Donald Trump’s xenophobic sayings are becoming more radical every day. Former general Mark Milley warns of the “fascist through and through.” Time to call a spade a spade.
General Mark Milley had to endure a lot when he served as Chief of Staff of the US Armed Forces under President Donald Trump. He should use soldiers against left-wing demonstrators and court-martial former officers critical of Trump. The time with Trump gave the highly respected Milley insights that he later gave the military as a warning in a widely watched speech: “We take no oath to a king or queen, a tyrant or dictator or would-be dictator. ”
Now Milley followed up. In today’s book “War” by investigative journalist Bob Woodward, Milley is quoted as saying: “No one has ever been more dangerous to this country than Donald Trump. I now know that he is a fascist through and through.”
There isn’t a day when Donald Trump doesn’t take things to the extreme
Milley spoke these sentences before the final spurt in the election campaign, but they couldn’t come at a better time. Not a day goes by when the former President of the USA does not take the agitation against migrants to the extreme.
At the start of the campaign, he said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language that was strongly reminiscent of the Nazis. A few days ago he once again called migrants “murderers” and added that they “carry it in their genes. We have a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”
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The White House finally found the right words for it: Trump’s language was “reminiscent of the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists.”
It didn’t stop Trump from increasing his incitement and inciting people against immigrants. “They’re going to come into your kitchens. They’re going to slit your throats,” he said at a campaign event in Wisconsin, again calling migrants “animals.”
On Thursday, Trump repeated his xenophobia in front of entrepreneurs and business leaders at the dignified Detroit Economic Club: “We let them rape our country. Oh, now he used the word rape,” he mocked his critics and followed up: “Exactly, me I used the word rapist. They raped our country.”
We’re used to a lot from Donald Trump, but the last few days have marked a new level of escalation. Trump’s sentences correspond entirely to his right-wing extremist sentiments, but at the same time they are also part of a perfidious tactic: he is keeping the election campaign issue of migration, on which he has the best poll numbers, on the boil. And he can only keep it simmering by increasing his rhetoric. He warns blacks that foreigners are taking their “black” jobs and Latinos that migrants are causing the housing shortage.
Where there are real concerns, such as high food prices and overpriced housing, he lures disappointed voters by pointing to scapegoats: immigrants. It’s not just the choice of words that stands out, but also its presentation: full of hate and disgust and gloomy scenarios of doom.
With almost demonic anticipation, he announces mass deportations and a “bloody story.” Neo-Nazis in Germany call this “remigration.”
In 2016 it was the wall that brought Trump into focus in the final stretch of the election campaign; in 2024 it will be mass deportation. And he knows America has his back: 54 percent support his plans. It is an astonishing number for a country that calls itself a country of immigration. There are enough immigrants in Trump’s own family, including poor and desperate ones. But for him, Scots and Germans are a different category than Haitians and Venezuelans.
Trump doesn’t shy away from even the most absurd lies: Haitians eat dogs and cats, Venezuelans create war zones in US cities. His deputy, JD Vance, openly admitted that they were prepared to “make up stories so that the American media would finally take an interest.”
“He doesn’t mean it like that” – yes!
No presidential candidate has ever gone as far as Trump in the country’s 248-year history, and there are still Republicans and commentators who say apologetically: “That’s Trump being Trump.” I mean to say: That’s just how he is. He doesn’t mean it like that.
For some time now, historians and political scientists have been debating how Trump should be classified ideologically. Some call him a nationalist, others a racist, still others a right-wing populist in the style of Mussolini, still others call him all of the above. Trump defended neo-Nazis at their rally in Charlottesville as “fine people” and calls convicted right-wing extremists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 “patriots.” If he wins the election, he wants to pardon her.
If the AfD is considered firmly right-wing extremist, then what is Trump 2024? If the Tagesschau calls Bolsonaro right-wing extremist, then what is Trump 2024? When former companions like Milley call Trump a fascist, by definition he is referring to the “obsessive preoccupation with the decline, humiliation or victimhood of a community as well as a compensatory cult of unity, strength and purity” – the definition of a fascist.
In addition to his xenophobia, there is an increasingly autocratic component: Trump has announced that he will imprison unpopular journalists and use the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents. He says he will fire any civil servants who show disloyalty to him and will not hire anyone who doesn’t classify the 2020 election as “stolen.” As he announced a few days ago, he wants to give police officers one day a year when they can strike “extraordinarily hard” and enjoy impunity for their actions.
Former General Mark Milley sums it up when he says: “Trump is a walking billboard for what he’s up to.” He does exactly what many autocrats and dictators do: they announce their atrocities. It is not for nothing that many of his former ministers and his former Vice President Mike Pence and hundreds of former high-ranking military officers are speaking out against him.
After leaving the service, Milley received “nonstop death threats” and blamed them on Trump’s political rhetoric and his obsession with revenge. He equipped his house with bulletproof windows and walls that protect against explosions.
Many are imitating Trump
If you follow the election ads on television and the Internet these days, you’ll notice that many Republicans, including local politicians, are copying Trump and warning about the dangers of immigrants, about “murderers, rapists, terrorists.” But no one trumps Trump. In his harshest spot, he accuses Kamala Harris of wanting to pay for transgender surgeries for murderous immigrants in prison.
The USA has had some notorious anti-migrant chapters, against the Japanese and Chinese, Germans and Irish – and under Trump also against Muslims. But nothing is as ugly as what the hateful 78-year-old man has been saying in these last few weeks.
If Americans actually elect him president on November 5th, no one should say they didn’t know what Trump stood for this time. Four years ago, upright people like Mark Milley were able to save the fascists from the worst of their deeds. These people will no longer exist this time.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
