11/17/25
The question is, am I a pioneer ahead of my time, or just a nut along with thousands of other nuts? You may think you know the answer. You may think the answer is so obvious, that you don't need to continue reading.

That's fine.

But I'm going to prove to you that I'm literally ahead of my time. Ten years ago, yesterday, I posted the following on Facebook. I can prove that, because Facebook's algorithm reminded me of it on the anniversary date:

That's November of 2015. Who was warning that Trump was a wannabe dictator, then? First of all I should clarify. You might take this post to mean that I was speaking tongue-in-cheek, exaggerating that Trump was "dictator-like." But I'm the one who posted it, and I clearly remember that I was quite serious.

I know, let's ask three different AI systems the same query: "As of November of 2015, who was seriously warning that Donald Trump wanted to become a dictator, like Mussolini?"

Here's our results (I've had to edit out some of the descriptions to keep this entry within reasonable length limits):

1) Microsoft copilot:
Martin O'Malley, then a Democratic presidential candidate
Dana Milbank, a columnist for The Washington Post
David I. Kertzer, a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and expert on Italian fascism
Edward Fitzpatrick, writing for The Providence Journal in December 2015

2) Claude AI:
The warnings came from conservative activists including Max Boot, Robert Kagan, Bret Stephens, and John Noonan, as well as former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore and Libertarian politician Gary Johnson. Republican former governor Christine Todd Whitman described Trump's 2015 calls for a travel ban as reflecting the type of rhetoric that enabled Hitler's rise to power. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck compared Trump with Hitler in 2016, calling him dangerous and noting that Hitler was also initially dismissed as a buffoon CNN.

3) ChatGPT (saying "yes" to its offer of a more in-depth answer):
There were several serious warnings in late 2015 that Donald Trump’s rhetoric and authoritarian?leaning style resembled that of Benito Mussolini or other dictators. Here are two prominent ones:
Max Boot (foreign-affairs scholar and adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio) tweeted on November 22, 2015: "Trump is a fascist. And that's not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it."
Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal columnist) wrote in November 2015 that Trump's proposed Muslim registry "is fascism, plain and simple."
If you like, I can look up all the earliest warnings from 2015 about Trump wanting dictatorial power (with Mussolini analogies) and send you a fuller list.
Yes, please.
Short answer: by late November 2015 there were people seriously sounding the "fascism/strongman" alarm about Trump, but I can't find anyone on record in that period literally saying "he wants to become a dictator like Mussolini." What you do see, before or by November 2015, is a cluster of writers and conservatives explicitly likening him to European fascist leaders (including Mussolini) and warning about his authoritarian tendencies.

Here are the key names and dates I can document up through November 2015:

Jeffrey A. Tucker (Newsweek&endash;July 17, 2015), "Is Donald Trump a Fascist?" in Newsweek (July 17, 2015).
Conor Lynch (Salon&endash;July 25, 2015), "Donald Trump is an actual fascist: What his surging popularity says about the GOP base" (Salon, July 25, 2015).
Nathan Swift (student journalist&endash;October 26, 2015), "Donald Trump’s fascist tendencies" in The Highlander (UC Riverside student paper), October 26, 2015.
Max Boot (Republican foreign-policy hawk and Rubio adviser), tweeted on November 22, 2015: "Trump is a fascist. And that’s not a term I use loosely or often. But he’s earned it."
Bret Stephens (then Wall Street Journal columnist) described Trump’s proposed Muslim registry as "fascism, plain and simple," quoted in a December 4, 2015 Washington Post piece that collected these conservative reactions (the statements themselves were made in late November).
Steve Deace (conservative radio host), tweeted on November 20, 2015 that if Obama proposed Trump’s Muslim registry idea, every conservative would call it "creeping fascism."
Jim Gilmore (former Republican governor of Virginia and 2016 GOP candidate), in a Newsmax TV interview on November 20–21, 2015, called Trump’s immigration and "deportation force" rhetoric "fascist talk" and "unworthy" of the Republican Party.

There are explicit Mussolini analogies in 2015, though often in local or opinion contexts rather than big national op-eds:
Reader letter in the Greenville News (South Carolina)–Sept. 4, 2015, a letter titled along the lines of "Trump has eerie likeness to another character" says the writer finds "a frighteningly eerie sense of likeness and attitude to Benito Mussolini" in Trump, noting his "jowly, jutting jaw," etc.

I'm not familiar with most of these people, but it would seem that I'm in some pretty good company, and that there weren't too many of us in late 2015. Unlike most of these persons, I have no expertise in political science. My expertise is in the psychology of personality. So let's ask another question: "When did members of the psychotherapeutic community begin sounding the alarm? "

1) Microsoft copilot:
Members of the psychotherapeutic community began publicly sounding the alarm about Donald Trump's psychological fitness and authoritarian tendencies as early as February 2016, with concerns intensifying throughout the 2016 campaign and into his presidency. A Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Lee was among the earliest voices to raise concerns. On February 1, 2016, she watched a Trump rally and was alarmed by his interaction with the crowd, which she later described as inciting violence and exhibiting dangerous charisma.
She went on to organize a conference and edit the 2017 book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, featuring essays from 27 mental health professionals warning of Trump's psychological instability.
In October 2016, a group of mental health professionals signed a letter warning of Trump’s "grave emotional instability." By 2017, over 30 psychiatrists and psychologists had signed public statements expressing concern about Trump’s behavior, citing traits such as narcissism, paranoia, and impulsivity.

2) Claude AI
Based on my search results, the mental health community began formally organizing warnings about Trump in early 2017, shortly after his inauguration. The key timeline:
Psychologist John Gartner launched a Change.org petition on January 26, 2017, just days after Trump took office. The petition stated that mental health professionals believed Trump manifested a serious mental illness that rendered him psychologically incapable of competently discharging presidential duties, and by the end of April 2017, it had gathered more than 41,000 signatures euronews.
In February 2017, 37 psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers published a joint letter in the New York Times warning that Trump's grave emotional instability made him incapable of serving safely as president The Washington Post.
In April 2017, forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee hosted a conference at Yale University medical school about the ethics of discussing Trump's mental health Factually. This led to the October 2017 publication of "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," containing essays from 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals describing the clear and present danger that Trump's mental health posed to the nation NewsweekFactually.
So while there were some concerns voiced during the 2016 campaign, the organized warnings from the psychotherapeutic community began in earnest immediately after Trump's inauguration in January 2017.

3) ChatGPT:
Members of the psychotherapeutic/mental-health community began publicly raising alarms about Donald Trump’s psychological fitness and authoritarian risks starting in the 2016 campaign cycle, although the most organized efforts began in 2017.

Here are key milestones:
The professional body American Psychiatric Association reaffirmed the so-called “Goldwater Rule” in early 2018, clarifying that psychiatrists cannot offer professional opinions about public figures they have not clinically examined.
Bandy X. Lee (psychiatrist, Yale) convened a conference in April 2017 at Yale on Trump’s mental state and edited the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (2017) in which many psychiatrists warned of his dangerousness.
John D. Gartner (psychologist) organized a petition in early 2017 ("Mental Health Professionals Declare Trump is Mentally Ill and Must Be Removed") which gathered tens of thousands of signatures.
A 2017 article by the British Psychological Society ("Psychologists and Donald Trump," Feb 2017) notes that psychologists and psychiatrists were speaking out about Trump's potential mental-health issues in "an unprecedented move."

So it appears I was two or three months ahead of the earliest of my mental health collegues (I should be clear that have never used my degree professionally). A few of the most astute political analysts were sounding the alarm roughly five months before I made my Facebook post (but not before I was privately aware of it).

Now, I'm telling you, on the basis of my master's degree in Counseling and Human Systems from FSU, and 16 years of intensive, rigorous lay scholarship, that Charles Dickens was a sociopath, and that there is no possible way he could have been the original author of "A Christmas Carol."

https://thesacredcarol.goldthread.com

https://www.academia.edu/77770388/Evidence_That_A_Christmas_Carol_Was_Originally_Written_by_Mathew_Franklin_Whittier_and_Abby_Poyen_Whittier_Rather_Than_by_Charles_Dickens

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.