We have often seen the comparisons between Trump and Hitler, and indeed, Trump did keep a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. But comparisons to Hitler are always problematic. The conditions in Germany that allowed Hitler to rise were highly unique and likely inapplicable to this country. Additionally, the public’s knowledge of all that Hitler did pollutes the utility of the comparison and, in my opinion, is disrespectful of Hitler’s Jewish victims.

It is far more useful to compare Trump and his dangerousness to Mussolini, who was an extremely dangerous fascist in his own right. We decided to revisit some of the comparisons made early in Trump’s presidency to see how those comparisons played out now three years down the road. It is even scarier.

According to History News Network, Mussolini didn’t create the nationalist movement in Italy, but he did use it to further himself. Trump is in exactly the same position. Trump didn’t create the xenophobic nationalist movement among the evangelical tea party types in the United States, he rode the movement already in position. Moreover, Mussolini’s character seems identical to Trump’s when looking at quotations from R.J.B. Bosworth’s 2010 examination of Mussolini as a person. (All quotes below come from Bosworth’s book and can be found at the link above). Note how familiar everything below sounds. It is chilling.

“Other more critical contemporaries noticed instead the fluctuations in Mussolini’s ideas and the way he preferred to avoid in-depth conversations, sometimes excusing himself by saying that the details should be left to the experts. Here, they discerned, was a leader more interested in imposing his will than in harmonising his attitudes or policies. Here was a politician more interested in seeming to know than in knowing.”

“He understood that a totalitarian dictator had to be, or to seem to be, expert in everything.”

“Cowing the press was only one part of building a totalitarian dictatorship.”

Next, there are exact parallels between Mussolini’s ambition among his followers and those found in Trump, a cult, near religion:

“The real novelty of his ambition lay in his pretensions to enter the hearts and minds of his subjects, and so install Fascism as a political religion.”

On Trump’s seeming desire to make it up as he goes along?

“and so readjusting his own history with his usual aplomb”

“Reactionary dictators are men of no philosophy, no burning humanitarian ideal, nor even an economic program of any value to their nation or the world. [George Seldes]’ They were ‘gangsters’ more than anything else.

How about both being thin-skinned?

“…he would flick through the French press and grow enraged at any criticism of Italy and himself.”

“…there were few things which annoyed Mussolini more than overt criticism.”

“This emotion [anger] had always been a prominent part of the Duce’s reaction to life…”

Thin-skinned plus arrogant?

“In his diary, Bottai depicted a war leader whose administration grew steadily more ‘approximate’, with the Duce, a ‘man of the banner headline’ at heart, now bored by detail or discussion and preferring to ‘let things run of their own accord’.”

“…the Duce’s reaction, Bottai complained, was, ‘if things go well, take the credit; and, if they go badly, to blame others’. This, Bottai concluded, had become the real meaning of the formula: ‘Mussolini is always right.”

I am already pressing the rights of fair use for both a novel and a website. So I will finish by noting that even though both communism and fascism can become authoritarian in nature, and cruel, there is a key distinction. In communism, the state or government is all-powerful, the government owns all industry and controls the economy. In fascism, the pattern is reversed, the rich business interests own the government and use the power of government to further their business and profit needs. Both can be dictatorial in their approach, but the latter is far more focused on profit and money than the former. Communism is about power through control, fascism is control and power through profit.

Both, however, rely upon hyper-patriotism or “nationalism.” If one ever peruses the twitter feeds of the MAGA heads or attends a rally, Trump’s followers truly believe they are the only patriots and true Americans. It is near-religious to them.

Additionally, any authoritarian relies upon the people turning against one another, and the easiest divide is race or anything perceived as “foreign.”

Along the line of divisions, one last quote, because it is particularly important in the time of COVID and states quarantining people for the public good:

Violence is central to the history of all of these movements, and both Hitler and Mussolini came to their dictatorial powers via a relatively singular act of violence: the Reichstag fire for Hitler and the Fascist march on Rome for Mussolini.

Trump didn’t need “violence” to rise in America to gain the presidency, but his ability to “keep” the presidency this coming year hangs over us menacingly and might be susceptible to violence, especially since Trump now has power over the military, and could plausibly declare a national emergency.

Tell me this isn’t Trump:

The parallels noted in the History News network are even more applicable today than just three years ago. If one needed more motivation to work to elect Joe Biden, there it is.

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Peace, y’all

jason

[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom