We contracted the fascist virus long before Trump. That is one thing I think many - not necessarily here - seem to misunderstand about what is at stake. You could say it started with Nixon. Really, you could say that the German fascists looked at what we were doing here as a general template for some of their worst atrocities. As has been pointed out routinely here, we're a pretty right leaning nation and of course there were a fair bit of proto-fascist tendencies in this country as early as the 19th century.
We're going to have to cure this virus somehow and I don't think centrism liberalism with tax credits and private sector solutions to public good problems is the cure. Maybe we're just too right wing to be cured and what's going to happen is one day, possibly in many of our lifetimes, we're going to over-commit to one too many foreign interventions and our own foreign policy machismo finally results in our tails getting whipped and having an attitude adjustment as a nation. I fear that it will result with us all having required reading of Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics.
You do realize the real progressives in the early 19th century were high on the ideas of eugenics right, and Hitler was highly influenced by their ideas of a master race. So there are huge leftist ideas that influenced Hitler and the third Reich.
I don’t think you realize how and why Nazism rose in the first place. It really wasn’t a “virus” as much as a defibrillator bringing back a body that was near death. The German people mostly fought and rejected Nazism until it was a better option than the option they had. An option they were forced to take, not by a right leaning regime but by liberal powers that forced upon Germany a massive war debt that took nearly 100 years to pay off and a stock market crash.
You can blame Hitler and the far right for the atrocities that happened in WWII but you have to blame the Democratic socialists for WWII happening and Hitler rising to power.
Point is fascism only happens either in hard times or when the left has pushed too far left. I don’t see us being there... yet. Yes there are fascist ideas out there, but at this point they are no more influential than Bernie’s socialism. The real danger with Trump is that he could potentially set the field for a real fascist down the line to declare himself “emperor”, dictator, king, etc.