A Quote by Jonathan Chait

There's an element of clowning and entertainment to Trump, that makes it surreal and hard to understand to what extent he is pretending to be a fascist or an authoritarian.

Jonathan Chait

Quote Topics

Authoritarian Clowning Element Entertainment Extent Fascist Hard Makes Pretending Surreal Trump Understand

Quote Author

Jonathan Chait
American - Commentator
Born: 1972

Donald Trump is american neo-fascist. The word "neo" meaning "new", has a lot to do with it, a new kind of fascist in our culture, dealing with an authoritarian demagogic point of view, nativist, anti-immigrant, racism, bigotry that he appeals to.

Carl Bernstein

Comics can be pernicious, fascist propaganda or anti-authoritarian. The ones that shaped me were particularly anti-authoritarian.

Art Spiegelman

It's possible that the clowning and the buffoonery and the entertainment are a bigger part of what's happening than we've allowed. And that Trump is primarily an entertainer who wants ratings, and an undisciplined speaker, and it will all be less than we think. It's something that we have to consider as a possibility; we don't know.

Jonathan Chait

You're all Buddhas, pretending not to be. You're all the Christ, pretending not to be. You're all Atman, pretending not to be. You're all love, pretending not to be. You're all one, pretending not to be. You're all Gurus, pretending not to be. You're all God, pretending not to be. When you're ready to stop pretending, then you're ready to just be the real you. That's your home.

Marcus Thomas

Donald Trump is a racist. Donald Trump in fact is making fascist appeals. That's why many self-respecting Republicans are not supporting Donald Trump for president.

Martin O'Malley

I want to say, however, one thing our media in America has done which didn't happen in other totalitarian states is it has very effectively stood up to Donald Trump who has obvious fascist tendencies and his - who's a temptation like all authoritarian figures to try to crush the media or make it obey him. As that - the media has, in fact, stood up to him and has refused to bow out or cower.

Tim Wu

Of course Russia is, let's say element, of American election campaign, was on the agenda to some extent but the influence of that element could have hardly been critical.

Dmitry Peskov

I think one can see the [Donald] Trump program as if it were that element of the bailout of 2009 writ very large, and now extended out towards both fossil fuels, and, on the other hand, the infrastructure program, which is such a key element of the spending side of the Trump program.

Judy Woodruff

People think if you're working class, there has to be some fascist element underneath.

Irvine Welsh

I think with Donald Trump we're seeing the sort of utterly vanished line at long last of enter - between entertainment and politics. I mean there's always been an enormous dose of entertainment in politics. Trump has completely erased that line but the Trump phenomenon when it comes to where the media's culpability is how much we should be beating ourselves up, that's a complicated question because one of the distinctive features of our era is we know exactly what consumers are doing almost in real time.

Frank Bruni

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments.

Ivan Krastev

When we look at these types of things it echoes to lessons we haven't learned from the past. We still don't see Rome as a negative thing; we glorify the Roman Empire. It was a fascist state under the control of an incredibly authoritarian militant pre-emptive striking genocidal regime.

Immortal Technique

Donald Trump really has authoritarian, dictatorial instincts.

Rashid Khalidi

I do think that tonal element of Trump's is attractive, but I don't know if I would go so far as to say the confrontational element of his rhetoric is necessarily attractive.