Joseph Stiglitz
Massive levels of inequality in the USA had led to political alienation, and Professor Stiglitz warned that he had been struck by the similarity between what happened in Europe in the 1930s and contemporary America.
The latest findings of the World Inequality Report from the Paris School of Economics show that the share of total national income of the nation's top 10% earners reached 47% in the USA in 2018 and 37% in Europe.
"I believe it is leading the United States to the growth of fascism," Prof Stiglitz said. "The outright attack on the media, on the judiciary, on the national intelligence agencies, the bureaucracy, and the universities, is totalitarian. He is against any checks on his power."
Prof Stiglitz said in an interview with that President Trump would shut down the free press if he got the chance, but he relied instead on intimidating the media through personal attacks, often on social media. "It's designed to intimidate, and it actually does, because if you are a business leader your responsibility is (to) your company." He heard that many business leaders feared a tweet saying their company was un-American. This kind of intimidation was "corrosive of our democracy."
The Trump presidency, he said, had echoes internationally. "He is very much of the kind of Erdogan totalitarian that says 'I know best', even though there has never been a leader as ignorant as he is." Prof Stiglitz said fascism is on the rise more broadly in Europe, and he saw similarities in the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Trump's campaign attacks against prominent Jewish figures such as George Soros.
The increasingly far-right tone of many European governments could wreak havoc on the EU system. "There is no easy remedy for Europe to deal with a country that is deviating so strongly from European values," he said.
By Conor Campbell and Noel Kriznik