Kamala Harris calls Trump a “fascist” and unfit for office
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For numerous years, scholars have argued over what the definition of fascism is. Roger Griffen, a widely cited political theorist on the topic and professor of modern history at Oxford Brookes in the United Kingdom, offers one explanation. Griffen states, according to NPR News, that fascism is a “revolutionary form of extreme nationalism,” continuing with, “Fascists themselves want to overthrow either a communist or a traditional conservative or a liberal state to create a new order.”
Even before the 2016 election, former President Donald Trump faced accusations of “invoking the leadership style of the world’s most infamous fascists, namely Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who popularized fascism, and Adolf Hitler.” Per NPR News. These accusations, however, have seemed to become more public once Vice President Kamala Harris called former Trump a “fascist” at the CNN town hall in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
According to NBC News, John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general who worked closely with Trump as the White House chief of staff, came forward after Harris spoke to warn voters that Trump is, “the general definition of a fascist.” Additionally, he said when he was in a private conversation with Trump, he allegedly admitted to admiring dictators and wished that he had military generals as loyal as that of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler.
Harris emphasized the timing of these comments, two weeks away from the election, and stated they were “a 911 call to the American people.” According to NBC News, she then continued, “We must take very seriously those folks who knew him best.” In this speech, Harris referred to the multiple former Trump advisers who have spoken up about their concerns surrounding Trump being president again.
Then, in a public statement, Harris used the term fascist herself, referring to Trump, and stated that voters care about “not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.” Once Kelly’s comments about Trump became public, Harris has been seemingly more forceful and critical in her arguments against him.
After the town hall ended, Trump posted to the social media platform X and Truth Social, arguing that Harris “sees that she is losing," so she "is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind."
While Harris did not directly call Trump “Hitler,” she did argue, per NBC News, that the American people “deserve to have a president who encourages healthy debate, works across the aisle, [is] not afraid of good ideas, wherever they come from, but also maintains certain standards about how we think about the role and the responsibility and certainly not comparing oneself in a clearly admiring way to Hitler.”
With just a week before the election, these comments may contribute massively to the outcome. It appears that the election will be a close race, and the swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan, will play a crucial role in determining the ultimate winner.