Posted on by Rmuse

Donald Trump Exposes Koch Republicans As Glaring Fascists

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It is a sad situation that, for the most part, Americans are completely ignorant of two terms used pejoratively to describe the opposing sides of the American political spectrum. It is true that most Americans understand that Republicans are conservatives and inherently terrified of, and violently resistant to change to maintain the power structure favoring the privileged few, and that Democrats are liberals and promote progress to advance the general welfare of all Americans.

Political pundits often go a bit farther and use “big confusing” words like “fascists” and “socialists” to describe each political extreme, but very few Americans comprehend those words’ meanings. In their most basic sense, socialism is when government owns and operates all businesses, financial institutions and property with no input of private individuals, and fascism is when corporations own, operate, and control all facets of a nation’s government without any input from the people.

Conservatives are infatuated with criticizing everything unrelated to corporatism and extremism as “socialism” because it resonates with their base’s inherent stupidity and horror due to having no idea what socialism entails. If conservatives understood what socialism is, they would understand that the United States military is the only socialistic entity in America. Conversely, the left often criticizes conservatives and the policies championed by Republicans as being fascist. Unlike the ‘socialist’ label, fascist is an apt description of Republican tactics and policies and an ideology that their clueless base ardently supports and falls victim to.

Regardless of what any American thinks of Donald Trump, he has performed a valuable service to America if for no other reason than highlighting, in grand fashion, his own fascist inclination that drives the Republican Party’s policies, practices, and allegiance to the rich and corporations. More than just his policies, Trump is unafraid to publicly practice fascist tactics and is having a great measure of success due to the past six years of Republicans’ conditioning their base.

It is no coincidence that the fascist zeal of today’s Republican Party and its racist, religious extremist base, is precisely the same as the fervent fascism of the early and mid-20th century; and Donald Trump has exposed the GOP as a fascist movement. In a recent article worth reading, Jeffrey Tucker argued brilliantly that Donald Trump is as much a fascist as Mussolini and Hitler for inciting conservatives “with race baiting, traditionalism, and ‘ugly American’ strongman tough talk; typically Republican.

It is true that Trump is not saying anything Republicans and their base do not ardently believe and support; he is just unafraid to say it loudly and it informs his growing popularity among conservative. As Tucker explains, Trump’s success is founded on saying exactly what conservatives believe and desperately want a conservative hero to say. Tucker argues that “Trump has tapped into it, absorbing unto his own political ambitions every conceivable conservative resentment; race, class, sex, religion, and economics. And he promises a new order of things under his mighty hand.” It is what every Republican candidate for president promises, except Trump is unafraid to say it in any venue.

Everything about Trump’s style, the blatant race baiting, xenophobia, and confrontational nationalism is not unique to Trump by any means; he is simply the most blatant and vocal about it. Republicans, on the other hand, reserve their fascist tactics for private fundraisers, town hall speeches, and special interests’ conference meetings. The only reason Trump is leading in some GOP polls is because he says what the base believes.  For example, the conservative base is furious that immigrants are in “their country,” are violently angry that homosexuals are destroying Christian’s tradition of marriage, and that America not at war is a sign of weakness. In fact, in the same way that fascism reacted to modernity in the early 20th century, right-wingers are reacting angrily to social progress of the new century.

Today’s Republican Party, like its base of support, is twisted sick with dangerously unwavering and dogmatic traditionalism, religious extremism, and blatant intolerance of anything they define as “other.” In fact, except for the people twice electing an African American man as President, Republicans and their conservative base are reacting violently to the “social progress” the nation has experienced over the past twenty years.  Like the early 20th Century fascists’ violently reacted to modernity and people’s flirtation with democratic values, Republicans have tapped into the religious and conservative negative reaction to America’s 21st Century modernity, or as it is called “social progress” and tolerance.

As any American who has been conscious over the past six years can attest, Republicans preach, promote, and practice intolerance, xenophobia, passion over reason, racial and religious purity, and nationalism, and they openly crusade against democratic values. An example is  Republicans’ dangerous and successful denial of climate change and science that originates with “the corrupt alliance of anti-intellectual traditionalism, religious fundamentalism, and corporate influence; the ultimate expression of fascism pushed and paid for by the Koch brothers.

For a prescient comparison between today’s GOP and 20th Century fascism, it is worth considering Benito Mussolini’s ghostwriter and “philosopher of fascism,” Giovanni Gentile’s definition of fascism. Gentile writes that, “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” If that one statement does not accurately describe the Republican Party, and all its iterations, then the Sun rises in the West. It is nearing the point that although large corporations do not yet have ultimate control and power over  government, republicans have brought the nation precariously close to government by corporation and achieved their fascist goals by closely following 20th Century fascist tactics of spewing hateful and religious intolerant ideology based on “traditional values;” values they claim the left have destroyed.

Those traditional values of guns, god, and racial purity predominate the official GOP platform that corporate interests fund to elect conservatives to serve those corporate interests; not the people. There is a reason the Republican establishment, or the Koch brothers, have not yet brought their considerable power to bear on Donald Trump to end to his campaign; he is conditioning the base for a “kinder gentler” Republican fascist to appeal to more mainstream voters. It is why fascists like Scott Walker, Rand Paul, and Jeb Bush are being labeled “moderate” when they are just as vicious, just as fascist, and just as much a Koch-Republican as Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a predatory businessman who, like Koch Republicans, wants to run America like his personal corporation. He, like Koch Republicans, fully understands that the voters, including the Republican base, would not be amenable to living under a government run by a corporation, so he appeals to the base’s intolerance, xenophobia, passion over reason, racial and religious purity, nationalism and the idea that America’s 236 year-old liberal democracy is why conservatives are losing their precious traditions. Most Americans likely have no real idea what fascism is, but if they listen to Donald Trump and peruse conservatives’ agenda, they will realize that officially, Koch Republicans are fascists.

36 Replies to “Donald Trump Exposes Koch Republicans As Glaring Fascists”

  1. “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

    Or perhaps even more appropriately be called, “global corporate fascism” as very few corporate entities large enough to matter are restricted to national boundaries.

  2. billionaire, food fight! aug 6th, normally the dog days of summer tv, will be alive with pre season election fun!. watch how the kochs try and protect their bagman walker. this will be epic. and yes, they are fascists. i dont agree that its a pejorative, but a true fact. we are in an oligarchy, and its a fact that billionaires seek complete corporate control with their bought and paid for local and federal gov. that is fascism, pure and simple…

    while, the movie, rollerball [1975] was a dystopian fantasy, it was set in this time period, and instead of governments, there were 5 corporations who were the overlords.

    In the film, the world of 2018 (referred to in the tagline as “the not too distant future”) is a global corporate state, containing entities such as the Energy Corporation, a global energy monopoly based in Houston which deals with nominally-peer corporations controlling access to all transport, luxury, housing, communication, and food on a global basis.

  7. My mothertongue is not English, so please excuse mistakes.

    I didnt read further than to this line:

    “, and fascism is when corporations own, operate, and control all facets of a nation’s government without any input from the people.”

    That is not true. Corporatism is right description for this. Fascism is terrible but it`s not what is described above. In some sense fascism and socialism are opposites as well as socialsm and fascism are opposites but that doesnt mean that fascism=corporatism. Not every Political ideology you can simply put on a simple line from far-left to far-right. Fascism is also not conservativism but anticonservative and in that sense even related to socialsm. Mussolini the de-facto Father of Fascism was in his younger years a socialist before he became a fascist. Fascism and socialism are both totalitarian and collectivistic while conservativsm and corporatism are not. Every political ideology has different dimensions (like Authorianism/Liberalism).

  11. Remember mr? I’m that angry black guy who uses a PLAYSTATION 3 to type out out my often grammatically incorrect post, listen, if some desperately financially challenged loud mouth like me knows what FASCISM- OLIGARCHY- SOCIALIST- COMMUNISM- PLUTOCRACY are, you would think LILY WHITE republican should know also, RIGHT? C’MON LILY WHITE republican is the authority on ANY and EVERY subject known to man, RIGHT ?? they’re authorities on american history, RIGHT ? they’re authorities on RACE relations, RIGHT? heres the REALITY, trump is rallying ALL those LILY WHITE republicans who “BACK IN THE DAY” were too ashamed to say SHOUT OUT LOUD their racism and their bigotry feelings. trump knowns EXACTLY what he’s doing! that’s why he’s reaching out the TEAM PALIN, he’s going for the cousin screwing TRAILER TRASH LILY WHITE republican vote! and he’ll get it! Now watch how the other GOP CLOWN greyhound bus candidates start talking like trump! Isn’t it interesting how republicans have….

  12. LMFAO see my point? I got cut-off in the tail end of my ”angry black guy” rant, may I continue? isn’t it interesting how republicans will have a complete nervous breakdown and STROKE OUT when ANYONE correctly calls the GOP a RACIST party? but when their candidates go all ARCHIE BUNKER, they go all energized and ready to VOTE?! Things that make ya go hmmmmm

  13. This is a most interesting article.

    While Donald Trump is putting himself out there, in front of everybody, we have the Koch brothers working behind the scene through their selected minions, both entities working for the same thing, corporate control of our country.

    This is like a competition for a corporate takeover, with the people of this country being the losers no matter who wins.

    George Santana said it, most appropriately, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it”

    We cannot allow Donald Trump or the Koch brothers to turn this country into another Europe, ruled by another Hitler with a different name.

  16. @Maradonna, GREAT JOB! isn’t it telling that someone who hasn’t mastered the ENGLISH language, comprehends POLITICAL and economic terms better than 99.9999% of republicans? that’s EXACTLY why I couldn’t give less than a damn about what republicans are babbling about! theres a pond outside my apartment complex and when the DUCKS start quacking and POOPING EVERYWHERE, it just reminds me of how republicans sound to me! I’m sorry ducks for comparing you to republicans.

  19. Mussolini did, in fact, describe his system as “corporatism”. That does not mean every system described as “fascism” is exactly coterminous with every system defined as “corporatism”, or vice versa, but the overlap is very great.

  20. What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.

    The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.

    The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category.

    The art of leadership… consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.

    Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

    All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.

    Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

    It is not truth that matters, but victory.

    I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Alm…

  21. The art of leadership… consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.

    Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

    All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.

    Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

    It is not truth that matters, but victory.
    Adolf Hitler

  22. The group of people that I watched an interview with this morning said even though Trump is a Billionaire<4.2 not ten! they like him because…"he's just like us"..So you people are all arrogant egotistical blowhards then eh'? Well they ARE Republicans so yes they are, I have yet to meet a Republican who didn't think the sun rises and sets on their ass.

  23. Donald Trump is Ross Perot Part Deux the Return (of Superman).
    His main thing is trade protectionism, but he has a much higher celebrity profile which he uses to get free media attention.

  24. Corporations pay off in money and kill as long as it is profIttable “”Corporations are a legal entity,” . “We create them. And when we create them we create all kinds of rules. They can go bankrupt. And that means they owe more money and they get away scot-free. They can create an environmental disaster, and then go bankrupt and again go away scot-free. So, as legal entities we have the right to make the rules that govern them.”
    “As individuals we have certain basic rights,” “We aren’t created by the law. We exist by nature. But corporations are man-made. They are supposed to serve our interest, our society’s interests. And we are creating them with powers that are not serving our society’s interests BUT bennifit a small group of select people.””
    “Corporations are made up of BOARD OF DIRECTORS who are people but DO NOT have the peoples best interest ,,,,,and should be treated as such”
    NO CORPORATIONS ARE …NOT… PEOPLE MY FRIEND

  27. “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That in it’s essence, is Fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”
    Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Message proposing the Monopoly Investigation, 1938

  28. VERY well written article—concise, precise, and to the point. Great lay-out and great explanations!! thank you!

  29. The rich aristocrats are also members of the extremist right

    Fewer than four hundred families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era.

    The vast majority of the $388 million backing presidential candidates this year is being channeled to groups that can accept unlimited contributions in support of candidates from almost any source. The speed with which such “super PACs” can raise money — sometimes bringing in tens of millions of dollars from a few businesses or individuals in a matter of days — has allowed them to build enormous campaign war chests in a fraction of the time that it would take the candidates, who are restricted in how much they can accept from a single donor.
    http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-rich-aristocrats-are-also-members.html

  31. “the United States military is the only socialistic entity in America.”

    Are you nuts?

    EVERY govt entity from dog catcher to NASA is a socialist entity.

    That’s what people need to be taught.

  34. There are 2 kinds of Dutch, those who stirred up trouble in Europe for a few hundred years, & the other kind.

    I’m the other kind.

  35. It is not just a coincidence that tax cuts for the rich have preceded both the 1929 and 2007 depressions. The Revenue acts of 1926 and 1928 worked exactly as the Republican Congresses that pushed them through promised. The dramatic reductions in taxes on the upper income brackets and estates of the wealthy did indeed result in increases in savings and investment. However, overinvestment caused the depression that made the rich, and most everyone else, ultimately much poorer.

    Since 1969 there has been a tremendous shift in the tax burdens away from the rich on onto the middle class. Corporate income tax receipts, whose incidence falls entirely on the owners of corporations, were 4% of GDP then and are now less than 1%. During that same period, payroll tax rates as percent of GDP have increased dramatically. While overinvestment creates more factories and shopping centers; higher payroll taxes reduces the purchasing power of middle-class consumers….”
    http://seekingalpha.com/154364…

  36. Good research on fascism, bad on Socialism.

    You need to separate what a political current is, who calim they follow the political current, and what they actually do. Just because you call youself doctor, doesn’t mean you are.

    Socialism is an umbrella term, used by many “social justice” movements, this movements wanted more democracy, more freedom, stop on the abuse from corporations and their police on the rest of the people. The origin was the XVIII Europe, when sweatshops and forced labour was the norm in Europe, America and all th Western “civilised” nations.

    The common trend among all socialist movements, was workers controll of the industry, some wanted private ownership, others wanted public ownership. Coops are the perfect model of socialist enterprise.

    Just because you call yourself a socialist doesn’t mean anything you do has anything to do with the ideology.
    Some people, confuses public ownership with state ownership.

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