In Hell with 47

[Thumpalumpacus]

[...] disbanding NATO [...]

America can withdraw from NATO. America cannot "disband" it.

Also, the article neglects to mention another key controllable necessary for a dictatorship -- the media.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I’m seeing news stories about prominent people apologizing (and in some cases, resigning their positions) for calling Trump and his Trumpettes ‘fascists’.

Here are Umberto Eco’s fourteen characteristics of fascism:

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
   
   
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
   
   
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
   
   
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
   
   
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
   
   
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
   
   
7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
   
   
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
   
   
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
   
   
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
    
    
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
    
    
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and 
    intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
    
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
    
    
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
    

Looks to me like they’ve ticked all the boxes.

Boru

[Ferrocyanide]

[...] disbanding NATO [...]

America can withdraw from NATO. America cannot "disband" it.

Also, the article neglects to mention another key controllable necessary for a dictatorship -- the media.

Yes, you need very good control of TV channels, newspapers, ISPs if you want to be a dictator.
All dictators tell ISPs which websites to block. There is a map of the internet and which countries block and how much they block on the weeb.

I guess you need to remove certain people from power positions, such as police forces, the army and replace them with your friends.
Eventually, you can use the police force and army to eliminate citizens you don't like.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I guess you need to remove certain people from power positions, such as police forces, the army and replace them with your friends.
Eventually, you can use the police force and army to eliminate citizens you don't like.

That's the end-game. Seizing the media is one of the first orders of bidness in a takeover. I think that's why Trump has been explicit in labelling the media "the enemy of the people", precisely to lay the groundwork for prosecuting and persecuting the infosphere. Doesn't hurt that he allied himself with an owner of a major online infoshitter.