Some time ago, I posted an analysis of fascism. And then I applied that analysis to Trumpism – both in a post and an eBook. The short version of all that: I consider Trumpism a movement of nationalist (or populist) white-identitarianism, a term I coined. I don’t mean to deny that work. I’m satisfied with it and consider it complete, as far as it goes.
But I’ve found some confusions out there on the left. Some leftists set up a false dichotomy. Here’s how it goes: either leftists use the term ‘fascist’ for all far-right viewpoints, or else they’re not taking far-right views seriously as a threat.
This false dichotomy carries the implication that people who don’t call all the far-right ‘fascist’ aren’t taking the far-right seriously. Of course, I don’t think Trumpism is a fascist movement. So it’s time to say a bit more about taking white-identitarianism seriously as a threat.
Sterling’s Discussion of Fascism
Abel G. Sterling recently took up the question, ‘What is Fascism?,’ in an issue of Current Affairs. Normally I wouldn’t have much to say here. Sterling adopts an approach common in the literature on fascism. That is to say, he points to some of the limits to class-based approaches to fascism – including ‘economic anxiety‘ ones – and then offers a standard checklist approach in response. That’s not new.
But I found Sterling’s article helpful. Not because he’s right about fascism. I think he gets some things right and some things wrong. Rather, Sterling draws the above dichotomy clearly and he clearly picks out the stakes. That’s to say he lays out why some leftists think those who don’t consider Trumpism fascist are guilty of not taking Trumpism seriously.
How does he do that? Sterling builds a narrative for what a leftist ‘Trumpism isn’t fascist’ argument looks like. He reads those leftists as claiming that Trump locates his politics as a continuation – perhaps an accelerant – of neoliberalism. Specifically, the neoliberalism of the 1980s-2010s. And while Sterling sees some continuity of politics, he argues instead that what Trump did in office differs more fundamentally from, say, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagan.
That’s the idea, anyway. Now – what to make of it?
Populist White-Identitarianism: Neither Neoliberal Nor Fascist
I can agree with Sterling in at least one sense. Trump isn’t a mere neoliberal. His politics didn’t merely continue those of Reagan to W. Bush. And his followers show elements of far-right militarism that go way beyond what neoliberalism usually brings about. Plus, even beyond these features, Trump’s politics weren’t even that good for capital accumulation in some ways (though they were in other ways).
But, more important, Trumpism builds its politics narrowly around grievance, notably white, straight, male, cisgender grievance. Anger not only at the world, but anger specifically based in perceived affronts to categories of personal identity. This is in many ways a non-politics – an anti-politics – beyond anything seen in actual fascist movements. Fascism was – as Walter Sobchak famously claimed, and Sterling also holds – an ethos.
Trumpism is not an ethos.
That’s what picks out nationalist (populist) white-identitarianism and separates it from fascism. It might require neoliberalism, but it goes far beyond it. And it carries on into far-right territory different from that which fascism holds.
Trumpism’s extreme grievance politics – and its tendencies toward nihilism – carve out a unique space in U.S. politics. And they warrant a new term different from ‘fascism.’ If not white-identitarianism, then another.
