Is Donald Trump a fascist? General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, thinks so.

Trump is “fascist to the core,” he warns.

John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, agrees. So does Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in this year’s presidential election.

But political commentators who have a grounding in history are not so sure.

Writing in The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal calls Trump “Hitlerian” and his rallies “Naziesque”, but stops short of calling him a fascist.

Michael Tomasky of The New Republic understands the reservations, but he is tired spending time debating the difference between “fascistic” and just plain “fascist”.

“He’s damn close enough,” Tomasky writes, “and we’d better fight”.

I understand this logic. It’s the reason Harris uses the term “fascist” to describe Trump – to send “a 911 call to the American people”. But there’s a problem.

I have spent the past six years researching right-wing, authoritarian political communication in America. I can say with confidence how these kinds of labels can misfire.

They can very easily be made to look like liberal hysteria, playing straight into the hands of the far right.

Here are the two reasons why it is crucial to call Trump exactly what he is.

In my view, Trump is not a fascist. Rather, he is part of a “new authoritarianism” that subverts democracy from within and solidifies power through administrative, rather than paramilitary, means.

This brand of new authoritarianism hides in plain sight because there is no name for it yet.

It looks like something else – for example, right-wing populism that is anti-liberal, but not yet anti-democratic.

And then suddenly, it shows itself as anti-democratic extremism, as Trump did in refusing to accept the 2020 election result and encouraging the storming of the Capitol.

This moment starkly revealed Trump as a new authoritarian. Supplementary debate about whether Trump is like Adolf Hitler risks being pointless. But the problem is that fascism is the only name we have now for anti-democratic extremism.

All fascists are authoritarians. But not all authoritarians are fascists. It’s crucial to understand there are other types of authoritarianism – and how they differ.

This is not just important for preventing Trump from seeking to subvert American democracy. It is also vital for stopping Trump imitators, who will now........

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