Noam Chomsky already branded the US a fascist nation. I was actually relieved to see him use the term because I had come to that conclusion myself already, but was afraid to use the term. I still don't make use of it much, though, because it is historically a loaded word and folks here don't use it - hardly ever, that is.
Another problem with the word fascist is that there are many ways to use it in different contexts. It is harder to grasp than what is known as its counterpart, communism.
For me, the word fascism points to a majority or an elite that controls society more than that society can control the majority or the elite. In other words: something is off where natural power is concerned. In a fascist nation, power is more in the hands of the majority/the elite than in the hands of society as a whole.
This fits the US to a T of course, because only the majority sits in the seats of our political decision makers. The minority voters all end up empty-handed. District elections are group elections. The individual is subordinate to the group outcome. I know that most folks say that the US is the most individualistic nation in the world. This is so not true, because in politics the individual is important only as that stone that helps tip the balance this way or that way. The stone itself is muted in any other respect.
Do I consider Trump a fascist? Any American president not interested in full representation is automatically tainted. Trump is tainted just a bit oddly. Make that orange.
In the United States minorities never win because only the majorities of the voters end up getting the seats.
https://medium.com/carre4/why-minorities-embrace-winner-take-all-f81b22b7f72
Minorities have to sneak their way in, and do so sometimes quite openly, publicly and successfully. If we have just a Red and a Blue party, then the odd color that tries to sneak in can be declared as yellow. In the case of Trump supporters, they colored the Red party orange with their yellow forcefulness. But look carefully and one can see how all kinds of yellow tries to infiltrate both Red and Blue parties, simply because it wants to get heard.
Yellow represents the unrepresented political position, and is the evidence that this is indeed a fascist nation for it cannot get expressed in its natural way. Red and Blue are truly in control, and more so than the voters are in control of Red and Blue.
It does not matter if one party wants to be fully democratic and implements parts of their program when it can. This one party cannot implement all. What makes this a fascist outcome is that interest groups end up with all control behind the scenes, being larger than what the one party can accomplish. These special interest groups are getting what they want because both parties can never fully implement their programs, leaving enough space for special interest groups to (ab)use society as it pleases. The political doughnut hole that sits right in the center of our 18th century two-party system cannot be overcome by the voters. That is the fascist part of our nation.
I chuckle when I think of the troupe that ransacked the Capitol. I dislike of course that people got killed or hurt badly and that damage was sustained. But there was never a coup possible, not even if Trump had been there himself. As such, the fascist ideal of a one-party regime did not succeed and will likely never succeed. It was just a small band of people with this weird idea in mind that their day of revolution had come. How bizarre that they even thought it was possible. They had not counted the political doughnut hole in with their calculations.
Yet were they the only fascist part in our nation? The fascist ideal of not giving the voters their natural power, not providing political emancipation for all, and that was established already more than two centuries ago. The founding fathers placed a fascist element in our voting system and are therefore responsible for incorporating the fascist outcomes in our society.
The voter is not the starting point of our political power. Rather, the voting collective is. And that makes our nation fascist in nature.
Okay, I have used the word fascist more times now in this one response than I have used it in the last ten years combined.
