While Democratic strategists debate whether or not their attack ads labeling Donald Trump a fascist have been effective, experts and academics told the Guardian his campaign and the Republican party he now heads have clear autocratic sympathies and political qualities that are firmly in line with fascism movements historically.

Put together, that makes any Trump victory this week and his return to the White House for a second presidential term a clear threat to US democracy, they added.

“There couldn’t be a more obvious example of a fascist social and political movement about to take power,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor whose new book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, looks at the global playbook of fascists through the lens of America and beyond.