Democrats like to hurl around the charge of fascism at Republicans. Quiz: from 1964 to the present, which major Republican candidate for president was NOT charged with this sobriquet? Answer: Gerald Ford (at least I couldn’t find any evidence for this).
You have to give the Democrats credit. They are past and present masters of claiming that Republicans are Nazis, Hitlers, fascists.
Goldwater was definitely Hitler. Martin Luther King, Senator J. William Fulbright, and California Gov. Pat Brown all said so and who would know better than these worthies? Said baseball legend Jackie Robinson, about a Goldwater speech, “I would say that I now believe I know how it felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.”
We can all be confident Nixon was Hitler, because this was George McGovern’s considered opinion. If you don’t believe him, famous artist Andy Warhol will be happy to set you straight.
Reagan? If you doubt he was a Hitler you just aren’t paying attention. In the view of Rep. William Clay, D-Missouri, he wanted to “replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf.”
What is this fascism business anyway? You don’t have to have a Hitler mustache, or wear heavy jack boots, or do the goose step, or throw innocent people in jail or “disappear” them to be a fascist. Socialists do some of this too, as well as do apolitical dictators.
What fascism is, at least from an economic perspective, is a system of heavy governmental regulation of industry. Hitler was not a socialist, he was a fascist. He never nationalized Messerschmitt, nor Volkswagen, nor BMW nor Mercedes Benz. Instead, he subjected them to orders: get me x number of tanks, y number of airplanes, etc. He even allowed these companies a limited amount of freedom: they could choose the color of these machines, the design of the interiors, etc.
In sharp contrast, well, maybe not that sharp, socialism is an economic system in which the government nationalizes all the factors of production. Under pure socialism, citizens are to be allowed to own their toothbrushes, underwear, maybe even a bicycle or two, but cannot open a restaurant, or start up a furniture store, or a factory, or a mine, or rent out apartments to others. Those are all a monopoly of the state.
So who is who? It is clear that if anyone is not a fascist, it is Donald Trump. He has called for deregulation of business, not regulation. And during his four years in office, he carried out this policy, the exact opposite of fascism.
Is Donald Trump still pushing for deregulation? You bet your boots he is. His middle name might as well be “Deregulation.” He has jumped down the throats of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion fanatics with both feet. DEI is in effect a regulation against excellence and merit. Martin Luther King Jr. must now be happy that people can be judged not on the basis of their skin color, but rather on “the content of their character.” What do you call the vast pruning of the bureaucrats who infest Washington DC with their regulations? I call it deregulation. In his first occupancy of the White House, Mr. Trump insisted that for every new regulation, two old ones must be rescinded. He has now upped the ante more than just a little bit. He now demands the demise of 10 of these business stultifications for every new one installed. Not bad for a supposed regulator.
Bottom line: Trump is entitled to label the regulatory Democrats as fascists, not the other way around. If the Donald were really a Hitler, how account for the fact that some 80-90% of Orthodox Jews favored him? How is it that his vote totals for Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minority groups rose, not fell, this past election?
Walter E. Block is the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans.
