SHAFAQNA – Shortly after last weekend’s tragic mass shooting at the Pulse dance club in Orlando by a homophobic Islamic terrorist, Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, quickly doubled down on rhetoric that had prompted numerous commentators to call the billionaire demagogue a fascist earlier this year. Even though the terrorist, Omar Mateen, was an American citizen born in New York, Trump once again called for a ban on Muslims entering the country, while fear-mongering about refugees and the screening process in a rambling speech full of blatant and egregious lies.
“In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason,” he writes. “Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
Finally, the Trump movement is united by national identity (of course, national identity does not mean all Americans, but those who Sarah Palin refers to as “real Americans” — after all, Omar Mateen was an American citizen). According to Eco, national identity is reinforced by a nations real or imagined enemies:
Fascism is ultimately more of a pathology than an ideology, engendered by destructive passions, fueled by resentment, bitterness and fear. The Trump movement has revitalized a dormant impulse in American politics, one that is as prone to paranoia as it is to violence and bigotry. And while it seems unlikely that Trump will win in November, the neo-fascist movement that he has breathed new life into is just as unlikely to go away after 2016.
By Conor Lynch – writer and journalist living in New York City. His work has appeared on Salon, AlterNet, Counterpunch and openDemocracy