Sticks and Stones.

February 19, 2025. 

On August 23, 2024, Vice President and candidate Kamala Harris was asked in a CNN Town Hall event if she thought Donald Trump is a fascist. “Yes, I do. Yes, I do,” she said.

Harris’s comment made headlines and sparked a debate, not so much about what Trump was doing, but because fascist is such a hot button term. Those objecting to Harris’s “name calling” did not seem to have a problem with Trump routinely calling Harris and Joe Biden some combination of radical extremist leftist socialist and communist agents of the deep state. Sticks and stones.

The term fascist carries a lot of baggage, stirring images of everything from Mussolini to 70’s radicals. Harris’s comment was quickly dismissed as overzealous campaign rhetoric instead of focusing attention on Trump’s authoritarian statements and tendencies.

After Harris’s comment, Jason Stanley, author of “How Fascism Works, the Politics of Us and Them,” told NPR, “The road to fascism does not start with an act of oppression. It starts with people freely surrendering their rights.”

Autocratic governments almost always follow the fall of a democracy, he said. Typically, a strongman emerges and convinces people that he and only he can solve their problems, if only they give him unlimited power and control over a country’s institutions.

On February 18, President Trump issued an executive order claiming control over agencies that Congress had established as independent, including the SEC, FTC, FCC, and NLRB. He has already fired at least 17 inspector generals and the Director of the Office of Government Ethics. He has placed a loyalist in charge of the Justice Department and the FBI, sparking senior level resignations at both. He has vowed retribution and is taking action against people he feels wronged him, past and present.

Democrats are apoplectic but helpless. Republicans have stepped aside as Trump takes on responsibilities previously reserved for Congress.

The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Trump appointed three of those justices during his first term.

He has a rabid base, who spring to his defense and cow opposition. Among them are the January 6 rioters he pardoned, including far-right activists convicted of sedition and those convicted of violence against police officers. Symbolically and practically they comprise a militia pledged to do his bidding, and a warning to anyone who might think about crossing him.

So, is Trump a Fascist? You decide. Consult the chart below. Feel free to mix and match authoritarian options.  

Authoritarian Forms of Government

Authoritarian governments are regimes in which power is concentrated in the hands of one individual or a small group of elites. In this kind of government, the leadership has no constitutional obligation to the people. Authoritarian governments restrict civil liberties and demand the blind submission of their citizens. The chart below lists some of the various types of authoritarian governments. These types are not exclusive, meaning that a government can be a combination of more than one of these types. For example, a dictatorship can be an autocracy or possibly an oligarchy, and it could also be a tyranny.

Type of government	Description
Autocracy	An autocracy is a community or country ruled by a single person with unlimited authority. An autocrat is one who exercises unlimited power.
Oligarchy	An oligarchy—as opposed to an autocracy—is a country ruled by a small number of people with unlimited authority.
Dictatorship	A dictatorship is the arbitrary rule by an individual or junta who is not constitutionally responsible to the people or their elected representatives. Dictators usually eliminate all opposition and rule through a single legal party while maintaining strict control over the military and the media.
Absolute monarchy	Monarchy is a form of government based on the rule of a single person who is normally chosen by hereditary succession to rule for life. In most surviving monarchies (e.g., Japan and Britain), the monarch has no real political power and serves only as the figurehead of government.
Communist regime	In theory, communism opposes authoritarian rule. In practice, however, all of the world's communist regimes are authoritarian in nature, with an autocrat or oligarchy made of members of the Communist Party controlling politics and restricting citizens' civil liberties.
Illiberal democracy	An illiberal democracy is a country that has many of the procedures of a democracy, such as legislative elections, but is essentially led by an authoritarian leader. For example, it may have an elected legislature, but the legislature has no real governing power.
Fascist regime	Fascist regimes are extremely nationalistic. Under this type of government, country is far more important than the individual, and society is strictly controlled. These governments are led by a dictator, who tends to be quick to use violence to quiet the opposition.

Entry ID: 2230729

Notes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/kamala-harris-calls-trump-fascist-argues-dangerous-unfit-office-rcna176713

https://campuspress.yale.edu/jasonstanley/

https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/StudentActivity/2273786

https://www.npr.org/2025/02/19/nx-s1-5302481/trump-independent-agencies