'Dehumanizing your targets': Authoritarian expert explains Trump's 'vermin' speech
November 14, 2023
Former President Donald Trump's Veterans Day speech denouncing his political opponents as "vermin" to be "rooted out" sparked a fresh wave of fears about the United States backsliding into authoritarianism should he manage to win office once more.
New York University professor and authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat emphasized that risk strongly in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes on Tuesday evening.
"If someone says to you, there's a political leader who is vowing to purge the communist and leftists who are like vermin within the confines of the nation, you just know immediately that's fascist rhetoric," said Hayes.
"Absolutely," agreed Ben-Ghiat. "And everything about that speech was drawn actually from the history of fascism, because fascism started as a decentralized militia movement in Italy, and in both Italy and Germany, its first people were — the nucleus was veterans who wanted to bring the war home. And they turned their weapons and their hatred on their own population, on leftists. And Hitler started talking about Jews as parasites as early as 1920, and Mussolini actually talked about having to kill rats who are bringing Bolsheviks in from the east, so dehumanizing your targets is an integral part of fascist rhetoric."
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"It's not just the rhetoric," said Hayes. "There are audacious plans. At this point just plans. One of them is to use the Insurrection Act, which is a pretty bad law in many ways in the U.S. government, an old law. His allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents, should he win a second term. The former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute. His associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations."
"Yeah," said Ben-Ghiat. "This is all the authoritarian playbook. As you know, Chris, I've been writing about Trump and warning people since 2016. My book 'Strongmen,' he is in it. He is at the end of a century of authoritarian history that starts with Mussolini. And so all of these things he wants to do our from some chapter of that a long history."
Watch the video below or at the link.
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