518. Is Trump a Fascist and is His War on Iran Unwinnable?

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0:13Dominic Sandbrook:Is Trump a fascist? When you say, I think Donald Trump is a fascist, they often mean this person is very right wing and I don't like them. Far right, authoritarian nationalism, obsession with military strength and centralised power, a determination to suppress opposition. I think he ticks a good 90 % of that. Trump is a narcissist. He's only interested in himself. I don't think he's powered by a wider ideology. We're dealing with somebody who is surrounded by sycophants, nobody talking the truth to him. That's what happens with a cult. It is a cult. Is there not a slippage here between the tribalism and the cult, as it were?

0:55now rory stewart has decided that he and his family should have a podcast free holiday but i obsessive that i am having never missed a week in the olympiad we've been doing this i am here with an absolutely brilliant stand-in so welcome to the rest is politics It's with me, Alistair Campbell.

1:14Dominic Sandbrook:And me, Dominic Sandbrook. There we go. It is none other than Dominic Sandbrook from our sister podcast, The Rest is History, and now also co-presenter of Goalhanger's new show, The Book Club. And boy, do we love books and are we living through history right now. So Dominic, thanks so much for stepping in. There could not be a better time to have your perspective. Oh, thank you, Alistair. It's nice to be working on a properly professional podcast with a really big star. of Gohanger's stable. Exactly. Anyway, I think it's fair to say that as we enter the second month of the Iran war, for the fifth week running, the issue will dominate the rest of this politics podcast.

1:55There are so many issues and angles to look at. Are Donald Trump's expletive-laden, war-crime-threatening social media post sign of a man losing the war, losing the plot, losing his mind even? Just hours before, he was triumphant at the Americans rescuing a couple of airmen who'd been downed in Iran. But is the fact of their jets downing one more sign that they perhaps have been underestimating their enemy? We've had Pete Hexeth firing generals galore. Some say because they don't support the Defense Secretary's notion that this is a war for Jesus, something the Pope has spoken out against. Then we have Lebanon at breaking point.

2:39We have Iraq and the worry that is being drawn into this war against its will, and maybe especially pressing for us in Europe, is NATO finished? And perhaps most of all, I guess, who's actually winning? So there's a lot of questions that we're going to get into, Dominic. But I wonder if first of all, we shouldn't just have a little seconds out round two. This is to revisit an excellent debate we had on election night in New York. You join me and Rory, Anthony Scaramucci and Marina Hyde as the Trump victory unfolded. We had quite a heated discussion, especially with the Mooch, on the question, is Trump a fascist?

3:17I was basically yes. Mooch was a very big yes, underlined many times, and you were a no. And I just wondered if you've changed your mind at all, given all that's happened since Trump returned for his second term.

3:29Dominic Sandbrook:Okay, so the short answer is no, I haven't. It's funny that you mention it, because that's something that I'm asked about a lot. A lot of people remember that election night debate about was Trump a fascist, especially the exchange between me and Anthony, because Anthony was so adamant that he wasn't a fascist. And I think part of the confusion is that people use the word fascist in two different ways. So number one, people use the word fascist to mean an authoritarian demagogue that they don't like. So when you say, I think Donald Trump is a fascist, or when lots of people say, I think so-and-so is a fascist, I mean, people said Thatcher was a fascist.

3:59Dominic Sandbrook:They said Nixon was a fascist. They often mean this person is very right wing and I don't like them. I wouldn't say that about either of those two. No, of course. I'm not saying you would, by the way. The other definition is more historically specific, which is the one that I would use, which is that I think fascism was a very distinctive sort of historical phenomenon. It came about in the ruins of the First World War. There's a paramilitary politics to fascism. There's also, if you look at people like Mussolini and Hitler, what they want to do is to, they have total contempt for democracy. I mean, I'm sure you'll say, well, there are lots of people now who have contempt for democracy, but they believe that the world is entering this new age because of modernity and because of new technology and all of these kinds of things they want to create a new society they want to create new kinds of people they want they are obsessed with change and i mean of course they're looking back to the past a lot but they believe all the old ways should be thrown out and let us create a new way of being they're both massive overthinkers actually muslim and hitler if you were sat next to them by some hideous mischance at a dinner party.

5:02Dominic Sandbrook:They'd be extremely boring. And they will be telling you about all these things they had read. Hitler's a great autodidact. He writes Mein Kampf. He's somebody who's always giving these long, boring lectures about eugenics and racism and all of this kind of stuff. Trump, I think, has very little of that. Trump is a narcissist. He's only interested in himself. I don't think he's powered by a wider ideology. I do think he has, obviously, total contempt for democratic norms. But I don't think that's because he thinks democracy is rotten and it's weak and all this. I think it's just because it gets in his way.

5:36Dominic Sandbrook:And so he wants to get rid. Let's revisit this briefly after we come back for a short break. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long, usually arrives for the bill. And from the 1st of April, 75 % of renewables obligation costs will come off electricity bills and move into general taxation. So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching? Because policy sets the floor. The saving itself is automatic. What suppliers offer beyond that isn't, and that's where real competition operates. Fuse goes beyond the mandated saving.

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6:41Dominic Sandbrook:Visit FuseEnergy.com for full details and terms and conditions. If we go back to the night of the election, your principal lines of argument against what Anthony and I were saying you said that he doesn't have a paramilitary force well I think we could argue that he does now with ICE and he also he and Hexer treat the Pentagon as though it's an extension of their political operation you said he doesn't have a cult for war yeah indeed you actually said in his defense he was actually a draft dodger that's how much he hates war yeah he now actually would seem to be despite constantly saying he's ending wars.

7:20He's actually started a war that we're going to talk about that is potentially catastrophic. You said he doesn't have a plan for aggressive expansion, Greenland, Monroe Doctrine, et cetera. And you said there was no ideological dimension to recreate society in his image. I definitely think tick, tick, tick on the first three, that makes him a fascist by the definition I would put on it. But then I think even on the no ideological dimension, I think MAGA has morphed into one not least because of the way that the people around him

7:52Dominic Sandbrook:have made it so let me just say by the way that I think it would be you mentioned MAGA yeah I think there are people who are associated with Trump who I would say are much much more as it were fascist adjacent well you said on the night you thought Musk was a fascist there's people like Musk there are a lot of these tech people the way they talk is very similar to how people talked in the 1920s and 30s or someone like Stephen Miller so again somebody who's very close to Trump but some of the stuff that he comes out with, I would say, is very reminiscent of kind of mid-20th century, the aggression of it, the nihilism of it, all of that kind of stuff.

8:25Dominic Sandbrook:But Trump himself, I just don't think he's that interested in ideas, frankly. Okay. I did a couple of things as I was thinking about how we were going to talk about this. The first is I did what all good people do when they're looking at big historical concepts. I went onto Wikipedia and looked for a simple definition of fascism. And what that says is, at its core, far-right authoritarian nationalism with an all-powerful dictatorial leader, obsession with military strength and centralised power, a determination to suppress opposition, not least by seeking to control media, curb the judiciary, distaste for the rule of law, and a passionate hatred of communism, liberalism, pluralism, democracy itself.

9:06I think he ticks a good 90 % of that.

9:10Dominic Sandbrook:I think a lot of authoritarian demagogic populists would tick some of those boxes, but not all of them. So first of all, I don't think ICE is a paramilitary movement equivalent to the paramilitaries that you saw on the streets of Italy or Germany in the 1920s. I mean, I don't like ICE and I don't like the way they behave, but I don't think it's the same kind It's not a volunteer paramilitary movement that inspires enormous enthusiasm from young people. No, but you could see it morphing alongside his misuse of the National Guard, alongside using troops on the streets of cities. You could see it morphing into something that we could at least equate with it.

9:52Because this is the thing I think when we talk about fascism. And I think people with your perspective think that fascism, as we saw in the 30s and what it evolved, was so horrific, we should be very careful about making the parallels. My point is that what started out in the 30s is now judged by how it ended, the Holocaust, et cetera, six million Jews being exterminated. But I sort of feel that Trump is on that sort of path, particularly in this term, faster than Hitler was in his time in office.

10:26Dominic Sandbrook:Oh, I think that's a big claim. I think there's a massive difference between Trump and Hitler. Now, I know a lot of the rest of his politics listeners will be throwing their phones at the wall at this point because they love to think that Trump is like Hitler. But I think Hitler had an exterminatory program from the very beginning. He was driven by virulent racism. Trump can be racist, by the way, but I think it's casual rather than virulent. I think it's casual and boorish. It's the racism of the boar at the golf club. I think Hitler's racism, he couldn't shut up about it. He talked about it absolutely openly and unashamedly.

10:57Dominic Sandbrook:And he saw it in terms of kind of, he talks about racial hygiene and cleansing society and all of this kind of thing. So does Trump, Somali garbage. But again, I think that's the kind of thing that somebody says when they've had a few too many drinks, of course, Trump doesn't drink, but they've had a few too many drinks at the golf club bar and they are boring on and they're revealing that the ugliness of their kind of political instincts. That to me is what Trump is, I think, rather than the sort of the cold-blooded, pseudo-intellectual side of fascism. Now, one thing I think you're right about, I think if fascism were to return in the 21st century, it would look very different from how it looked in the 20s and 30s.

11:35Dominic Sandbrook:So in the 20s and 30s, there were kind of torchlight parades and there were mass marches and all that kind of thing. That was the sort of political world of that era, and that we would have something very different now. The other thing I think, actually, Trump is not going to run again. in the next presidential election. I mean, he's basically said that himself, and I think it would be almost impossible for him to do so. I think after November, when we have the midterm elections, we won't be having the same kind of debate about Trump, because he will be a lame duck president, because basically he'll be yesterday's man.

12:06Dominic Sandbrook:Now, maybe we'll be having a different conversation about J.D. Vance, let's say. I know we'll be talking about Vance probably a little bit later in this episode. But I think the Republican Party, even now, I think there are people who are conscious that they've maybe be overreached a little bit, that people are tiring of the, that they are in a democracy, whether they like it or not, and people are tiring of the constant aggression and that abrasive style of politics. And of course, the MAGA movement now is so unstable because there are so many people who don't like what Trump is doing in foreign policy.

12:35Look, I obviously hope you're right. And I think the midterms will be crucial. I also think the Supreme Court, which I think has been pretty lame most of the time, it has actually started to show a bit of what you might call independent judgment. But maybe before we go on to Rand Dominic, the last time Rory and I discussed this on the podcast, I recalled a visit that I made to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington. And there's this very, I don't know if it's still there or whether it's been taken down in the light of the cultural revolution that Trump is supervising, but there's this very yellowing, very thin piece of paper.

13:10And I don't think it's even got an author on it, but the headline is early warning signs. fascism. And there are 14, but I'll read them very, very briefly. And again, you listeners, viewers, just bear Trump in mind as we go through. Number one, powerful continuing nationalism. Number two, disdain for human rights. Number three, identification of enemies as a unifying cause. Number four, supremacy of the military. Number five, rampant sexism. Number six, controlled mass media. Number seven, obsession with national security. Number eight, the intertwining of religion and government, excess. Number nine, corporate power protected.

13:50Number 10, labor power suppressed. Number 11, disdain for intellectuals and the arts. Number 12, obsession with crime and punishment. Number 13, rampant cronyism and corruption. Number 14, fraudulent elections. Now, I think he ticks them all with the possible exception of number 14. He passes that one merely by the fact that he claims the election he lost was fraudulent. But I think that's the American Holocaust Museum's warning signs of fascism. I think he takes all of them.

14:22Dominic Sandbrook:See, I think he's not sufficiently ideological and not sufficiently consistent to count as a fascist. What I do think, however, is the political ecosystem is moving in that direction anyway, with or without Donald Trump. I think Trump has hastened that. And that's why your point about the tech bros is so important, because they are such big drivers of the change that are bringing this about. Yeah, I think so. So I think that we are, it's a really interesting question about how sustainable, you know, the democracy that you and I grew up in, the model of democracy, how sustainable that is in the 21st century, where the institutions that were so important to the survival of that democracy.

14:56Dominic Sandbrook:So they would be things like big mass membership organizations like trade unions, or let's say in Britain, an organization like the Conservative Party, where, you know, hundreds of thousands of people would be affiliated with it one way or another. They'd turn out for fates. They'd turn out for all these fundraisers, all that stuff, as they did in the Labour Party or before then, the Liberals. So those institutions have gone. people see themselves much more as atomized individuals and they get their news not from as it were responsible institutions like the big newspapers or the bbc or big broadcasters that felt they had a duty to reflect the pluralism of a democratic society but they get their news from x or from you know tiktok or whatever it's much harder to have a pluralistic democratic conversation i think where you recognize the legitimacy of other people's positions if you live in this hyper-polarized, hyper-partisan world that the tech giants want us to live in because their algorithms drive it and it's good for their revenues.

15:55Dominic Sandbrook:And that's what would really worry me, that actually fascism or a more modernized version of fascism can really thrive in such a climate in a way that it couldn't in 1960s or 1970s Britain or something where you have these big institutions that basically act as gatekeepers. Okay, we'll clip that up and send it on to the mooch and see whether he has moved in his opinion. But I suspect he's hardened his view that we're dealing. We're definitely dealing with a wannabe fascist, I would argue. But let's turn to Iran. I said in the introduction, we're now into week five. We've had a lot of claims from Trump that it's been won.

16:35We've had a lot of promises that it's about to end. I think we're now on to the eighth final warning to Iran to avoid complete obliteration. But as so often with Trump, the realities don't really square with the claims that are coming from his bully pulpit. And the brutal truth, I think, is that the war shows little sign of ending. I don't know if you'd agree with this, but I think the Iranians seem, for all the destruction and for all the cost, I think they seem happier with the way that it's going. and meanwhile for the whole world the costs the consequences and the risks particularly of economic catastrophe are rising but i wonder if we shouldn't start with that question that i've trailed at the top who do we think is winning this war do you know it's such a strange war i was trying to think

17:20Dominic Sandbrook:of a historical precedent for it and i couldn't think of one and it's a sign of how warfare has changed so the americans you know by a sort of conventional measure are obviously winning the war they've killed they've killed the iranian leader they've killed a lot of senior iranian leaders i mean just before we started recording this i think the intelligence chief of the revolutionary guard was announced as having been killed and you know his predecessor was killed six months ago by the israelis so the iranians are losing a lot of their top people they're obviously taking a battering so by conventional standards you might say well they are obviously you know that they're losing but there is an argument isn't there that this is going to end up as a big strategic defeat for the United States, that they're torching their own reputation yet again by launching this sort of attack that feels more like a spasm than a sort of coldly calculated planned operation.

18:14Dominic Sandbrook:It's never been clear what their objectives are. It's never been clear what their rationale for the invasion, for the attack was. I mean, I was about to say invasion. It's not really an invasion. I mean, that's the peculiar thing about it, that they're hesitating to put in ground forces. There's no endgame in mind. Has this strengthened their allies in the region? Has it strengthened their bonds with countries like Saudi Arabia or the other nations on whom they depend? No. Is it likely to make the Middle East more or less stable? I mean, it's hardly going to make it more stable. I suppose the one thing you would say if you're playing devil's advocate is that it has emasculated Iran's ability to strike beyond its borders.

18:54Dominic Sandbrook:Iran definitely looks, I would say Iran looks weaker as an offensive actor now because its ability to project its power beyond its borders has been hampered by this. If you were a client state of Iran, you wouldn't look at Iran and say, gosh, they're so powerful. I'm glad we're in bed with them. I suppose the counter to the counter argument is Iran looks more resilient than people thought it would have been a few weeks ago. You remember, think of all the protests at the turn of the year. and there was an expectation i think in washington well maybe you know the iranians will seize the opportunity to rise up and overthrow the regime i mean that was trump's rhetoric wasn't it he said it's now up to you to take to the streets and people haven't done that because you know one of the put my historian's hat back on a lesson of history is if you rely if you think aerial power will cripple a regime it never works out that way often it solidifies support for a regime because people say, frankly, I'd rather, I hate our leadership, but I'd rather side with them than with those bastards who are dropping death on us from the skies.

19:55Dominic Sandbrook:So I would say, I mean, it's very hard to make a case the Americans are winning the war, isn't it? I mean, no matter how many people they kill. I think also, I completely agree with that. And I think the other point to make is that we talk a lot about asymmetric warfare. Because of Trump and Rubio and Vance and the competing narratives and objectives they put out there, and because of this superlative language that Trump uses all the time. It's the biggest, it's the best, it's the most daring, we've got the most amazing, etc. Winning for America literally has to mean a changed regime. The regime has been decapitated, but the same regime is still in place.

20:33And the other thing is that for the Iranians to win, they just have to survive. They can tolerate a lot of deaths. We've seen that in the way they They treat their own people. And I'm not sure I agree with you about your point about extending their power beyond the borders. We'll talk a little bit in a moment about what's happening in Iraq. But I think their power at the moment, which they are using absolutely brutally, is an economic power based upon their access to and control of the Straits of Hormuz. That is a form of power. Let's just look at what Trump said yesterday. and what was probably actually had a debate going in America yesterday about the 25th amendment whether you can remove a president on mental health grounds so this was the tweet the post in full on truth social and I can't believe anybody was in the room with him when he did this because I even though I know people in there who tell me that the only person who speaks truth to power still a bit is Susie Wiles he's chief of staff who's now got breast cancer so I don't know whether that's going to take her out of the picture for a while but I think even Vance and Rubio, even possibly Hexer, no, not Hexer, let's forget him, would have said, please, Mr.

21:42President, don't do this. So this is it. I'll read out in full. Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the fucking strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Caps, just watch. Praise be to a la this is easter sunday by the way president donald j trump yeah demented i mean that is if

22:08Dominic Sandbrook:i may use the f word too that is fucking insane yeah and it's strategically stupid it is because he's making a threat that it's not clear whether he can follow through with it if he does their war crimes yeah to attack the power plants it's all very well to say we call i mean netanyahu is an indicted war criminal we regularly call putin a war criminal because he attacks hospitals energy infrastructure. This is Trump saying he's going to destroy your civilian infrastructure. That is a war crime. The crazy thing here is, I mean, you mentioned Putin. Putin's obviously a very bad man. And Putin has made some horrendous miscalculations, you know, most famously in 2022.

22:46Dominic Sandbrook:But Putin is a cold-blooded, you know, he's a cold-blooded killer, isn't he? He sits there, he makes his plans, he thinks what he wants to get out of this, he weighs up the odds, and then he makes his decision. Trump is just lashing out. I mean, what is this, his eighth deadline or something you said? His objectives for the operation have changed over time. What he thinks about the Straits of Ilmas has changed over time because just a couple of days ago, he was saying, if the Europeans want the oil so badly, why don't they go and get it themselves? Oh, they can't because they haven't got a proper navy and all of this kind of thing.

23:15Dominic Sandbrook:So he's just making stuff up on the fly. I mean, the extraordinary thing is, this is how he has run his administration since day one. I mean, not just when he, the second term, the first term as well. The first term he had people there who were restraining him. Now he's basically just got a cabinet of enablers and administration of people who enable him. Somebody like, I mean, you mentioned Hegseth. Hegseth is just Trump's mini-me, isn't he? He doesn't seem to have any sort of plan either, which is why he's getting rid of generals who disagree with him. So how do they get out of it? You see, I think there's a very easy way to get out of it.

23:51Dominic Sandbrook:They declare victory and leave. I mean, this is what people used to say about the Vietnam War. Why don't you just say we've won and go home? I don't think he necessarily has to have regime change to stop. I think he could say, we have degraded the Iranian regime to a point where they're no longer a threat to America or to the wider world. We're finished. Mission accomplished. Thank you very much. We're going home. I mean, if I was in Trump's administration, God forbid, that's what I would tell him to do. Okay. And what the Iranians might be sitting there thinking is, okay, he's desperate. He's worried about the midterms.