Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally. Credit:AP A recent assessment of Trump as Hitler was utterly remarkable, for the manner in which it clearly likened the Republican candidate to the former German chancellor – but without once mentioning Trump's name or that the US was in the midst of an election campaign. The publication was The New York Times and the article, the review of a new Hitler biography by Volker Ullrich, was headlined: In 'Hitler,' an ascent from 'dunderhead' to demagogue. The review opens with a question, in which any mention of Trump would have been superfluous: "How did Adolf Hitler – described by one eminent magazine editor in the 1930s as a 'half-insane rascal,' a 'pathetic dunderhead,' a 'nowhere fool,' a 'big mouth' – rise to power in the land of Goethe and Beethoven?" Ullrich describes Hitler as a "Munich rabble-rouser" (delete "Munich", insert "New York") – seen by many as a self-obsessed "clown", who had a strangely "scattershot, impulsive style", who was described as an egomaniac who "only loved himself".

Adolf Hitler with some of his deputies. Rudolf Hess, left, and Baldur V. Schirach, right, in 1936. Get the drift? Hitler was a narcissist with a taste for self-dramatisation and a "characteristic fondness for superlatives" – did someone say "beautiful" wall? There were questions about the limits of Hitler's self-control and yet, Ullrich writes, he had "a keen eye for the strengths and weaknesses of other people" and a capacity to "instantaneously analyse and exploit situations". He took advantage of economic difficulties, dysfunctional government, naive adversaries, a growing resentment of elites and a slick propaganda machine that used the latest technology. National Fascist Party headquarters, Rome, 1934, decorated with Benito Mussolini's face and the word Si in reference to the Italian general election which took place in the form of a referendum; voters could either accept or reject the Grand Council of the National Fascist Party, 99.84 per cent of voters voted "si". Credit:Alamy Hitler loved big rallies and shaped his speeches to suit the tastes of his lower middle class, conservative and nationalist followers – they would be Trump's non-college-educated white voters. Hitler would manipulate the crowds' fears and resentments before offering himself as the visionary leader who would restore law and order and "lead Germany to a new era of national greatness".

Did I just hear "make America great again?" Right-wing Spaniards make the fascist salute at a rally in Madrid in 1995 as they commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Spain's dictator Francisco Franco. Credit:AP Hitler was a psychopath. Trump is just a con man. I don't recall Hitler flip-flopping. Essayist Shalom Auslander Did somebody say: "I alone…" Americans have seen a Trump-like figure walk from the pages of Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, and Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. But they must wrestle with conflicting assessments in the context of analysis and reporting in the current presidential campaign.

Greek army tanks parade in the streets of Salonica during celebrations for the 57th anniversary of Ochi Day No Day, when Greece refused to comply with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini's demands in World War II. In the conservative Nation Review, Jay Nordlinger opts for several descriptions of Trump – maybe a lout, a nationalist, a demagogue – "but he's not a fascist". He detects the attitude of a king, maybe a dictator, and he's troubled that Trump is something other than an exponent of liberal democracy. There are other F-tendencies – Trump is impressed by "the power of [Beijing's] strength in putting down the Tiananmen Square protests"; he has no time for "losers"; he obsesses about intelligence (especially his own) and that it's in the breeding; physical handicaps are not good; some races and creeds are definitely inferior; he demands personal pledges from his followers; he'll stick his name on anything; he threatens companies he doesn't like; and he figures the military brass will break the law, if he orders them. The Frecce Tricolore air squadron flies over the Via dei Fori Imperiali during the military parade to mark the founding of the Italian Republic and the 150th anniversary of Italian unification after the death of Benito Mussolini. Credit:Getty Images But the Hitler comparison is a fascist too far for historian Fedja Buric. Writing in Salon magazine he'll cop to Mussolini, noting that like Il Duce, Trump lives up to the Umberto Eco definition of fascism as "a beehive of contradictions" – pro-choice, then pro-life; donated to politicians, now condemns political donations; trice-married but now embracing Christian Evangelicals; embodies capitalism, but wants to crackdown on free trade.

Like Mussolini, Trump is dismissive of democratic institutions – he wants to "dismantle the establishment". Buric lays out Trump's self-assigned challenges – he'll crack down on freedom of the press; he'll "ethnically cleanse" 11 million "illegals" and strip their US-born children of their American citizenship; he'll commit war crimes. Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, foreground, who praised Benito Mussolini for "having done good". Credit:AP Elsewhere Trump's speeches are likened to an "interwar seance of once-powerful dictators who inspired multitudes, drove countries into the ground and died grim deaths"; and "like reading a comic-book version of Franco, Mussolini or Hitler". Essayist Shalom Auslander writes that the easy Hitler-Trump comparison belittles Hitler – "Hitler was a psychopath. Trump is just a con man. I don't recall Hitler flip-flopping – I don't see him saying one morning 'I'm going to invade Poland' and then softening his stance in the afternoon after meeting with Sean Hannity". An attendee salutes as the pledge of allegiance is recited at a Donald Trump event. Credit:Bloomberg

Political analyst TA Frank quibbles with what he calls the "definitional hairsplitting" by which we might conclude that Trump is not a fascist. And writing in Vanity Fair, he lets rip: "At the end of the day, fascism is just shorthand for right-wing tyranny, and that can come in many varieties. In the case of Trump, what people want to know is whether they are electing a militarist who's sympathetic to white nationalism, hostile to the First Amendment, and generally indifferent to the niceties of constitutional order. They worry about racial pogroms, extra-judicial violence and new foreign conflicts." Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Frank declares all these to be bad. But then, something of a disclaimer – "Trump is no fascist and he's not going to be a Constitution-shredding dictator, but that's probably not going to comfort you all that much". The same ambivalence is in the assessment by Robert Paxton, a leading American authority on fascist history. He sees echoes of fascism in Trump, but "profound differences too".

Alessandra Mussolini resigns from the right-wing Alleanza Nazionale party, which descends from the Fascist regime of her grandfather, Benito Mussolini, in Rome in 1996. Credit:AP Paxton discerns a resemblance to Mussolini, in the way that Trump sets his lower jaw, the bluster and his skills in working a crowd and the news media; and particularly his capacity to enlist working-class voters against the left, just as Hitler and Mussolini did. But just as Forrest Gump and Chauncey Gardiner stumble upon events, Paxton doubts that all this is a conscious effort by Trump. He tells Slate magazine: "I don't think he's a bookish man – I'm sure he's never read a book about Hitler or Mussolini." A statue of presidential hopeful Donald Trump is placed outside a shop in Los Angeles. Credit:AP Neo-conservative historian and foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan warned during the primaries, as Trump was getting a lock on the Republican nomination: "He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him."

Setting out the troubling levers of power a President Trump would have had his disposal, Kagan poses this question at the end of an op-ed piece in The Washington Post: "Is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?" He answers in despondent resignation: "This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes and a whiff of violence), but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac 'tapping into' popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party – out of ambition or blind party loyalty or simply out of fear – falling into line behind him." A visiting professor at Princeton, Italian journalist Gianni Ricotta, is adamant that Trump is not a fascist. He poses a question – "can you imagine Mussolini being accused of endorsing 'New York values'?" And he makes a statement: "Witch-hunts, racism, repression and state surveillance may plague a democracy without it morphing into a fascist dictatorship." Ricotta's national pride seems almost offended by the comparison, writing in The Atlantic: "Whereas it can be impossible to discern any logic or strategy in Trump's campaign, the fascists who marched on Rome in 1922 were relentlessly, violently focused on a clear goal: to kill democracy and to install a dictatorship." Denouncing Trump as an opportunist who will change course as he likes, and say anything, Ricotta reminds Americans of what real fascism was and of how unlikely it is: "[Trump] is not about to dissolve the Democratic Party and banish the Clintons, [Barack] Obama, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Jimmy Fallon to exile on Randall's Island. Americans will not goose-step down Broadway; no screaming squadraccia of middle-aged Trump fans will occupy Grand Central; Amazon will not be nationalised as a 'strategic state asset'."

And now – drumroll, please – the Benitos! Georgetown University's John McNeil slices and dices Trump on 11 aspects of fascism, somewhat as Trump assessed the Miss Universe contestants, awarding from one to four Benitos. 1.Hyper-nationalist: By US standards yes, but not by the standards of historical fascism. Two Benitos 2.Militarism: He'll snatch Middle Eastern oil resources, but is not big on military action and he doesn't wear a uniform. Two Benitos 3.Glorification of violence: What we've heard at his rallies is well short of Mussolini's Blackshirts and Hitler's Brownshirts, who resorted to political violence extensively. One Benito

4.Fetishisation of youth: No real youth organisation and his most devoted followers are Grey Power refugees. Zero Benitos 5.Fetishisation of masculinity: Trump is big on stamina and he mocks men who he thinks are deficient in virility. Mussolini lionised his mother as the feminine ideal, but for Trump it's a supermodel, more akin to Hugh Hefner than Mussolini. But Trump does have that swaggering machismo. Four Benitos 6.Leader cult: Absolutely – that's why they call him Mr Trump. His business experience proves his leadership; can't bear to have either questioned. Four Benitos 7.Lost golden-age syndrome: Absolutely – "make America great again". Four Benitos 8.Self-definition by opposition: Always railing against politics as usual, political correctness, elites and minorities. But doesn't advocate annihilation. Three Benitos

9.Mass mobilisation and mass party: He had taken the GOP as his party, even though he never refers to himself as a Republican and a good many in the party loathe him. Two Benitos 10.Hierarchical party structure and a tendency to purge the disloyal: There's a bit of this in the Trump campaign, but not in the GOP and no role for violence. One Benito 11.Theatricality: Look at the rallies and the speeches – he constantly calls things and people the worst or the best; there's the repetitive chants; even the studied frown is a Mussolini pose. Three Benitos Trump is a loser in the fascist derby. Loading

"[Only] 26 out of a possible 44 Benitos. Even Spain's Francisco Franco [1892-1975] and Portugal's Antonio de Oliveira Salazar [1889-1970] might score higher," Professor McNeill explains in The Washington Post. "Trump does not do nuance – a crude, quick and flippant assessment is what he deserves. He is semi-fascist: more fascist than any successful American politician yet; and the most dangerous threat to pluralist democracy in this country in more than a century, but – thank our stars – an amateurish imitation of the real thing."