Trump’s appearance at the Archdiocese of New York annual Al Smith charity dinner on Thursday was deranged, even for him. One attendee at the formal Waldorf Astoria banquet told me that “Trump was the most purposefully objectionable speaker in nearly 80 years.” Marianne LeVine and Isaac Arnsdorf reported that the senile, potty-mouthed sociopath mispronounced Vice President Kamala Harris’ name and said she had ‘no intelligence whatsoever.’ He made fun of her husband, Doug Emhoff, for an affair he acknowledged during a previous marriage. He questioned the manhood of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), at the same time belittling transgender people. He tendentiously emphasized former president Barack Obama’s middle name of Hussein, as he often does at his rallies, and used profanity to disparage former New York mayor Bill de Blasio. The only person off limits for Trump was himself [and fellow corrupt pos Eric Adams]... Disparaging both President Joe Biden and Harris, Trump said [projecting]: ‘We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child. … But enough about Kamala Harris.’”
Although there were many reactionaries in attendance, including MAGA Mike, RFK Jr and multibillionaire Blackstone criminal Stephen Schwarzman who cheered him, he was mostly booed and jeered. “Ammar Moussa, a spokesman for the Harris campaign,” they reported, “said in a statement Thursday that Trump ‘struggled to read scripted notes written by his handlers, repeatedly complaining that he couldn’t use a teleprompter. … The rare moments he was off script, he went on long incomprehensible rambles, reminding Americans how unstable he’s become.’”
Maybe Trump was acting out because of how angry he is at General Mark Milley, his former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2019-2023), who told Bob Woodward that Trump was a fundamental threat to the safety and integrity of the United States. “No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country… fascist to the core.”
Fascism scholar Anne Applebaum couldn’t agree more, noting this week that he sounds more like Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin by the day. She wrote that the kind of language Trump is using against his opponents comes straight out of Authoritarianism 101: “If you connect your opponents with disease, illness, and poisoned blood, if you dehumanize them as insects or animals, if you speak of squashing them or cleansing them as if they were pests or bacteria, then you can much more easily arrest them, deprive them of rights, exclude them, or even kill them. If they are parasites, they aren’t human. If they are vermin, they don’t get to enjoy freedom of speech, or freedoms of any kind. And if you squash them, you won’t be held accountable… In using this language, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes. ‘I haven’t read Mein Kampf,’ he declared, unprovoked, during one rally— an admission that he knows what Hitler’s manifesto contains, whether or not he has actually read it. ‘If you don’t use certain rhetoric,’ he told an interviewer, ‘if you don’t use certain words, and maybe they’re not very nice words, nothing will happen.’”
His talk of mass deportation is equally calculating. When he suggests that he would target both legal and illegal immigrants, or use the military arbitrarily against U.S. citizens, he does so knowing that past dictatorships have used public displays of violence to build popular support. By calling for mass violence, he hints a his admiration for these dictatorshipst but also demonstrates disdain for the rule of law and prepares his followers to accept the idea that his regime could, like its predecessors, break the law with impunity.
These are not jokes, and Trump is not laughing. Nor are the people around him. Delegates at the Republican National Convention held up prefabricated signs: mass deportation now. Just this week, when Trump was swaying to music at a surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan: Trump Was Right About Everything. This is language borrowed directly from Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally, the scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted a photograph of a building in Mussolini’s Italy displaying his slogan: Mussolini Is Always Right.
These phrases have not been put on posters and banners at random in the final weeks of an American election season. With less than three weeks left to go, most candidates would be fighting for the middle ground, for the swing voters. Trump is doing the exact opposite. Why? There can be only one answer: because he and his campaign team believe that by using the tactics of the 1930s, they can win. The deliberate dehumanization of whole groups of people; the references to police, to violence, to the “bloodbath” that Trump has said will unfold if he doesn’t win; the cultivation of hatred not only against immigrants but also against political opponents— none of this has been used successfully in modern American politics.
But neither has this rhetoric been tried in modern American politics. Several generations of American politicians have assumed that American voters, most of whom learned to pledge allegiance to the flag in school, grew up with the rule of law, and have never experienced occupation or invasion, would be resistant to this kind of language and imagery. Trump is gambling— knowingly and cynically— that we are not.
To get a sense of how unusual it is for a presidential candidate to close on a message of American Carnage turned up to 11, Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson, contacted Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University who has written several books about presidents and elections. He told them that “From a mainstream candidate, I don’t think we’ve seen this kind of tapping into the most vicious, nativist, racial backlash. He doesn’t even really use code words or anything. He’s just all in.”
Zelizer connected Trump’s escalating rhetoric to the fact he’s has gotten away with so much over the years.
“If you can be part of an insurrection against an election you lose and still end up as the very well-positioned nominee for your party a few years later, why edit yourself? He’s not someone who’s guided by any kind of internal moral ethic,” he said.
Didn’t Merrick Garland and Joe Biden understand that? Was it too difficult to figure out? They should have paid closer attention to moral compasses like Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Jamie Raskin, Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Adam Kinzinger and Adam Schiff, men and women who will be remembered— certainly unlike Garland— as our guardians of democracy.
When I was a dj at the Jesuit-owned San Francisco radio station, KUSF, I thought it was important to warn my listeners about the threat of creeping fascism. One song I played regularly was “Amok” by Düsseldorf-based Ledernacken. Trump didn’t use the song at his weird Monday swaying rally in the Philly suburb of Oaks but it delves into regular Trumpish themes: violence, chaos and uncontrolled rage, consistent with the literal meaning of Amok in German (as in “Du läufst Amok!”— “running amok”). The track blends aggressive, industrial rhythms with dark, unsettling lyrics, creating an atmosphere that reflects Trump-like mental instability and destructive impulses. Ledernacken's style was known for defiance and critique of societal norms. These lyrics suggest the experience of someone losing control, spiraling into violent behavior as well as a metaphorical critique of societal madness and the darker aspects of human nature.
Listening back today, “Amok” reminds me of the way MAGA exploits rage and aggression to push its destructive, fascist agenda. Like Trump, fascism thrives on a sense of chaos— whether through rhetoric that incites violence or actual policies that encourage brutal enforcement of power. In the song, the protagonist loses control, representing a breakdown in rationality. Fascist leaders, including Trump, capitalize on emotional, irrational responses rather than logical discourse, creating environments where fear, anger and mob mentality override reason, leading people to make dangerous, reactionary choices. Think back to the J-6 insurrection, which mirrors the song’s depiction of someone “running amok” with no regard for consequences. The MAGA movement, like Naziism did, encourages a tribal loyalty that dismisses evidence, reason and debate, leading to destructive actions taken purely out of emotional allegiance to the leader. The line “Komm und tanz den Tanz des Todes!” (“Come and dance the dance of death!”) is an invitation to engage in reckless, self-destructive behavior. Fascism, at its core, is a death cult— inviting followers into a dance of destruction, be it through wars, purges, or other forms of systemic violence. The glorification of violence, even to the detriment of the state and people, is a hallmark of fascist ideology. Señor T’s glorification of violent acts— whether in calling for the harsh treatment of protesters, promising to pardon January 6 insurrectionists or advocating policies that are inhumane (like family separation and mass deportation)— all reflect this macabre “dance” where destruction is central to power.
"Amok's" depiction of madness and chaos fits well into the narrative of MAGA-fascism, which is, in the end, nothing but a descent into societal madness. The irrational, authoritarian tendencies of leaders like Trump can only result in policies and actions that seem like a de-evolution into chaos— attacks on democratic norms, disregard for the rule of law and the incitement of political violence. Trump's continuous rejection of legal norms, his personal vendettas against critics and efforts to undermine democratic elections (like his claims of a stolen election) can be compared to the madness of the song’s protagonist, who is overtaken by violent impulses and wreaks havoc without concern for the consequences. And like him, Trump has consistently used divisive, violent rhetoric to push his agenda, stoking his followers' mindless rage. More often than not, especially of late, his speeches echo the same uncontrollable fury seen in the song, channeling frustration into hate-filled action.
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