Is Donald Trump a fascist? The ‘F’ word is in play in the final few days of this US election campaign.

Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris was asked whether she thought Donald Trump is a fascist during a CNN townhall in Pennsylvania this week and replied “Yes. I do. Yes. I do.”

She has shifted her campaign from smilingly spreading “joy”, to concentrating on bread-and-butter issues and warnings about a Trump victory.

People “care about bringing down the cost of groceries”, she explained. “They also care about our democracy and not having a president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

The spectre of fascism is in the news because of alarming threats from Trump himself, along with on the record responses to them by two top generals who served in the White House during Trump’s presidency.

His planned rally in Madison Square Garden this weekend is also being compared in some quarters to a notorious Nazi rally held at the same venue in 1939.

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US Marine Corps General John F Kelly served under President Trump as homeland security secretary and then as his longest chief of staff, from 2017 to 2019.

Talking to the New York Times this week, Kelly first defined fascism: “It’s a far-right, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy.”

Then drawing on his extensive personal and private experience of Trump he concluded: “He’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators – he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Kelly had vowed not to intervene during the election unless he felt the US Constitution – to which Americans swear allegiance – was under threat.

Trump’s increasingly violent outbursts changed his mind. This month Trump said he plans to turn the “National Guard, or … the military” on “sick people, radical left lunatics” and others he called the “enemy within”. He has also threatened to shut down major media organisations.

In her Fox News interview, the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris denounced her Republican opponent, saying: “You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people.

“He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him.”

Trump has gone still further, accusing America’s highest military officer Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, of a “treasonous act… so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”.

General Milley’s offence, in Trump’s eyes, was calling his Chinese counterpart after the January 6 insurrection to assure him that the US and its international relations remained stable. “My intention was to de-escalate,” he said.

‘Gates of hell will be unleashed’

Another ex-military leader, retired General Mike Flynn, who has stayed loyal to Trump and who was pardoned by him for failing to register as a foreign agent, was asked if he would preside over military tribunals in a second Trump term “not only to drain the swamp, but imprison the swamp, and on a few occasions, execute the swamp”.

“Believe me,” Flynn replied, “the gates of hell – my hell – will be unleashed.”

Milley warned the Watergate reporter Bob Woodward that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country”.

While in office Trump routinely referred to his senior officers as “my generals” and was bewildered that their loyalty was to uphold the Constitution rather than to obey his commands without question.

Independently both the generals, Milley and Kelly, recall President Trump repeatedly expressing admiration for Hitler, “you know Hitler did some good things” and expressing contempt for American soldiers killed or wounded fighting for their country as “losers” and “suckers”.

On a visit to Arlington Cemetery, near where Kelly’s son, a fallen marine, is buried, Trump mused “what’s in it for them?”

“I thought he was asking one of these rhetorical questions,” Kelly recalls, “but I didn’t realise he was serious – he just didn’t see what the point was… selflessness is something he just didn’t understand”.

Trump cannot bear to be in the company of the disabled and has flirted with the idea of eugenics, exerting control over which humans are allowed to breed.

Trump ’employs racist slurs and tropes’

He employs racist slurs and tropes, ranging from attacking Harris as lazy, dumb and sleepy to outright attacks on Mexicans as “murderers and rapists”.

When a 20-year-old Latina army private was murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood, the then president Trump met her grieving family and offered to pay funeral costs personally, The Atlantic magazine reports.

But when a bill came in he told his chief of staff “don’t pay it” adding “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f*****g Mexican… f*****g people trying to rip me off!”

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Donald Trump has always wanted to play Madison Square Garden, like big showbiz and sports celebrities.

He was advised against wasting his time in previous campaigns because New York is a blue wall Democratic state. This year he is indulging himself by making a big noise in his home town – what matters most to him.

His rally will not have the jack-booted polish of the Nazis in 1939. Trump embracing and kissing the stars and stripes is more his style.

The alt-right TV presenter Tucker Carlson has been booked as the warm-up man for the big show.

Carlson: VP deserves a ‘spanking’

Carlson had the same job at another rally in Georgia this week and gave a taste of the sexist patriarchal, and vulgar, attack which the 20,000 MAGA fans in New York City can expect “Dad” to make against Kamala Harris.

“Dad is pissed. And when Dad gets home, you know what he says?” Carlson told the cheering crowd with Trump on the platform behind him, “‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now'”.

Trump would like to be a fascist dad, trampling on the rules and decencies of American democracy. Fortunately, should he be re-elected to the White House, he will likely be too ridiculous, ignorant and weak to pull it off, so long as there are still enough people like General Kelly to defend the Constitution.

Harris: Trump ‘increasingly unhinged and unstable’

Now after Trump’s threats, Kamala Harris’ rhetoric has darkened.

Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there and no longer be there to rein him in.

“He wants a military who will be loyal to him, personally, one that will obey his orders, even when he tells them to break the law or abandon their oath to the Constitution of the United States,” she said.

Posing the question as a stark choice for US voters going to the polls for the presidential election on 5 November, she added: “We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power.

“The question in 13 days will be: What do the American people want?”