When asked outright if she believed former President Donald Trump was a fascist at a CNN town hall last week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ answer was simple.
“Yes, I do,” the Democratic presidential nominee told Anderson Cooper. She used the term later in the night when asked what she’d say to someone considering a third-party candidate due to her stance on the Israel-Hamas war.
“For many people who care about this issue, they also care about bringing down the price of groceries,” Harris said. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”
I was surprised to hear her use such a loaded word on the presidential campaign trail, though people have called Trump one before. Historians and scholars have been debating whether Trump is a fascist for years, and the answer has shifted over time. So I decided just to ask the question. Is Trump a fascist?
Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor, is the author of “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.” He has been describing Trump’s rhetoric and actions as fascist since 2018. In a Vox interview from the time, he described fascism's key components as "identifying enemies, appealing to the in-group (usually the majority group) and smashing truth and........