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Is there any real difference between MAGAs and Fascists? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-11
In this clip of a debate between Medhi Hasan and Piers Morgan, they argue about the supposed difference between Trump’s MAGA and Nazi-like Fascism.
Piers claims that throwing around the word “Fascist” constantly weakens the word’s meaning. Saying everyone and anyone who you disagree with is a “Fascist” or a “Racists” diminishes the impact when you meet a “Real” Fascists or Racists.
But then, is a person a Racist only when they use an epithet like the N-Word or L-Word? Don’t they already harbor those negative impressions of certain people long before they use the slur? Can’t you tell by their actions and behavior what they really feel and believe?
If someone supports authoritarianism, do you have to wait until they are cooking someone in an oven to notice that they support and practice Fascism?
For the sake of discussion I will refer here to both Racists and Facists as being portions of a similar coin. They aren’t the same or interchangeable, but they can act in unison. To me a Fascist is a often a Racist with Military Totalitarian aims. Their intention is to marshal the weapons of the state and corporate interests against disfavored minority communities and to the benefit of White Supremacy. Totalitarianism and fealty to corporations is the method, but Racism and Bigotry is the fuel behind their actions.
On the one hand, name-calling is never really a good thing. Nobody likes being called a name. Sometimes the accusation is unfair and inaccurate. Maybe somebody may have done something for their own legitimate reasons, and they didn’t do it because they’re secretly a bigot.
The problem has been that most Bigots, Racists and Fascists will loudly deny that their actions are motivated by bias — even when they clearly are.
People lie.
So everyone has resorted to trying to figure out people’s motives while ignoring their obvious and predictable denials. Not everyone who criticized Obama was a Racist. But some of them were. Everyone denied it.
The reality is that many of the Racists and Fascists have started acting out with dog-whistles that make it clear what they’re doing, but they like to pretend like it’s not what it seems. They’ve learned to gaslight us all, As this has gone on, they’ve also grown to resent not being able to shout the N-word to the hills and they’ve been growing more and more bold with their bullshit.
Now, as Medhi Hasan discovered on Jubilee, they can’t hold back anymore.
[Note: This was written before the shooting] Charlie Kirk openly said that he grows afraid when he sees a “Black Pilot” because he doesn’t know if he’s qualified. That is blatant racism and bigotry and no one in MAGA stated a single word of complaint. Instead, we’ve only seen this bigotry repeated and amplified by people like Pete Hegseth and others as they delete references to Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson from government websites. Kirk also stated that Kentanji Brown Jackson, who graduated from Harvard Magna Cum Laude with a degree in government, who worked as.a reported and researcher for Time Magazine, then graduated from Harvard Law School Cum Laude, and has the greatest amount of judicial experience of any Justice in a generation — was a “DEI Hire.” He also said that Vice President Harris was a “DEI hire” when she was a former U.S. Senator, former Attorney General of California, former District Attorney of San Francisco and was at the top of her class at Howard University. Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk himself, was a college drop out.
He had gone on many rants about the recent North Carolina stabbing of the Ukrainian woman arguing that “Black men are clearly a violent threat.” It is sad and tragic what has happened to his family now, but he was clearly a racist, a misogynist, a propagandist and grifter — who was praised by MAGAs and Trump. And they praise him because he was a bigoted racist. The fact remains he was a major player in advancing the MAGA cause to indoctrinate the youth with their bigoted dogma.
Trump himself has a long history of bigoted statements and actions — from his attacks on DEI to his discrimination suit in the 70s to “Shithole Countries”, to his calling for the Death Penalty against the (Exonerated) Central Park 5, to his saying he doen’t like “Black guys touching his money because they’re all lazy”, to his demand for Obama’s birth certificate to attacking the Squad and saying they should “Go back where they came from” when they are all American Citizens and 3/4ths of them were born in the U.S.
People who haven’t heard him literally say the N-Word ignore all these other statements and actions as if there could be some other reasonable explanation for them. There isn’t. His father was a virulent racist who engaged in a KKK riot; he is also.
During their debate on Trump’s Fascism via Mass Deportation, Piers brings up the high rate of deportation implemented by Obama and Biden. But his argument is devoid of context. Both Obama and Biden’s deportation rates were higher than Trump’s had been so far, but in both their cases, more than 90% of the people they threw out of the country were convicted criminals.
Obama and Biden were already doing what Trump claims we need, but he himself isn’t doing that. Reports are that 70% of people being detained and deported by ICE under Trump don’t have a criminal record.
As of Friday, out of the 61,226 detainees, 18,205 were convicted criminals, 15,593 had pending criminal charges, and 27,428 were being held on other immigration violations, reflecting normal trends for ICE detention. Arrests within the U.S. now make up the majority of monthly book-ins to ICE detention centers, after several years of Border Patrol arrests making up the larger share as officials dealt with a high number of illegal crossings from Mexico. Under President Donald Trump, the focus has shifted inwards due to far fewer border crossings and targets to detain those living in the U.S. without legal status.
Morgan’s point about Obama’s deportation rate is moot since the tactics and strategy used have been the exact opposite. Obama focused on deporting criminals, which just about everyone agrees with. Trump has been focused on regular law-abiding people. Restaurant workers, day workers, and farm workers. People who have been here and law-abiding, for decades. He’s detained green card holders like Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Madawi. He’s threatened to denaturalize U.S. Citizens like Zorhan Mandami and Rosie O’Donnell. He’s deported U.S. citizens both due to negligence and apparent malice. The people he sent to CECOT who had no criminal record, such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Andry Romero, were very obviously tortured. He sent innocent people to be tortured in a place where no one usually leaves while still alive and he was happy to do it. CECOT is a death camp.
These actions don’t have a legitimate rationale behind them other than Racism. It’s clear that he wants everyone who isn’t a “White American” out of the nation. All of them. That’s his goal.
He’s sending masked men without badges in unmarked cars into Democratic cities to disappear people off the streets and place them in detention and death camps.
That’s pretty fucking Fascist.
People like Piers are trying to slice the hair of the angels dancing on the head of a pin to make some kind of mystical distinction between doing that and what the Nazis did. Or what Pinoche did. Or what Franco and Mussolini did. But there is no distinction other than the fact the people he’s targeting aren’t Jewish. Yet. Dying of dysentery from drinking out of a toilet bowl in Alligator Alcatraz isn’t much different from dying of starvation, or the acid showers in Auschwitz.
Morgan, desperate to chalk up a “win” for Trump, tries to get Hasan to agree that reducing the rate of people crossing the border has been a “good thing.” And Hasan gives the exact correct answer: Not if it removes the International Right to seek Asylum.
As I noted in this previous diary, the U.S. ratified the UN Protocols on the Refugee back in 1969, which require us to honor the rights of people who are under physical threat in their home countries. We are obligated to allow people trying to escape persecution, intimidation, assault and death with a safe harbor.
That is why both Obama and Biden “allowed” so many people to come into the country in order to seek Asylum. That’s the law.
Morgan and Hasan argue about this — but Hasan is correct. Trump has completely shut down the Asylum process. He’s established an Indefinite Ban on Refugees which has been — so far — struck down in district court.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration cannot deny entry to people crossing the southern border to apply for asylum. The court found that neither the constitution nor federal immigration law allow the president to make that decision. The proclamation to deny entry to asylum seekers at the southern border was issued by President Trump on his first day in office. Asylum has been part of U.S. law since 1980, allowing those who fear for their safety to seek refuge in the U.S. as long as they can show a credible fear of persecution in their home country. In the past, other U.S. presidents had attempted to make asylum seeking more difficult, but the scope of Trump's order was unprecedented.
The reason the UN created the Refugee protocols in the first place was because of Eastern European Jews who were trying to escape the Nazi Holocaust who were refused entry into Cuba and America and were sent back to die in the death camps. So that’s rather on the nose for Trump to cancel Asylum.
If people whose lives are at risk in the Northern Triangle are no longer coming here, where are they going — or are they simply remaining at risk, taking their chances because America is no longer safe?
Further, as Hasan points out, Trump has defied court orders multiple times. He is violating Posse Comitatus by sending Troops into Los Angeles. He’s violated the Home Rule Act by doing the same thing in Washington DC, and is threatening to do it again in Chicago. Using the military to go to war with parts of your own country is a particularly Fashy thing to do.
People like Piers will say “Calm down, it’s not like he has the Army shooting down people in the streets.”
Yet.
Trump told his military to “crack their skulls and shoot them in the legs” during his first term. Do we really have to wait until that shit really happens this time?
And that’s the problem. Fascism doesn’t just suddenly happen one day. It slowly creeps up on you. It takes steady, methodical planning, moving step by step, removing one liberty after another. Project 2025 was the plan; now he’s implementing as much of it as he possibly can.
Being a Nazi isn’t just about “Hating Jews” because even the Nazis themselves weren’t limited to that. They put the disabled, the mentally ill, Gypsys and LGBT persons into their camps as well as Jews. It’s about normalizing White Supremacy and White Power. They attacked everyone they didn’t like or approve of, anyone who wasn’t Aryan — just like Trump does.
That’s on top of the fact that America taught Nazi Germany everything they knew about hate and racism. We implemented the Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Relocation of Native Americans, killing millions of them in the process. We had slavery, segregation and Jim Crow — which killed tens of millions during the middle passage and those who died in servitude. We had our entire society organized around White Supremacy with “Seperate but Equal.” We were the nation that firebombed Black Wall Street from the air. We interned and imprisoned Japanese American Citizens. We implemented the Chinese Exclusion Act. We implemented Operation Wetback. We had most of our entertainment industry organized around “Minstrel Shows” which used black face and characatures to mock, demean and degrade black people including performers such a Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney.
This went on for over a century.
We gave an Oscar to “Birth of a Nation” which falsely portrayed black people as lazy, indolent and criminal rapist predators who had to be “handled” by the vigilantism of the KKK, which in turn, led to over 4,000 Americans being terrorized, lynched and murdered. A false portrayal we’ve seen yet again with Trump saying Haitians are “eating the cats, eating the dogs” when that shit simply didn’t happen. It was totally made up. It was propaganda. And it worked exactly as it was intended; it shocked and outraged people, and they reacted accordingly.
Hitler made up shit too, he learned it all from us and the Confederacy, and we were frankly much worse than him when you actually count the various trails of bodies we’ve left behind. We’ve done far worse than the Holocaust.
Trying to argue that Trump isn’t as bad as Hitler only because he hasn’t personally killed millions — yet — is completely missing the point. He’s on a direct pathway to accomplishing that.
Just for the record, we had 103 million cases of COVID19 which more than twice the total number of infections found in any other country, That led to 1.1 million Americans dying from COVID, also twice the casualties of every other nation, all on Trump’s watch after he botched the response by canceling the Pandemic Response Plan, as well as failing to provide PPE or implementing a comprehensive testing plan. Trump seriously suggested ingesting bleach and using UV lights “under the skin” to combat the disease. It was appalling ridiculous and deranged.
Estimates are that as many as 400,000 more Americans died than should have compared to other nations. The first company to develop effective COVID vaccine, Pfizer, wasn’t initially supported by Operation Warp Speed at all; they did it all on their own through funding from Europe. And after that happened, he left office without any vaccine distribution plan; Biden’s people had to develop and implement a plan totally on their own. Trump deserves no credit for any of this. He already has blood on his hands.
When it comes to outright murder, Racist and Neo-Nazi Trump supporters have initiated deadly mass shootings in Christchurch (51 killed), Las Vegas (5 killed including 2 cops), Pittsburgh (11 killed), El Paso (23 killed), Buffalo (10 killed), Allen, Texas (9 killed) and Sutherland Springs, Texas (26 killed). They’ve had over 130 casualties.
What DOGE and Elon Musk did with USAID will likely lead to as many as 12 millions of deaths overseas. Estimates are that 330,000 people have already died, including 220,000 children. (This, plus the unjustified COVID casualties, already puts him close to his first million dead.)
What RFK Jr. is doing to the CDC by cancelling $500 million in vaccine development and changing the delivery schedule could also lead to millions of deaths if we encounter another pandemic.
Cancelling gender-affirming care for youth with gender dysphoria will likely lead to thousands of suicides.
In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 48,183 people died by suicide in the United States. Depression, substance abuse, other mental illness, legal/financial problems, harmful relationships, community risk factors, and easy access to lethal means are contributing factors to successful suicide. Transgender individuals have a higher prevalence of depression across several age groups, often due to life experiences that include discrimination, harassment, violence, misgendering, and enacted stigma that may generate poor mental health outcomes and harmful behaviors [4,7,8]. It is widely accepted that depression puts an individual at higher risk for suicidal ideation and suicide attempts [9]. Individuals at higher risk for suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) should have comprehensive psychiatric interventions and care throughout their lifetime. A better understanding of the relationship between suicide and gender affirmation remains particularly important.
Trump also cancelled funding for the National LGBTQ suicide hotline, so the intent here is certain.
These likely outcomes are not a mystery. They are obvious, clear, and predictable. They are deliberate. We can see what he’s doing, and we can see where it’s all going.
MAGAs or FASCISTs?
IMO, that is a distinction with no real difference. The MAGA movement is built on the same soiled, bigoted ground as Fascism. It’s still White Supremacy. It’s still Totalitarianism.
Updated: In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting, Steven Miller’s wife Katie Miller has posted “You called us Nazis, you called us Fascist, now the blood is on your hands.”
Well, first off, at this point, no one knows why Kirk was shot, but the fact here is that the fucking Fascist shoe fits.
Secondly, as noted above, Trump supporters have performed much more deadly mass murders more than a half-dozen times based on bigoted lies like the “Great Replacement Theory.” Governor Shapiro’s house was set on fire. Nancy Pelosi’s husband had his skull smashed in. Minnesota State House Speaker Mellisa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed, and State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were injured by the same gunman. Judge Esther Salas’ husband was shot and her son was killed simply because she is a Latina in authority. 9000 of those fuckers attacked and ransacked the Capitol, doing over $30 million in damage, injuring 140 police officers — including one who had his eye gouged out — and contributing to the deaths of 9 people. 1,500 people were convicted, 600 of them for assaulting police, 13 of them for Seditious Conspiracy. Trump pardoned them all. Rocks and Glass houses people.
In this case, “Fascist” is not name-calling or incitement — it’s an accurate description. It’s no endorsement of political violence to tell the truth.
On the right, they are now calling the shooting of Kirk as a call for “WAR.” Conservative columnist Matt Forney says that this is their “Riechstag Fire.”
Every accusation is a confession. It can’t be much more on the nose than that.’
EDIT: Since I wrote this, and before it was scheduled to post Trump has claimed Democrats are “Directly Responsible” for Kirk’s shooting because we’ve so often compared MAGA to Nazis.
"It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible," he said. Trump took an opportunity to bash progressives, railing that the "radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals." "This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now," said the president.
Yeah, that’s some bullshit. Again, no one knows who shot Kirk or why. it’s bogus and premature to make any assumptions at all. Sadly, MAGA have a serious character flaw that doesn’t let them pay attention to facts and reality rather than their most dark disgusting delusional fantasies. It’s sad.
This could have just as likely have been someone with a personal beef or someone on the Right who didn’t think he was MAGA Enough! or thought his criticism of the Epstein files was “disloyal” just like Trump who was shot in the ear by a Republican. Kirk wasn’t even a politician or government official, he was a Youtuber. He was a pundit. I can’t even imagine him as a good target for political payback — he’s merely a spokeshill. And as I’ve outlined, the Nazi/Fascist comparison is valid and it’s not going to stop. Sorry, not sorry.
Republicans are not going to stop demonizing progressives or anyone they don’t like. They aren’t going to stop attacking us — this is an attack on us. This release by Trump is incitement and Stochastic Terrorism. They already call us “Marxist”, “Socialist” and “Criminals” now they’re calling us “Terrorists.” Again. Pathetic.
More importantly, they also know the Fascist claim is true. They know the Racist claim is true. They know what they’re doing. The hair-pulling, whining and venting is just an attempt to get us to yet again ignore what is obvious. It’s an attempt to get us to not say what is the truth.
It’s more bullshit gaslighting.
As AOC says in this video, people who have done nothing in the wake of growing gun violence have no ground to complain about other people's “words”. You can complain about people with emotional problems, mental problems, lack of a male in the home or with domestic violence records all day, but if you aren’t willing and able to block allowing dangerous people from access to high-powered weapons — you have no right to point fingers.
We can’t let them use this to scare us into silence — we have to keep on swinging, keep on fighting, keep on telling the truth.
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