Trump 'lost any benefit of the doubt': Conservative says ex-president is now a fascist

A former Republican columnist concedes: Trump is teetering toward fascism.

Time isn't proving kind for the case that Donald Trump's substance and positions so far in his third run for the White House are taking on fascist leanings, The Atlantic's Tom Nichols wrote in a column titled "Trump Crosses a Crucial Line".

"The former president, after years of espousing authoritarian beliefs, has fully embraced the language of fascism," he writes. "But Americans—even those who have supported him—can still refuse to follow him deeper into darkness."

Nichols defines fascism as a "holistic ideology that elevates the state over the individual (except for a sole leader, around whom there is a cult of personality), glorifies hypernationalism and racism, worships military power, hates liberal democracy, and wallows in nostalgia and historical grievances."

He adds: "It asserts that all public activity should serve the regime, and that all power must be gathered in the fist of the leader and exercised only by his party."

The writer claims he warded off the loaded term and essentially gave the Trump the benefit of the doubt.

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Instead, Nichols likened as a candidate and ruler Trump not as a fascist but certainly a narcissist and also a "wannabe caudillo" which he characterized as "the kind of Latin American strongman who cared little about what people believe so long as they feared him and left him in power."

He said he still held off anointing the term to Trump after he was elected because he writes "I suspected that the day might come when it would be an accurate term to describe him, and I want to preserve its power to shock and to alarm us."

That day has apparently come.

"The events of the past month, and especially Trump’s Veterans Day speech, confirm to me that the moment has arrived," writes Nichols.

He blames the 45th president for "ramping up his rhetoric" at his rally speeches and interviews by adopting "obsessively germaphobic language of Adolf Hitler" toward foreign immigrants and even fellow citizens.

Nichols notes that, "Trump no longer aims to be some garden-variety supremo; he is now promising to be a threat to every American he identifies as an enemy—and that’s a lot of Americans."

In his caution to fellow citizens, Nichols suggests that Trump "whether from intention or stupidity or fear, has identified himself as a fascist under almost any reasonable definition of the word.... he has abandoned any democratic pretenses, and lost any benefit of the doubt about who and what he is."