I was sitting on the porch of my family’s home, a field/forest/residential area sorts of place on the outskirts of the town, in the midst of writing a completely different blog post last week, when I found myself stumbling, as I often do, into a completely different narrative altogether and, though one preceded the other, I grew far more interested with the latter rather than the prior one. So the first sits in my Google Drive waiting to be finished but, first, here’s the second.
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If you call every person you don’t like a fascist, the word loses its meaning. Some groups better understand than others what we see or mean when we call somebody like the former and increasingly-likely future President of the United States a fascist. Yet, the meaning has been worn down. Not quite lost to all, but worn down for so many. Calling him a fascist in 2015/16 was not the right move. He was, as he remains, a bumbling, ever-failing business world persona, getting moderately and temporarily rich off of his criminal schemes. Even and, as of late, especially off of the political schemes. Calling him a fascist now is increasingly accurate, but is still not truly fitting for who he is or even for who he will be.
It must need be said that this would normally be the place where certain people who are staunchly opposed to Donald J. Trump’s existence in the political or business world would cease to read; I, myself, have been occasionally guilty of this very act, especially after a few weeks or months worth of steady influx of news about his latest attempts at finessing the law, the country, and the people. I completely understand, I do. However, I beseech you to keep reading. If you will think of me as an enemy, fine, so be it. But at least keep reading to know thine enemy. If nothing else, you will know the thoughts of those like me, and will be able to better argue against or entirely avoid such ideas in the future.
Now, he shows public and private signs of fascist rhetoric and behaviour. In fact, if we together, as I do alone, follow the list and reasoning provided by Umberto Eco in his Ur-Fascism text, we will see that the former president fits quite nicely into Eco’s ideas of fascism. The problem, however, is the same as it always is with Donald J. Trump. He, in the professional terminology of the field of politics and international relations, halfasses things. He does not commit. Not because he wants to or does not want to commit but because committing is not the final goal. The final goal, for Donald J. Trump, is, as it always remains, pocketing money.
Not just money and definitely not earning money. Specifically, he wishes to pocket money. He will do anything—Gods, anything!—just to have more money in his pocket. He’ll sell shoes that look like they came off of a Wish version of Liberace, hawk Bibles that go against the Bible, and inflate his social media stocks to match his ego and nearly match that of his latest debt.
He is a wannabe businessman, as much of a fascist as he is a dancer, and somebody desperate to be not just a celebrity but a messiah and not just a messiah but the messiah. In fact, if nobody really minds, Donald J Trump would like to take up the position of Supreme Deity, if that’s fine with everybody.
And yet.
Yet, if we fear Donald Trump first, we miss the point.
Yes, handing over the nuclear codes, foreign diplomacy, and a good chunk of control of an already decrepit, carved up, and increasingly violent state to a money-hungry moron is, yes, Bad™. Letting anybody even a little bit like him control any state in the world is worrisome.
What I mean when I say that we should not fear him first is exactly that—do not put him first on your list of “What Is Likely to End Life As I Know It”. First fear the people propping him up. We’ve all by now heard of former New York City mayor and since disbarred lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. We’ve all heard of the Bannons, and Barracks, and Stones, and Papadopouloses. If you’re really keeping track of the news, the names of Weisselberg and Manafort will be just as identifiable to you. And, sure, these are the people who have helped him defraud, blackmail, and buy or attempt to defraud, blackmail, or buy entire towns, and states, and countries. These are the people who helped him in every authoritarian or faux-fascist move, every time he has hurt or extinguished real-life, actual, palpable lives. But these are not the people who are really keeping him up there. These are not the people who shaped him, made him, taught him.
Take for example, Roy Cohn, posthumously and quite appropriately referred to as a “new strain of son of a bitch”. His Wikipedia page does mention his relation with the former president; “[h]e also represented and mentored New York City real estate developer and future U.S. President Donald Trump during his early business career.” While it goes on later to say that Cohn was responsible for defending and otherwise representing the Trumps and, especially, Donald J. Trump in several law cases, and that his connections to the NY mafia were allegedly helpful during the construction of the notorious Trump Tower, the article does seem to undervalue the idea of just how much Cohn really influenced the former president.
It’s not just that Cohn would fix his legal issues for him or would introduce him to influential players, as he had introduced Trump to the infamous propaganda-pushing and media megalomaniac Rupert Murdoch, the man with whom Trump has had a on-again, off-again, friends-again, want-to-off-you-again sort of business and political relationship with since the mid-70s. (Indeed, another man who has made Trump, his base, and his politics who and what they are today.)
Cohn was so much more than a handyman and a matchmaker to the former president. As Michael Kruse wrote in 2019 in his article on Trump and Cohn’s relationship, “with the exception of his father, whose fortune made possible the life he’s lived, Trump used Cohn more than he used anybody” and “[a]t a most formative moment for Trump, there was no more formative figure than Cohn.” As the accounts, memoirs, and diary entries featured in the article show, Cohn was not just involved or influential or even instrumental in the making of Donald Trump; he was integral and indispensable. Without Cohn, we wouldn’t have Donald J. Trump in all his ravenous glory.
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