The The Hello and welcome to behind the news. My name is Doug Henwood. Two segments

today, no surprise there. Samuel Moyne will delve into the political and linguistic

complexities of calling Trump a fascist and emerges

with the conclusion that it's neither enlightening nor helpful.

And at the bottom of the hour, Juliet Shore will report on her studies of the so-called

sharing economy.

First is Trump a fascist. For a lot of

people left of center, both liberal and radical, it's a matter of passionate

intensity to say yes. The phrase passionate intensity by the way is from Yates's famous poem the second coming

which people often quote without realizing that Yates had deep fascist sympathies which are reflected in the poem

Samuel Moyne a professor of both law and history at Yale, dissents.

He's written on the topic for the New York Review of Books, among other places.

Here he is to explain his doubts.

Samuel Moyne.

People seem very invested in applying the label fascist to Trump. I'm not

sure precisely what they mean by that and saying he's very bad and I'm sure you

agree he's rather bad, but what is the utility either in language or politics of applying that label?

How important is it?

For what we call the resistance, it's very important I think that since 2016 but really as the

elections approach they have wanted to signal just how much they hate the man and

of the words out there that you can choose,

this one has a lot of charge.

...