Trump’s military parade: Straight out of the fascist playbook
Chauncey Devega:
Petit-fascist Donald Trump may finally get his very own military parade. At last he will be able to put on a Napoleon costume and parade about under the big top like “Tom Thumb” in P.T. Barnum’s circus.
As both the Washington Post and New York Times reported on Wednesday, Trump has apparently told Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he wants “a military parade in Washington similar to the Bastille Day parade he witnessed in Paris in July.” An unnamed military official told the Post that the “marching orders were: I want a parade like the one in France. … This is being worked at the highest levels of the military.”
Trump’s proposed parade has already been widely criticized because it will be wasteful, embarrassing, and beneath the dignity and honor of the United States military and its service people. Trump is indifferent to those concerns. As a would-be despot, Trump considers a military parade as his personal rite of power. On this point, he is correct. Such displays are expected from an authoritarian. And like his heroes and role models of despotic power, including Vladimir Putin, Saddam Hussein, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and China’s Xi Jinping, Trump will not be denied his own martial spectacle. MORE…
