American left tries to stick Trump with fascist label

A few days before the American elections, the US vice president and Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, adopted a more radical speech about her political opponent, Republican Donald Trump, classifying him as “fascist”, a term that has become increasingly common in the vocabulary of the left.

The most recent example of this stance was seen in her last speech, at the White House, last Tuesday, when the former prosecutor stated that Trump was a “petty tyrant” and a “project dictator”.

Until this stage of the electoral race, Joe Biden’s replacement to represent the Democrats at the polls portrayed her opponent as a standard Republican who is not committed to the needs of the American people, only to businesspeople with money. Now, Harris takes a more offensive stance, in an attempt to paint the former Republican president as an autocrat who threatens American democracy.

This harsher speech from Kamala came after Trump’s former chief of staff, General John Kelly, who served in the White House between 2017 and 2019, stated that the former president met the definition of a fascist, in an interview with the newspaper The New York Times. Days later, she gave an interview to CNNat which point he expressed his agreement with Kelly.

Trump and his allies classified Kamala’s strategy as a sign of “desperation”, at a time when some election polls indicate a slight advantage for him.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the candidacy from the corrupt Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her tone, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and whatever else come to your twisted mind,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social and X accounts following Kamala’s comment in the CNN.

But why isn’t Trump a fascist? In an article in the magazine americana National Reviewwriter Rich Lowry explains that the term has been misused for a long time by the left and no longer matches its original meaning.

According to Lowry, 20th century fascists hated parliamentary democracy and believed in a state that controlled all sectors. “They had contempt for bourgeois life”, highlights the writer. “Fundamentally, fascism celebrated violence in a nihilistic rejection of rationality and elevation of military struggle,” he added.

Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign event in Mint Hill, North Carolina, in late September. Credit: EFE/EPA/ERIK S. LESSER| EFE/EPA/ERIK S. LESSER 

The former Republican president does not fit into any of these categories. In his first term (2017-2021), he appointed constitutionalist judges to the Supreme Court, reduced the power of the federal government, and encouraged free enterprise.

Furthermore, the Republican candidate never said he would use the Army against his political opponents, as Democrats have been advocating, based on an edited video of Trump’s interview with Fox News.

Kamala Harris has used an excerpt from an interview between the Republican and presenter Maria Bartiromo at her rallies. The media content says: “We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left-wing lunatics, and I think they (…) that this should be easily resolved, if necessary, by the National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.”

However, the Democrat omits the words “in terms of Election Day”, trying to distort the fact that Trump is responding to a question from a Fox News journalist about possible disruptions on November 5th. In the video addition, Trump says that the National Guard could “easily resolve” riots on that date.

But this offensive stance against Trump is not new within the Democratic government. In 2022, before the midterm elections, President Joe Biden already stated that the former president was a “threat to democracy”.

On the occasion, the American president stated that Republicans who adopt the “Make America Great Again” philosophy defend “semifascism”.

With electoral polls indicating a tight scenario between the candidates, political strategists say that this change in Democrat Kamala Harris’ stance is a strategy to reach moderate Republicans and voters who remain undecided, the same tactic used by Biden’s campaign in 2020.