them both as having Fascist tendencies.
Fascists certainly do spectacle well, and the preeminence of personality in totalitarian movements is widely recognized. While Clinton may be a dominating personality on a personal level, Trumps charisma with the crowd and his reality show experience make him the showman here. And his entrance spectacle at the Republican convention certainly outdoes anything Hillary could accomplish with a pantsuit. Point for Trump. The Donald leads by one.
Religion plays a bigger role in American politics than in the politics of any other Western democracy, except for Northern Ireland. Not that religion actually shapes public policy at all - wouldn't want to let personal values inform public decision-making now, would we! - but candidates for office will fall over themselves to be photographed going into church, quoted reciting Scripture, or seen hobnobbing with religious elites. The division between the religious and the anti-religious is also starkly clear in the U.S.: the more strongly you hold to a particular flavour of Christianity, the more likely you are to vote Republican. The more strident you are in your atheism, the more you cleave to the Democratic Party. That hasn't changed in this election. Evangelicals appear to be backing Trump despite many values-based reasons for them not too (though Mormons seem to be holding out) and the irreligious are falling in line behind St. Hillary. How does this fit in with our analisi fascista? Mussolini of course was virulently anti-clerical. Hitler was 'born' Catholic but certainly didn't practice it later in life. While he didn't subscribe to the Nordic pagan hocus pocus of many of the other top-level Nazis, it is generally believed that widespread persecution of Christianity was down a ways on his victim list, but was on the list nonetheless. And while political expediency certainly caused Hitler and Mussolini (and even Stalin during WWII) to be friendlier with institutional Christianity in practice than would have been indicated by theory, no serious historian would suggest these guys whistled Amazing Grace on the way to work. While Trump may be only playing up religiosity in order to win Republican-base votes, we're going to have to give the anti-religion point to Clinton here. Democratic party supporters would expect nothing less. We're back to a tie.
A main tenet of Fascist movements is an expansion of the welfare state and other populist economic measures. You would think this would be a slam-dunk point for Hillary, and I'll ruin the surprise and say that I will give it to her, but the contest is closer than you would think. The other night when Trump's daughter Ivanka was introducing her father she gave emphatic advocacy of the 'need' for government to 'remedy' the 'wage disparity' between men and women with children. It sounded like the last thing you would hear at a Republican convention. It was certainly the last thing a liberal would expect to hear at a Republican convention. But then you realize: she wasn't speaking to the attendees at the convention. She was speaking to the wider American sense of entitlement and desire for government to 'do things'. She was speaking to Bernie Sanders supporters. She was reinforcing the economic populism that her father has been espousing all along with his trade protectionism and anti-Wall Street rhetoric. So why do I give the point to Hillary? It seems to me that Trump is a master tactician. He is sensing the temper of our times and he is attempting to ride this subsidized horse all the way to the White House. Hillary on the other hand is a true believer. Her entire adult life she has been on the side of government intervention in the economy and redistribution of income. Certainly she has amped it up to fend off the Sandersistas, but I don't think she's felt terribly uncomfortable doing it. So that's why I give Hillary the point - by a hair.
That leaves us as Clinton being the bigger Fascist, by the slimmest of margins. Certainly this isn't an exhaustive evaluation of all the points of intersection between fascism and the leading candidates - it's just a quick-and-dirty look at a few main characteristics by one guy with some free time on a Saturday afternoon. I certainly welcome your opinion on the matter in the comments below, and would like to hear who you think is the greater threat to freedom and liberty in the U.S.A.