> You're making a claim that is fairly recent and that is intentionally inflammatory.
Neither is true.
David Neiwart, an expert on US far-right militia groups, wrote a long piece in 2003 about protofacism in the US and how its ideas were being gradually mainstreamed by a chain of pundits and media organizations:
Personally, I still think full-on fascism is still unlikely in the US, but it's no longer unthinkable. Previously, serious concerns about fascism in the US were the provenance of ultra-radicals on the right and left. But now you can find plenty of political science professors both in the US and elsewhere soberly discussing the possibility.
Neither is true.
David Neiwart, an expert on US far-right militia groups, wrote a long piece in 2003 about protofacism in the US and how its ideas were being gradually mainstreamed by a chain of pundits and media organizations:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160106001734/http://cursor.org/...
It's a bit wandering, but I think it has turned out to be remarkably prescient.
Trump specifically has been compared for a long time to media-savvy populist strongmen like Hugo Chavez. E.g.:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election...
Personally, I still think full-on fascism is still unlikely in the US, but it's no longer unthinkable. Previously, serious concerns about fascism in the US were the provenance of ultra-radicals on the right and left. But now you can find plenty of political science professors both in the US and elsewhere soberly discussing the possibility.