Being openly fascist and doing fascist things isn't any more evil than being closeted fascist and doing fascist things.
I feel like this is the substance of our disagreement. In my view, open fascism is altogether worse. Fascism historically always prefers the more secretive angles of gaining power and influence, because as Hannah Arendt once said it is the reasonable individual who is obligated to facts, it is the fascist who has the right, to play. The entire idea of that, though, is that they believe that if things were ever laid out openly, then people reject them out-of-hand and so they must operate through disguises, intermediaries and secrecy. The fact that they are not anymore tells me they perceive their strength as such that they no longer fear this, that they have enough strength to act openly and not be immediately condemned; they are normalized in the public mind, and it is a small step from there to victory.
Put another way: when you have to hide crimes and horrible things, there is the assumption (on the part of the actors invovled, the public at large, etc) that they are shameful; they are something to hide through obfuscation, distraction, etc. It inherently makes people distrusting of you, it provides the possibility of exposure. While they have to hide there is only so much they can do, only so fast they can move. But now it's been embraced. Now they ask openly for people to support these things. And if people agree? If you can't beat a vampire in daylight, if you can't beat where they are weakest, they have won, completely and utterly.
I don't think the fascist movement in America is as married to Trump as a cult figure as you're making out here. They don't love him because of him. They love him because he offers an environment of validation and permissibility to what they have been feeling and wanting for decades. All they have to do is cheer for him, and he'll cheer for them. It's a relationship of convenience, and the USA's fascist movement is very comfortable with those. Bush's administration was also extremely fascist. Fascists had no problem dropping their love for him as soon as he was no longer convenient to them, but they didn't drop their fascism at the same time. Remember when crowds at McCain's rallies had a habit of chanting calls for political violence, and he refused to ask them to stop? They never went anywhere. And if he had asked them to stop, he would have immediately ceased to be their candidate. Trump has repeatedly been put under the same pressure by his fascist base. The Oath Keepers put out this statement just yesterday. They don't need a sympathetic president to keep growing and preparing for civil war. They only need to be ignored enough, as they were until 2016.
And yet the transformation of the republican party into a cult of personality belies your belief that he is so easily disposed of. Sure if he were to change entirely he would no longer be acceptabel to them; to me that statement has about as much value as saying that the fact that, if hitler were to suddenly become a social democrat and swing the country in that direction in 1938 he'd lose power, is equivalent to saying that Hitler is not very important to Nazism (which, as a historian, I can assure you is not true). The difference between popular authoritarianism and an oligarchy is that the latter conceives of things like succession, inherently admitting the fact that one's rule is not eternal; the former does not, and often collapses (dragging the country along with it) if it should suddenly end (due to the authoritarian in question, for instance, dying) until a new one is formed. The idea of bureaucracy as created by that great authoritarian, Bismark, was to seperate the state's fortunes from that of the individual ruler. That the bureaucracy and government machinery has been subverted so thoroughly in this case (of which there are currently countless examples, name a department in government and I'll give you 10 artciles!) indicates that the opposite is occuring.
Trump has systematically gutted his party. Perhaps this sort of thing doesn't get spoken of much here, since it is mostly republican backend stuff, but his thorough efforts to remake the party in his own image has borne fruit. He has used his influence to destroy members of the republican section of congress and replace them with ones more favorable to him (there is a reason he spends a lot of time bragging about his record of primary endorsements suceeding). The Party at the convention has suspended traditional activies such as the writing of a Party Platform; it stands for nothing, now, at long last. Replacing the elected officials who usually speak are trump family members; the convention is traditionally the place where up-and-coming political stars attempt to dazzle the party, now the only stars permitted are the ones already part of the show. Trump freely starts fights with people who ought to be sacrosanct due to their wealth and influence, for instance Sheldon Adelson, ultra-rich megadonor capable of writing a nine-figure check, for not doing enough. There remain some notable figures of influence in the party, primarily Mitch McConnell, yet if he were to leave (due to age or anything else), what it Trump is as successful in ensuring the will of his replacement as with Kevin McCarthy? Do you remember John Boehner, Paul Ryan? Gone. If there is no one else who matters in the party but Trump, Trump is by definition the Party, and the Party is Trump.
The Oath Keepers put out this statement just yesterday.
That's interesting. But as of yet it remains talk, which one can dismiss as being for internal purposes. Until it starts being followed up with action, defection from Trump's right seems unlikely. He has already, after all, successfully corralled the "principled moderates" and center-right figures. He has so far freed himself from being accountable to actually achieve any agenda or goal. So long as that is the case, my argument grows stronger.
I do not think that if he were to win a second term that the republican party would continue exist in any capacity except as an extension of Trump. That does not mean it would always be so, after all Trump is already 74. But when it reaches
that situation it will either be absorbed by another strongman, perish, or be scavenged by vultures.
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