There is at least one good reason not to fear the Donald Trump acolytes who are jostling hecklers, shouting down opponents, assaulting them with pepper spray and otherwise doing their best to emulate the forces of Mayor Daley during that charmed summer of ’68:
They don’t have the duds.
As pundits and the public alike continue to agonize over whether the GOP presidential heir apparent more closely resembles Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, they overlook a salient sartorial fact. The goon squads of both of these legendary bad guys had matching outfits. The Trump forces, by contrast, have nothing comparable in their closets.
How, then, can they rate? A common look signals a common cause — namely, power and unity. Hitler and Mussolini grasped this. So they clad their followers accordingly, the former’s Sturmabteilung in brown and the latter’s Black Shirts in — well, you know.
These paramilitary forces may have been Trumpian roughnecks and hooligans at heart. But when they donned their raiment, they became imbued with fierce organization, or at least the appearance thereof.
(The SS is not part of this conversation. Yes, their togs were iconic, churned out by no less than Hugo Boss. But these psychotics were ruthless, soulless professionals, not mere thugs.)
On democracy’s shores in the 1930s, homegrown would-be dictators took their cue from the fashion sense they saw emanating from Berlin and Rome. Oswald Mosley clad his British Union of Fascists in black. Closer to home, the tin-pot crackpot William Dudley Pelley outfitted his Silver Legion of America with — what else? — silver shirts. For a smart complement, he threw in dark blue corduroys.
But Trump? His minions appear to be incapable of dressing their way out of a paper bag (which, upon reflection, might well suit them). Observe them, in action, at their candidate’s rallies. These upstart adherents sport a sorry and indiscriminate mélange of jeans, nondescript business suits, floppy t-shirts, 10-gallon hats and “Make America Great Again” baseball caps. It’s not exactly a phalanx that’s garbed to intimidate.
These wingnuts can’t even find themselves a proper symbol. Der Fuehrer’s black swastika, set against a white circle and red field, was striking and terrifying in its bold simplicity. The bundled fasces of Il Duce were so totemic that they adorned our Mercury dime years before he came to power. Meanwhile, the Trump forces have come up with nothing worth mentioning — not so much as an officially stylized “T.”
Yes, a pro-Trump outfit that calls itself the “Lion Guard” has hoisted an emblem of sorts. But it’s a multicolored mess — a cluttered cameo of the king of the beasts with three stars on a blue necklace, set against the 13 classic red and white stripes. The lion’s orangey mane is, one presumes, meant to heroically evoke Trump’s locks. Instead, it is a joke reminder of their inherent absurdity.
Anyway, it’s not the sort of thing that’s rendered easily on a brassard.
Trump’s devotees might take their cue from It Can’t Happen Here. In that famously cautionary “What If?” novel, Sinclair Lewis depicted the Minute Men — the private army of the Huey Long-esque antagonist Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip — in arresting detail. They were rigged, he wrote, like “an American cavalryman in 1870: slant-topped blue forage caps, dark blue tunics, light blue trousers, with yellow stripes at the seam, tucked into leggings of black rubberoid for what appeared to be the privates, and boots of sleek black leather for officers.”
For good measure, Lewis added, “Each of them had on the right side of his collar the letters ‘M.M.’ and on the left, a five-pointed star.” Now that’s a political fashion statement.
So, Donald, do yourself and your campaign a favor. To really register with the opposition on a visual level — and afford them at least the semblance of serious terror — give your disciples some proper working kit in time for the convention. And please, start with a decent moniker. With your customary modesty, you might even want to weave your own name into it.
Since these folks strut so arrogantly and trumpet you so loudly, you could call them “Strumpets.”
Thomas Vinciguerra is the author of Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E.B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of The New Yorker (W.W. Norton, 2015).
