Presidential Candidate Donald Trump and Vice Presidential Nominee Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana at the conclusion of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Thursday, July 21, 2016. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill.
Both American voters and historians will need to go beyond the scandals of Cleveland, to look deeper than the Melania Trump plagiarism story and the moment when Senator Cruz got booed. From an historian’s perspective, two related themes were strikingly present in the Republican national convention (RNC): a politics of fear, mobilised by the ethnic majority (or so-called "silent majority", assumed to be pro-Republican), and the fantasy of sending Hillary Clinton to prison. The radical ideas of a massive deportation of Hispanic migrants and the banning of Muslims from entering the country were voiced at the convention along with the equally radical promise of prison for the Democratic candidate.
These notions not only signal a populist disregard for the separation of powers, they also show the fascist genealogies of the populism that Donald Trump represents so well. The promise of repressive measures against minorities and rivals places the Trump movement where it belongs: in the history of how fascism became populism. The result of this change was an authoritarian form of democracy that combines electoral procedures with themes and practices more typical of fascism.
