The Fascism Is Here To Stay
While the authoritarian threat recedes, the fascist threat remains.
As of today, it’s unclear how Trump’s unwillingness to concede — and his enablers willingness to support him in this denial — will continue. While I am less sanguine about the outcome than other observers, one thing is very clear: Trumpism is here to stay. The authoritarian moment may be (temporarily) passing, but the fascist movement that has been slowly growing over decades, accelerating under Trump, will be a fixture of American politics for the indefinite future.
If it strikes you that I’m a little obsessed with the f-word, it’s because people are still hesitant to utter it. Fascism is an unrelenting, uncompromising, unreasoning force. Wishful thinking that “moderates” in the ranks of its true believers overnight will moderate their behavior, or change their worldview, is both silly and dangerous. Looking to people who are non-believing supporters of fascism to suddenly become less opportunistic, or fearful, or nihilistic is equally reckless. We must look at our country as a nation not divided merely over policies or facts, but over who we are. The fascist belief in things like the blood and soil as the measure of citizenship, the poisonous nature of modernity, the existence of conspiracies against them, the fallibility of democracy and the rule of law, the silliness of tolerating other points of views, and the necessity of apocalyptic struggle put fascists in a parallel political reality from everyone else. Unfortunately, we actually all occupy the same universe, in which fascists are desperate to seize the levers of power.
If it’s still hard to accept that real fascism is alive and well in the Republican Party, OANN, and Parler, I recommend that you read Umberto Eco’s article on Ur-fascism. Eco is worth heeding, since he grew up under capital-F Fascism, and is well-read on small-f fascist movements. Eco identifies more than a dozen traits of fascism, not all of which need to exist in a movement for it to qualify as having the fascist mode of thought. “Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives.”
It’s hard to look at Eco’s list of fascist traits, starting with the cult of tradition (what I called a nationalist aesthetic in an earlier post) and not see the color of fascism in the MAGA hats and signs (a perpetual callback to a mythical past), the intolerance expressed in the social media posts, the conspicuous racism (a necessary outcome of the fascist fear of difference, according to Eco), the intolerance of any differences of opinion, and the eager embrace of conspiracy theories. What more evidence does anyone need, short of the ghost of Mussolini manifesting to wish Donald Trump well?
Unfortunately, fascist movements do not disappear quietly. It usually takes a cataclysm — one larger than a failed election, which is no worse than the failed Millerite prophecy of the end of the world. Trumpism is not a fringe movement like Oswald Mosley’s British Union Of Fascism (pictured above). Instead, it is a movement of millions of Americans, reinforcing each other’s common identity, building collective bulwarks against uncomfortable facts, directing their combined rage against today’s targets.
We are all exhausted by the last few years. However, while the lazy, incompetent, wannabe-authoritarian Trump regime may be ending the fascist core of Trumpism will remain alive, and perhaps outlive him. We need to accept that sad conclusion, especially since Trumpism will continue to disrupt normal politics and governance. The election will not sober many of them, but just provide the excuse for a stab in the back legend that they will keep telling each other.
You may well be right, but I’ll take the opposing view just to see if it flies.
1) Fascism is a pre-existing condition of the human race, an elaboration of simple, straightforward bullying, dominance. The Assyrians were ‘fascists.’ Human behavior obviously predates all attempts to classify human behavior. We label what are just human impulses to dominate and control. So in that sense the fascist impulse has always been, and will always be, part of human history.
2) Trumpism is not a political theory, it is a cult of personality, more a religion than a political party. After Mussolini fell, there were still Italian fascists. They ran in elections. They never held power again. (Though Berlusconi came close in some ways.) After Hitler fell there were still Nazis, ditto the Italian experience. After Peron fell, after Franco fell, after Stalin, Mao, ditto, ditto. Cults of personality seldom outlive the cult founder.
3) Fascism fails because fascism is inefficient. There’s a notion that Hitler’s regime was a model of efficiency, it was not. Compare weapons production after 1940 in Germany and the UK. The most effective political duo in human history is Democracy + Regulated Free Markets. Every wealthy country on earth today practices some version of D + RFM. Not every powerful country (China) but every country whose people are well-off. D + RFM efficiently provides what people want and need, and no Fascist or Communist system (or any other version of authoritarianism) does. In a world of just-in-time international supply lines, rapid shifts in consumer demand, constant scientific and technological churn, D + RFM beats all competitors. A fascist US would soon lose its competitive edge, with attendant reduction in living standards.
4) Fascism (again, in all its iterations) also fails because fascists suck at alliances. NATO vs. Warsaw Pact. One is still around, the other isn’t. In WW2 the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ hung together. The Axis hanged separately in part because Germany and Japan never formed a true alliance. And because Spain wouldn’t play ball. Had Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini and Franco been capable of a true alliance, they might well have won. It’s good to remember that Hitler and Stalin actually had an alliance pre-war. That did not go well, whereas the Democracies were able to ally to Stalin and hold that together through the war.
So, I agree that the fascist impulse will survive Trump, but I think Trumpism won’t.
To my mind, Trump is a fascist, but his government or to draw the frame closer, his presidency isn’t fascistic. Yet. Mostly the Executive has been populated by what have referred to as the adults, having driven off the adults, a second trump term would have embedded fascists and fellow travelers into government and quite likely becoming an actual fascist government.
Among R’s there are some who will sign on to that, Cruz, Cotton and Hawley come to mind and a number who will simply go with the flow, the good nazis if you will. There are others, McConnell and most R legislatures and probably an alarming number of Dems who will go along, simply because they believe they are insulated from the danger and can leverage benefits by acquiescing. I’d refer you to Anne Applebaum’s recent book or any one of several Atlantic essays for a description of how this
willis happen(ing).The election of Biden, hasn’t saved the day, only delayed the reckoning.
@Michael Reynolds:
That depends on what your definition of Trumpism is, what you think the word entails.
If it’s still hard to accept that real fascism is alive and well in the Republican Party, OANN, and Parler, I recommend that you read Umberto Eco’s article on Ur-fascism.
I don’t think it’s hard to accept. It’s hard to figure out how to treat these people, because they are all–fascist and racist and whatever–so weird and anti-social. They don’t have dreams or stories about the world. For all the talk about how little big-city liberals know about the rest of America, these people know shit about America. And like Trump, they seem simply to live in a constant state of emergency which has been forced upon them by nefarious elements.
I think if there’s a COVID vaccine MAGA is going to really lose it. They’re already anti-vax curious. Wearing a mask is already an emergency situation for these people. A vaccine will be something required in a way by society and these people don’t get society or community.
After Mussolini fell, there were still Italian fascists. They ran in elections. They never held power again. (Though Berlusconi came close in some ways.) After Hitler fell there were still Nazis, ditto the Italian experience. After Peron fell, after Franco fell, after Stalin, Mao, ditto, ditto. Cults of personality seldom outlive the cult founder.
Look up the Years of Lead. Fascism dug itself into the Italian government and the police. A lot went into this–the CIA, the KGB, and the mafia plus the Vatican Bank, I think–and fueled terrorism and false-flag operations.
I can a weird shadowy paramilitary union of right-wing judges and police forces and disaffected income streams. This is basically the Klan in the South plus Jim Crow, and the reason you can find the Confederate flag in upstate Michigan is because right-wing Americans have fantasies about being paramilitary freedom fighters.
On the other hand, these people are bozos who get upset about putting masks on their faces, so much personal hardship can they handle?
@charon:
Trumpism isn’t anything. It’s not an idea, it’s not a theory, it is only accidentally related to politics. There is no Trumpism, there’s a cult of personality built around a terrified and cowardly criminal.
@Michael Reynolds: One of the important points that Eco makes about fascism is its lack of coherence.
@Kingdaddy:
Probably because it’s emotion-based: on fear, resentment, warped pride, and xenophobia. It can’t be rational because it has no rational basis.
@Kingdaddy:
I don’t think you can separate Italian and German fascism from WW1, the Bolshevik revolution, and the fact that both countries were late to the game in establishing global empires. Without these, what happens?
Looks like the worst Trek show ever.
I haven’t red Eco’s list of fascist traits in “Ur Fascism” in some time. I will again in a minute, and thank you. You offer a concise list of fascist traits yourself,
I don’t disagree that this is a fair list of fascist traits. The problem is trying to see where your list doesn’t read on conservatives generally.
I would hate to say conservatives generally are proto-fascists, but I’m not sure it’s wrong. And it explains a lot. (As usually, when I say “conservative” I’m not using the dictionary definition that applies outside politics. I’m talking about the actual, living people who we all refer to as “conservative” in the context of current politics.)
@Michael Reynolds:
Just as a matter of historical correction: Peronism well outlived Peron, and remains a force today (The Partido Justicialista). The current president is a Peronist.
There is a lot that could be said about what that does, and does not mean, but just wanted to note that example doesn’t fit.
@Michael Reynolds:
Trump tapped into, perhaps accidentally, a couple of things that aren’t going away: white nationalism and evangelical grievance, as well as what I have long identified, and echoes part of what Kingdaddy is noting, a clear reactionary core on the American right (the dreams of mythical past).
It worries me deeply that those things are not going away.
@gVOR08:
Reactionaries are close to being proto-fascists, and a lot of American conservatism has ranged into being reactionary.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I have seen it reported a couple times that prior to running Trump had staff listening to talk radio for months to identify repeating and effective themes.
These things have always been with us. What’s changed is the eagerness of one political party to shamelessly exploit them.
I would prefer the word “authoritarianism” because it doesn’t come tied up with specific historical contexts.
@Steven L. Taylor:
More than a couple of things. “Trumpism” strikes me as being as handy rubric as any to classify the lasting changes to GOP behavior that the Trump presidency brought forth.
@Michael Reynolds:
Trumpism is Palinism. I see no shortage of loud-mouthed idiots willing to tell Real America that they are under attack. They have been invited into the Republican Party and celebrated. Can you see is real distinction between Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump? I can’t. Tucker Carlson?
We treated Palin as a joke, but she was beloved. We treated Trump as a joke, and he was elected President. I’m not going to make the jump and say that anyone we think of as a bad joke is capable of motivating the fascist-friendly revanchist wing of the Republican Party, but I do think we are incapable of distinguishing the dangerous buffoons from the ones that would be laughed off the stage. We have a mighty big blind-spot because we don’t speak moron.
@Steven L. Taylor: I have by and large stopped calling Republicans conservatives because the term reactionary is far more accurate (think Cleek’s Law). I think “conservative” describes the Lincoln Project folks and other never trumpers far more. I won’t agree with their policy preferences very often but I can respect where they are coming from.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I would venture that among Rs, the number of true conservatives is fairly small. They exist in the punditry and the business community and will self identify as Rs because of policy preferences. Certainly the Christianists aren’t conservative as they are more than willing to use the power of government to enforce their preferred social order and certainly they’ll take advantage of any governmental largess that is offered. The R business community is happy to turn to government to protect their markets and to limit the ability of workers to organize and limit consumers an independent avenue to resolve grievances.
That is one of the great what-ifs? of the 21st century. What if Sarah Palin had the guts to go through with the hints she dropped after the 2008 election? I think that was the only sign of Trump’s political acumen: he watched the appetites she was whipping up, and when she flinched from capitalizing on them, he went ahead and did it himself.
@Gustopher: @Not the IT Dept.:
Yes, yes, yes to you both. I’ve often said that Palin paved the way for Trump. I also wonder if he adopted his incoherent speaking style from her because it worked so well. The glorious thing about word salad is that you can interpret according to your own individual desires and needs.
I still haven’t succeeded in figuring out what Palin was saying about Paul Revere.
@Michael Reynolds:
I can’t tell if you’re playing devil’s advocate here, but I don’t think you are.
Your cult of personality frame is useful to explain specific behaviors of MAGAites, but it carries entirely too much weight in your posts as a full explanation. In that context, it’s semantic, at best.
Trump did what he has always done, whatever makes him feel like his hand can palm a toddler’s basketball. More to the point, he does what makes him feel like he has a tip bigger than a truffle in his pants.
He took much of the Atwater out of Republican messaging, but kept much of the agenda. His primary grievance – – his rejection by Manhattan elites – – is petty, but deeply felt. It is authentic, so it rang true to some of the aggrieved masses.
Hitchcock didn’t invent the thriller and horror genres, he just evolved key aspects of them, and gave them a silhouette sticky enough to last beyond further evolution.
Hitler didn’t invent the core tenets of Nazism, he sharpened them for a new reality. Current iterations of it are indeed different from their origin even if some of the core ideas are the same.
Trump didn’t invent what we call Trumpism, he just gave it a silhouette too portly to fit on Gravatar. He gave it a slogan, but Republicans have been arguing, mostly in less specific terms, that America is not as great as it once was.
@Michael Reynolds: Of course Trumpism won’t survive Trump. Trump was a flavor of the month for Republicanism, held over, odious as it was, for an extended period. The next flavor variation, as a post at the Atlantic website linked here several times already noted, may well market itself better next time.
We won the rat race, temporarily, now we have to await the next heat against what we hope won’t be a more cunning and ruthless rat.
@Gustopher:
I’m no longer sure that it’s a “wing.” It might be that it is the “body” and the Never-Trumpers and the Romneys and other “moderates” are the “wings.”
@Steven L. Taylor:
In The Reactionary Mind Corey Robin makes a case that conservatism is now and always has been really nothing but reaction.
( “Reactionary” is a word that seems to have deteriorated, like “existential”, into just meaning “bad”. But Robin is pretty explicit about it meaning opposition to liberalism, and constantly shifting as liberalism changes. Actually, he sees liberalism as a constant, trying to extend full citizenship to whoever doesn’t have it, but as that frontier moves, reaction moves with it. (I assume if the book is of any interest to a Poli Sci prof, you’ve read it. I’m trying to explain it to the audience.))
@gVOR08:
ffs, is there anything you haven’t read?
@Kurtz: The trick is that no one pays that much attention to what any of say here. I keep referring to the same few books.
@Michael Reynolds:
I recall coming across an interesting theory re. agriculture and states systems.
Basically, that certain humans may always have been inclined to over-active dominance drives and cruelty, but in pre-agrarian societies any chief who pushed it too far was asking for a club in the snoot, or the aggrieved parties simply buggering off and leaving the proto-tyrant to lord it over his own family and some tree stumps.
“Tribal” societies tend to have a term for psychopaths and sociopaths: dead person.
Things changed with agriculture, and especially with high-return grain cultivation.
More elaborate requirements for land management, storage etc plus greater surplus (plus formalised religion?) invited a charismatic sociopath plus his followers to capture the system.
A pack of well-rewarded followers averts the dangers of one-on-one fight; and the average grain-growing peasant cannot just up sticks and wander off.
And so history starts historying.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think even that is too optimistic. The body of the GOP is now the conspiracy loons, the Evangelical cults, the racists, the single-issue anti-abortionists, and the nihilists. They are encouraged by the plutocrats through the mechanism of propaganda and disinformation — they need that coalition of the crazy and the deplorable in order to elect mercenary tools who will oppose taxation, regulation of business, and spending money on things that will only benefit future generations.
The actual GOP candidates are a mix of mercenary tools and (increasingly) true believers drawn from the crazies and deplorables. (Or both.) They divide their efforts between fighting for the interests of the rich and staying attractive to the base via reactionary judges and anti-liberal legislation.
Lincoln Project participants have no remaining place in the GOP, and they know it. Ditto Romney. I will be interested to see what they do.
@gVOR08:
Haven’t read it yet, but
And presumably once it has encompassed one group, moving on to the next?
(But why that particular sequence? Why not derive the ultimaste goal and liberate all right now? Mere pragmatism? In which case why the specific order?)
That strikes me as a slippery way around the uncomfortable reality of much pre-modern liberalism: it was most emphatically not egalitarian (e.g. Locke). And even when it sort-of was, only on its own terms (e.g. Jacobins).
Arguably some of its proto-conservative critics were more egalitarian than the early liberals; at least Hobbes posited the equality of all men in the state of nature, whereas a lot of early liberals assumed inequality of property as a fundamental.
@gVOR08: I’m just starting Karen Steiner’s “The Authoritarian Dynamic.” It’s dense to say the least, but if you are interested in that sort of thing I can tentatively (in the sense that I haven’t finished it so can’t make a firm conclusion) recommend it
@Sleeping Dog:
The weird thing is that what some Americans define as “conservatism”: free markets, constitutionalism, limited government, legal equality of citizens etc. all strike me, from a British/European perspective, as historically liberal policies.
@JohnSF: I think you make a good point that classical Liberalism was not necessarily inclusive or egalitarian. It sought to improve life for everyone, but not to eliminate class distinctions or to achieve equal opportunity for all. The US Founding Fathers make this pretty obvious.
I think it’s right that conservatism is fundamentally reactionary, but I think the thing it reacts against is progressivism — the expansion of the definition of “us” and the inclusion of “them”.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I’d disagree with that; reactionaries tend to end up aligning with fascists simply because they don’t have much alternative, the sorry fools.
But reactionaries want a return to an imagined past; fascists dream of an impossible future.
My favourite definition of fascism: “How to be revolutionary in a liberal-capitalist system without being Marxist” (courtesy of J.S. McClelland)
@DrDaveT:
“Nihilists! F*** me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos.”
@gVOR08:
Nah, man. Quit with the modesty. you refer to several a bunch of times, but you still cite a lot of books.
@DrDaveT:
I’d argue that there at least three different main variants of “conservatism”: (WARNING massive generalizations follow!)
– Pre-WW2 European and British;which wished to adapt to and modify and dominate modernity, unlike the reactionaries who rejected it, and increasingly allied with the new elites of industrial society. But still could not accept the “lower orders” as full participants.
– Modern American; which is essentially a bunch of early liberal principles plus 19th century Spencer/Sumner style “thriving of the fittest”, plus “business-ism”, plus democracy/populism and it’s perils. And increasingly tempted to radical &/or exclusionary politics.
– Post WW2 European conservatism, reconciled to welfare states and managed economies; accepting the need for an all-inclusive system, far less inclined to class or national chauvinisms.
But still wishing to preserve as much of “tradition” as possible, cautious of radical constitutional or economic or social change
(And post WW2 British conservatism, tugged between those three)
@JohnSF:
This jibes with what we know of chimp troops. If an alpha pushes dominance far enough, other individuals form an alliance to challenge the alpha.
Also, the popular notion of “alpha” is usually tied to physicality, which is certainly not the case in the real world.
@JohnSF:
Yes, what conservative and liberal mean in America is nearly the reverse of what Europeans mean when they use the terms. In America conservative means revanchist, without the restoration of the monarchy. While the Burkean, Oakeshott, Scruton strain of conservative is what I’m referring to when I say few Rs are classical conservatives, with the addition of being strongly pro market economy.
Liberals here fall most closely to the UK Labor Party under Tony Blair with the left of the Dem being similar to Corbyn w/o the antisemitism. The left typically disparages the center left and center right who are advocates of a market economy as neo-liberals.
@Kurtz:
Again, my memory of cites fails, but apparently a common theme in currently or recently known pre-state societies was that chiefs had to spend a lot of time and effort cultivating friendships, alliances etc.
Any who just tried to physically bully everybody would not be likely to last long.
For that matter, even once the “coercive state” arises and the ruler can bully and plunder the commonality, they tended to spend a lot of time stroking their their warriors.
Look at any Celtic or Germanic references to chieftains or king rewarding their followers with the “choice cuts of meat”, “gold arm-rings”, slaves, land.
Or the chivalric obligation systems of medieval Europe or Japan.
Or in a different way, the privileges of priests and mandarins.
There’s always some groups you can’t afford to piss off too much.
Even Sy Kottic, Dictator and Tyrant, usually has enough sense to terrorise commoners, even his ministers, but to be nice to his bodyguards.
@JohnSF:
That’s what I’ve read too.
To me, that seems intuitive anyway. But people are often committed to a meta-narrative of some kind.
@Michael Reynolds: “A fascist US would soon lose its competitive edge, with attendant reduction in living standards. ”
The elites can grab more of the pie, the lovers of power are rewarded in power, and and it’s clear by now that the Base will be quite satisfied with hurting the Other and blaming them for their own problems.
@gVOR08: “These things have always been with us. What’s changed is the eagerness of one political party to shamelessly exploit them.”
I think that there are two other changes:
1) The self-awareness of these people. They’ve realized that the rich plus the rural whites plus the right-wing GOP-gelical churches plus the right-wing mediasphere plus right-wing politicians are a very strong combined force.
2) The realization among these people that the norms are hollow and the checks and balance do not check and do not balance. Those stone walls are not manned, and most of them will tumble down with a hard push.
@JohnSF: “(But why that particular sequence? Why not derive the ultimaste goal and liberate all right now? Mere pragmatism? In which case why the specific order?)”
Because you can’t accomplish everything at once. For example, what would have happened to the 13th-15th amendments if Congress and the state legislatures foresaw that they’d be powerful tools to promote racial equality? That the side effects would include women getting the vote?