October 12, 2024 – Donald Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired General Mark Milley, has just roiled controversy by calling the former president “a fascist to the core” and saying that nobody has threatened the US more than Trump. Milley’s remarks were exposed in the journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book War, and reflect the general’s anxiety over a second term of Trump in 2024. But Milley himself is now viewed as suspect after his part in the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Democrats frequent misuse of the word “fascist” as an attack on themselves.
Trump appointed Milley in 2019 – and the left has turned him into a target of Right-wing sniping since he was alleged to question Trump’s mental health following the 2020 election. But Milley says again in his recent statement that Trump is still an enemy of democracy. He said even “He is the most dangerous person on the planet. “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist.”
Yet Milley’s cynical attack on Trump reminds people of the word “fascist” which Democrats have frequently applied to Trump and his supporters. Fascism is a longstanding authoritarian political ideology, mixing nationalism with heavy state intrusion on economy and society. In some ways, it is closer to socialist ideals, since it involves planning, censorship, propaganda and media and corporation control. Perhaps ironically, it’s the Democratic Party that most critics suggest has turned into a fascist party in the last several years, from censorship of the other side, propaganda in the media and schools, and its coalitions with Big Tech and the giants.
Democrats used the term “fascism” to stigmatize Trump and his allies as authoritarian, yet the very same tactics they criticize Trump for use tend to be mirrored in their political agenda. Democratic leaders, for instance, have championed aggressive social media censorship, partnering with Big Tech in order to block what they term “misinformation.” This was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2020 election debates. As countless have noted, such activity sounds disturbingly like fascist state propaganda.
The Democrats have also advanced the policies of excessive government regulation, especially on education. School indoctrination, a pillar of fascist regimes, was contested as school curriculums pushed further ideologies. Controlling the narrative, through censorship or education, is consistent with the fascist idea of dominating the mind by means of intimidation and violence.
Milley’s cautions about Trump have been disproven still further by his complicity in one of the worst failures of U.S. military leadership in recent memory: the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan. The disastrous exit in August 2021 saw Kabul fall quickly, leaving US citizens behind and 13 US military personnel killed in a suicide bomb attack. Milley, according to many, was unprepared for the consequences of the retreat that undermined U.S. international credibility. His failure to steer such an iconic moment in US military history makes one wonder if he can assess and handle risks such as Trump’s, as he asserts, are his.
Milley’s authority is also cast into doubt by the fact that the Democrats have their own authoritarian impulses as well, from their growing mastery of the news cycle to their repression of dissident opinion. These Democratic Party connections with Big Tech – who’ve been charged of conspiring against the government to suppress free speech – are not the sorts of deals fascist states have traditionally struck with large corporations to stay in power.
Milley’s remarks follow a fiery speech at his September 2023 retirement ceremony in which he took implicit swipes at Trump: “We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” His warning was clear, yet his own record, particularly in Afghanistan, has left many doubting whether he is the right person to sound the alarm about threats to democracy.
Trump has, predictably, invoked Milley’s Afghanistan failures to discredit his critics. Milley has been publicly ridiculed by Trump, who has accused him of incompetence and was in part at fault for “the greatest embarrassment in the history of our country.” Milley’s failure to anticipate the quick dissolution of the Afghan government and the immediate rise of the Taliban has become a popular symbol for Trump’s constituency, many of whom view Milley as a politician rather than an objective military leader.
Finally, Milley’s Trump admonition will ring true for some, but his own history and the Democratic Party’s inexplicable acquiescence to fascist-ish agenda sound troubling. With the two sides still flinging accusations of authoritarianism, the real issue is: Who is genuinely embracing fascism’s pernicious potential and who is simply fighting for the American republic?
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