December 5, 2023 - 10:35am
Articles in the forthcoming edition of the Atlantic are bound together by a shared theme, one that will be familiar to readers of the magazine over the past seven years. In the January/February issue of the publication, 24 writers “imagine what a second Trump term would look like”, with new pieces spread across the Atlantic’s website.
David Frum heralds the “the danger ahead”; Caitlin Dickerson cautions against Trump’s “anything-goes approach to immigration enforcement”; Anne Applebaum predicts “the end of American influence”. Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg’s prefatory note is titled, “A Warning”, and accuses the former president of “rotten, depraved” behaviour, adding that “both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to America.” The themed edition follows an article from the same outlet last month which claims that the former president has “fully embraced the language of fascism”.
The Atlantic is not alone in sharing its fears about a second Trump administration, nor in pulling the fascism card to describe his rhetoric. Last month, an edition of the Economist featured on its cover a familiar lip-puckered silhouette, with the accompanying editorial titled, “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024”. That assessment came days after a New York Times poll found that Joe Biden trailed his White House predecessor in five out of six key battleground states ahead of next year’s election.
Most polling aggregators now have Trump leading the race for the Oval Office, in some cases by as many as six percentage points. While his 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton came as a shock to America’s establishment press, a victory for the Republican hopeful in 2024 is now being treated, if not with grim inevitability, at least as a very plausible outcome. The New Yorker, to give one example, has recently suggested that “the warnings about Trump in 2024 are getting louder”.
Meanwhile, on Monday CNN’s Stephen Collinson outlined “the profound choice that voters could face next year”, citing Trump’s “increasingly unapologetic anti-democratic rhetoric”. The writer claimed that the former president’s “political career is built on an edifice of a spectacular falsehood”, and that a second Trump term “would risk destroying the principle that presidents do not hold monarchical power”.
The same day, the Washington Post pointed to “the fear of a looming Trump dictatorship”, interviewing several “scholars of 20th-century fascism”. The previous week, the paper had published an opinion piece by columnist Robert Kagan which argued that “a Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable”, and which, perhaps inadvertently, revealed the extent to which the anti-Trump press needs its villain. “Even today,” Kagan conceded, “the news media can scarcely resist following Trump’s every word and action.” What’s more, the Democrats are in “a mounting panic” over the likelihood of him winning the election.
This commentary has been exacerbated by eye-catching accusations from some of Trump’s noted political opponents. Speaking to CBS News on Sunday, former Republican Congresswoman and longtime Trump critic Liz Cheney argued that she would prefer a Democrat victory in 2024 due to fears that the US is “sleepwalking into dictatorship”. Last month, his old nemesis Hillary Clinton compared the Republican to Adolf Hitler and warned that his return to the White House “would be the end of our country as we know it”. Appearing on ABC’s The View, she warned that “Trump is telling us what he intends to do”, a departure from her previous claims about her rival’s dishonesty.
As America’s press once again prepares to circle the wagons against Trump’s impending return, discussion of the former president’s “violent and authoritarian rhetoric” will dominate print and cable news. He is a “dictator”, a “threat to democracy”, and the harbinger of American fascism on the world stage. Trump’s liberal critics used similar language during his 2016 campaign; they would do well to remember the effect that had.
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SubscribeWhat’s missing from the entire debate is any self-examination. As in the UK, the US elites who indulge in this hysterical behaviour have been on the receiving end of the largest upward transfer of wealth in history – yet it never seems to occur to any of them that phenomena such as Trump – or Brexit – might in some way be a consequence of their own parasitism.
I think it is, more precisely, a consequence of the static or declining real incomes of half the American population since the 1990s as a result mainly of globalisation and immigration.
One symptom of Trump Derangement Syndrome is that those operating within its bubble are genuinely baffled by the attitudes and voting intentions of Trump supporters – and wonder if they can all be racists or other “deplorables”. They simply don’t get it – despite the fact that it was Bill Clinton who said “It’s the economy, stupid.” This is still true provided one focuses on real individual incomes not headline GDP growth figures.
This perspective is now spreading from the original Mid West middle aged Trump core vote to those under 30 who are suffering from similar strength economic headwinds as the original victims of globalisation. In 2016 Hilary had the support of about 60% of the under 30s and Trump only 30%. This time Trump and Biden enjoy equal support. According to the polling, the reasons for this shift are explicitly economic. It may determine the result.
Perhaps they think, “We did some field work out in Flyover Country in 2016 to try to understand these rubes who don’t want to see ‘Hamilton’ on stage like normal people — remember those sympathetic studies by Kathy and Arlie and Chris and Jennifer? — but even though we understand them perfectly and feel somewhat sorry for the poor sods, they keep voting for this fascist! Best to just crush them.”
Jonathan Pie made a video about this in 2016 (about the only sensible thing he did). They insult Trump supporters and Brexiteers and seem surprised when voters reject them. The same is happening in Italy, Netherlands, probably France and Germany.
Like you said, not the slightest self examination; I can’t recall the quote but I think they’d like to elect another set of voters.
As a foreigner, I can’t understand Americans’ use of the term ‘fascist’. Under Trump, where was the prohibition of free speech or free assembly? Where was the ethno-nationalism? Where was the aggressive military acquisition of foreign land? Where was the corporate cronyism?
Sorry my progressive American friends, you’re playing into every stereotype of Americans knowing nothing about history, and nothing about the rest of the world.
There was not. In fact, one could argue that many of those features have been more prevalent under Biden.
It’s not just Americans using the term. In Europe any one who want a a sane immigration policy will be insulted invthe same way
It’s just our typical American hyperbole, amplified by demagogic Democrats.
But when they use such language for Trump, what can they possibly say MORE if we face an actual threat to the republic?
The neocons is really hate Trump, they won’t forgive him for not finishing off Syria and going to war with Iran
99% of the people that use the word “fascist” in a pejorative sense don’t know anything about Fascism as a movement and ideology. To them it just means someone who is not a bleeding heart liberal.
In terms of state control of resources, industry and commerce, the subjection of the individual to the “collective good”, censorship and authoritarianism, I would say, today’s Leftist “progressives” would be on board with about 90% of fascist ideas.
Indeed I would have been honoured had I lived in a time to earn the ‘Fasces’.
99% of the people who use the word fascist in a pejorative sense do it to try to unilaterally exclude somebody they don’t agree with from the democratic debate.
“Fascism” has lost its original meaning. It is now merely a slur used against anyone to the right of a centrist Republican.
I’m sure all 12 viewers of CNN will be terrified.
Don’t be ridiculous; CNN has a huge viewership of people who are stuck at airports.
The cynic in me sees this whole affair as an attempt to boost viewership, sales and circulation. These US alphabet networks have only suffered losses since Trump lost in 2020. They need him.
It is the Biden administration that tried to establish a Department of mis-Information, not Trump’s. Biden’s FBI raided the homes of school board critics and traditional Catholics, sometimes carting out their victims in handcuffs.
There are many current and present regimes that resort to such tactics. Trump’s wasn’t one of them.
Anyone who mentions Hitler first in a debate or interview or speech has already lost. Any argument that appeals to that analogy for its support has revealed that is is unsupportable by reason or fact.
The Boy who SCREAMED “wolf” too often.
Tump is obnoxious, an ahole, arrogant, and crass, but that does not make him a dictator or a fascist.
But ask yourself this; “Was the US better off with Trump in office or with the uniparty running things or with Biden?”.
I think what the media and the punditry fear more than anything is that the American voters just simply have stopped listening to them, they have lost the ability to control a narrative and an outcome.
Now, do I think that Trump will not be nearly as naive this time? Yep
Do I think he will look to break, completely shatter, the powers, open and hidden, of those who went after him? Yep
Are either of those things necessarily bad?
Jolly good news that he’s on his way back.Let’s hope they don’t shoot him!
At least he didn’t reduce the USofA to “Rogue State” status by indulging in completely illegal and disgraceful foreign wars/ invasions unlike the other bellicose cretins.
He should also pursue the Hillary beast with the utmost prejudice.
Trump should have initiated action against Hillary while he was in office. She is a scandalous liar – not that all politicians aren’t, but she is especially duplicitous – all the while moral posturing. Sickening.
A nob of antisemites were protesting a Philadelphia restaurant two days ago, only because the owner is an Israeli Jew. But ya, keep telling us Trump is the real fasc!st. If he somehow manages to win the next election, cities across the nation will be torched. It will make Jan. 6 look like a pillow fight.
The American media was driven mad by Trump’s win in 2016 and has never recovered. It showed how wide was the gap between flyover-country Americans and themselves – something good liberals usually treasure, secure in their ability to control the public conversation and direct the pitiful wretches in their ranch homes to Correct Thought. Everything we’re seeing today, from the Trump panic to the sub-rosa but increasingly public attempt to control what may be said online, is about them desperately trying to regain control.
The single most remarkable feature of Western politics today is the inability, indeed refusal, among liberal elites to analyse developments staring them in the face.
Trump, Brexit, and other manifestations of grass roots voter anger, are arrogantly dismissed as uneducated hordes with malign intent seduced by demagogues. Even now, some eight years on, there is little evidence of effort to gain insight into events and develop politics accordingly. Instead, we see a doubling down on ignorant rhetoric about fascists, racists, dictatorships…. Wealthy, expensively suited, grown ups with years of political experience, and on intimate terms with major editorial boards, have adopted the excitable vernacular of screeching student leftists.
The worrying irony is that in so far as there is evidence of drift to reactionary attitudes, it is mostly found among liberals. The picking away at the frayed edges of free speech. The use of courts to stymie political mandates of elected governments. And of late, the shoegazing and appeasement as anti-Semites take to the streets.
Here here!
He is an enemy of those who welcome the influence of Beijing and Moscow as they quietly fund and foster the socially divisive politics pursued by the US Democrats in the name of mobilising a young and progressive graduate and corporate base.
Hence, enormous international forces are manoeuvring against Mr Trump’s new campaign, while we also note that Obama effectively legislated for US media to pump out grotesque levels of propaganda freely.
I voted against Trump in both elections. But if he’s the GOP’s nominee, I’m SO tempted to vote for him. Because screw them.
I would
I do wonder if the attitude you express is gaining currency. I’m a Brit and wouldn’t pretend to know how politics is playing out on the ground across the US.
Trump benefitted from a ‘screw them’ attitude in 2016. As luck would have it the electoral college system meant he prevailed despite Clinton receiving more votes. Forward to 2020, he received circa 5m more votes than Obama in his pomp, yet was well beaten by the never Trump vote coming out to support Biden.
This time around, there’s a sense (my reading at least) that Trump is actually the less weird choice on offer. Biden gives the impression that his handlers are working full time to keep him from intimacy with a coffin. The Democrat establishment in general looks like a parade of museum artefacts. Its youth wing, that’ll be anyone under 60, is stark raving bonkers.
The screw them vote might just be the voice of reason in 2024.
What is most strange is that pretty much every one of the Democrat’s fearmongering accusations of what a Trump presidency would bring about, have actually been made manifest by the Biden presidency, most notably the politicisation and weaponisation of the Justice system.
‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘if Trump is President he’ll go after his political opponents and hound them through the law courts’. Even more terrifying was the claim that the application and severity of the law would be different based on nothing but which party you support.
The fact that so many refuse to see it shows how effective the propagandised news agenda can be. There seem to be plenty of people willing – indeed eager – to be outraged, wanting to be herded into fits of choreographed indignation, or distracted to the point that they refuse to see things that are happening in plain sight right in front of them.
One way to stop the Trump juggernaut: field a strong, centrist, Democratic candidate.
They stopped making those at least 30 years ago.
and that would be????Gavin Newsom?
OH HELL NO
Who exactly would that be? The closest candidate to that description is Trump. There’s no one else on the field, or in the wings.
In the January/February issue of the publication, 24 writers “imagine what a second Trump term would look like”
I think they should start with Justinian II’s second term and work their way up from there.
Well, it’s not difficult, is it? All the Democrats have to do is find a better candidate than Boden.
The Biden who won in a landslide against Trump last time?
And there’s more! At the usual time of day I note.
Why has the Trump rhetoric hit hyperdrive now – all seemingly at the same time? The polls have been crushing Biden for months, so why is the regime media losing its mind at the same time?
Remember how far behind Obama was in the polls against Romney a year out from the election?
How did that turn out for ya?!?!?
Regime media? Got the tinfoil hat a little tight today, Jimmy?!?!
Well, I turn my back for five minutes and here you are again. The same old yobbish jeering and sneering.
Let’s put aside the question of Trump’s character and intentions for a moment and ask this question: how could he become a dictator? This is a serious question. Every dictator or autocrat in history that I’m familiar with had either the military openly on his side, or had a paramilitary group such as the Blackshirts or Brownshirts (or, for a more modern example, Maduro’s bully-boys in Venezuela) to keep him installed and do his dirty work. Trump has neither. Yes, he may have broad popular support but, however distasteful this may be to a lot of people, it’s not really the same thing. Perhaps these Trump alarmists think that the U.S. electorate would simply allow him to stay in office indefinitely and at will and suspend laws at a whim but, if this is the case, why don’t they come out and say it? They don’t. I don’t think this is because they would have to slur much of the electorate if they openly took this position (I doubt this concerns them much), but because, deep down, I think they don’t really believe he’d be a dictator as the term is properly understood. They just fear that he’d be a very effective opponent of the left.
It is my opinion, based on three years in the US Army a long time ago, that the military probably likes Trump better than they do Biden. That does not translate into a willingness to commit unconstitutional acts just because he says so.
The officers’ oath is to the Constitution, not the President, and I think many take that oath seriously.
No one in their right mind who’s bought gasoline or groceries, visited a large coastal city, or watched any of the Congressional testimonies of Biden appointees, would vote for anyone BUT Trump, assuming he’s the nominee.
Democrats seem to have no understanding whatsoever of basic macroeconomics, nor of really anything resembling common sense, and seem to believe that simply lying and trying to redefine observable realities will change the results of their disastrous policies.
Putting aside what some of the Democrat leaning media think about prospect of Trump winning in 24 what the Republicans and MAGAs perhaps should be concerned about is his total self absorption. Has he got a policy platform beyond revenge?
As it is he’d be a lame duck President after 2yrs (as he’s limited to 2 terms). Maybe less for him if Republicans lose the House.
So whilst he might win, then what?
Whereas with Haley they might actually accomplish something.
And US avoids a likely constitutional crisis.
This is a legit criticism of Trump. He’s a narcissistic blowhard and I’m dumbfounded why GOP supporters continue to rally behind him. Ultimately, I would rather have a leader with no agenda, than the progressive, destructive agenda being pursued by the Dems.
Trump is too dumb to be a dictator.
However, the people who control him are not and this is a dangerous time for America and the west. Trump’s obsequious sucking up to Putin and Ji will have real consequences and if he is mad enough to let this handlers pull the US out of NATO then there could be serious consequences.
All because a few rubes feel hard done by because their bigotry is no longer tolerated by normal folks.
Indeed, Trump is too dumb – period. But quite a lot of US presidents have also been dumb. Reagan was dumber than dumb but is seen to be a good president. The problem is that Trump is outside of the Republican machine, a machine which would control him if he wanted to be very, very dumb. Really, the Republicans have to get behind Trump and I don’t think they will. Trump’s controllers will not be part of the machine; they will be loose cannon.
More than anything else, I think that Trump just wants to be liked/respected. The opposite of your downside (NATO) is that he might actually be good and stand up against his controllers and then – would be remembered as one of the good presidents. A 50/50 chance. Not good odds for the world.
OK, some of the anti-Trump rhetoric is over the top and may work to Trump’s advantage. But what does Rob Lownie think of Trump? Would a second Trump term be good for the U.S., the world? I think not.
Why not?
Was the first Trump term good for the US, or the world?
The trouble really escalated with Biden…
It was quite good for the US, but not so much everyone else. This was because Trump quit passing out American largesse and money, and started calling out nations that wouldn’t help themselves.
Yes it was. And we weren’t on the precipice of another world war like today, although that is what these same useful idiots proclaimed would happen with Trump as President in 2016. And the high pitched shrill proclaiming the end of democracy? It was the Dems who coordinated the shutdown of free speech with large social media conglomerates and federal agencies, not Trump.
It’s not censorship when we do it. It’s just channeling the discussion in the right direction.
Yes, it was.