Fascism Then and Now

“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’”
-Prof. Harvard E. Luccok, Yale Divinity School. 1938

“Make America great again!”
-Donald Trump

We need to keep calling Donald Trump a fascist because he is. He lied and continues to lie about the outcome of the 2020 election as recently as his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He’s developed a cult following based on his personality, on his person, not on any clearly defined legislative agenda or platform, nor upon any party (sloganeering isn’t a legislative agenda: neither are “concepts of a plan”). He is authoritarian, posting about being “President for Life” on Twitter before he left that platform. He suggested to Evangelical Christians that if they’d vote for him in the next election, they “wouldn’t have to do it again,” he’d “fix it so they wouldn’t have to worry about it.” He is anti-democratic, authoritarian, and attempted to overthrow US democracy on January 6th, 2021 with an incendiary speech providing false evidence about the 2020 election being stolen. He is also anti-immigrant, nationalist, and racist. He is a fascist in the mold of Nazi Germany.

The right wing is of course blaming this “rhetoric” (actually, facts) on two assassination threats on Trump. There was one attempt by a registered Republican, and an assassination threat by a convicted felon. The potential shooter never fired his weapon, but he is being charged with an assassination attempt because he was detected and fired upon by a Secret Service agent before he could aim his weapon.

But nutcase right wing rhetoric has been incendiary since Obama ran for president the first time — for at least that long. Trump spent five years lying about Obama’s birthplace (the BBC link here documents three years of birther lies by Trump, but I have followed five years of it on YouTube). Then when the Affordable Care Act passed, right wing media and politicians started saying the Nazis, of all people, had national health care too.

Now you’re welcome to criticize the Affordable Care Act, but that’s not equivalent to fascism in any way, while Trump’s subversion of democracy on Jan. 6th, 2021 certainly is. We need to keep in mind exactly how this comparison matters, though: no, there is no clear, ongoing holocaust in the US. But Trump’s zero tolerance policy for illegal immigration, racist anti-immigrant rhetoric, cruel detention practices and family separation policies on the border point to a movement that has parallels with Nazi Germany in 1933, when the detention centers were built there even if not with 1941, when they became extermination camps. We might also compare the political violence Trump incited on January 6th, 2021 to the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, where the Hitler-led Nazi Party attempted to overthrow German democracy, or to the racist, political violence of Kristallnacht in 1938.

It might help to define fascism. However, I prefer not to give a general or abstract definition of fascism, but rather define it as a constellation of attributes. If most of these are present, I identify the regime as fascist.

• Focused on a strong, central male leader who represents a big version of the little guy. Fascism is populist, and its populism draws in the working class even if it’s not limited to it. The little people believe they will be the leader’s jackboot, not that the jackboot will be on their own necks. They learn otherwise very soon, of course, but then it’s too late.
• Authoritarian organization of government characterized by tight control of the press/media to restrict information and maintain image.
• Nationalist in the early twentieth-century sense of blood and soil nationalism. We need that chronological limiter on “blood and soil” as the phrase goes back to the US founding fathers and before that to Rome, but these were more open ended than the twentieth-century, fascist version of the concept.
• Usually aligned with capitalism. Hitler’s party was of course the National Socialist Party, but he hated Marxists, socialists, and communists, and went after them first as his primary political opponents. When he took over the Nazi party he started getting close to industrialists, which angered the real socialists in the party, who left to form the Black Front. Capitalists like the fascist leader so that they can organize their society the way they organize their companies, through top-down control, but they find he gets out of their control.
• In Europe and the US, Christian by public identification in its early days, but with no real commitment to Christianity. Hitler began to pivot toward “Positive Christianity” near the end in preparation for a full swing toward German paganism.
• Racist, generally aligning the “real identity” of the people group with race.
• Virulent hatred of an outgroup — Jews, Mexicans, etc.
• There is no truth here — anti-intellectual. Conflicting messages were the norm, even about Jews (they were cunning perpetrators of world conspiracies and dirty, stupid, and barely or not at all human), but followers don’t notice or process the contradictions: “Immigrants are taking our jobs away and are lazy, don’t work, and on welfare.” Intellectuals/ knowledge workers are distrusted and punished just for being who they are. The Nazis had agents in every classroom reporting on instruction.
• Because of the above, there’s no logic to the system or its goals beyond the expression and assertion of power for its own sake.
• Rejection of democracy, of course, as corrupt and ineffective. Question the vote or say it doesn’t matter.

The point is that you don’t need a Holocaust to make valid Nazi comparisons, and the most important Nazi comparisons observe similarities before there is another Holocaust. That is the work we need to do. We don’t need political violence to beat Trump. He clearly thinks he needs political violence to win, however, and that makes him a fascist.