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Trump’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden – WSWS

The rally held for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night exposed the face of a political movement that is becoming increasingly openly fascist.

Donald Trump arrives to speak at his fascist campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. [AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson]

Media commentators have aptly used the term fascism to describe the movement Trump is building. But while they identify certain characteristics of fascism – including the subversion of traditional electoral methods to violence and intimidation, extreme nationalism and xenophobia – they exclude its most essential content, the capitalist counter-revolution.

Some commentators noted in response to the Madison Square Garden rally that it would likely cost him votes. There is no doubt that the New York exhibition will arouse disgust among wider segments of the population, not just those directly targeted by Trump’s fascist filth.

However, Trump’s plan for power is not based on formal election procedures, but on the methods of civil war. Trump and the Republicans are operating on a fascist game.

This is also evident from what was said on Sunday evening. In New York, the media capital of the world, Republican speakers blithely tossed out racist and anti-immigrant remarks. One speaker referred to Puerto Rico, the ancestral homeland of some 6 million Americans, including 1 million New Yorkers, as a “floating island of garbage.” Trump adviser Stephen Miller shouted that “America is for Americans and Americans alone,” a slogan that is a direct translation from the Nazi mantra, “Deutschland ist nur für Deutsche”, which was used to justify the mass murders of Jews during the Holocaust.

Trump, for his part, announced that with his victory, “the immigrant invasion of our country ends and the rebuilding of our country begins” and that Election Day will be “a day of liberation.” Tropes of “national rebirth,” overcoming “foreign pollution,” have long been a staple of fascist movements. The Republican platform includes a commitment to round up and deport 11 million men, women and children, a feat that can only be accomplished through a police state. Outlined in Madison Square Garden is a strategy of violent repression on an industrial scale. What Trump is promising must eventually lead to mass murder.

The violence will first be directed against political opponents, what Trump calls the “domestic enemy.” Under the watchful eye of the Republican leadership in Congress, Trump and his allies have once again sworn blood oaths of revenge against their enemies. Given that just under four years ago his supporters came within feet of publicly executing Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, these threats must be seen as deadly real. Speakers called Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the devil.” Another called all Democrats “a bunch of degenerate, lowlife, Jew-haters.”

Trump doubled down on his rhetoric, calling his opponents domestic enemies, saying “they’re smart and they’re mean and we have to defeat them,” adding, “they’ve done a lot of bad things to this country. They really are an enemy from within.”

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