If we wait around for a certain kind of violence that we associate with fascism,

to be worried, we're going to wake up one day and find an authoritarian state

in the 21st century manner and not have understood how it got there.

Welcome to Deconstructed, I'm Maddie Hussin.

Is it time to call Trump the F-word?

Because what we've seen in recent days is the behavior of a deranged demagogue,

someone who is following almost chapter by chapter, the playbook of fascists.

A lot of the mainstream liberal politicians are in denial about this,

because it means that you have to come to terms with very unpleasant truths about America.

That's my guest today.

Fascism, scholar and Mussolini expert Ruth Ben Giat will be discussing Trump's assault

on the rule of law, on democracy, on actual Americans in the streets.

His naked attempt to seize more powers for himself and asking,

is this Trump's Reichstag fire moment?

Here you see the Reichstag, the German House of Parliament in Berlin,

which has been seriously destroyed by fire.

Hitler, now Chancellor, has announced that the fire was the work of communists

and was intended to be the signal for a large of its uprising throughout the country.

In consequence, Germany has been faced under a system of martial law,

a decree having been signed which aims at the total destruction of communism.

On February 27th, 1933, the German Parliament, the Reichstag, was burned down.

Adolf Hitler, then in coalition government, used the fire to claim that the communists

...