We must take care with the word “fascism” and use it precisely.
The term “authoritarianism” means something more broad than “fascism”, describing a range of conditions in which the powerful have their power unchecked by limiting institutions, tests of legitimacy, or whatever. Fascism is an authoritarianism but not all authoritarianisms are fascist. The USSR, Gaddafi’s Libya, and contemporary Singapore are all authoritarian states with a distinctly different politics from fascism.
We must also add the word “totalitarianism”. Not all authoritarian societies qualify as totalitarian. In a totalitarian society, not only is power unchecked, it pursues limitless exercise of power. East Germany was totalitarian, trying to put literally every single citizen under active surveillance by the secret police, torturing people for deviance from government wishes in the minutiae of their private lives. The concept of totalitarianism helps us think about how Stalin’s USSR, late Nazi Germany, and ISIL have striking similarities despite very different ideologies and policy programs.
Fascism differs from other authoritarian ideologies. Though it tends toward totalitarianism when it holds power, this does not define it. It need neither exercise totalitarian power nor make totalitarian claims to count as fascism. We can recognize movements as fascist in their thinking even when they hold no power at all and claim to reject authoritarian governance.
Fascist ideology confuses us in part because while it is a political ideology it is not a policy ideology. This differs from political ideologies like communism which also incline toward authoritarianism but are defined by their policy program. Consider how communism has a clear policy aim: the development of an international political order of, by, and for workers who collectively control the means of production and distribute the wealth equitably. Communist movements famously have policy positions on every little question, derived (at least theoretically) from core principles. Authoritarian communism emerges from the challenges of implementing that policy.
Fascism, on the other hand, has a radical distinterest in policy. Fascist movements will shift policy positions whenever convenient to seize more power. They often propose absurd policies, creating an environment which rejects policy discussions in general as absurd.
Instead of a policy ideology, fascism has a myth and a method.
Fascism’s myth says:
- the essence of our nation is strong and great and virtuous
- the essence of our people is good, united, unique, and distinct from all others
- in the inexorable violent contest between peoples of the world our nation is destined to prevail
- but alien, corrupting influences have created weakness and division which will destroy the nation;
- this corruption must be destroyed through violence at the direction of a noble leader of profound insight
- our movement will produce a rebirth into greatness and unity and power, an escape from our national strife of petty politics
Scholar David Griffin, who studies historical fascisms, sums this up as “palingenetic ultranationalism”: a dream of violent national rebirth.
Fascism’s method acts in bad faith to use the instruments of liberal democracy to destroy liberal democratic institutions. Here “liberal” means not “neither conservative nor leftist”, but rather “rights and rule of law”. Thus fascism will ...
- yell “fire” in a crowded theater to discredit commitment to free speech
- lie brazenly and to claim that the press are motivated solely by politics so that citizens stop trying to figure out what the truth is
- sow violence in society so that limits on the use of force by the state seem pointless
The fascist myth and method produce authoritarianism and brutality.
This was the logic of the Confederacy. This was the logic of the Klan in the Reconstruction era ... and again in its 20th century revivals. This was the logic of the John Birch society. This was the logic of Timothy McVeigh.
It has been with us for a long time.
For a long time, I referred to DJT and Team Trump as “para-fascist”: the differences from historical fascism were sufficient to make me hesitant, but the resemblances were too strong to ignore.
Partly this reflects how American fascism is complicated by our deep rhetorical commitment to liberal democracy. (Again, not “liberal” as in “not conservative”, rather “liberal” as in “universal rights and rule of law”.) All of our politics references “freedom” and “rights” and so forth, which means American fascism needs to be more oblique in expressing its authoritarian rejection of libdem principle than other fascisms do.
Partly this reflects how Trump himself is barely interested in politics qua politics, rather being driven by his personal narcissism. Fascism reflects his fundamental urges rather than his considered philosophy, and emerges from the team around him rather than directly from him personally.
But as more and more pieces have fallen into place, it has become unmistakable in the last year. “Trumpism” is a form of fascism. The Republican Party is fascist. American conservatism has turned to fascism.
After writing this post I came to rely on it heavily, so I have a few follow-ups to append:
- I have made a number of little edits in original post in service of clarity. I think I have done so without changing the substance of the post.
- That has meant leaving the paragraph which references several movements from American history, which in retrospect I worry invites a bad inference. My point was that the sensibilties of contemporary American fascism draws on deep roots, but one may read me as saying incorrectly that all of those movements were fascist, which is incorrect. McVeigh did reflect white nationalist fascism. And the Klan of the revival of the 1910-20s was arguably the first proper fascist movement. But while Klan revivals (and fascist movements in other countries) inherit key sensibilities from the original Klan and the Confederacy, it would be misleading to call either the original Klan or the Confederacy fascist, as they differ in a fraught relationship with the Westphalian nation-state and other ways. And while Bircher-ism is at least fascism-adjacent with its weird anti-internationalism and dread of a corrupting, alien Bolshevisim, I hesitate to offer fascism as the best lens with which to understand it.
- I have come to refer more to our contemporary American fascism as “MAGA” more often than “Trumpism” because I think it has clearly become a movement which extends beyond DJT and will outlive him. And it is difficult to imagine a better slogan for the fascist myth per Griffin’s palingenetic ultranationalism than “Make America Great Again”. Not everyone who finds MAGA rhetoric appealing can be understood as a fascist and not all of American fascism identifies itself as or aligns itself with MAGA, but it is as good a locus as any for naming the fascist movement which we have to face.
- It is important to not simply equate fascism with the entire far right. I use “far right” to mean any movement opposed to democracy (right) which holds that nothing less than revolutionary change is worthwhile (far). Fascism is a particular far right movement; for an example of a not-fascist-but-still-horrifying far right movement in the US, consider neoreaction.
- I reject the argument of some leftist observers that fascism can be understood as the instrument which capitalism or liberalism or neoliberalism creates to crush the left. My comrades are right to dread how capitalists and anti-left-liberals enthuiastically make that faustian bargain, but to imagine fascism as their creation misses how fascism emerges from social impulses prior to elite manipulation. I hope to someday find time to make that argument in greater detail.
- It is important to register the Republican Party as having undergone a dramatic but not-yet-complete transition to fascism. Movement conservatism, the style of conservatism which consumed the Party and US politics in the wake of Reagan and Fox News sold itself to many voters with oblique dogwhistles which nourished fascist sensibilities. But MAGA is a transition away from movement conservatism, reflecting those voters’ dissatisfaction with movement conservatism’s failure to deliver the goods.