https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/07/if-you-genuinely-think-trump-is-a-fascist-go-and-have-a-lie-down/
This is an edited version of a speech that was delivered at the Cambridge Union on February 6 opposing the motion, ‘This house believes Donald Trump is a 21st-century fascist’.
Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump. Il Duce, der Führer, The Donald. The Roman salute, the Sieg Heil, the YMCA dance. The comparison is so absurd it practically debunks itself.
Anyone who genuinely thinks that Trump’s America – whatever else you might think of the man or his policies – can be mentioned in the same breath as fascist Italy or Nazi Germany needs to get a grip.
Because let’s be clear about what we are talking about here. Fascism, and especially its Nazi incarnation, was an evil the like of which the world had never seen before. Or, thankfully, since.
Totalitarian control. Messianic dictatorship. A cult of racial superiority. Paramilitaries crushing the left at home. A Darwinian military struggle for supremacy abroad. The worship of war and violence. The mechanised attempt to murder all of Europe’s Jews.
If this sounds anything like America in 2025 to you, then I suggest you leave here right now and go and have a nice, long lie down.
Trump is many things. He’s a right-wing populist. He’s a trenchant opponent of illegal and mass migration. He’s a culture warrior. He can also be a thin-skinned, occasionally conspiratorial, blowhard.
But try as I might, I am struggling to find the extermination camps or the goose-stepping gunmen killing with impunity. Perhaps my colleagues on the other side can enlighten me.
I almost feel sorry for the speakers for the proposition. It must be exhausting – petrifying even – to see fascism everywhere. To see everyone who disagrees with you, about immigration or gender or whatever, as literally Hitler. I’m amazed you can sleep at night.