@TruthSandwich @freemo I'm not sure how to make this more clear? I don't support (1) unless by fascist you mean something silly like "supports single-family housing zoning". I've like made this point that the word "fascist" is being wildly misused for rhetorical reasons in pretty much every post in this thread. You keep talking to me as if I never said anything like that and instead obviously agree with your framing – I'm not quite sure how to respond if you keep doing that.
@freemo @TruthSandwich (so option (a) I guess? 😂 )
I suggest to you that calling Trump a fascist because he wanted a stupid parade is probably not useful for productive political discourse; I think this isn't what most people mean by the term.
(Also ... what? Bastille Day Parades: has France been "fascist" for the last 150 years??)
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I think the problem is you are treating fascism as an all or nothing state (same way people treat capitalism)... thats just not how it works... Trump has elements of fascism, whether those are bad enough to be a concern is always the crux of the problem.
Is france fascist for having a military parade on bastille day... well it was definately a fascist move, and tipped the scale ever more slightly towards fascism.. but a country/person is not a state of fascism vs not fascism.. its always a sliding scale.
BTW if we really want to get into fascism from trump the parade is a pretty minor example... Not accepting the results of an election that he clearly lost and his fraud claims were very obviously invalid (yet he still pushed them) is very clearly fascist in nature. It is also quite damning
@freemo @TruthSandwich He took the lawsuits about the election a bit far, but we see that kind of thing quite often. I think it's best to think of lawsuits about close elections as "part of the game" these days. He and e.g. Hillary did have obnoxious *rhetoric* about stolen elections – again, this is my point: it's the rhetoric that has gone of the rails, not the actual policy preferences or actions.
In the same vein, I was quite alarmed by his 2016 campaign *rhetoric* about “I'm going to open up our libel laws" to go after his detractors, etc. I think just saying that is enormously harmful. (I agree some of that rhetoric was fascist-ish.) Good thing his presidency had like ~nothing to do with his 2016 campaign.
Its not just the lawsuits, to this day he still claims the elections were rigged when he knows full well they werent. Lawsuits at least have fairness to them where an objective third party can investigate, I have no problem with that. The issue is in how he acted and spoke, and continues to, about anon-existant election fraud.
@freemo @TruthSandwich Yeah, I wish he and Hillary wouldn't have done that. Again, agreed his rhetoric is gross.
@ech
There are certainly some pretty hallmark fascist things he has done.. military parades are sterotypical fascism for examples... I think the issue is the other way around, fascism can be pretty bad, and while i dont support it, there are milder forms of fascism (like military parades).
Now I am pretty sure I can say Trump leads more towards the fascism side of the spectrum.. but whether he is "mildly" fascist or extremely fascist leaves some room for debate.
@TruthSandwich