There is a strong resistance to comparing anyone, no matter how vile, with fascist leaders, and with good reason. Four years of the Time of Trump, however, has made honoring this taboo more and more of a strain.
In her 2018 book “Fascism: A Warning,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, herself a refugee from totalitarians, cautioned that it was hubris at best and delusional at worst to imagine that fascism of the sort that ascended to power in 1930s Europe couldn’t do the same here. That was two years into Donald Trump’s presidency, and the ugly outlines of fascism were already discernible in Trump’s conduct. Hitler, Albright wrote, “lied incessantly about himself and about his enemies.” He duped millions of Germans into thinking that he “cared for them deeply when, in fact, he would have sacrificed them all.” He strove to nullify limits on his power. He exhorted his supporters to harm his political opponents, and delighted in the suffering of his victims. There is a strong resistance to comparing anyone, no matter how vile, with fascist leaders, and with good reason. Four years of the Time of Trump, however, has made honoring this taboo more and more of a strain. The famously cautious Joe Biden entered new territory on Saturday, saying aloud what most of the world has already concluded: America has a president who acts a very great deal like the Nazi propaganda minister.
