He's well schooled. Trump on his graduation day.

As somebody with a political science degree, I find it hard to keep a straight face when someone tells me Trump's beliefs aren't obviously fascist.

To wit:

- He's ultra-nationalistic.

- He promises a sort of total national rebirth, re-invigoration and regaining of honor ("Make America Great Again").

- He's running on a "stab in the back" narrative involving weak and feckless internationalist "elites" and scheming, advantage-taking "allies". Just look at his words on NATO and trade deals.

- He has a weird, semi-incoherent corporatist philosophy which involves giving lots of benefits and free rein to businesses, but is also heavy on things like tariffs and promises lots of social and monetary benefits to his preferred class of people.

- He's running as a strongman. He doesn't care for or understand the lawmaking process laid out in the nation's constitution, nor does he seem to care about his own party, federalism, separation of powers, etc. etc., yet he still claims he will fix all of America's problems unilaterally. Oh, and he wants to throw his main political opponent in jail and thinks he can personally force business employees to say "Merry Christmas".

- He's an obvious authoritarian. He casually suggests torture, killing the innocent family members of terrorists, pillage and plunder in war, nuclear first use and "unpredictability", revoking the rights of suspected terrorists (even denying them emergency medical care), making it legally harder for the press to criticize the powerful, and so on.

- He worships and fetishes police and excuses even their most flagrant abuses.

- He blames the country's problems on oft-disliked minorities with little political power: muslims, immigrants (particularly Mexicans), blacks etc., and has blatantly authoritarian plans for all of them (mass deportations, a bigger police state, monitoring of religious minorities, etc.).

- Oh, and as the historical cherry on top of the ideological cake: his campaign is supported by and associated with prominent anti-Semite, neo-nazi, and white supremacist activists/communities, all of whom have connections to the last major fascist movement the whole world banded together to destroy.

It's textbook.

@Hardwood is coming to terms with it