Like Trump, Mussolini was a public figure from outside politics before he was "Il Duce."

He's Mussolini to Putin's Hitler. Mussolini was a powerful fascist before Hitler came on the scene. Then he was the first to go. Now he's a footnote eclipsed by Hitler's atrocities.

"The urge to want some bit of information to be true often clouds our ability to assess why that information may be false."
-Neil deGrasse Tyson

but he does appeal to the same social forces that fascism does. And he uses many of the same political tropes to make that appeal that fascism would make. But Trump isn't a fascist, he just uses a fascistic type playbook to support his opportunism and narcissism. That's dangerous because, in his hubris, he either thinks that he can control these social forces OR that these social forces won't affect him in any way once unleashed. That's a dangerous misconception that the bourgeoisie always make when playing with this fire.

becoming self-appointed "monitors" at election sites and, even more ominously, how they will (mis)-behave if he loses. All of this constantly repeated talk for months of the, "election is rigged", is code and a real dog whistle to his supporters.