Trump is the face of fascism and women are one of his targets

Once a leading prime-time propagandist on Fox News, Tucker Carlson is the embodiment of the type of angry, hyper-masculine face that animates the Trump campaign. He regularly embraces such vitriolic, anti-feminist bombast that it fits perfectly with one of the defining features of fascism.

Recently, Carlson introduced Trump at a rally in Georgia with a truly creepy speech that fantasized about “spanking” all those uppity girls and women who’ve dared to defy the far-right image of the submissive female: “There has to be a point at which Dad comes home. Yeah, that’s right, Dad comes home, and he’s pissed. Dad is pissed! He’s not vengeful, he loves his children, disobedient as they may be. And when Dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you, no it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.'”

That’s an exact quote.

And the crowd responded by chanting, “Daddy’s home!” and “Daddy Don!” Can there be any doubt that the MAGA faithful, prompted by Trump and Carlson, are fostering the worst impulses of virulent misogyny, toxic masculinity, and rape culture?

Late-night comedian Seth Meyer pointed out that Trump himself was the object of a spanking by his favorite porn star—performed with the Forbes magazine with his picture on the cover!

Seriously, though, the onslaught against women orchestrated by Trump and his media allies is just one more indication of his fascist impulses. As John Kelly, Trump’s longest-serving White House chief of staff, warned just last week, Trump “fits into the general definition of fascist.”

As American GIs were preparing to go to war against Hitler in WWII, the War Department informed them about fascism in a series of pamphlets designed “to help become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives, because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state. The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.”

Most significantly to our current topic, the pamphlet offers this truth:

“Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women.”

It’s most disturbing that Trump tried to reassure women, in a late September speech in Pennsylvania, with the following lines:

“You will no longer be in danger. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion—that’s all they talk about, abortion—because we have done something nobody else could have done.”

Is it any surprise that Trump permits speakers at his campaign rallies to disparage Kamala Harris as a prostitute with “pimp handlers”?

Can it get any worse? Yes.

Famous MAGA pastor and Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon is a rising star in the GOP. Webbon would like to repeal the 19th Amendment and revoke women’s right to vote because that’s “the Christian position.” He’s in support of a bill in Oklahoma that could require women who claim rape, but can’t prove it, should be publicly executed: “If you perjure yourself by bearing false witness accusing somebody else, whatever the penalty would have been for that person had they been found guilty, then that penalty should fall on your head for falsely accusing them. … False accusing, playing the victim when you’re actually not; you know how to end that real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.”

Let’s call Trump and his acolytes what they are: fascists, eager to place women in the subservient role where they will be seen and not heard. Eager to prosecute and punish “the enemy within.” An NPR investigation has revealed that since 2022, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison, or otherwise punish “radical left lunatics”—an ever-larger group that includes not just Democrats but “disloyal” Republicans like Liz Cheney, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, and all of the dozens of those former staff members from his first term who have publicly opposed him.

Trump and his MAGA allies have done lasting damage to our national civic culture. Even if he is soundly defeated in next week’s election, his presence will hang like the fabled Sword of Damocles over the Oval Office. And if he wins, he will not hesitate to use the sword to smite his enemies far and wide in order to execute his campaign of “revenge and retribution”—and all of you “uppity women” had best be prepared for mortal combat. Δ

John Ashbaugh takes no comfort in the fact that he’s a “him.” Send your comments by writing to editor@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 10, 2024.