to set limits on what is thinkable, claiming that reason, standards of evidence, consistency, and logic no longer serve the truth because the latter are crooked ideological devices used by enemies of the state. “Thought crimes” are now labeled as “fake news.” This president views the notion of truth as a corrupt tool used by the critical media to question his dismissal of legal checks on his power, particularly his attacks on judges, courts, and any other governing institutions that will not promise him complete and unchecked loyalty. For Trump, intimidation takes the place of unquestioned loyalty when he does not get his way, revealing a view of the presidency that is more about winning than about governing. One consequence is a myriad of practices in which Trump gleefully humiliates and punishes his critics, willfully engages in shameful acts of self-promotion, and unapologetically enriches his financial coffers.72
David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Obama is right in stating: “And while every president is irritated by the limitations of democracy on them, they all grudgingly accept it. [Trump] has not. He has waged a war on the institutions of democracy from the beginning, and I think in a very corrosive way.”73 The New York Times writer Peter Baker adds to this charge by arguing that Trump — buoyed by an infatuation with absolute power and an admiration for authoritarians — uses language and the power of the presidency as a potent weapon in his attack on the First Amendment, the courts, and responsible governing.74 For example, Trump’s admiration for a number of dictators is well known. What is often underplayed is his inclination to mimic their language and policies. For instance, Trump’s call for “law and order,” his encouraging police officers to be more violent with “thugs,” and his adoration of all things militaristic echo the ideology and language of a number of dictators Trump adulates.75
Trump makes no apologies for ramping up the police state, imposing racist inspired travel injunctions, banning transgender people from serving in the military, and initiating tax reforms that further balloon the obscene wealth gap in the United States. All the while, he uses his Twitter feed to entertain his right-wing, white supremacist, and religious fundamentalist base at home with a steady stream of authoritarian comments while showering affection and further legitimation on a range of despots abroad, the most recent being the self-confessed killer, Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines. According to Felipe Villamor of The Washington Post, “Mr. Duterte has led a campaign against drug abuse in which he has encouraged the police and others to kill people they suspect of using or selling drugs.”76 Powerful authoritarian leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping appear to elicit an especially strong and fawning attraction for Trump who exhibits little interests in their massive human rights violations. Trump’s high regard for white supremacy and petty authoritarianism became clear on the domestic front when he pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joseph Arpaio, a monstrous racist who waged a war against undocumented immigrants, Latino residents, and individuals who did not speak English. He also housed detainees in an outdoor prison, which he called his personal “concentration camp.” As Marjorie Cohn observes, Arpaio engaged in a series of sadistic practices in his outdoor jail in Phoenix that included forcing prisoners “to wear striped uniforms and pink underwear,” “work on chain gangs,” and be subjected to blistering Arizona heat so severe that their “shoes would melt.”77 In this instance, Trump not only legitimates the practices of an undeniable racist, he is also offering expressed support for both a culture of violence and state legitimated oppression. Furthermore, Trump’s fascist proclivities also become evident in both his cozying up with dictators such as Putin and Kim Jong-un as well as his use of presidential power to pardon what amounts to a parade of cons, grifters, crooks, and ideological extremists.
At the same time, it would be irresponsible to suggest that the current expression of authoritarianism in US politics began with Trump or that the context for his rise to power represents a distinctive moment in American history. The United States was born out of acts of genocide, nativism, and the ongoing violence of white supremacy.78 Moreover, the United States has a long history of demagogues extending from Huey Long and Joe McCarthy to George Wallace and Newt Gingrich. Authoritarianism runs deep in American history, and Trump is simply the endpoint of these antidemocratic practices.79 Empire has long had roots in diverse forms of domestic state violence while state terrorism amounted to the official memory of authoritarianism, “reaching into the smallest crevices of everyday life.”80
The rise of casino capitalism, a savage culture of cruelty, and a winner-take-all ethos have made the United States a mean-spirited and iniquitous nation that has turned its back on the poor, underserved, and those considered racially and ethnically disposable. Powerful digital and traditional pedagogical apparatuses of the 21st century have turned people into consumers and citizenship into a neoliberal obsession with self-interest and an empty notion of freedom. Moreover, they have also created a society in which civic literacy has taken a direct hit while the formative culture necessary for creating informed and engaged citizens has withered into a grotesque economic and pedagogical apparatus at odds with democratic values and social relations. Shock, speed, spectacles, idiocy, and a culture of sensationalism undercut the discourse of civic literacy, thoughtfulness, and reason.
The ecosystem of visual and print representations has taken on an unprecedented influence given the merging of power and culture as a dominant political and pedagogical force. This cultural apparatus has become so powerful, in fact, that it is difficult to dispute the central role it played in the election of Donald Trump to the presidency. Analyzing the forces behind the election of Trump, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt provide a cogent commentary on the political and pedagogical power of an old and updated media landscape. They write:
Undoubtedly, Trump’s celebrity status played a role. But equally important was the changed media landscape. Trump had the sympathy or support of right-wing media personalities such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage as well as the increasingly influential Breitbart News. He also found new ways to use old media as a substitute for party endorsements and traditional campaign spending. By one estimate, the Twitter accounts of MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and NBC — four outlets that no one could accuse of pro-Trump leanings — mentioned Trump twice as often as Hillary Clinton. According to another study, Trump enjoyed up to $2 billion in free media coverage during the primary season. Trump didn’t need traditional Republican power brokers. The gatekeepers of the invisible primary weren’t merely invisible; by 2016, they were gone entirely.81
What is essential to remember here, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat notes, is that fascism starts with words and Trump’s use of language and his manipulative use of the media as political theater echo earlier periods of propaganda, censorship, and repression. Commenting on the Trump administration’s barring the Centers for Disease Control from using certain words, Ben-Ghiat writes:
The strongman knows that it starts with words ... That’s why those who study authoritarian regimes or have had the misfortune to live under one may find something deeply familiar about the Trump administration’s decision to bar officials at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from using certain words (“vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based,” and “science-based”). The administration’s refusal to give any rationale for the order, and the pressure it places on CDC employees, have a political meaning that transcends its specific content and context … The decision as a whole links to a larger history of how language is used as a tool of state repression. Authoritarians have always used language policies to bring state power and their cults of personality to bear on everyday life. Such policies affect not merely what we can say and write at work and in public but also [attempt] to change the way we think about ourselves and about others. The weaker our sentiments of solidarity and humanity become — or the stronger our impulse to compromise them under pressure — the easier it is for authoritarians to find partners to carry out their repressive policies.82
Under fascist regimes, the language of brutality and culture of cruelty were normalized through the proliferation of the strident metaphors of war, battle, expulsion, racial purity, and demonization. As leading scholars on modern Germany, such as Richard J. Evans and Victor Klemperer, have made clear, dictators such as
