Fascism's last piece falls into place: Trump's Madison Square Garden rally is meant to encourage violence, not voting

Donald Trump has foregone most of the staples of campaigning, in recent months. His visits to battleground states have been sparse, with Trump instead preferring to cater to true believers and only true believers. This Madison Square Garden rally, though—this is something different. It's a level of odious that not even the papers can scrub away.

"The rally at Madison Square Garden that Donald Trump is holding in New York on Sunday began with speakers delivering a litany of racist remarks, vulgar insults and profanity-laden comments" was The New York Times take.

The true theme of the night, however, appeared to be violence, not just insults.

The Trump rally in NYC opened with a clip from the movie "Patton" that partly recreated the US general's famous speech to the Third Amy to prepare them for battle: "We're not just going to shoot the bastards. We're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks."

And speakers re-emphasized that imagery.

Miami-based private equity manager Grant Cardone, speaking at the rally, ratcheted up the rhetoric as he condemned Vice President Kamala Harris and her "pimp handlers." [...]

"She makes her boss look competent," he said, referring to President Joe Biden. "She's a fake - I'm not here to invalidate her - she's a fake, a fraud, she's a pretender."

He added, "Her and her pimp handlers will destroy our country."

"This election has to be more than a victory - it needs to be a landslide," he said. "We need to slaughter [these] other people."

For those who wonder why Trump's camp would be holding a near-election-eve rally in New York City, another part of America he will never, ever win the vote of: It's because the collection of far-right extremists assembled for this rally aren't intended to coax Americans into voting for Trump. The goal is to rally Trump's farthest-right supporters into committing violence if American's don't.

The rally and its themes were almost certainly meant to intentionally invoke one of the "great moments" of the American fascist movement, the American Nazi rally held at Madison Square Garden in 1939.

It is not a moment most of America chooses to remember. Among today's far-right extremists, however, it remains a point of movement pride.

Indeed, speakers appeared to go to some lengths to appropriate the rhetoric of that past Nazi movement.

The obvious question is why Trump, in a nail biter of an election, would intentionally stage a far-right hate-in deliberately invoking as many neo-Nazi themes, slogans, "jokes," and callbacks as can be stuffed in. It is not the sort of rally that will convince candidates wary of Trump that he does not mean all the most vicious and violent things he says: far from it.

But this Madison Square Garden rally isn't meant for the consumption of "wary" voters. It's meant to light a fire under the violent far-right—the people who do know these references and callbacks by heart, and who want to know for certain that Trump is on their side before they load their guns and act on his behalf.

Trump is not trying to win the election anymore. Trump is setting up the conditions for again trying to topple the government if the vote goes against him. The playbook is identical to the one he and Republican lawmakers (like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is to speak at this rally) deployed for Trump's Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

• Fill the airwaves with made-up hoaxes declaring that the vote count cannot be trusted, because the "enemy within" has taken control of the voting.
• Use the hoaxes to assemble conspiracy cranks, militia groups, and other Americans both gullible enough to believe Trump's lies and violent enough to act on them.
• Turn them loose.

There are few better ways to broadcast that you are a true backer of violent fascism than recreating the rally that defined success for modern violent groups. The airwaves will not be filled with quotes aimed at sympathetic voters, tomorrow morning. The circulated clips will instead be peppered with Nazi slogans, racist jokes, and demands that true patriots "cut out the living guts" of the enemies around them. The rally is an invitation to the far right: Trump is one of you. Trump is serious, when he demands violence for the sake of expelling the "enemies in our midst." Trump will fight—and expects you to fight as well.

This is a rally meant to encourage terrorist acts if Trump loses—or, more critically, if the vote is close enough that violence could make a useful difference in blocking the "wrong" votes from being counted. It is the transparent extension of the Jan. 6 coup plan.

I assure you, tomorrow morning the nation's neo-Nazis, militia groups, violent racists, and compulsive far-right gun holders will be giddy. And they will be planning, because that is what Donald Trump has asked them to do. He is absolutely a fascist, and the last necessary piece of his fascist movement—violent paramilitary groups willing to engage in horrific acts so that their chosen leader can be granted the powers of the state whether the public accepts him or rejects him—is now being prepared.