The night of the dull knives

Can anyone still believe that President Trump is a fascist, or that his is a fascist movement, after the controversy over the Fire and Fury book? People may still feel that Trump has authoritarian tendencies, and they may be disturbed by the way Steve Bannon is groveling to get back in the movement's good graces, but howevermuch he and other sources now claim to have been misrepresented in the book, it seems clear that Donald Trump simply isn't and never will be the sort of leader historical fascism has produced. Mussolini and Hitler were know-it-all, at least in their own minds, fond of bloviating on a wide range of topics, while Trump seems to be a literal know-nothing outside his specialized business realm, but is no more modest for that. More significantly, the World War II dictators impressed their followers as visionaries rather than reactionaries, while Trump has little more vision than "Make America Great Again" and far less ability to articulate or dramatize what vision he has. For all that he demands praise, he clearly lacks the awful charisma that made even insiders worshipful toward the authentic fascist leaders; he lacks the stuff from which a fuhrerprinzip can be made. Of course, people can still remind me that someone said that American fascism will look different from the European originals, but that would only start a debate over the meaning of fascism that they most likely wouldn't win. Suffice it to say that Trump and his movement are bad enough as they are, while his voters were "fascist" only insofar as they were hoping for a punitive presidency on the model of The Apprentice. There is danger enough, depending on your perspective, in many Americans' desire to see many other Americans "fired" without accusing them of wanting something that very few, if any, actually do. And if more really want a more authoritarian or even totalitarian nation, it should be clear by now that Donald Trump isn't going to be the one to bring it.