Yes, It's Fascism

Why the much-abused term is accurate.

I typically don’t like to revisit old ground or write about politics, but today I’m going to both.

I’m increasingly hearing the term “fascist” used to describe the second Trump administration in popular discourse, and even increasingly in media outlets.

When I wrote my posts on Neo-fascism, the second Trump administration was only a theoretical possibility. Now that we’ve seen it in action for over a year, we are able to make a more accurate assessment. So I think it’s time to revisit the topic.

The Anatomy of Neo-Fascism - Part 1

And, based on this, I think the term “fascism” is entirely justified. I think a case can be made that it fits well within the definition of historical fascism—or at least as close as it’s possible to be in the post-World War II modern age.

A lot of people will reject the term “fascism” in a knee-jerk response because the term has been thrown around sloppily and has been so overused as a pejorative empty of meaning. There’s a joke which says that fascism simply means “politics I don’t like.” People who like to tell that joke usually state that the term should never be used, and will invoke something called “Godwin’s Law” to dismiss it outright (despite the fact that law’s namesake has objected to it being used in this way).

But I don’t subscribe to that. The fact that some people use the term sloppily or inaccurately does not preclude us from using it in a precise, specific way in accordance with political science and historical analysis.

That’s why when I use the term “fascist,” I’m not using it simply as a pejorative, or as a synonym for “far right” or “authoritarian,” even though other people might be using it that way. Rather, I’m using in a very clinical, descriptive sense for a type of politics very similar to what the original word was used for.

And by that criteria, I think it’s undeniable that the Trump administration and the MAGA (Morons Are Governing America) movement is fascist by even the loosest definition of the term. And to prove that point, I’m going to rely on some academic works from historians who have thought deeply about what fascism is (and is not). I’ll be referring to The Nature of Fascism by Roger Griffin, and The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton¹, and also some of my own opinions.

In the first part, I’m going to explain exactly why I think people using the term “fascist” to describe the second Trump administration and the MAGA movement are absolutely on point, even if they are using it unconsciously of the real definition. Then, I’m go to further argue that not only is the Trumpist movement clearly fascist, but that it’s even valid to use the term “Nazi” to describe it. That’s a bold claim indeed, and I don’t make that claim lightly or frivolously. But I think it’s true, and I’m going to provide evidence for why I think that characterization is valid.

The common argument

The debate over fascism, as with most things political in the United States, is rather brain-dead. For most people, it seems that the terms “fascist” and “Nazi” are simply interchangeable terms, like “groundhog” and “woodchuck,” or “reindeer” and “caribou,” or perhaps “slaughterhouse” and “abattoir.”

And, for them, “Nazi” means one thing, and one thing only—antisemitism and the Holocaust. So therefore any government not overtly antisemitic and actively engaged in a genocide cannot, by definition, be Nazi. And since “Nazi” and “fascist” mean the exact same thing, it is therefore impossible for any such government to be described as “fascist” either. QED.

That seems to be the crux of the argument, anyway.

This is simply wrong, of course, and quite stupid. By this standard, one—and only one—regime in all of human history could be regarded as fascist, and that would be the German government from roughly 1938 to 1945. This criteria is so extreme and narrow that it would be virtually impossible for any government to qualify as fascist—even historically! Even the Nazis themselves could not be described as fascist from 1933 to 1936 by this criteria, for example.

The problem with the argument

In fact, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party never referred to themselves as fascists. As Roger Griffin notes, many scholars believe that the Nazi Party should actually be excluded from a historical analysis of fascism, because it was so extreme and sui generis. Despite this, most scholars do include it based on the similarities to other post-war European far right political movements.

Furthermore, the term “fascism” itself was coined in Italy, not in Germany, by Benito Mussolini to describe his own political movement in 1919. For the Nazis themselves, fascism would have referred to that political movement, and not to their own National Socialism, which they would have regarded as totally different and specific to Germany’s history and culture, even if they did borrow some of its methods and tactics.

As Griffin notes, in a precise historical terms, there was one, and only one, fascist party—Mussolini’s Italian Fascist party. This was the only party which came to power that specifically referred to itself as “fascist,” although there were other European political parties which adopted the name, such as the short-lived Le Fasceau in France and the British Union of Fascists led by Oswald Mosley in Great Britain². Neither of these movements obtained any degree of actual political power, however.

Of course, Mussolini’s fascist movement was not overtly antisemitic (although racism and national chauvinism did play a part), nor did it engage in the systematic murder of an entire race of people (although it did eventually cooperate with Germany’s efforts to do so). Thus, by the faulty logic described above, the only truly fascist movement in history could not itself be described as fascist!

That alone should demonstrate how silly the argument is. Let’s see if we can do better.

So, how then can we determine whether or not a particular movement is fascist?

The Fascist Minimum

Roger Griffin’s book wrestles with exactly that question. It’s a rather dry, academic treatise addressed to other historians rather than the general reader. Nonetheless, its general argument and methods are not hard to grasp.

Griffin describes what he calls the “fascist minimum.” That is the basic criteria, or “lowest common denominator” a movement has to meet to be considered “fascist” as opposed to autocratic, repressive, or vaguely far right. This allows us to distinguish which regimes to apply the label “fascism” to, and which to exclude. Traditionally, repressive, authoritarian regimes such as the Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe, or the military dictatorships of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, have been placed under different categories in political discourse.

Griffin refers to a concept from the great German sociologist Max Weber called ideal types. Weber categorized political regimes by comparing them against an “ideal type” which is a platonic ideal almost never realized in practice, but which allows us to categorize various political movements based on how closely they resemble this hypothetical ideal.

He also refers to what he describes as the “mythic core” or “founding myth” of a political movement, meaning the underlying ideology which sustains and motivates its adherents and followers, which is often something more emotional than practical: “The core of an ideology can be conceived as the fundamental political myth which mobilizes its activists and supporters.”

Taking all this into account, Griffin arrives at the “fascist minimum,” which he describes as:

“Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism.”

Let’s unpack this definition. “Palingenesis” is a fancy term which refers to the notion of a kind of “rebirth.” As Griffin describes, the “mobilizing vision” of fascism is “that of the national community rising phoenix-like after a period of encroaching decadence which all but destroyed it.” He describes its “mythic core” of fascism as, “…rationalizing ephemeral collective movements of extreme violence, including those bent on overthrowing society when it is perceived to be in crisis and replacing it by a new order.”

The idea is that the nation was once great, but has been brought down and humiliated by its enemies. Those enemies may be external—such as military conquest—but more often they are internal, such as opposition parties, leftists, socialists, free-thinkers, nonconformists, “moral degenerates,” ethnic and sexual minorities, and immigrants. Thus, in order to restore the nation to its former greatness, then, these subversive elements must be purged. It is essentially backwards-looking, even while it promises a glorious, shining future. It is simultaneously both anti-modern and futuristic, something historian Jeffrey Herf has described as “Reactionary modernism.”

“Populist ultra-nationalism” is a bit more complicated. Griffin intentionally combines these terms to describe a political philosophy different than what those words mean in isolation.

“Populism” doesn’t just mean a political philosophy that is popular. It is a very specific political style which divides the world into two groups: the “elites,” and the “common people.” The elites are depicted as the enemy who are responsible for the fall from greatness, and for everything wrong with society. According to this philosophy, the elites are oppressing the common people, who are depicted as the true soul of the nation, and the only “real” citizens. Thus, the elites must be defeated and destroyed for the nation to rise up again and for the common people to throw off their oppression. It often depicts the movement as “outsiders” or “anti-establishment,” even when backed by some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the county.

In practice, populism tends to degenerate into internal strife and conflict as people try to figure out exactly who is an “elite” and who is the “common people.” For populists, elites end up getting amalgamated into a broad, undifferentiated “they” who are unfairly persecuting us and our leader. “They” are out to get us, which leads into another common feature of populism: paranoia and conspiracy theories. We’ll return to this point later.

Who this “elite” is varies according to the time and place, and from movement to movement. For the communists, it was the bourgeoisie, monarchists, and traditionalist conservatives. For the National Socialists, it was the politicians and military leaders who had lost World War I for Germany, in league with a cabal of internationalist Jewish bankers and financiers. This was the so-called “stab in the back” myth which played such an outsized role in post-war German politics³.

Modern forms of populism tend to depict different elites. Left-wing populism sees billionaires, oligarchs, big business, corporate monopolies, bankers, international finance and Wall Street as the enemies. Right-wing populism sees journalists and the media, academics, universities and higher education, the civil service, the independent judiciary, unions, college-educated professionals, scientists, the opposition party and its voters, foreigners, Muslims, leftists, immigrants, and basically everyone trying uphold the liberal (in a Lockean sense) order as “elites,” and therefore the enemy who are oppressing the “real” people, typically depicted as blue-collar, Christian, and rural.

In addition, populism claims legitimacy from the alleged support of the “common people” rather than established political institutions or elections, which they regard as hopelessly corrupt and compromised. By this standard, it does not matter whether they have a numerical majority or not, since the movement expresses the true will of the “common people,” and the “common people” are defined as those who support the movement in opposition to those who don’t.

“When populists get into power, the rhetorical discourse frames tend to be used to implement successive autocratic measures, such as limiting opposition through electoral manipulation, thwarting the free press, changing the constitution in their own favor, and circumscribing minority, civil, political, and economic rights. Populists are usually not against electoral democracy per se, but rather at odds with liberal democracy. Since they believe they represent the ‘true people,’ other people’s votes do not really count as legitimate. Consequently, they are hostile to the underlying values and principles of constitutionalism, pluralism, minority rights, and checks and balances.”

-Nils Karlson, Economist and poltical scientist, founder of the Ratio Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, former professor of political science at Linköping university, Sweden, visiting fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, etc.

Ultra-nationalism is an extreme form of nationalism that exalts one’s own nation and racial/ethnic group above all others. Often ultra-nationalism sees the nation as “special” or “chosen” and believes it must fulfill some sort of historic destiny or higher calling (such as uniting a vast territory through conquest or “purifying” society). It rejects boring, “traditional” consensus politics in favor of cult dynamics led a charismatic leader who embodies the “will” and the “soul” of the nation and its people: “I am using ‘ultra nationalism’, … to refer to forms of nationalism which ‘go beyond’, and hence reject, anything compatible with liberal institutions or with the tradition of Enlightenment humanism which underpins them…”

Thus, Griffin describes populist ultra-nationalism this way:

…populist ultra-nationalism rejects the principles both of absolutism and of pluralist representative government…it thus repudiates both ‘traditional’ and ‘legal/rational’ forms of politics in favour of prevalently ‘charismatic’ ones in which the cohesion and dynamics of movements depends almost exclusively on the capacity of their leaders to inspire loyalty and action.

It tends to be associated with a concept of the nation as a ‘higher’ racial, historical, spiritual or organic reality which embraces all the members of the ethical community who belong to it. Such a community is regarded by its protagonists as a natural order which can be contaminated by miscegenation and immigration, by the anarchic, unpatriotic mentality encouraged by liberal individualism, internationalist socialism, and by any number of ‘alien’ forces allegedly unleashed by ‘modern’ society, for example the rise of the ‘masses’, the decay of moral values, the ‘levelling’ of society, cosmopolitanism, feminism, and consumerism.

For the sake of succinctness ‘ultra nationalism’ will henceforth be used exclusively with the qualifying connotations of ‘populist’ outlined here.

Whereas traditional liberal political parties see opposition parties as co-equal-partners in good-faith debates over the direction of the country; and cooperation, compromise and consensus as means to achieve their political goals, palingenic ultra-nationalism sees other political parties as enemies and traitors to be abolished, not negotiated with. Thus its goal is the elimination of political opposition, and those who disagree with their vision, in order to carry out their utopian political program.

So, does Donald Trump and his “Make America great again” movement meet the “fascist minimum”—the minimum criteria that must be met in order to qualify as “fascist” historically?

I think it’s pretty obvious that it does. Populist? Check. Ultra-nationalist? Check. Anti-rational and anti-modern? Check. Charismatic authority? Check. I mean, it’s right there in the fucking name!

Beyond the fascist minimum

Robert Paxton’s book, The Anatomy of Fascism, is a bit more of an easy read for non-historians. He points out that it’s useless to try and assign a specific political program to fascism, since its politics are not based on any sort of rational political program. Instead, it rejects the “boring” procedural methods of liberal democracy in favor of the charismatic, populist ultranationalism described above. As such, it exists outside of the customary political paradigms of “left and “right.”

Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program. Mussolini exulted in that absence...Mussolini liked to declare that he himself was the definition of Fascism. The will and leadership of a Duce was what a modern people needed, not a doctrine. Only in 1932, after he had been in power for ten years, and when he wanted to “normalize” his regime, did Mussolini expound Fascist doctrine, in an article (partly ghostwritten by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile) for the new Encyclopedia Italiana. Power came first, then doctrine. Hannah Arendt observed that Mussolini “was probably the first party leader who consciously rejected a formal program and replaced it with inspired leadership and action alone.”

Paxton also points out that one of the core defining features of fascism is that it relies on persecution of an enemy in order to motivate its followers. “Traditional” political parties advance their program through the legislature. Fascist movements, by contrast, are driven by their opposition to an enemy, whether it’s an opposition party or an ethnic group, and they are willing to pursue it by undemocratic means. While people fixate on the German persecution of the Jews (which also included Sinti and Roma people, political opponents, Poles, Slavs, homosexuals, and the disabled, among others), Paxton notes that the “enemy” varies with whichever society fascism takes root:

Fascists saw enemies within the nation as well as outside. Foreign states were familiar enemies, though their danger seemed to intensify with the advance of Bolshevism and with the exacerbated border conflicts and unfulfilled national claims that followed World War I.

Internal enemies grew luxuriantly in number and variety in the mental landscape as the ideal of the homogeneous national state made difference more suspect. Ethnic minorities had been swollen in western Europe after the 1880s by an increased number of refugees fleeing pogroms in eastern Europe. Political and cultural subversives—socialists of various hues, avant-garde artists and intellectuals—discovered new ways to challenge community conformism. The national culture would have to be defended against them...

Fascists need a demonized enemy against which to mobilize followers, but of course the enemy does not have to be Jewish. Each culture specifies the national enemy. Even though in Germany the foreign, the unclean, the contagious, and the subversive often mingled in a single diabolized image of the Jew, Gypsies and Slavs were also targeted. American fascists diabolized blacks and sometimes Catholics as well as Jews. Italian Fascists diabolized their South Slav neighbors, especially the Slovenes, as well as the socialists who refused the war of national revival. Later they easily added to their list the Ethiopians and the Libyans, whom they tried to conquer in Africa. (pp. 36-37)

For what it’s worth, my own rough-and-ready definition of fascism is “a form of authoritarian reactionary populism.” That is, for me to consider a political movement as fascist, it has to be that at minimum, with a few other characteristics (not that I’m any great historian, of course).

We’ve already covered “populism,” above; fascism is obviously of the right-wing variety. “Authoritarianism” is both a political style and a personality type. Authoritarianism stresses obedience, loyalty and conformity above all other values. It abandons any notion of objective morality with subservience to authority. It takes an inflexible “the rules are the rules” approach, and deems those who suffer punishment for any transgression whatsoever as “deserving what they get.” It rejects pluralism and democracy in favor of a single faction—or even a despot—issuing orders. It is often based around tribalism and the leader’s cult of personality which followers can rally behind. It tends to celebrate the patriarchal “strict father” archetype.

I’ve talked about what “reactionary” means in politics before. It’s often used as a slur for people who tack to the right of the “traditional” right-wing parties which are more centrist and conciliatory, or as a synonym for “far right.” But, in reality, a political reactionary is someone who wants to return to a previous social order and is willing to burn down society in order to do so. Rather than the conventional right-wing concerns such as tax rates and business regulations, reactionary politics is a totalizing, all-encompassing vision of a new social order.

In practice, reactionaries tend to embrace a hypermasculinist ideal, and disparage “feminism,” childless people, ethnic and religious minorities, and homosexuals. They want to blend church and state in the manner similar to pre-Enlightenment European monarchies. They want a hierarchical, patriarchal society where women are confined to the domestic sphere and away from politics and leadership, exemplified by the Nazi slogan “Kinder, Küche, Kirche⁴” (and by the currently trendy “tradwife” movement). They disparage “multiculturalism,” atheism and and “degeneracy” (by which they mean transgressing gender norms), and wish to return to an imagined homogeneous ethnostate. It is deeply intertwined with cultural pessimism and is obsessed with decadence and decline, from which it derives its revolutionary ethos⁵.

I think it’s pretty indisputable that the modern Republican party can be accurately described as an “authoritarian reactionary populist movement,” which fits with my definition of fascism. Its reactionary tilt is subsumed under the anodyne phrase of “culture war.” It’s authoritarian personality cult is glaringly obvious. And it enthusiastically embraces the “politics of hate,” seeing itself in a total war with the opposition and willing to use the organs of the state to forcibly suppress opposition and dissent.

The people who support this regime, yet reject this term, are simply in denial. They know that fascism is bad, so therefore they reject the label via some sort of rationalization (such as the nonsensical argument described above), despite the fact that their beliefs conform almost exactly to those held by historical fascists, the only differences being culturally specific (e.g. hatred of brown immigrants instead of Jews, worshiping Trump instead of Mussolini, watching Newsmax instead of listening to Goebbels, or imprisoning Democrats instead of Communists).

Next time, we’ll take a closer look at some of the events which have unfolded over the past year which make the Republican Party’s embrace of fascism even more obvious, events which include:

• The creation of a vast paramilitary force loyal only to the executive and the construction of a vast surveillance state under the guise of “immigration enforcement.”

• The sidelining of the legislature and the declaration of frivolous “national emergencies” in order to seize more power for the executive.

• The takeover of the judiciary or, failing that, simply ignoring the law.

• The creation of a loyal propaganda network, attacking non-aligned news media via barratry, arresting journalists and buying up media outlets.

• Attempted censorship of critics and persecution of political enemies.

• The sanctioned extrajudicial killing of American citizens.

• The arrest and detention of American citizens.

• Calling for the execution of members of the opposition party.

• The depiction of political opponents as “domestic terrorists”

• The arrest of opposition party members.

• The deployment of political terrorism and stochastic violence to keep party members in line and intimidate opponents.

• Military occupation of American cities against the express wishes of the citizenry and local politicians.

• Extreme secrecy and a pervasive culture of fear.

• Undermining the peaceful transfer of power via democratic elections and questioning the results of those elections only during losses.

In addition, I’ll look at the factors which make me think this administration goes beyond simply generic fascism, and can be justifiably compared with the original NSDAP:

• Racism and white supremacy.

• Ethnic cleansing.

• The establishment of a vast archipelago of concentration camps, including overseas, which have been documented as having unsanitary conditions, and even rape and torture. Many people have already “disappeared” from these camps, and several deaths have been recorded.

• Belief in Social Darwinism and contempt for the “weak and “unfit.”

• A fixation with genes, eugenics, and IQ.

• Embrace of occultism and “alternative therapies.”

• The elucidation of a romantic, nationalist “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden) doctrine in place of democratic ideals.

• A desire to expand the country’s borders militarily, to the point of threatening neighboring countries and close allies with invasion (irredentism).

Some of these features are unique to German National Socialism (Nazism) and appear to be fully present in the current administration. In many instances, Republicans have been found directly citing Nazi theorists such as Carl Schmitt, and even expressing admiration for Adolf Hitler himself (although not publicly, at least not at this time). Some have even described themselves that way.

There is no “quantity threshold” for fascism—it does not suddenly become fascism once a certain specific number is reached. It does not matter whether the regime arrests one journalist or one hundred; whether it detains a dozen people in concentration camps or one million; whether ten people mysteriously die in state custody or ten thousand, or whether the paramilitary thugs gun down two innocent people in the street or two thousand. Fascism is still fascism.

I’ll end with this interview with the two historians of fascism I cited above:

Roger Griffin, an emeritus professor of modern history at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. and a widely cited political theorist on the topic, offers one explanation: an authoritarian, “revolutionary form of extreme nationalism” that often incorporates racism, xenophobia, male chauvinism and the culture of violence. “It sees things like communism and liberalism as a threat to society,” he told NPR.

A recent NPR investigation found more than 100 instances in which Trump has said his opponents, critics and private citizens should be investigated, prosecuted, jailed or otherwise punished. He’s accused ideological opponents of being “the enemy from within.”

The “enemy from within” rhetoric is a key facet of fascism, said Griffin, author of The Nature of Fascism. “Fascists are obsessed with the idea that the present state of the nation is decadent. The world is falling apart. It’s got inner and outer enemies. There are forces at work destroying sacred, eternal truths or important things about the nation or the race,” he said…

For Robert Paxton, a foremost scholar on fascism, focusing on the followers is just as important in trying to understand fascism, according to the Times.

Paxton, a former Columbia University professor and author of The Anatomy of Fascism, was previously only convinced that Trump bore some staples of fascism.

But he said his mind changed after Jan. 6. In a Times interview published last week, he confirmed that he was no longer opposed to calling Trump a fascist after the Capitol siege. Trump’s brand of fascism, Paxton told the Times, is “bubbling up from below in very worrisome ways, and that’s very much like the original fascisms,” when Mussolini and Hitler leveraged mass discontent to gather support…

Harris called Trump a ‘fascist.’ Experts debate what fascism is — and isn’t (NPR)

P.S. Jonathan Rauch of The Atlantic makes the same point using different criteria here: Yes, It’s Fascism (archive link). Note that Rauch was initially reluctant to use the term.

Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.

When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

1. Fortunately, both are available online, so you can read them for yourself if you want more information.

2. Mosley’s grandson, Louis Mosley, is the head of Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies in the United Kingdom. Nope, nothing worrying about that, no sir.

3. The American Left has embraced its own “stab in the back” theory, that dastardly elements in the Democratic Party establishment single-handedly prevented Bernie Sanders from winning the primary in 2016 (despite not receiving enough votes), and that he would have easily gone on win the presidency had this not happened. That theory has been effectively used to fracture the American Left coalition by various actors (including foreign ones) and reduce it to irrelevance.

4. Children, the church, and the kitchen (not in that order).

5. As exemplified by the inordinately popular, “soft men make hard times…” quote, which is philosophically fascist to the core.