October 29, 2020

By Bill Berkowitz

Since and even before Donald Trump’s his election, much has been written about his narcissism, xenophobia, white nationalism, reverence for so-called strong foreign dictators, unabashed claims that only he can fix America’s problems, desire to stay in office beyond two terms (if he should be re-elected), lack of concern for the rule of law, media bashing, fear of diversity, purveying of outlandish conspiracy theories, advocacy for voter suppression, love of a powerful military display, abhorrence of peaceful demonstrations, penchant for the strongman photo-op, and, authoritarianism. Over the past few years, Trump critics have increasingly used the F-word, fascist, to describe Trump’s leadership.  

“In plain view, Trump was flaunting, ignoring, and destroying all institutions of accountability,” Masha Gessen writes in Surviving Autocracy (2020). “In plain view, he was degrading political speech. In plain view, he was using his office to enrich himself. In plain view, he was courting dictator after dictator. In plain view, he was promoting xenophobic conspiracy theories, now claiming that millions of immigrants voting illegally had cost him the popular vote; now insisting, repeatedly, that Obama had had him wiretapped. All of this, though plainly visible, was unfathomable.”

Debates have raged over whether Trump is a Mussolini-like character or more a caricature of the Italian fascist dictator? Is he Putin-lite or an imitation tyrant like the Philippines Rodrigo Roa Duterte?

Every strongman needs a base. Trump’s base is a three-legged stool made up of white nationalists, conservative evangelical Christians, and the Republican Party’s political, media, and corporate supplicants. In David Frum’s Trumpocracy, he writes: “Gullibly or cynically, resentfully or opportunistically, for lack of better information or for lack of a better alternative, a great party has slowly united to elevate one man into a position of almost absolute power over itself.” 

Are American institutions strong enough to withstand this era? Is the era of Trump another challenge – albeit heightened -- to democracy “aggravated by Trumpism but inherent in the American experience,” writes Carlos Lozada, a Washington Post book critic and the author of What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era. “The United States at its most heroic—striving to meet its promise of equality and liberty—is also the United States at its least inspiring, as it fails, repeatedly, to get there.” 

In contrast, Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post in 2016, “This is how fascism comes to America,” pointing to Trump’s “aura of crude strength and machismo,” his exploitation of resentments, and his cult of American victimhood. In the introduction to his 2018 edited collection Can It Happen Here? Authoritarianism in America, Harvard University’s Cass R. Sunstein writes:  “This is not a book about Donald Trump, not by any means,” adding, “there is no question that many people, including some of the authors here, think that Trump’s words and deeds have put the can-it-happen-here question on the table.” A few months later, Sunstein published an essay in the New York Review of Books titled “It Can Happen Here.” 

Are Trump’s actions those of a neo-fascist or the self-absorbed and unrelenting eruptions of an authoritarian? Is the rise of fascism merely in the eyes of the beholder, or are there a set of criteria that defines fascism and its adherents? And, most of all, when democratic values are threatened and eroded, does the political label really matter?

For years, Americans opposed to a particular political administration have tossed around the term fascist like baseball players tossing balls around the infield during fielding practice. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama were all labeled fascists by opposition groups. The danger of labeling every political opponent as fascist is that it dilutes the term; “He’s a fascist” becomes a Boy Who Cried Wolf story, making it difficult to recognize actual manifestations of fascism.

In November of last year, Foreign Policy’s Eliah Burees wrote: “The charge of fascism is always at the ready. Like the other F-word, ‘fascist’ is marvelously flexible and emotive, but it is also an example of language that is more likely to alienate and enrage than promote dialogue—a rhetorical turn that makes people less, rather than more, open to the humanity of those they oppose. While demonization is an ancient political itch always better left unscratched, it is especially harmful to a liberal-democratic political culture since it legitimizes intransigence and extremism in return. Faced with the next Adolf Hitler, any opponent becomes an enemy.

“There are many ways of reaching [fascism],” the Italian writer Primo 

Levi noted, “not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned, and where the security of a privileged few depends on the forced labor and the forced silence of the many.”

Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale University, defines fascism as "a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation." Sound familiar?

Key Characteristics of Fascist States

--Denial/distortion of information (and attack the free press);

--Nostalgia for a world where order reigned;

--Promise of national restoration in the face of immigrants and minorities;           

--Undermining systems of justice including the right to vote;            

--Undermining/paralyzing the public education system (privatization of public schools);

--Police intimidation:        

--Growth of militia organizations;

--Cult of the leader: 

In early September, Stanley, the author of the 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, told NPR's All Things Considered: "The leader proposes that only he can solve it and all of his political opponents are enemies or traitors.”

If Trump wins the 2020 election, America will bear witness to a more thorough destruction of democracy. The voices of resistance will be swallowed whole by the voices and actions of resentment. The Republican Party will have completely capitulated to its own personal caudillo. 

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