In Rhinoceros, a play by the French-Romanian author Eugène Ionesco, a quiet French village is overrun by rhinoceroses. It seems the villagers themselves are transforming into raging beasts, attracted by their “frankness” (their lack of political correctness in today’s phrasing), and by their unthinking herd mentality. As a Logician holds a learned debate on whether the rhinoceroses are one-horned or two, of the Asian species or the African, they destroy the entire village.

It is a plainly absurd situation, but that is Ionesco’s point. The nonsensical plot mirrored a nonsensical world — the atmosphere of madness that he had witnessed in Romania in the 1930s as fascism had deformed his neighbors. Not unlike the “rhinoceritis” deforming his fictional villagers. Not unlike the Trumpism that deforms America in 2017. Whatever Donald Trump’s faults, whatever his accomplishments still could be, one reality stands out.

He is a fascist.

I assure you, I don’t hurl the insult lightly. I don’t casually call conservatives or liberals “fascists,” since they aren’t. The propagandistic “hundredfold repetition” of just such uninformed assertions is part of our problem, though.

We can’t combat fascism unless we understand it on its own terms. In this series of columns, we have seen that its ideology is highly informal, its policies flexible; it may seem right-wing or left-wing at times. It is defined, though, by a distinctive collection of “passions.” According to historian Robert Paxton, among them are — an ethno-racial ultra-nationalism; conspiratorial paranoia fueled by a sense of crisis and decline for the nation caused by ethno-racial enemies; a militaristic, us-versus-them, survival-of-the-fittest world view; an authoritarian contempt for democratic norms, the rule of law and the free press; a populist appeal based on an extraordinary level of systematic deceit and highly theatrical rallies; and a cultish faith in an egomaniacal leader, one who demands unconditional loyalty to himself, and extends loyalty to none. One who will betray all.

This is fascism. This is Donald Trump.

Academic historians have noticed. Amid their general alarm, the debate has usually concerned where to place our president on the fascism scale — as merely “fascistic” or as an outright fascist. We have to remember, though, that fascism, being ultra-nationalist and extremely leader-centric, varies by place and time and the temperament of its chief. Trump didn’t study someone else’s ideology. He is fascist by nature, drawing on the fascistic “passions” of our own past. So, all the scholarly parsing of pachyderm horn counts, and the acknowledgement that Trumpism is not Hitlerism cannot be allowed to obscure the essential reality — a brutish rhinoceros is trampling the Republic. The damage mounts by the day.

And, as in Weimar Germany, the demolition of democracy must precede the construction of despotism. I began this series of columns with Timothy Snyder’s insight that republics fall only after civil society “breaks,” after political ethics “collapse.” Even if Trump proves too incompetent to build a fascist edifice himself, our rampaging “Leader” is surely a virtuoso at such wreckage.

Luckily, our better impulses, and institutions, are not dead. For now, the Constitution abides. Speaking of its genius, poet-diplomat James Russell Lowell once said that it was “a machine that would go of itself.” While not perfect, it is indeed an exceptional “machine.” But still, Lowell was wrong. Someone has to make it “go.” Us. If we fail to make it work, the Constitution will not save us. If we use the tools it provides, it will. All anti-fascists — true conservatives and liberals alike — have work to do. Now.

Republics and rhinoceroses cannot long co-exist.
Jim Wiggins is a retired Copiah-Lincoln Community College history instructor.