A 2024 Trump Victory Looms and the Left Latches on to Trump's 'Fascism' As a Campaign Theme

streiff reporting for RedState 

With more and more polls showing former President Trump building an insuperable lead over incumbent Joe Biden, the leftist media has become increasingly shrill and panicked over the return of Trump to the White House and what that will mean for them. Their fears often take on a psycho-sexual nature as they seem to visualize themselves at risk of being marched off to extermination camps or heroically staring down a conservative firing squad.

When the former president ascended the state at CPAC back in March, he laid down a marker.

"In 2016," he said, "I declared I am your voice." He continued, "Today I add I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."

Needless to say, this threat-slash-promise kicked off an industry within the media declaring that the raison d'être for Trump's candidacy was to exact vengeance as though that were necessarily a bad thing.

A headline in Government Executive claimed Trump Has Endorsed a Plan to Purge the Civil Service of ‘Rogue Bureaucrats’ - Government Executive.

Trump spoke Tuesday at an event hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded by former staffers in his administration. His speech came on the heels of an Axios report last week that former White House aides are planning to revive the controversial Schedule F, a job classification system that would take current federal workers in “policy-related” positions out of the competitive service, stripping them of civil service protections and making them effectively at-will employees.

The Atlantic ominously spoke of Trump’s Open Plot to Break the Federal Government, as Axios reported that behind the scenes, people were working feverishly to take charge of the federal government; Trump allies pre-screen loyalists for unprecedented power grab. As someone who suffered as the collection of imbeciles, grifters, and quislings that Trump brought into power in 2016 pissed away a golden opportunity for change and reform, I found this to be refreshing. Reuters has declared that Armageddon will follow a Trump election; Trump's second-term agenda: deportations,  trade wars, civil servant firings.

Scarcely a week ago, Trump reminded everyone that this CPAC promise was not a rhetorical flourish.

Flanked by supporters waving “witch hunt” signs, former President Donald Trump turned in a signature incendiary performance Saturday in Waco, using his first 2024 campaign rally to frame himself as a victim of politicized legal investigations and vowing to be the MAGA movement’s “retribution.”

"I am your warrior, I am your justice,” Trump said in a nearly 90-minute speech, most of it focused on perceived political enemies and slights. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution."

Trump positioned himself as the sole protector of American values, painting a grim future if he is denied a second four-year term.

Today, the New York Times used its news pages rather than its opinion section to warn us that "autocracy experts" (wtf? I mean wt-f'ing-f?) had identified creeping fascism in Trump's rhetoric, though strangely, they'd missed any sign of it in Joe Biden's weaponization of the Justice Department.

Scholars, Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans (Ed note: ..but I repeat myself) are asking anew how much Mr. Trump resembles current strongmen abroad and how he compares to authoritarian leaders of the past. Perhaps most urgently, they are wondering whether his rhetorical turn into more fascist-sounding territory is just his latest public provocation of the left, an evolution in his beliefs or the dropping of a veil.

“There are echoes of fascist rhetoric, and they’re very precise,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University who studies fascism. “The overall strategy is an obvious one of dehumanizing people so that the public will not have as much of an outcry at the things that you want to do.”

The adulterous team of Joe and Mika followed the article with a rant on the subject earlier today.

I just want to go through again this New York Times article and let's just go through them. Because it's time that fascism is called fascism and Americans know exactly what they are fighting for. You know, I've heard people pooh-pooh this, "oooh, people on the far left." No, I'm a conservative, I'm of the right. There is a difference between conservatism, radicalism, and fascism. This is fascism. This is, the Times quotes an expert on the topic, fascism. It's generally understood, this is boilerplate stuff, really, for what fascism is. 

Fascism is generally understood as an authoritarian, far-right system of government in which hyper-nationalism is a central component. Check. It also features a cult of personality around a strongman leader. Check. The justification of violence or retribution against opponents. Check. And the repeated denigration of the rule of law. Check. Said Peter Hayes, a historian who has studied the rise of fascism.

Past fascist leaders appealed to a sense of victimhood to justify their actions. Check. "We’re entitled because we’ve been victimized. We’ve been cheated and robbed." Check. Check. Check. 

The whining, the snowflakery, coming from the Trump people. I mean, a snowflake falls on their shoulder and they're victimized. They're victimized by history books on Hank Aaron. They're victimized by kids's books on Roberto Clemente. They're victimized by tweets. You name it. They're victimized by everything. They are such weak snowflakes, and they're using that victimization to justify violence against their opponents.

Trump having his photo taken with a group of soldiers and police officers (see 0:33), had this guy imagining himself as a wounded, stinking Che Guevara laying on a litter in the Bolivian jungles waiting for the end.

When hardcore leftist Glenn Greenwald called him out, he responded by saying Greenwald had sold out to fascists.

This is nonsense. It has as much substance as any of the Russia allegations made against Trump in 2016. It serves primarily to frame the terms of the 2024 campaign should Trump manage to avoid incarceration. The shrill and illogical nature of it all does show the fear the left has of finally being called to account for their corruption of American politics and assault on the Constitution and American identity. It also shows that many of the left are no longer writing anti-Trump nonsense because of the clicks and the attaboys from their peers; they are wiring it because they have a legitimate fear that Trump will be the GOP candidate, and they know Joe Biden can't win.