{"id":49383,"date":"2025-07-17T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=49383"},"modified":"2025-07-17T11:17:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T14:17:02","slug":"trump-and-the-authoritarian-drift-echoes-of-fascism-in-american-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/trump-and-the-authoritarian-drift-echoes-of-fascism-in-american-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and the authoritarian drift: Echoes of fascism in American democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trump is rapidly advancing toward a very dark place for democracy. Over the past month, he has radicalized his positions. On the international front, he has escalated his actions and, for now, managed to avoid becoming a direct actor in a war with unpredictable consequences in the Middle East. In Latin America, his vow to punish Brazil over Jair Bolsonaro\u2019s legal troubles<\/a> is a clear case of meddling in domestic affairs while also defending the legitimacy of his own past coup-like behavior\u2014embodied in his Brazilian imitator. It\u2019s yet another attack on judicial independence and the democratic system with obvious global implications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this, one must add the erratic nature of his economic policy\u2014particularly his tariff war rooted in a brand of mercantilism devoid of intellectual substance; his falsehoods about unemployment numbers; and the \u201cbeautiful\u201d Trump law, passed at record speed, which foretells even greater economic inequality and a massive deficit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also the record budget increase for ICE and its detention capacity\u2014$170 billion\u2014whose agents, masked and armed like elite soldiers, have arrested not only undocumented immigrants but also citizens at schools, workplaces and courthouses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is compounded by blurred lines between the public and private realms, directly benefiting Trump\u2019s family fortune. Compared to corruption scandals in Latin America, the figures are staggering. In just the first three months of his presidency, Trump increased his personal fortune by $3 billion through dubious sales of \u201cTrump\u201d cryptocurrencies and investments in the family business by state funds from the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most other countries, if a president earned even less than a billion dollars a month, the word \u201ccorruption\u201d would be part of everyday analysis. Yet Trump has openly promoted these dealings and many accept the official line: he does it in his \u201cfree time,\u201d and profiting from his position in the White House is not, according to his defenders, a problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these developments\u2014the glorification of violence and war, the corruption, the collapse of economic predictability\u2014are interconnected, especially with Trump\u2019s latest battlefield: the domestic front. Here, we are witnessing an even faster escalation against the pillars of democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of all these crises, what makes Trump such an anomaly among U.S. presidents is not only his personal enrichment or the institutional breakdown, but his monarchic or autocratic will, which is one that directly contradicts the very essence of constitutional norms as historically understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put it more plainly: many analysts of American politics increasingly view Trump as deepening his fascist tendencies. As a historian of fascism, I share this assessment. In recent times, Trump has further intensified the fascist practice of militarizing politics<\/a>, merging warfare and governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve also seen a repressive escalation in California, along with an ideological glorification of violence against the opposition. Consider the Speaker of the House, who expressed a wish to publicly disgrace Governor Gavin Newsom through a form of mob justice more akin to the mythic Wild West than to a serious nation. He literally suggested \u201ctarring and feathering\u201d him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inauguration of a migrant prison in the swamps of Florida\u2014dubbed \u201cAlligator Alcatraz\u201d\u2014is another example of the extralegal glorification of violence in a society seemingly abandoning its modern values. According to Trump himself, the idea is that the animals would eat escapees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The so-called \u201cTrump parade\u201d must also be seen in the context of a broader crisis\u2014and possible collapse\u2014of democracy in the United States. It was a textbook example of authoritarian leader-worship. In a climate of extreme polarization and demonization of opponents, politically motivated lone-wolf assassinations have occurred\u2014like the recent cases in Michigan. We still know little about the killer\u2019s motives, but the MAGA movement\u2019s responses are deeply troubling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a democratic country, a birthday parade disguised as a military celebration should never have taken place. Given the severity of the situation, the event should have been canceled altogether. Although it was a failure in terms of attendance, Trump used it to reinforce the conflation of his persona with the state\u2014especially with the military. In response, there were massive peaceful \u201canti-monarchist\u201d protests, which made clear that his actions run counter to the country\u2019s core democratic values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historians aren\u2019t fortune tellers, but based on the record of past and present fascisms, I believe we\u2019re going to see an even greater escalation across all the typical fronts of authoritarianism: more violence and militarization, deeper demonization and repression, intensified propaganda, attacks on the free press, erosion of judicial independence and the dismantling of republican institutions. Let\u2019s hope we also witness a growing peaceful resistance to these efforts to dismantle American democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Machine translation proofread by Ricardo Aceves.<\/em><\/sub>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump is steadily moving toward an authoritarian drift that threatens the fundamental pillars of American democracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":49367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17024,16805,16856],"tags":[],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49383","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fascismo-es-en","8":"category-donald-trump-en","9":"category-eeuu-en"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49383"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=49383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}