Image by The Now Times.

Numerous Clear Warnings

I recently did an essay or post or talk somewhere that included some reflections on why nobody who has paid decent attention to history and current events should be surprised by the rampaging fascism of the malignant Trump47 juggernaut atop the United States government right now. I’m fairly sure I mentioned:

Trump’s comments after Charlottesville (“fine people on both sides”)

Trump’s response to the George Floyd Rebellion (he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act and drown the protests in blood with the US military).

Trump’s stop in Kenosha, Wisconsin (site of the teen fascist Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder of two people with an illegally owned AR-15 during an August 2020 Black Lives march) on the very last night of the 2020 presidential campaign.

The Trump-sparked and Trump-fanned January 6th Capitol Riot, which Trump wanted armed with military style assault weapons in the hands of fascist paramilitaries.

Trump’s constant repetition of the Goebbels-worthy Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Trump’s Hitlerian 2023 campaign claim that nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Donald “Shithole Countries” Trump’s Hitlerian 2024 campaign claim that Haitian immigrants were “eating the cats and dogs” of their neighbors in an Ohio town.

Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to his base that “I will be your retribution.”

Trump47’s day one pardoning of more than 1500 January 6 putschist criminals.

Trump47’s day one commutation of the long prison sentences handed down to the nation’s two top paramilitary fascist leaders (Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers) for their leading roles in the putsch attempt.

I hope I also mentioned the Trump-crafted Christian Fascist US Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024 decision in the aptly titled Trump v The United States ruling. It granted Trump absolute forever immunity from prosecution for any crime he commits that bears the imprimatur of “official duties of the president of the United States.” This absurdly underestimated “Reichstag Fire ruling” amounted to a blank check and green light for all-out fascist impunity on the part of Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump.

“He Who Saves His Country”

Here’s another early indication of Trump47’s fascist essence that deserves mention. Last February 15th, Trump pinned the following supposed Napolean Bonaparte quote to his social media: “HE WHO SAVES HIS COUNTRY DOES NOT VIOLATE ANY LAWS.”

That was an openly dictatorial statement, all too darkly consistent with Trump v the United States – and with the palingenetic ultra-nationalism that fascism scholars have long seen as central to the ideologies of Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco. By posting it, Trump made it clear that he views his supposed and imagined role as the rescuer and redeemer of a dying country grants him absolute power over and above mere legislation and court rulings.

Authoritarian Power for What?

As I have been showing at The Paul Street Report and on other venues, Trump and his regime have been acting furiously in accord with that authoritarian belief for the last eight months and five days.

That said, it isn’t sufficient to call the Trump regime authoritarian – the most common term used to describe the Trum47 administration in liberal discourse.

World choices matter. Oxford Languages Dictionary online defines “authoritarian” as follows: “favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.” That obviously fits Trump and his regime. But there’s critical core content missing from

Trump and Trumpism if we stop there. “Strict obedience to authority” for what? For what? Power for power’s sake? For the sadistic glee of power? To feel like a king and his court?

I don’t rule out some of that, particularly when it comes to Trump himself. But the Trump regime is worse, more than merely “authoritarian.” It is not wielding state power just to wield state power. It has taken and used that power to impose “xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive ‘traditional values.’” (I am quoting here from the organization Refuse Fascism’s definition of fascism.) The new “authoritarian”/dictatorial form of governance that the Trump fascists are working relentlessly to impose, beyond previously normative bourgeois democracy and rule of law, has richly oppressive material racial, gender, cultural, and nationalist – as well as class – content.

And it isn’t just law and judicial orders alone that they are attacking. It isn’t just the state they want to control. They have also been assaulting basic norms and values of decency, civility, truth, empathy, creativity, free expression, free press, liberty, environmental sanity, public health, international cooperation, and shared humanity on the path to transforming the world’s most dangerous and powerful nation into a fascist Hell.

They don’t just want the state, they want the culture. They want the hearts and minds of tens if not hundreds of millions of US Americans. Hence the regime’s racist attack on how US history is presented at the Smithsonian, Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the administration’s assaults on higher education and on independent media, including not just the news but even late-night comedy and talk show hosts.

“We are the Storm…You Who Did This to Us and Our Great White Lineage Are Nothing”

Don’t think this regime is fascist? You might want to have a look at the top nativist MAGA policy architect and Trump political adviser Stephen Miller’s screaming rant at the stadium memorial service held for the heinously assassinated fascist youth leader Charlie Kirk in Phoenix, Arizona last weekend. It was a deranged, classically fascist speech epitomizing the racialized, Social Darwinian, and neo-Nazi politics of “us and them.” It was a chilling expression of the Trump fascist regime’s determination to use Kirk’s murder (by a 22-year-old gunman from a MAGA family in Utah) as a Reichstag Fire moment, a pretext for Miller’s declared goal of “dismantling the left.”

Not to be outdone by his boss Mein Trumpf for menacing rhetoric, Miller threatened non-Trumpist America with “the warrior” who says, “I am the Storm.” Further:

“We are the Storm and our enemies cannot comprehend our strength or determination our resolve, our passion. Our lineage, our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities. They produced the art and architecture. They built the industry. [Charlie Kirk’s widow] Erika stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors…who pulled us out of the caves of darkness and into the light. The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.”

“To those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. YOU ARE NOTHING! You can build nothing. You can produce nothing, You can produce nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”

“You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk? You have made him immortal! And now millions will carry on his legacy…You cannot defeat us, you cannot slow us, you cannot stop us, you cannot deter us…We will carry Charlie in our heart and fight that much harder because of what YOU did to US. You have no idea of the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save this civilization, to save the West, to save this republic, Because our children and our grandchildren will be strong. And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness. We have beauty, We have light. We…have goodness. We have determination. We have strength. WE BUILT THE WORLD THAT WE INHABIT NOW, generation by generation and we will defend this world! We will defend goodness. We will defend light. We will defend virtue. You cannot terrify us. You cannot frighten us. You cannot threaten us. Because we are on the side of goodness. We are on the side of God.”

Who is Miller’s “You”? The supposedly powerful and threatening “radical Left” that has always been the primary political bet noire of fascist ideology.

Ancient Athens, ancient Rome, and (Thomas Jefferson’s) Monticello (and even Philadelphia, to be honest) were all based on slavery, a labor regime that Miller and the MAGA movement would love to restore in the US if they could. It was Black slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, coolies, and multi-racial wage earners who built the United States, at no small cost in blood.

“Der Sturm bricht los”: Straight Out of Goebbels

Three days ago, I asked Google AI about the political meaning of the phrase “the storm.” It came back with this useful and accurate discussion:

“The metaphor of ‘the storm’ is a key element in fascist discourse, signifying violent, revolutionary action and purification. It is used to contrast perceived societal decay with the promise of a cleansing, transformative upheaval. This rhetorical strategy, with its origins in 20th-century fascism, continues to be employed by modern extremist and far-right movements.”

Google AI might have dug deeper in its Internet scan. As Travis Gettys reports on Raw Story:

“Numerous social media users pointed out how closely Miller’s themes and word choices resembled the speech Goebbels used to elevate Horst Wessel, a young member of the Sturmabteilung – or Storm Troopers – who was killed in 1930 by members of the Communist Party of Germany. His political martyrdom inspired the Nazi Party’s official anthem, which later became the country’s co-official anthem.

‘Stephen Miller’s speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial was essentially plagiarized,’ posted podcaster Jim Stewartson, who went on to list several examples. “So our dead comrade Horst Wessel wrote, and we are fulfilling his prophesy,” Goebbels said, according to Stewartson’s post. “The others may lie, slander, and pour their scorn on us — their political days are numbered. They promised you, workers, citizens and creative Germans, a Reich of freedom and beauty and dignity. People, rise up, and storm, break loose!’”’

‘This accurate, near-verbatim translation of key passages from Joseph Goebbels’ speech titled “The Storm is Coming” (original German: “Der Sturm bricht los”), delivered on July 9, 1932, in Berlin, agreed attorney Tracey Gallagher, commenting on Stewartson’s post. ‘This was a campaign rally speech in the lead-up to the July 31, 1932, Reichstag elections, where the Nazi Party (NSDAP) achieved its peak pre-1933 electoral success.’

‘Goebbels, then the Nazi Gauleiter of Berlin,’ she added, ‘used the speech to rally supporters by invoking the martyrdom of Horst Wessel — a young Nazi stormtrooper killed in 1930, later mythologized in Nazi propaganda as the author of their anthem, the “Horst-Wessel-Lied.” Wake up America.’

‘Funny, I thought the same and checked it out,’ noted economist Anders Åslund. ‘Stephen Miller is Goebbels.’

‘This is 100% Goebbels,’ argued educator Jürgen Nauditt. ‘Terms like “forces of evil,” “the good,” and “the virtuous,” as well as the notion of an “inflamed army,” reflect a dualistic worldview that pits good against evil — a stylistic device often used in totalitarian ideologies to mobilize emotions and demonize opponents.’

‘It’s like they made a clone of Goebbels but somehow the volume got stuck on ‘screeching banshee,’ commented historian Kevin Kruse.”

“See You in Valhalla”

This is hardly the first time that someone high in the Trump regime has channeled Nazi discourse. At a press conference on September 12, 2025, Trump’s preposterous fascist bootlicker of an FBI Director Kash Patel said something very chilling after he announced the arrest of Kirk’s alleged assassin. “Lastly, to my friend Charlie Kirk, rest now, brother,” Patel said. “I’ll see you in Valhalla.” The FBI later included this comment in its summary of Patel’s appearance.

This is a phrase first popularized by a Third Reich suicide bomber who was channeling the Nazis’ appropriation of Norse mythology. It confers honor on a fallen male warrior felled in the glorious struggle for racial purity.

“Poisoning Our Blood”

Trump himself has repeatedly channeled the Social Darwinian racism at the heart of classic fascism and in 2023 claimed that nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” That was language straight out of Hutler’s Mein Kampf as was Trump and JD Vance’s absurd animalizing campaign claim that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs and cats” of their neighbors in an Ohio town. Such language is a perfect match for the University of Toronto philosopher Jason Stanley’s important and widely read analysis of fascist rhetoric and ideology How Fascism Works.

The vicious nativist kidnapping crusade that Trump, Miller, the sociopath Kristi Noem (“Gestapo Barbie”), the corrupt fascist crime boss Tom Homan, and the Trump-crafted Christian fascist US Supreme Court have unleashed across the “land of liberty” is a violent operation of racist ethnic cleansing that would have won admiration from Hitler, who named his early WWII military train Amerika in honor of the racist genocide and terror inflicted by the 19th Century white killers, slaveowners, lynchers, and arch-segregationists that Trump and MAGA say Made America Great.

Kamala Harris Called Trump a Communist

Kamala Harris might want to get her “isms” straight. She recently called Trump a “communist.” It’s hard to believe that Harris is stupid enough to believe that the obviously fascist billionaire Trump is down with the abolition of capitalism and the collective ownership of the means of production. Has she decided to adopt the fascist habit of demonizing her opponents as “communist” and “radical left” even when the targets of her ire aren’t remotely communist or “radical left”?

If Kamala Harris thinks the obsessively anti-communist fascist Trump is a communist, something supposedly terrible to be, what on Earth must she think of the self-declared “democratic socialist” who has won the Democratic Party’s nomination for New York mayor?

Trump has absurdly called his centrist and moderate enemies evil “radical left” commies for years. That’s because anti-communism/-socialism/-Marxism is so central to the fascist movement that he and Miller lead that it must be wielded against the political opposition even when that opposition is headed by bourgeois conciliators who are anything but socialist/Marxist/communist – Weimar-like enablers of fascism like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris.

I guess Ms. Harris, a notoriously terrible politician, has decided that neo-McCarthyite turnabout is fair play. How lethal and pathetic.

The post The Trump Regime is More Than Just “Authoritarian” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

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