The below is not a particularly new thought. But it was forcefully made, by Mr. Trump himself, on Thursday evening. [Art work, at right, linked to artist, here.]
Mr. Trump’s chosen introduction speaker, his daughter, spoke at length about new social programs (childcare, etc.) — programs that Republicans have grown fond of calling “socialism”. Fair enough. Let’s accept their nomenclature, at face value.
Mr. Trump’s own speech — given even in the style of the speaker I am about to invoke — uniformly bellicose, overbearingly loud and monotone it its unrelenting fire — was almost all about NATIONALISM.
Anti-immigrant, anti-free trade, religious testing, and very much about police powers, as opposed to individual liberties — yes, this is nationalist rhetoric.
So — the unmistakable — and correct, impression of Mr. Trump’s remaking of the GOP’s platforms must be seen as… a return to the rhetoric of national socialism.
Yes, Mr. Trump — that was the what the Third Reich called its party platform — national socialism. I won’t get too terribly hung up on using labels as crutches — but calling your brand of politics Nazi-ism is not inaccurate, Mr. Trump. It is exactly what you espouse. And your speechifying sounds positively Hilter-ian, to my ear.
But do march forward, with your goose-stepping brown-shirts — who threatened the WIFE of a sitting US Senator (from Texas, not that he is anyone’s innocent), on the convention floor, after her husband, and a member of your own party — had the temerity to urge people to “vote their conscience” this fall. Yes it all surely looks sadly… familiar.
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