What is fascism? And why does Harris say Trump is a fascist?

News

What is fascism? And why does Harris say Trump is a fascist?

2024-10-25 08:29 Last Updated At：08:40

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris was asked this week if she thought Donald Trump was a fascist, and she replied, “Yes, I do.” She subsequently called him the same thing herself, saying voters don't want “a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

But what exactly is a fascist? And does the meaning of the word shift when viewed through a historical or political prism — especially so close to the end of a fraught presidential race?

Here's a closer look:

An authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is often associated with the far right and characterized by a dictatorial leader who uses military forces to help suppress political and civil opposition.

History's two most famous fascists were Nazi chief Adolf Hitler in Germany and Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Known as Il Duce, or “the duke,” Mussolini headed the National Fascist Party, which was symbolized by an eagle clutching a fasces — a bundle of rods with an axe among them.

At Mussolini's urging, in October 1922, thousands of “Blackshirts,” or “squadristi,” made up an armed fascist militia that marched on Rome, vowing to seize power. Hitler's Nazis similarly relied on a militia, known as the “Brownshirts.” Both men eventually imposed single-party rule and encouraged violence in the streets. They used soldiers, but also fomented civilian unrest that pit loyalists against political opponents and larger swaths of everyday society.

Hitler and Mussolini censored the press and issued sophisticated propaganda. They played up racist fears and manipulated not just their active supporters but everyday citizens.

Today, the term fascism has taken on a looser political definition and is often evoked as a catch-all for efforts to spread oppression and racism — as well as to decry dictators or leaders who embrace totalitarian tactics.

It is not just the left that has used the term, denoucning a push rightward in the U.S. and in many parts of the world. Some conservatives decried lockdowns imposed during the coronavirus pandemic as “fascist.”

Hitler and Mussolini are its two biggest names, but it gets murkier from there.

Does military dictator Augusto Pinochet's 17-year, ironfisted rule in Chile qualify? What about Indonesian strongman Suharto or Spain's Francisco Franco? Were the regimes of Ferenc Szálasi in Hungary and Brazil's Plínio Salgado fascist? Where does American neo-Nazi leader David Duke fit?

Indeed, critics sometimes describe modern U.S. extremist groups — including movements that have cheered Trump, like the Proud Boys — as fascists or neo-fascists. Those labels may be more steeped in political ideology than clear historical parallels.

The vice president has long criticized Trump as being mentally unstable and not a true believer in, or defender of, the nation's founding democratic principles.

She notes that Trump suggested he'd deploy the military to target political opponents, including people he has decried as the “enemy from within.” The former president has long talked about attacking his enemies and declared to his supporters that he would be their “retribution.”

“He’s talking about the American people. He’s talking about journalists, judges, nonpartisan election officials,” Harris said Wednesday night at a CNN town hall.

Trump has threatened to take action against television networks and news organizations for coverage he deems unfavorable. And, when now-President Joe Biden challenged him during a 2020 debate to denounce the Proud Boys, Trump replied: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”

A mob of pro-Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, seeking to overturn Trump's loss to Biden after Trump gave a speech propagating falsehoods about the election and exhorting the crowd to “fight like hell.” Among the people imprisoned in connection with Jan. 6 was the leader of the Proud Boys, accused of orchestrating a failed plot to keep Trump in power.

Harris has been building toward the characterization. During an interview with her in Detroit on Oct. 15, radio host Charlamagne Tha God, said Trump was increasingly embracing fascism and asked, "Why can’t we just say it?” “Yes, we can say that,” Harris replied.

Then, Trump's longest-serving former chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, warned that the former president meets the definition of a fascist. He said Trump, while in office, suggested that Hitler “did some good things," and that Trump valued personal loyalty above the Constitution.

Trump's campaign has accused Kelly of lying and brushed aside Harris' criticism, with spokesperson Karoline Leavitt responding, “Kamala will say anything to distract from her open border invasion and record high inflation.” Trump has described Jan. 6 as a “day of love.”

Trump himself rejected the fascist label in an interview Thursday with Fox News.

“Everyone knows that’s not true,” he said. “They call me everything until something sticks.”

They are divided.

Robert Paxton, a Columbia University professor emeritus who wrote “The Anatomy of Fascism,” has cited the Jan. 6 attack as evidence of Trump's fascism.

“It’s bubbling up from below in very worrisome ways, and that’s very much like the original fascisms,” Paxton told The New York Times Magazine in a piece published this week. “It’s the real thing. It really is.”

Some do not see Trump as meeting the classic historical definition of a fascist, but rather increasingly moving toward politics that have fascist tendencies.

David Kertzer, a Brown University professor and Italian historian, said he was “a little horrified” to hear Harris call Trump a fascist given the term's “historical resonance.” He said there are some similarities, including “mass movement, a cult of the strongman.” He noted that Trump sometimes juts out his chin, though he isn't prone to tearing off his shirt and bare his chest, like Mussolini did.

Kertzer said that fascism involved "a one-party state, a banishing of all opposition newspapers and jailing people who disagreed,” and that, while Trump has talked about jailing opponents, he's not moved toward embracing other key facets of the movement.

“There are certain echoes, but in terms of turning the Republican Party into a one-party state, that seems rather farfetched at the moment,” said Kertzer, author of “The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe.”

David Clay Large, a senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies, said “the alarm bells now going off may be somewhat overblown."

“Our democratic institutions, however beleaguered, remain much stronger than those of the European nations that turned fascist in the ‘20s and ’30s,” Large said. Still, he added, there would be “a real danger to these institutions” in a second Trump presidential term.

The rise of far-right parties across Europe and Trump’s control of the GOP, Large said, carves out “an entirely new situation: The center cannot hold as it once did.”

Add to that mix social media, which in the digital age mirrors the use of propaganda, amping up emotions and division, he said.

"Where everyone’s an expert, we’ve lost respect for factuality, objectivity, and actual expert opinion,” Large said.

—- Kellman reported from London.

Prosecutors seek resentencing for Erik and Lyle Menendez in 1989 killings of their parents

2024-10-25 08:33 Last Updated At：08:40

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Prosecutors recommended Thursday Erik and Lyle Menendez be resentenced for the 1989 killings of their parents in the family’s Beverly Hills home, providing the brothers with a chance at freedom after 34 years behind bars.

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced during a Thursday news conference that his office would recommend the brothers receive a new sentence of 50 years to life. Because they were under 26 years old at the time of the crimes, they would be eligible for parole immediately, he said.

Resentencing must now be approved by a judge, and the state parole board would have to sign off on the brothers’ release.

“I came to a place where I believe, under the law, resentencing is appropriate," Gascón said. He said some members of his office oppose the decision.

Prosecutors filed the petition Thursday and a hearing before a judge could come within the next month or so.

The Menendez brothers were sentenced in 1996 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, admitted they fatally shot their entertainment executive father, Jose Menendez, and their mother, Kitty Menendez. The brothers said they feared their parents were about to kill them to stop people from finding out that Jose Menendez had sexually abused Erik Menendez for years.

The brothers’ extended family has pleaded for their release, saying they deserve to be free after decades behind bars. Several family members have said that in today’s world — which is more aware of the impact of sexual abuse — the brothers would not have been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life.

Multiple members of their extended family, including their aunt Joan Andersen VanderMolen, sat in the first few rows of Thursday's news conference. VanderMolen was Kitty Menendez’s sister and has publicly supported their release. Family members said they flew across the country on six hours’ notice to be in attendance.

Mark Geragos, an attorney for the brothers, would not say whether he had spoken to Lyle and Erik on Thursday but said he believes they have heard about the district attorney's decision. Geragos said a “reentry plan” has already been drafted if the brothers get released to help them reacclimate to being free.

Anamaria Baralt, a niece of Jose Menendez, said the district attorney's “brave and necessary" decision means “Lyle and Erik can finally begin to heal from the trauma of their past.”

Not all Menendez family members support resentencing. Attorneys for Milton Andersen, the 90-year-old brother of Kitty Menendez, filed a legal brief asking the court to keep the brothers’ original punishment. “They shot their mother, Kitty, reloading to ensure her death,” Andersen’s attorneys said in a statement Thursday. “The evidence remains overwhelmingly clear: the jury’s verdict was just, and the punishment fits the heinous crime.”

Geragos declined to comment on the statement by Andersen’s attorneys.

Gascón said he made the final decision only an hour before the news conference and that family members were told just minutes before.

Despite their life sentences, Gascón said the brothers worked on redemption and rehabilitation inside prison.

“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” he said.

Though Kitty Menendez was not accused of abusing her sons, she appears to have facilitated the abuse, according to her sons' legal filings. One cousin testified during the brothers’ first trial that Lyle told her he was too scared to sleep in his room because his father would come in and touch his genitals. When the cousin told Kitty Menendez, she “angrily dragged Lyle upstairs by his arm,” the petition said.

Another family member testified that when Jose Menendez was in the bedroom with one of the boys, no one was allowed to walk down the hallway outside.

The Menendez brothers were tried twice for their parents’ murders, with the first trial ending in a hung jury.

Prosecutors at the time contended that there was no evidence of molestation, and many details in the story of sexual abuse were not permitted in the second trial. The district attorney’s office also said back then that the brothers were after their parents’ multimillion-dollar estate.

The LA district attorney is in the middle of a tough reelection fight against former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, who has blamed Gascón’s progressive reform policies for recent high-profile murders and increased retail crime.

Gascón said Thursday that his office has recommended resentencing for some 300 offenders, including people behind bars for murder.

Hochman on Thursday questioned the timing of the Gascón's announcement, coming less than two weeks before the election and calling it a “desperate political move.”

He said he is unable to form his own opinion on the case without access to confidential records and relevant witnesses.

“If I become DA and the case is still pending at that time, I will conduct a review consistent with how I would review any case,” Hochman said.

Geragos said the DA took the case seriously long before there was any talk of him losing reelection.

Laurie Levenson, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, warned that the judge would not likely be a “rubber stamp” on the resentencing recommendation due to dissent within Gascón’s office.

“That puts the judge actually in a very challenging position,” Levenson said, who noted that she had not heard of any cases until recently where the head of the office disagreed with other lawyers involved in the case. Ultimately, Gascón chose the “safest route” for his decision — leaving it up to the court and parole board, she said.

Geragos has said he's hopeful the brothers could be freed by Thanksgiving. Levenson called that deadline “awfully hopeful."

The Menendez case has gained new traction in recent weeks after Netflix began streaming the true-crime drama “ Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”

Roy Rossello, a former member of the Latin pop group Menudo, also recently came forward saying he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez, the boys’ father, when he was a teen in the 1980s.

Rossello spoke about his abuse in the 2023 Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed.” His allegations are part of the evidence listed in the petition filed last year by the Menendez brothers’ attorney, seeking a review of their case. Rossello’s assertion that he was raped twice by Jose Menendez is part of the Menendez brothers’ petition.

Menudo was signed under RCA Records, which Jose Menendez headed at the time.