FREDERICTON — Local man Carl Hampton recently retweeted Donald Trump’s statement that “all negative polls are fake news” with the phrase “This is how fascism starts,” notably missing out on the fact that fascism has been going strong for at least a few months now.
“I saw Trump’s blatant attempt to discredit the free press and I thought to myself: ‘This is it. This is where it all begins’” said Hampton, who hasn’t been following the news for the last eight to twelve weeks and seems to think he’s the first to figure this out. “I find it so hard to believe. There’s been no lead up to this.”
A plethora of fascist incidents have escaped Hampton’s notice on a consistent basis, including the appointment of a white nationalist to the position of White House Chief Strategist, a travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries, and the apparent adoption of a dictatorial Russian leader as the president’s BFF.
Hampton’s friends aren’t sure why Trump’s tweet is the metaphorical fascist straw that broke the camel’s back. “I pretty much figured out the fascism thing back when Trump threatened to jail his political opponent if he won the election,” said co-worker Dee Sutton.
Following this extended period of time apparently reading zero news stories and talking to zero other people, Hampton is finally prepared to tell it like it is: “I know some people might say this is going too far, but I think there’s a case to be made that Trump bears a few similarities to historical despots”
Experts admit that it’s hard to pinpoint when fascism actually started, but most agree that it really got going around November of last year when Americans elected a fascist.
