Would Heather Digby Parton Prefer Hitler Atop the US Empire?
Image by Kadir Celep.
So what’s worse than a fascist atop world history’s most lethal superpower in the middle of an ecological catastrophe led by that superpower in an increasingly anarchic world loaded with thermonuclear weapons capable of blowing up the planet many times over?
According to Salon writer Heather Digby Parton, the answer to this question is Donald Trump atop that superpower.
Parton claims that, to quote the title of a recent Salon essay, “Trump is something worse than a fascist.” Trump, Parton argues, is about “tyranny,” not fascism, because: (a) he has “no concept” of what “the rule of law” and “our system of checks and balances” are and (b) Trump “operates purely out of greed and self-regard” and thinks “he can do anything he wants,” including turning the White House into a vehicle for expanding his own vast personal fortune.
“This,” Parton says, “is not ideology at work…He is a tyrant…[with] no belief in anything but himself.”
This is a bad argument, one that I first took down in the fourth chapter (titled “The Anatomy of Fascism Denial”) of my 2021 book This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America.
Parton’s thesis is undone by four key problems.
First, notwithstanding his brazenly avaricious, malignant narcissism, fascist ideology has long been written all over the Hitler-admiring ogre Donald “Poisoning Our Blood” Trump’s statements, policies, and actions from his 2025-16 campaign to the present day. This is something that I and many other commentators and scholars have been reporting on at great and detailed length for years.
Trump indirectly approved Zohran Mamdani’s description of Trump as a fascist last November with good reason. Trump himself and not just “fascistic and authoritarian people around him” (Parton’s words) has long checked off key fascist boxes, including these: genocidal racism, militant misogynist patriarchy, xenophobic nationalism, palingenetic ultra-nationalism, obsessive anti-Leftism, the embrace of political violence, all wrapped up in a project for a new dictatorial form of governance trumping previously normative bourgeois democracy and rule of law with the rule of force and violent men.
Second, anyone with a reasonably informed understanding of fascism’s history knows that fascist regimes have been headed by tyrannical narcissists who believe madly in their own superior vision and excellence (the ultimate fascist dictator, Adolph Hitler, was very much like that, to say the least). They do nearly all the things Parton has Trump doing in support of her false-dichotomous thesis that Trump is a tyrant, not a fascist: mocking and demeaning their predecessors atop the government; persecuting and prosecuting their political enemies; rejecting and violating domestic and international law and basic morality; unleashing brutal gendarmes to “batter immigrants and citizens;” claiming that their fear-generating terror and repression is “for the common good,” “ginning up one phony crisis after another” to justify their dictatorial moves; “ruling by threats and extortion.”
Third, while it is certainly true that the billionaire parasite Trump is personally venal in ways that differentiate him from far more deeply ideological, doctrinal, intellectual, and messianic fascists Mussolini and Hitler, there has been ample room for Trump to combine egoistic avarice with fascist beliefs and actions (including the appointment of doctrinal fascists like Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Russell Vought to top regime posts). At the same time, the classic fascist regimes of the past all practiced a form of gangster capitalism marked by corrupt capitalist dealings behind the scenes. That Trump himself is one of the top capitalist gangsters in the 21st Century US version of fascist rule is no anomaly for the notion that he and his regime are fascist.
Fourth, it is a complete mystery how any of what Parton claims to make Trump “not a fascist” is somehow worse than fascism”! Does Parton mean to suggest that real, bona fide fascism contains a virtuous commitment to the common good by comparison with Trump’s supposed non-ideological greed, narcissism, and depravity? Does Parton think fascism is a lesser evil compared to Trump’s epic selfishness? Would Parton prefer a more completely ideological and messianic fascist madman like Hitler – a purer fascist for whom Fatherland and the racialized war against “Judeo-Bolshevism” completely trumps lining one’s own pockets – atop the US Empire? Would she prefer Stephen “We are the Storm” Miller as US president?
If anything, Parton’s argument that Trump is all ego and avarice and therefore (supposedly) not fascist would seem to suggest that he could be narcissistically drawn to step back towards some measure of law-abiding decency and democracy if doing so could be shown to be in the interests of his wealth and image.
That step back will not likely occur given how far the orange-brushed tyrant has already gone down the fascist highway to Hell, and because of how well that trajectory reflects his fascist character and world view.
On a positive note, Parton does say this: “Many Americans have finally wrapped their minds around the idea that we are dealing with a presidency and political movement that can be defined as authoritarian, and even fascist” – a curious statement given her overall argument. And even if she wrongly rejects the organization Refuse Fascism’s understanding of Trump (as well as the broader Trump regime) as fascist, Parton’s essay seems usefully aligned with RF’s essential slogan: TRUMP MUST GO NOW! As I have been saying all year, it’s a mistake to deny that Trump is a fascist but one does not have to accept that description of the 47th POTUS to agree that his immediate removal from power is an urgent existential necessity.
During the last year of the Trump45 regime, the esteemed left intellectual Noam Chomsky engaged in wrongheaded denial of Trump’s fascist essence even as he properly observed (mainly on ecological grounds) that Trump was “the most dangerous criminal in human history.” That description came during the first eco-fascist Trump presidency, which now looks mild compared to the second one. Surely anyone who is “worse than a fascist” and who has been judged “the most dangerous criminal in human history” by a thinker like Chomsky must be removed from power as soon as humanly possible!
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