Is Donald Trump a fascist? Historians and experts dare.

Then, on Wednesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, called Trump a fascist during a CNN town hall in Pennsylvania. In response to Kelly’s comments, a spokesman for Trump’s campaign said that Kelly “made a name for himself with these debunked stories that he made up.” This is reported by NPR.

But some local experts who study fascism agree with the sentiments of Harris and Kelly.

“If Trump is not a fascist, then no one is,” said Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale University who published a book last month.Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.” “Trump exits central casting.”

For Stanley, fascism is based on the distinction between friend and foe, and on the idea that the group is restoring the nation to its former glory. “Traditional European fascism,” he said, focuses on “the cult of a leader who promises national recovery.”

“The idea is that there is a mythical past where the country was great and pure and the country was being humiliated,” he said.

For fascists, humiliation comes from the hands of various actors: immigrants, intellectuals, feminists.

“All political opponents are Marxists and Communists,” Stanley said.

Max Abrams, professor of international security at Northeastern University, disagrees. In his opinion, Democrats call Trump a fascist for political reasons. In particular, to undermine his political support and convince voters that he is dangerous.

A key component of a fascist, Abrahams said, is control over key institutions in the state. By this criterion, Abrahams said, Trump is the opposite of a fascist.

“There is a real decentralization of power and a huge amount of dissent from the most powerful institutions against Donald Trump,” he said.

The media, he said, continues to be very aggressive and critical of Trump. In addition, MAGA’s rhetoric is anathema in all academic circles, Abrams said.

“The number of MAGA professors in political science is extremely small,” said Abrams, who added that he had never seen a thesis sympathetic to Trump’s ideology and that any such academic work would likely disqualify scholars from future work in the sector. .

Cory Dolgon, a professor of sociology at Stonehill College, said there are various hallmarks of fascism, including demonizing or alienating a group, and economic centralization, violence, hyper-nationalism and anti-intellectualism.

“If you take what Trump is and operationalize politics and policy around him, that’s fascism,” said Dolgon, who is writing a book on the history of fascism in the US. He joked that every time he thinks he’s closer to finishing a book, he has to write a new chapter because of current events.

Dolgon called Trump an authoritarian megalomaniac, comparing him to a “fascist Rorschach test.” Fascism, he says, often tends toward hypermasculinity that encourages action rather than thought.

“Trump is kind of funny because he talks a big game, but he’s one of the whiniest fascists you’ll ever meet,” he said.

Various experts suggest historical leaders who fit their definitions of fascism. There are obvious examples, such as Hitler and Benito Mussolini, but also others, including Charles Lindbergh and Pol Pot. Some scientists offer a list of current world leaders, including Russia Vladimir Putinof Hungary Victor Orban, Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan and India Narendra Modi. Several local scientists pointed this out this week Jim Crowthe racist caste system that has operated in the US for decades as inherently fascist.

“Nazi lawyers and judges were inspired by America’s Jim Crow laws, and Hitler looked to Native American reservations as a way to rid the country of ‘undesirables,'” wrote a Boston College history professor. Heather Cox Richardson on her Undertaker.

Kelly’s comments, Cox Richardson said in her post, were a “big deal.” She also discussed the roots of fascism, saying that Mussolini, the 20th-century fascist Italian dictator, “rejected the equality that defined democracy and believed that some people were better than others.”

“These few must lead, leading the nation forward, directing the actions of the rest,” she said. “They must organize the people as they did during the war, ruthlessly suppressing any opposition and directing the economy so that business and politicians work together.”

She continued, “It is only logical that a select group of leaders would elevate one man to become an all-powerful dictator.”

This report uses materials from the Globe TV channel.

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Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.