Is Donald Trump a fascist?

And while he has a number of obvious similarities to past right-populist candidates, from Pat Buchanan to Ross Perot to the Alabama governor George Wallace, he tends to differ from them in precisely the places where fascist temptations can creep in.

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Buchanan, for instance, was a nationalist, but also a deeply religious man, whose campaigns were fueled as much by pro-life conviction as by populism. Not so Trump: He plainly regards his semi-professed Christianity purely instrumentally and has little time for the religious right’s causes.

Perot was an economic nationalist but also an obsessive deficit hawk and budget balancer, who won a lot of libertarian votes with his promise of a green-eyeshade approach to government. Not so Trump: He clearly doesn’t care a whit for limited government or libertarianism, and he’s delighted with a hyperactive state so long as it’s working hand-in-glove with corporate interests.

Wallace was a noxious segregationist, but his racism was bound up in a local and regional chauvinism, a skepticism of centralized power and far-off Washington elites. Not so Trump: When he sounds an anti-Washington note, the argument isn’t that local governments can do things better, or that local folkways need respect; it’s that he can do things better, that centralization is fine and dandy so long as you have the right Duce — er, Donald — at the top.

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