Remember Greg Bovino? He's now an international fascist hero

[marmar]

Remember Greg Bovino? He’s now an international fascist hero
Fascists are like cockroaches: They survive on the conservative movement's leftovers, and keep coming back

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published June 7, 2026 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) It’s hardly breaking new ground to suggest that former U.S. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino, the man who led the Trump administration’s paramilitary assault on Minneapolis last winter, looks and acts like a fascist. But so much of American public discourse, over the last decade or so, has involved refusing to “observe the observable,” in Joan Didion’s famous phrase. To put it another way, it seems inordinately difficult for our media class to make the daring leap from “it quacks like a duck” to the conclusion that it actually is one.

German media outlets, which arguably have some expertise in this area, were all over it with Bovino from the jump. Arno Frank of Der Spiegel described Bovino’s infamous olive overcoat as recalling the attire of an “elegant SS officer,“ set against “the rowdy SA mob.” All that was missing for “the perfect cosplay,” Frank added, was a monocle. The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung also heaped mock praise on Bovino’s “Nazi look,” writing that his “closely cropped haircut” suggested he might have “taken a photo of Ernst Röhm to the barber.”

That mordant humor, however enjoyable, tiptoes around the unanswerable question of how, or even whether, we can tell the difference between cosplay and the real thing. How is a guy who wears that coat, cites Nazi general Erwin Rommel as an inspiration, and has suggested there may be 100 million “deportable individuals” in the United States — which is roughly 30 percent of the entire population — not a fascist?

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It’s pretty hard to top Greg Bovino in the category of crazy right-wing Americans, but the summit organizers may have done so. Veteran white supremacist crank Jared Taylor, author of “White Identity: Racial Consciousness in the 21st Century,” was also on hand. So was, I kid you not, a young man named Stefano Forte, who is president of the New York Young Republicans. He previously appeared in Salon thanks to Russell Payne’s reporting on the “campaign” to get Zohran Mamdani deported, which does not appear to have succeeded.

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But Bovino was, and is, a deeply resonant figure to the deepest and most committed elements of the MAGA base, or rather to those within it who fear that Donald Trump cannot go fast enough or far enough, and is now selling out to the weak-willed Panicans and traitorous Marxist liberals. Bovino represents the MAGA soul — perhaps we should say the MAGA Geist — which is not just kinda-fascist but deeply and enthusiastically fascist, not just curious about the legacy of Nazism but achingly, passionately eager to revive it. ..................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/06/07/remember-greg-bovino-hes-now-an-international-fascist-hero/