Trump Enters His Fascist Era

It Starts With Banners and Ends With Camps.

Washington is entering the adolescence of its Fascist Era, with giant banners of Donald Trump’s scowling visage staring down at the little people scurrying to their government jobs—reminding all who pass that the Dear Leader is omnipotent and omnipresent.

There’s a reason and a method to this, as with so much else in Trump’s emerging autocracy: in fascist and authoritarian regimes, symbols and spectacle meet. They demand your gaze, your internalization of the primacy of the Dear Leader, and ultimately, your obedience and subservience to a culture that is inescapable and immovable.

Under his eye.

In fascist systems, the leader is transformed from man into myth, into a superhuman figure—unbeatable, inevitable, omnipotent. Trump has his own modern iterations of Joseph Goebbels, Leni Riefenstahl, Julius Streicher, and Hans Fritzsche working to saturate public and private spaces with his face, his brand, his ideas, his name, and his mythology.

Whether in the form of signs, banners, statues, murals, or big, synchronized military parades like the one coming up for the Dear Leader’s birthday, the imposition of image and symbolism serves as a critical instrument of control, unity, and intimidation.