Rise of Donald Trump Tracks Growing Debate Over Global Fascism

Mr. Trump’s campaign has engendered impassioned debate about the nature of his appeal and warnings from critics on the left and the right about the potential rise of fascism in the United States... leaders like Vladimir V. Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan employ strongman tactics. In Austria, a nationalist candidate came within three-tenths of a percentage point of becoming the first far-right head of state elected in Europe since World War II...
globalization creates losers as well as winners... middle-class wages are stagnant ... Populists have replaced contests between left and right with a struggle between cosmopolitan elites and angry nativists.”... a tendency at times to try to fit current movements into understandable constructs ... scholars say there is a spectrum that includes right-wing nationalism, illiberal democracy and populist autocracy....
similarities and differences in Mr. Trump. His message about an America in decline and his us-against-them pronouncements about immigrants and outsiders echo Europe in the 1930s... [but] Mr. Trump has hardly created uniformed, violent youth groups... fascists believe in strong state control, not get-government-off-your-back individualism and deregulation.
real fascism requires two more elements — an outright rejection of democracy and a harsher definition of order