Democracy and Class Struggle says there have been some disagreements about Trumpism which may also be misunderstandings characterizing Trumpism as a political phenomena.
Is Trump a Right Wing Populist or ProtoFascist ?
Democracy and Class Struggle has pointed out the roots of Fascism in The United States and looked at previous Fascist Movements in the USA for its particularities..
We have constantly emphasized what is universal as well as what particular in Fascism in its US incarnation.
Trotskyists like Tariq Ali call Trump a Right Wing Populist but we see Populism as one of the building blocks of Fascism and have referred to Trump as a precursor of Fascism or as Chris Hedges would say a ProtoFascist.
Therefore we do not just see him personally just as a right wing Populist or his movement as merely right wing Populist but he and his movement already has Proto Fascist character eg Bannon and Michael Anton.
We think this statement below captures our view
Populism as Core Element of Fascism
Fascism is a complex political current that parasitises other ideologies, includes many internal tensions and contradictions, and has chameleon-like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of the society it wishes to mobilize.
In addition, fascism as a social movement often acts dramatically different from fascism once it holds state power.
When holding state power, fascism tends to be rigidly hierarchical, authoritarian, and elitist.
As a social movement fascism employs populist appeals against the current regime and promises a dramatic and quick transformation of the status quo.
In interwar Europe there were three distinct forms of fascism, Italian economic corporatist fascism (the original fascism), German racial nationalist Nazism, and clerical fascism exemplified by religious/nationalist movements in Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and the Ukraine, among others.
Right-wing populism can act as both a precursor and a building block of fascism, with anti-elitist conspiracism ( Alex Jones ) and ethnocentric scapegoating (Muslims) as shared elements.
The dynamic of right-wing populism interacting with and facilitating fascism in interwar Germany was chronicled by Peter Fritzsche in Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany.
Fritzsche showed that distressed middle-class populists in Weimar launched bitter attacks against both the government and big business.
This populist surge was later exploited by the Nazis which parasitized the forms and themes of the populists and moved their constituencies far to the right through ideological appeals involving demagoguery, scapegoating, and conspiracism.
Source: http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/pop2fasc.html
PS the reference to Alex Jones and Muslims in above text is from DCS and not in original text
