WASHINGTON—Donald Trump’s ugly, deceitful and intensifying attacks on the integrity of America’s democratic system have alarmed experts on dictatorships, who say his words resemble those of foreign fascists and authoritarians.

As voting day approaches, Trump has descended into a conspiratorial darkness he had not previously approached during a presidential campaign always marked by dishonesty and demonization.

His false and outlandish claims have reminded scholars of those of illiberal leaders from Italy’s Benito Mussolini to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. And they “can potentially lead to violence, in particular if the followers take this seriously,” said Pippa Norris, an elections authority at Harvard University who is director of the Election Integrity Project.

“I actually can’t believe all of the parallels,” said Erica Frantz, a political-science professor at Michigan State University who studies dictatorships. “I actually can’t believe that it’s happening here.”

Norris said she was “very worried” about what will happen on and after Nov. 8. Trump’s claim that the election is “rigged” against him, she said, is the kind of statement usually limited to “autocratic states in Central Europe and in Africa by people who don’t want to give up power.”

She warned of global consequences.

“It’s not just the damage that happens to America as a result of this but the damage that happens to the reputation of democracy worldwide. Where dictators say, ‘Well, if America’s going to do this, then so can we.’ So it really encourages the worst abuses of human rights,” she said.

In the last three weeks, Trump, a Republican who trails substantially in every poll, has falsely claimed that the election is plagued by “large-scale voter fraud.” He has said he will use the powers of the presidency to have opponent Hillary Clinton prosecuted.

He has urged supporters to go “watch the polling booths” in “other” communities, a clear reference to racial minorities. He has lashed out at disloyal former allies like House Speaker Paul Ryan.

And he has alleged that he is the victim of multiple conspiracies involving such disparate entities as the FBI, the media, and “international banks” he declares to be plotting the “destruction of U.S. sovereignty.”

There is no precedent in American history, four professors said in interviews Monday, for Trump’s claim that the election is rigged. In fact, said prominent fascism scholar Stanley Payne, even 20th-century European fascists did not go so far.

“Even back in the era of great conflict, back in the ‘30s, things were not this pointed and clear-cut,” said Payne, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin. “The (British Union of Fascists) did not make that kind of charge in England. Nor would you have found it in Northern Europe. Nor did the Nazis really make that kind of charge in Germany.”

Payne thought of one precedent. Trump’s pledge to try to imprison Clinton, he said, was somewhat reminscient of the rhetoric of Spain’s left-wing Popular Front in the 1936 election just before the Spanish Civil War, when “they said they wanted to turn the tables and put the people who had repressed them in jail.”

Experts on fascism say Trump does not meet the definition of a fascist, and there are, of course, massive differences between him and European dictators. But Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, said there are some “great parallels” between Trump’s “victimhood narrative” and that of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who took power in 1922.

“You create the appearance of a conspiracy of forces that is trying to ruin the nation. And on the other you build yourself up as: ‘I alone can fix it,’” she said, repeating one of Trump’s phrases. “The man of destiny.”

Trump, referring to Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street companies, employed anti-Semitic tropes when he alleged last week that she held secret meetings with “international banks” to “plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers.” Mussolini, Ben-Ghiat noted, used similar code when he railed against the “international plutocracy.”

Frantz said her thoughts keep returning to Venezuela, where Chavez won a legitimate presidential election in 1998 and then cracked down on dissent and accumulated control over the media and the courts. Most dictatorships, she said, begin when “individuals vie for power, win an election democratically, and then slowly crack down on the institutions.”

“And the way in which they do it,” she said, “is starting to generate distrust among the citizens about the strength of the institutions, the reliability of democracy. And it generates a feeling of distrust, which can be effective in enabling these types of individuals to clamp down on power.”

She said Trump’s words about prosecuting Clinton were a “scary development.” Jailing one’s opponent, she said, is “usually the first indicator that a democratically elected leader is going to clamp down on the opposition.”

Trump’s spokespeople and allies have repeatedly insisted that he is being misinterpreted. His campaign manager, for example, suggested on CNN on Monday that he was merely talking about the media when he claimed the election was rigged.

And then, immediately after, Trump made clear that he meant the election was really, truly rigged.

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“Of course there is large-scale voter fraud happening on and before election day,” he falsely claimed on Twitter. “Why do Republican leaders deny what is going on? So naive!”

Ben-Ghiat said she is “quite sure that he is an authoritarian leader, and he would rule that way if he were able to.”

The question, she said, is the extent to which he will be constrained by America’s democratic system.

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