Insightful interview https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-trumps-rhetoric-compares-to-historic-fascist-language

"I think Trump has been conditioning Americans since 2015 to see violence as something justified in certain cases and even patriotic.

He's been conditioning them to see other Americans as enemies, as diseased, as dirty. And what we have to remember is that authoritarians might initially target one group, and he's been talking mostly about immigrants. But he's also calling the enemy within the political opposition.

[...]

And this is part of an authoritarian projection mechanism. I call it the upside-down world of authoritarianism, where, ever since Mussolini, he was the first to call democrats the real tyrants and fascism was going to be freedom. Fascism was going to make Italy great again. That was a slogan, as was drain the swamp. Trump took that from Mussolini as well."