Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes:

There Trump stood, eyes closed, swaying to the music, as the minutes ticked by and his handlers tried to salvage the situation, likely wondering what on earth had happened to him. He had started his Oct. 14 town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, a town hall being an opportunity for people to ask him questions. Then people started to faint in the overheated room.

“Personally, I enjoy this, you know,” Trump commented callously, as medical personnel wheeled people out on stretchers. “We lose weight. We can do this, lose four or five pounds, it’s okay with me.” Then he abruptly shut down the questions, telling his aides to put on some music. For the next half hour, he remained mostly silent, surrounded by his followers, as his favorite tunes played.

Many observers felt that Trump was having some kind of episode, and the incident sparked a new round of questions about his stability and mental capacity. “It shows that he is increasingly detached from reality,” posted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI).

That is certainly true. Yet I also read this as Trump, knowing he is in the fight of his life, taking refuge in plain sight of everyone into a specific kind of reality that is familiar from the history of authoritarianism: the artificial reality he has created with his fortress of lies. During this musical “pause,” he was basking in a cocoon of adoration, standing in a protected environment of his own design. His eyes closed, his favorite music playing, he was in his safe space.

As I write in Strongmen, “who would the strongman past and present be without those crowds that form the raw material of his propaganda? His secret is that he needs them far more than they need him.”

The bond that Trump has constructed with his followers, and the durability of his personality cult, is one measure of Trump’s deployment of the Fascist arsenal. [Continue reading…]