He “flaunts his disdain for democratic institutions, the ideals of equality and social justice, civil discourse, civic virtues, and America itself”. Trump is “the first antidemocratic president in US history”.
Trump is one of a kind with such tinpot dictators as Maduro, Erdoğan, Putin, Orbán and Kim Jong-un Madeleine Albright “If we think of fascism as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab,” she writes.
Economic and social crisis, weak democratic parties and compliant conservatives all helped bring fascism to power then, and look very much as if they are doing so again today.
But are we really witnessing the revival of fascism? Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state under Bill Clinton, certainly thinks so. He defames his critics as liars, calls for the suppression of newspapers that expose his falsehoods, attacks judges who rule against him, urges the wider use of firearms in society, expresses sympathy for white supremacist demonstrators, withdraws demonstratively from international alliances and organisations, and suggests that becoming president for life might not be a bad idea.įor some concerned observers, it’s all too reminiscent of the 1930s, when democracies were destroyed all over Europe and dictators plunged the world into the bloodiest war in history. There can be little doubt about Trump’s hostility to democratic institutions or his contempt for democratic standards of public discourse. And then there is Donald Trump, who, as we have seen during his recent European tour, is potentially a far more disruptive and dangerous figure than any of these, because as US president he wields an influence that is global in scale. In other countries, antidemocratic parties are riding high on a wave of public hostility to immigrants. Right-wing strongmen such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland are curtailing civil liberties, removing the independence of the judiciary and muzzling the press. D emocracy is under threat in its historic heartlands, Europe and the US.
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