You might be a fascist if ....

“When you’re attacking FBI agents because your under criminal investigation, you’re losing”  - Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Hillary Clinton in 2016

If you consider yourself a Republican and find yourself irate from being unfairly labeled by President Biden’s recent statements that impugned your association to fascism - maybe you should chill out.

My sister-in-law recently expressed her anger about this in a recent Facebook posting.  Were we still talking to each other over this medium I would have inquired why the ire about something that isn’t true, unless of course the shoe fits, as they say.  To be a self-acknowledged fascist your behavior and speech have to reflect its outward signs and manifestations.

A combination of interpretations defines fascism as: a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Of the Republicans who adhere to some or all of these distinctions, it is probably safe to say they are those who Joe Biden referred to as MAGA Republicans.  Those people who have unflinchingly bought into Trump’s Big Lie about voter fraud, think the January 6th assault on the Capitol was a “normal tourist visit” or largely a “peaceful protest”,  see violence as viable means to an end and who align themselves with QAnon Conspiracies.

It’s hard for me to fathom that my sister-in-law would be part of any Hitler/Mussolini/Franco appreciation society but it can be said that her loyalty to a former president who has violated all the norms of civil behavior to hold onto power by inciting violence, is susceptible to fascism’s lure.

Her husband, my brother, once opined with me as high school students, how an entire nation like Germany could be won over by the hate and fear-mongering of a delusional autocrat, trading their representative, republican form of government for a totalitarian model.  It was hard to imagine then that the war our father fought in to preserve liberal democracies would ever gain a foothold on American shores.  And yet, here we stand today faced with that very real possibility.  One so unequivocal that academic historians confronted the President recently and warned him about totalitarianism's rise and parallels between now and pre-World War II fascism in Europe.

In his Atlantic article, Fear of Fascism, Tom Nichols conveys his reluctance to
use “the word fascism to describe Donald Trump and his Republican followers, but”, he continues, “we have to overcome our reluctance to use strong language and admit that America is now beset by a dangerous antidemocratic movement masquerading as a party.”

In the vernacular of Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck if ...”,  I would pose the suggestion to lifelong Republicans unsure about the direction which Trump and his acolytes have taken that Party - You might be a fascist if you are willing to defend Trump’s break from reality that attacks our institutions we depend on to ensure that no one is above the law and that we the people are in control of America’s destiny, not a cult of personality or a Party that has no policy platform and whose leader has high praise for authoritarian strongmen.