When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.
- attributed to Sinclair Lewis

In my Open Thread of last Wednesday, March 16, we examined some of the parallels between Donald Trump and other strong arm fascists. Trump's far right wing rhetoric has alarmed many people and has such notables such as Robert Reich, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, and Roger Cohen of the New York Times have all expressing concern about Trump's fascistic parallels. For purposes of this essay and relative to public commentary on Trumpism, the term proto-fascist has been used to describe Trump. So Bob Dreyfuss' description of Donald Trump as proto-fascist is probably apt.

Trump, of course, has repeatedly played with fire when it comes to violence, intimidation, and the role of white supremacists, the radical right, and others. His dog-whistle refusal to instantly disassociate himself from David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan on the eve of the Super Tuesday primaries in the Deep South was widely condemned even by Republican officials. But in at least one case, an actual neo-Nazi, Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Workers Party, used physical force against protesters at a Trump rally in Louisville.

Ironically last week at the same time that I was composing my Open Thread, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed Robert Paxton professor at Columbia University, who is known as the father of fascism studies. Paxton broadly defines fascism as thus:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

At the beginning of the interview, Amy Goodman notes some disturbing aspects of Donald Trump's campaign for President that have many varied public figures are calling it very fascistic.

AMY GOODMAN: Donald Trump has waffled on accepting support from white supremacist groups like the KKK, and he’s even encouraged hand salutes at his rallies that some say are reminiscent of Adolf Hitler. However, Donald Trump, is he a fascist? Could fascism ever come to America’s shores?

For more, we’re joined by the father of fascism studies, Robert Paxton, professor emeritus of social science at Columbia University. Paxton is the author of several books, including The Anatomy of Fascism. His recent piece is headlined "Is Fascism Back?" and a while ago wrote a piece on "The Five Stages of Fascism."

In this interview, Amy asked Paxton to weigh in on the rise of Donald Trump and for his take on Trump as a fascist. After giving a short recount of the history of fascism in Italy and Germany, Paxton seemed somewhat surprised that Trump's candidacy had taken hold. While he did not see Trump as a true fascist in the classic sense, he did note that there were a number of alarming fascist tendencies in Trump and was concerned about how they played out at Trump's campaign rallies.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWvVKTxTCAA]

Finally at the end of the interview, Amy Goodman asks Paxton for his assessment of Trump as a danger.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Donald Trump is a danger to America or represents a danger that’s already here?

ROBERT PAXTON: I think that his violent and aggressive temperament installed in the powers of the president of the United States is unpredictable and frightening.

snip

Then Paxton adds this one last thought.

ROBERT PAXTON: Yes. I think—I think we don’t know what he would do. We know that his temperament is such that we will have foreign policy crises that we shouldn’t have, and we will have domestic conflicts that we shouldn’t have.

In my essay last week, user WoodsDweller made a comment which included Paxton's five stages of Fascism. This listing is something we should keep in mind in the coming years.

Paxton's Five Stages of Fascism

1) Intellectual exploration, where disillusionment with popular democracy manifests itself in discussions of lost national vigor
2) Rooting, where a fascist movement, aided by political deadlock and polarization, becomes a player on the national stage
3) Arrival to power, where conservatives seeking to control rising leftist opposition invite the movement to share power
4) Exercise of power, where the movement and its charismatic leader control the state in balance with state institutions such as the police and traditional elites
5) Radicalization or entropy, where the state either becomes increasingly radical, as did Nazi Germany, or slips into traditional authoritarian rule, as did Fascist Italy

I believe we may be seeing some of these characteristics manifest in our populace already, aided and abetted by both political parties and the mainstream media as well as other factors, such as the break down and privatization of our education system and the outsourcing of our economy with its attendant impoverishment of a significant portion of our population.

We have seen the disillusionment with popular democracy as evidenced by a lack of voter participation and open anger exhibited by many of Trump's supporters. As I noted in last week's essay, Trump's supporters are the poorest and least educated of all the candidates in the Presidential primaries.

In the case of this rightward shift, probably more blame can be laid at the feet of the Democratic party than upon the Republicans. The Democrats have failed to live up to the promises of the past as the party of the people. When Obama offered up the social safety net as a bargaining chip to the Republicans, it indisputably signaled that a Democrat was willing to go back on decades of fighting for the people. In fact, we are now seeing Democrats co-opting what were formerly Republican stands and policies.

Chris Hedges has famously railed about the failure of the liberal class to act as a backstop to the increasingly rightward movement of our political system. In his Death of the Liberal Class, Hedges slams those forces that have previously looked out for the underclasses. The following is an excerpt from a 2010 interview Chris Hedges did with NPR.

In his new book, Death of the Liberal Class, Hedges slams five specific groups and institutions — the Democratic Party, churches, unions, the media and academia — for failing Americans and allowing for the creation of a "permanent underclass."

Hedges says that, for motives ranging from self-preservation to careerism, the "liberal establishment" purged radicals from its own ranks and, as a result, lost its checks on capitalism and corporate power.

"For millions of Americans, including the 15 million unemployed Americans," Hedges tells NPR'S Neal Conan, "the suffering is becoming acute."

Now, six years later, nothing much has changed except people are fed up more than ever with the current status quo and are searching for someone to change things drastically. What has resulted is that one party has shifted so far to the right that its nominee may well end up being a proto-fascist in Donald Trump. But Trump is not really the exception here. He is just the most overt symptom of the rightward drift of this country, pushed by both major political parties, the corporate media, and ignored by the other institutions that have traditionally created a firewall against our steady march toward fascism.

Electing Hillary Clinton will do nothing to stem the tide because she is symbolic of the disease that has been inflicting our political system. Clinton is corrupt and too heavily co-opted by the corporate establishment which is contributing to this rightward shift. In fact, her stance on the issues that most directly affect the people will probably hasten this rightward shift because they will do nothing to help real people whose lives have been destroyed by a very corrupt political system. So if the choice is Clinton or Trump in 2016, it will not change the dangerous course this country appears to be heading. Without major changes to our political system that significantly address the needs of the people, another Trump like strong man will likely emerge in the next cycle.

Last week when I published my previous essay on this topic, user stevej and I had a very interesting conversation in the comments. As a result of that conversation and an exchange of pms, I am hoping that stevej will expand upon this topic in his own essay in the future.

As always this is an Open Thread too.

UPDATE: Thanks to Zeitgeistus for this link.. Thom Hartman published a column in Salon this morning after this essay was published here. Itis a summary of his interview with Thomas Frank along with his own observations. I am including this excerpt from that article.

The more likely outcome, given all the machinations of the elite media and both party’s elites, is that the Republicans will nominate an establishment candidate like Kasich or Ryan/Romney, and that the Democratic Party will nominate Hillary Clinton.

The choice between an establishment Republican or an establishment Democrat will depress overall political turnout, turn an emerging generation of Millennials into radical cynics, and feed growing explosions among the base of both parties (Tea Party and the latest version of Occupy/BLM). It could mean chaos in our streets for a decade or more.

No matter what happens in this 2016 election, though, the bottom 90% has had enough.