142nd National Rifle Association meetings and exhibits. Flickr/ Gerald Rich. Some rights reserved.Can it happen here?

That’s the question circulating now that
Donald Trump, the nativist, rabble-rousing xenophobe, and billionaire, is
threatening to capture the Republican nomination for president of the United
States – and it’s a question that isn’t being asked only on the left. It’s
been raised by a New York Times editorial,
which claimed that Trump has brought the GOP “to the brink of fascism,” and by Republicans,
ranging from neoconservative pundit Max Boot to Virginia's centrist former
Governor Jim Gilmore. Conservative Times columnist Ross Douthat was
reasonably typical in a piece headlined “Is Donald Trump
a Fascist?” While he allowed that The Donald may not be Adolf Hitler
or Benito Mussolini, he added, “It seems fair to say that he’s closer to the
‘proto-fascist’ zone on the political spectrum than either the average American
conservative or his recent predecessors in right-wing populism.”

For figures ranging from
comic Louis C.K. to right-wing commentator Glenn Beck, making direct
Hitler-Trump comparisons has become the fashion of the moment. I must
admit, however, that “proto-fascist” sounds about right to me. Certainly,
the rise of Trump has caused many voters to take notice – the question being
whether the real estate mogul (who further stirred the pot recently by retweeting
a quote from Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini) could cobble together
enough of a coalition of nationalists, Angry White Men, “poorly educated”
working-class backers, the disaffected religious right, Islamophobes,
immigrant-bashers, and others to wield the figurative pitchforks in a march to
victory in November.

If indeed Trump is a mere
“proto-fascist,” then what ingredients, if any, are still needed for the
emergence of an authentic twenty-first-century American fascist movement? To
think about that question, I recently read Richard J. Evans’ book, The Coming of
the Third Reich. It spans the era from 1871 to 1933, describing
in exquisitely painful detail the gestation and growth of the Nazi party. If
you decide to read the book, try doing what I did: in two columns in your head
draw up a list of similarities and differences between the United States today
and Weimar Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.

In this edgy moment in America, the
similarities, of course, tend to jump out at you. As Trump repeatedly pledges
to restore American greatness, so Hitler promised to avenge Germany’s
humiliation in World War I. As Trump urges his followers, especially the white
working class, to blame their troubles on Mexican immigrants and Muslims, so
Hitler whipped up an anti-Semitic brew. As Trump – ironically, for a
billionaire – attacks Wall Street and corporate lobbyists for rigging the
economy and making puppets out of politicians, so Hitler railed against Wall
Street and the City of London, along with their local allies in Germany, for
burdening his country with a massive post-World War I, Versailles
Treaty-imposed reparations debt and for backing the Weimar Republic’s feckless
center-right parties. (Think: the Republican Party today.) 

As with Trump’s China-bashing comments
and his threats to murder the relatives of Islamist terrorists while taking
over Iraq’s oil reserves, Hitler too appealed to an atavistic, reckless sort of
ultra-nationalism.

The Second Amendment society

But don’t forget the differences, which
are no less obvious. The United States has a long-established tradition of
democratic republicanism, which 1920s Germany did not. The economy of the
planet’s last superpower, while careening into a near-depression in 2008, is
incomparably too strong to be put in the same category as the
hyperinflation-plagued German one of that era.

There is, however, another difference
between Donald Trump of 2016 and Adolf Hitler of 1921 (when he took over the
leadership of the fledgling National Socialist German Workers Party) that
overshadows the rest. From the beginning, Hitler wielded the support of a
brutal, thuggish armed paramilitary wing, the notorious Sturmabteilung
(SA), the Storm Detachment (or storm troopers). Also known as the Brown Shirts,
the SA often used violence against its opponents in the streets of Germany’s
cities, and its sheer presence intimidated Germans across the political
spectrum.

And that got me thinking. Would it be
possible for Donald Trump or some future Trump-like figure to build an armed
following of his own? Frighteningly enough, the answer is certainly: yes. And
it might not even be that hard. 

Bear with me a moment here. Back in
2010, in Alexandria, Virginia, radical partisans of the Second Amendment right
to bear arms, bolstered by Virginia’s egregiously anything-goes open-carry
laws, held a Restore the Constitution Rally in Fort Hunt Park on the Potomac
River – and they came armed.
The event was, by the way, scheduled for April 19, the anniversary of Timothy
McVeigh’s 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. At the time, I
lived a mile or so from that park, and the combination of fear, anger, and
disgust that such a weapons-displaying political demonstration could happen in
the virtual shadow of the Capitol was palpable.

Admittedly, only about 50 armed people
took part, though 2,000 others held an unarmed, parallel rally in Washington,
D.C., where carrying weapons is forbidden. Think about how many more might turn
out today in a country where there have already been a number of armed rallies
and demonstrations by Second Amendment activists, and in 2016,
thanks to effective lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA), the
majority of states have enacted complete or partial open-carry laws. Meanwhile,
all 50 states
now have concealed-carry laws, meaning that pistol-packing is lawful in most
public places other than Washington, D.C.

So imagine this scenario for a moment:
Donald Trump (or a future Trump-esque demagogue) announces that he’s convening
a rally in a state where open-carry is permitted – say, in Dallas, at the
Cowboys' AT&T Stadium – and adds that he wants his supporters to come
armed. (Trump has loudly defended
the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment during the primary season and on his website
there’s a plank called “Protecting Our Second Amendment Will Make America Great
Again.”) Under Texas law,
it would be perfectly legal for his supporters in the thousands to attend such
a rally armed with semi-automatic weapons. And there, at the podium, looking
out over the crown of gun-wielding militants would be The Donald, smiling
broadly.

It doesn’t take much to imagine the
instant backlash this would engender, from near-apoplectic television talking
heads to scathing editorials in the New York Times and other newspapers
to sputtering denunciations from liberal and moderate politicians, especially
those from urban areas. But it’s also easy to imagine Trump’s vitriolic disdain
for the naysayers, while the NRA’s pet Republicans tut-tutted over Trump but
defended his right to organize such an event.

Imagine then that he repeated the event
in other stadiums in, say, Denver, Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Miami – and then
announced that he’s establishing the Donald Trump Second Amendment Society? He
might even issue specially designed baseball caps emblazoned with the name. How
far might we then be from armed marches by the new organization in the streets
of American cities, its name, of course, soon abbreviated to the Trump SA (for
Second Amendment) Society?

To some, this may sound like an
outlandish, near-doomsday scenario. (“It can’t happen here.”) But developments
in this country in recent years suggest that the path is open to just such a
possibility, and that the question is less “if” than “when.” The groundwork is
already potentially being laid. According to the latest report
from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 2015 saw a significant increase in
hate groups in this country, with militias and anti-government “patriot” groups
growing last year from 874 to 998, having fallen precipitously in the previous
two. Of these, says the SPLC,
at least 276 were anti-government “militias.” It adds: “Generally, such groups define
themselves as opposed to the ‘New World Order,’ engage in groundless conspiracy
theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.”

In early January, the nation watched
in shock as a band of “dozens of white, armed American militants stormed a
federal wildlife refuge in Oregon seeking to take a ‘hard stand’ against
federal government ‘tyranny.’” The action thrilled militia and “patriot” groups
across the country, while, oddly enough, the mainstream media was reluctant to
apply the obvious word – “terrorism” – to this armed rebellion by political
radicals led by the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy. (Juliette
Kayyem, a Harvard expert on terrorism and a former assistant secretary of
homeland security, was a rare exception in writing
for CNN, “The men, heavily armed, urging others to come support their cause,
and claiming somehow that, while peaceful, they will ‘defend’ themselves
whatever it takes, are – by any definition – domestic terrorists.”)

The occupation was eventually
suppressed, but in the present overheated atmosphere expect other provocative
actions by some of the 200-plus militias that the SPLC has identified. Though
Trump himself expressed mild
disapproval of the Oregon militia, calling for “law and order,”
Gerald DeLemus, a co-chair of Veterans for Trump in New Hampshire, praised
the action as a “great success,” insisting in an interview
with Reuters that the militia’s cause was “peaceful” and “constitutionally
just.”  He was later arrested
“as a ‘mid-level leader’ and organizer of a conspiracy to recruit, organize,
train, and provide support to armed men and other followers of rancher Cliven
Bundy.”

Trump, of course, has repeatedly played
with fire when it comes to violence, intimidation, and the role of white
supremacists, the radical right, and others. His dog-whistle refusal to instantly
disassociate himself from David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan on the eve of the
Super Tuesday primaries in the Deep South was widely condemned even by
Republican officials. But in at least one case, an actual neo-Nazi, Matthew Heimbach,
the leader of the Traditionalist
Workers Party, used physical force against protesters at a Trump
rally in Louisville.

Uniquely American fascism

However reprehensible Trump’s dalliance
with the far right may be, however disturbing the actions of figures like
Heimbach, we’re still a significant way from the birth of a true national
fascist movement, even if the Times’s Roger Cohen can already write a
column headlined
“Trump’s Weimar America.” (“Welcome to Weimar America: It’s getting restive in
the beer halls. People are sick of politics as usual. They want blunt talk.
They want answers.”) As of yet, Trump has not tried to fuse his far-right allies
into a genuine movement – though he has started using the term “movement” – or
a party, nor has he made any real effort to rally the country’s gun-owning
right-wing militants into his own version of the SA. And he may never do so.

Keep in mind as well that an
American-style fascist movement would hardly be a precise copy of either the
German or the Italian models, or even of the parties currently building
far-right movements in France,
Hungary,
Greece, and elsewhere. Nor
would it copy the proto-fascist coalition of ultra-nationalists and religious
zealots being courted by Russia’s
Vladimir Putin. It would undoubtedly be a uniquely American
creation.

Though Trump has managed to bring
together disparate elements of what an American fascist movement might roughly
look like, he may not, in the end, be quite the right messenger for its
development, nor may this be quite the right moment for it to fully develop.
Among other things, for such a movement and the armed militias that would go
with it to coalesce, you might need another 2007/2008-style economic meltdown,
a crisis long and profound enough for such a movement to seize the moment. In
that case, of course, it’s also possible that a Bernie Sanders-like leftist or
socialist – or maybe Sanders himself – would emerge to capture the ensuing
political and economic unrest in a very different manner. But in The Donald’s
America, don’t rule out the possible emergence of an even more formidable and
threatening Trump-like figure, one unburdened by his clownish persona, Trump
University, and the rest of his billionaire’s baggage.

Whether or not Donald Trump wins the
Republican nomination or is elected president, for the gathering members of his
grassroots coalition, he’s certainly shown what can, indeed, happen here. 

This piece is reposted from TomDispatch.com 
as published on March 13, 2016, with that site's permission.