On Thursday evening, New York Times Washington editor, Jonathan Weisman tweeted out a link to a Robert Kagan editorial in the Washington Post. Kagan’s editorial explained the relationship between what’s happening with Trump and fascism.

It’s a common — and common sense — argument, i.e.., that patriotism becomes nationalism becomes fascism, with the rise of a charismatic figure with no regard for laws or history, and creating an “us vs them” environment. What they have is anger, militancy, and the cult (yes, cult) following of a single strongman leader. What they have is racism, a simplistic nationalism, a concept of governing both domestically and internationally that is based on bullying and threats. What they have is the mindset of children pulling the wings from flies.

As Kagan wrote:

That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as anyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous.

Republican politicians marvel at how he has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.”  …

This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society.

So what happened?  The response that Jonathan Weisman received did nothing to dispel the connection between Trump supporters and those of earlier fascist movements.

Check out Weisman’s timeline.  I’ll put a small sample of the vileness below the fold….