'This is fascism!' Morning Joe checks off all the ways Trump meets chilling definition
Donald Trump has sent every possible warning that he intends to rule as a fascist autocrat, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said it's long past time to cover his presidential campaign around that startling fact.
The New York Timespublished an article highlighting Trump's fascist tendencies, and the "Morning Joe" host went through a checklist of the defining characteristics of fascism.
"It's what we heard from people that were, I guess, just too offended, or maybe perhaps too delicate to call a fascist a fascist, or to call fascism, fascism," Scarborough said. "For years, people said, 'You know, we don't have the violence component,' despite the fact Donald Trump throughout the first campaign said, 'Beat the hell out of my opponents, and I'll pay your lawyer fees,' for asking a question about health care reform. Charlottesville, good people on both sides, trying to justify that. Jan. 6 then comes, there's really no ambiguity there. Like Mussolini going after government buildings with violence, taking over government buildings with violence on his rise, we have Jan. 6. We have the example of Paul Pelosi, a guy, a speaker of the House's husband, a speaker of the House he calls deranged and crazy and all these other things, dehumanizes. Then he still, he still revels in an 82-, 83-year-old man having the hell beaten out of him, so the violence component of fascism is there."
"It's time that fascism is called fascism and Americans know exactly what they're voting for," Scarborough added. "You know, I've heard people poo-poo this and go, oh, people on the far left – no. I'm a conservative, I'm on the right. There's a difference between conservatism, radicalism and fascism. This is fascism."
The Times quotes multiple historians and other experts on authoritarianism, and Scarborough said Trump and the Republican Party he has taken over meet the definitions they provided.
"This is boilerplate stuff really for what fascism is," Scarborough said. "Fascism is generally understood as an authoritarian far-right system of government in which hypernationalism is a central component, check. It also features a cult of personality around a strongman leader, check. The justification of violence or retribution against opponents, check, and the repeated denigration of the rule of law, check, said Peter Hayes, a historian who studied the rise of fascism. Past fascist leaders appeal to a sense of victimhood to justify their actions, check. We're entitled because we've been robbed, we've been victimized, we've been cheated and robbed. Check, check, check."
"The whining, the snowflakery coming from the Trump people," Scarborough added. "I mean, a snowflake falls on their shoulders, and they're victimized. They're victimized by history books on Hank Aaron, they're victimized by kids' books on Roberto Clemente. They're victimized by tweets – you name it, they are victimized by everything. They are such weak snowflakes, and they're using that victimization to justify violence against their opponents."
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