Why Both of America’s Presidential Candidates Are Fascists

8 October 2024, by Eric Zuesse

A fascist is a supremacist who thinks that “ONLY people like US — “WE” people [however that person primarily defines himself or herself] — should count; we are indispensable, and everyone else is dispensable.” Mussolini defined fascism as “corporationism”, and he was right, because that comes down to the same thing, and I shall therefore discuss that equation between fascism and corporationism at the end here. But what is basic to understand about fascism, at the very beginning here, is that it is political belief in supremacism of one group over everyone else within the polity or nation, and it is simultaneously the belief that oneself is WITHIN that ‘supreme’ group. (For example, opponents of that group are not necessarily fascists.) In a corporation, the supreme group are the owners, but in a polity it’s the individuals who actually control the nation, regardless of whether or not those individuals are the nation’s official rulers. (This isn’t about official titles, such as “The President”; it is only about reality.) Or, as U.S. President G.W. Bush phrased this, “You’re either with us or against us.” In the neoconservative (which is America’s version of internationalist fascism) view, every contest is a purely win-lose game; win-win games are only for sissies (fascists contemptuously derogate their ‘enemies’); and, so, as Barack Obama phrased this, “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come.” In other words: all other nations are “dispensable.” That is the neoconservative view (the American-fascist view), and it has been the U.S. Deep State’s view ever since that Deep State took over the U.S. Government on 25 July 1945.

The international (as opposed to national — or “intranational”) extension of fascism is this same supremacist attitude but toward “our” nation or alliance of nations against all others (nations not allied with “ours”). For example, America kicked-out the U.N.’s weapons-inspectors and invaded Iraq and effectively killed Iraq’s leader on 20 March 2003 because America’s Government is fascist, and America bombed Libya and effectively killed Libya’s leader in 2011 because America’s Government is fascist. All of this is history, which cannot be denied, just as it is history and cannot be denied that Mussolini and Hitler were fascists. Maybe today’s pro-U.S.-Government fascists will deny it, but all of this is undeniably history, regardless of what liars allege.

On 20 August 2024, I headlined “Since Kamala Harris Won’t Reveal Her Record and Policies, I Will:”, and that proved she’s a fascist (though, as a liberal, she’s a lying  closeted fascist); and, so, here, I shall prove the same about Trump (though, as a populist, he too is a lying closeted fascist). 

First of all, who controls the mega-corporations, including the mega-foundations, and mega think tanks, and mega news-media? Billionaires do. There are only about a thousand of them in America, but they control all of those organizations, and so those organizations are agents of theirs, and the billionaires’ agents hire and fire to get the best sub-agents (employees) they can for their boss’s money, to carry out the owner’s bidding. 

Here is how it works at the very top of the U.S. Government, as explained by Trump, during his first-ever political debate, the first 2015 Republican Presidential candidates’ debate, which was held by Fox News on 6 August 2015:

[The following portion of the transcript is shown in video here (and here), and is discussed here:]

DONALD TRUMP: I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

CHRIS WALLACE: So what did you get? So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, “Be at my wedding,” and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice, because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn’t know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world. It was.

Basically, American politics is a bribing-contest between the super-richest Americans in order to determine which ones of them will end up controlling the elected officials who control the Government (just like both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris do). And this fact has been proven scientifically; it isn’t merely Trump’s publicly stated opinion (and Kamala Harris’s secret). America is long past the time when our Constitution was more than mere words on parchment. This nation since then has become a two-Party one-system aristocracy — the wealthiest rule here (even though behind the scenes). An aristocracy used to be called a feudalism, but now it is called a fascism, or a corporationism, because a corporation is one-share-one-vote, and a fascism is one-dollar-one-vote. The private wealth rules it and is served by it, in either case (and regardless of what they might call their particular fascist Party). Liberal fascists might be more hypocritical about it than conservatives ones are, but there’s no basic difference between the two types of fascism.

As regards some of the specific instances which show Trump to be a fascist, Caitlin Johnstone has done a good job of that.

So, what America’s voters are given to vote for are the nominee of Republican Party billionaires, versus the nominee of Democratic Party billionaires. Regardless of what the nominee might be promising publicly to voters, that person will be delivering on what he or she had secretly promised to that person’s mega-donors. This is the way any aristocracy works. It serves the aristocrats, not the public. Like Trump was honest enough to say, “I said, ‘Be at my wedding,’ and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice, because I gave.” The voters are mere pawns. What’s taught about the U.S. Government, in the schools and universities (that in America a politician’s public promises are commitments, and the politician’s private promises aren’t commitments), is what the billionaires want the public to believe about it, not what it really is. This is just a scientifically established fact. (Click on it there to see the evidence regarding it.)

Another interesting fact is that before the 2024 U.S. Presidential primaries had even started, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump all had higher “Disapprove” than “Approve” ratings from the American people, because they all were widely despised on the basis of their actual records; and by far the highest net-approval rating of all named persons by the public, was (this was in the first-ever poll that included all of the possible contestants) for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (at +21% net-favorability), whom Joe Biden (at -11% net-favorability) refused to allow to compete against Biden in his Party’s primaries; so, Kennedy quit that effort and ran independently, which (third-party efforts) is now impossible to succeed in today’s American system; and, so, America will now get either of the two fascists (Trump had -3% net-favorability rating in that poll; Harris had -10% net-favorability rating there) as America’s new President, on January 20th.

So, all of the ‘news’-media, and political ‘scientists’ who refer to America as a “democracy” are either fools or liars, because nothing in the social sciences is as overwhelmingly documented as that any such allegation about today’s America is false, and that anyone who would say that America’s “enemies” are so because they’re “autocracies” or “dictatorships” instead of because America’s billionaires want to take them over — “regime-change” them — is nothing but an agent of America’s billionaires and an imperialist (which all of U.S.-and-allied — or colonial — billionaires are). Billionaires naturally want to expand their empire still further; and, so, imperialism is at least as natural for them as heterosexuality is natural for the entire human population.

Nothing that is said here is against a nation’s going to war (it’s not necessarily for ‘peace’, if surrender is the wrong thing to do), but it is instead anti-imperialist: it is against all forms of aggression (international coercion). Under international law, every nation has the right of self-defense, and that is its right against ANY imperialist which endangers that nation’s sovereignty over its own territory.

And this ALSO doesn’t say anything at all either for or against a national region’s right to secede from its existing nation. Under international law, that right does exist if the given nation is unfairly abusing that region; so, judgment on such a matter is ONLY on a case-by-case basis, not subject to any single law. (Furthermore: no foreign nation has ANY right to interfere in a given nation’s civil war — any such involvement by any foreign nation or entity is imperialistic and ought to be outlawed by the U.N., so that ONLY the U.N. itself will be able to have any foreign involvement in it.)

To boil all of this down: the U.S. is a fascist country.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.