section_path: Background
section_name: Background
paragraph_text: Background
  
  Donald Trump is an American businessman and politician who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has served as the 47th president since January 2025. He ran three times as the Republican party 's candidate for the presidency, winning against Hillary Clinton in 2016, losing to Joe Biden in 2020, and winning again facing Kamala Harris in 2024.
  
  Fascism is an ideological term which refers to a broad set of aspirations and influences that emerged in the early 20th century, exemplified by the European dictators Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco; and include elements of nationalism, enforcement of social hierarchies, hatred towards social minority groups, opposition to liberalism, the cult of personality, racism, and the love of militaristic symbols.
  
  Since Trump was elected to office in 2016, many academics have compared Trump's politics to fascism. Several have pointed out that contrasts exist between historical fascism and Trump's politics. Many also argued that "fascist elements" have operated within and around Trump's movement. Following the January 6 attack, some voices within the academic community felt that things had changed and that Trump's politics and connections with fascism deserved greater scrutiny. According to an October 2024 poll held by ABC News and Ipsos, 49% of American registered voters considered Trump to be a fascist, defined in the poll as "a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents", while 23% considered Kamala Harris to be a fascist. Another YouGov survey from the same year reported that about 20% of Americans believed that Trump saw Hitler as completely bad; among Republican respondents, four in ten believed that Trump held such position. The same poll reported that nearly half of Trump voters would continue to support a political candidate even if he or she stated that Hitler had done some good things, a position that was held by a quarter of all respondents.