Here are some classic definitions of fascism, most of which are characteristic of Trump and his loyal turd-polishers:
--Roger Griffin (historian and political scientist): Fascism is best defined as a revolutionary form of nationalism, one that sets out to be a political, social and ethical revolution, welding the ‘people’ into a dynamic national community under new elites infused with heroic values. The core myth that inspires this project is that only a populist, trans-class movement of purifying, cathartic national rebirth (palingenesis) can stem the tide of decadence. In “The Nature of Fascism,” Roger Griffin described fascism’s “mobilizing vision” as “the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it.”
----Robert Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, defines fascism in his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism as:
Fascism is obsessed with fears of victimization, humiliation and a decline, and a concomitant cult of strength. Fascists the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny.”
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. In the same book, Paxton also argues that fascism's foundations lie in a set of "mobilizing passions" rather than an elaborated doctrine.
He argues these passions can explain much of the behavior of fascists:
• a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.
• the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it.
• the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external.
• dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.
• the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
• the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny.
• the superiority of the leader’s instincts over reason.
• the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success.
• the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle.
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