Source: Alisdare Hickson (https://www.flickr.com/photos/alisdare/42730197674)
As I said in my previous post, I’ve been sitting for awhile on the question of whether Trumpism is a fascist movement. But to answer this question, I needed to first sketch out what fascism is. A lot of people use ‘fascist’ to mean something like ‘very bad.’ Even historians and social scientists use the word without thinking about the economic and political contexts in which fascism grows.
So I offered five historical conditions where fascism grows. And a starting point for defining it. That starting point was: Fascism is the emergency management mode of capitalism. It arises during times of serious crises and left-wing threats in order to save capitalism from itself.
Here we are, then. Is Trumpism a fascist movement?
A Short, Preliminary, and Unhelpful Answer
No, it’s not. At least, it’s not a fascist movement yet.
It could grow into one, though at present that potential is relatively low. However, as I’ll spell out in more detail below, there’s little relief in this fact. Trumpism is very bad, even if it’s not very bad in a fascist way.
Common Background of Fascist States
In the previous post I identified five features fascist states have in common. Those were: peripheral capitalist status, economic crisis, political crisis, short democratic histories, and left-wing, existential threats to capitalism.
Let’s look at the United States in those terms. For each feature, is it in place? From there, we can get a good sense for what the risks are in the US for the near future.
Peripheral Capitalist Status
Answer: Definitely not.
Sure, China is well on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy. And Trump certainly uses China as a foil. But let’s not get carried away. The United States is still very powerful, and it will continue to be for at least the next few decades. The US’s status is well ahead of any of my five examples of fascist states.
That said, I also wouldn’t put too much weight on this one. Yes, yes, I know that Gramsci did. But if the other four conditions were in place, I suspect fascism could develop in the US. Peripheral status is, in my opinion, less a predictor of fascism than a predictor of political and economic crises. If those crises developed in the US, I think fascism could follow.
Economic Crisis
Answer: Probably not.
Obviously we had the Great Recession in 2008. That recession had largely American causes, and it was very pronounced in the US. Long-term unemployment lingered long after 2008. Even the jobs that ‘came back’ were beset with issues of structural unemployment.
While it’s important to take these facts seriously, it’s equally important not to overstate the crisis. The US is still relatively wealthy. Its crisis, while severe, particularly from 2008 to 2010, was not as severe as the Great Depression. And the Depression, as you’ll recall, didn’t produce a fascist state in the US. Therefore, on balance, I think we have to conclude that there are some risks here, but that they’re not strong indicators of a good environment for the development of a fascist state.
Political Crisis
Answer: Probably not.
US politics are increasingly hyper partisan and acrimonious. It has become difficult to pass major legislation without Congressional super-majorities. But we again have to put these things into context. Our political troubles aren’t even close to the those faced by Italy in the 1920s or Germany in the 1930s. If there’s a political crisis of that magnitude looming in the US, it hasn’t hit yet.
Short Democratic Histories
Answer: Definitely not.
The US has a deeper and richer democratic history than any country that has gone fascist. This is even after we allow for the fact that US democracy has been extremely limited for much of its 200+ year existence. Most actual fascist states had (often very limited) democratic status for less than a couple of decades. This doesn’t mean the US couldn’t go that route, but it makes it more difficult.
Left-Wing, Existential Threats to Capitalism
Answer: No, and not even close.
Thus far, fascism has only developed in countries where there was a looming left-wing threat to capitalism. Generally with the Soviet Union as a threat. We’re nowhere near this point in the US. There is no major left-wing political party in the US. Unions have been on the decline for decades. The left in the US is barely organized at all.
Bernie Sanders, America’s most popular politician, calls himself a ‘democratic socialist.’ However, Bernie’s explanation makes it clear that he’s only advocating center-left, New Deal style reforms. He’s not really a left-winger. The Democratic Socialists of America now has 50,000 members, and many of them are left-wingers. But it’s still very small.
Could Trumpism Turn Into a Fascist Movement?
With that, I’m ready to give a longer answer. Trumpism is not a fascist movement, but it could become one. The potential for the development of fascism in the United States is higher than what it was before the 2008 recession. But it’s still relatively low.
There are paths toward fascism. Ideologically and practically, I don’t think Trump and the GOP are necessarily opposed to taking a fascist turn. The willingness seems to be there in some parts of the White House. Certainly they’ve shown little respect for democratic norms, the impartial rule of law, etc. They advocate voter suppression. They’re committed to stripping immigrants and children of immigrants of rights.
But, more deeply, here’s what would need to happen for fascism to become a major threat in the US: a series of economic and political crises along with the rise of a genuine left-wing threat to capitalism. If we had a recession on the scale of 2008 or greater, the Democratic Party were taken over by elements at or to the left of Bernie Sanders, and Congress had even greater gridlock than now, that might be sufficient. Or it might require a bit more.
It’d probably require all of those things to happen, at a minimum.
More Remote Possibilities
There are a couple of more remote possibilities worth considering. One is that Trump, or other Republicans, might invent a fake threat to capitalism. Trump has been trying to do this with respect to Venezuela, though without much success. It’s possible that an entirely fake crisis of capitalism could spur fascism, though it’d be completely unprecedented.
Another one is that looming ecological disaster could present a threat to capitalism and spur a fascist response. We have reason to believe, for example, that we could have widespread ecological disasters by 2040 that could seriously threaten global capitalism. This is obviously worth keeping in mind.
Trumpism’s Ideology and History
So, if Trumpism isn’t a fascist movement, what is it?
I took a crack at this earlier. The upshot is that Trump is most likely trying to save the Reagan coalition. Most likely he’ll fail. While unusual in several aspects, Trumpism seems to mostly fit within the general theoretical framework laid out by political scientist Stephen Skowronek. That is to say it’s, broadly speaking, a movement we can explain within the current system.
The more descriptive answer is that the Trump Administration is a bit of a mess. It’s an uneasy, pragmatic alliance between corporate interests. This alliance includes Christian theocracy, military contracting, oil, finance, war, oil again, finance again, finance again, pharmaceuticals, finance, finance, racism and Christian theocracy, paranoid quasi-fascism and finance, and natural gas.
Did I mention finance?
Anyway, it’s devoted mostly to promoting these interests. Along with contempt for public interests. Beyond that, Trump’s speeches and actions are a hodgepodge of racism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
His announcement of his candidacy was one of the weirdest events in American political history. His inauguration speech was equally bizarre. Trump has accomplished very little since he took office, largely because his coalition agrees on very little aside from eliminating regulations and cutting taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations.
The closest parallel to Trump is probably a wee little Italian man with an inferiority complex. No, not that one.
I’m talking about Silvio Berlusconi. Like Trump and most of his Administration, Berlusconi was a disaffected member of the establishment. Like Trump, he was a media and branding figure who made the leap to politics. His ideology, again like Trump, was unclear and resulted in significant internal disagreement and lack of accomplishment. At least at first.
The comparison to Berlusconi also makes it clear that Trump doesn’t represent an end point to the right-wing shift in the US. Trump very well could give way to movements even further to the right, which would be an even greater danger. Even Trumpism at present is dangerous in several ways, particularly the racism and anti-immigrant actions.
Trumpism as Populist White-Identitarianism
There comes the issue of labels. Since ‘fascist’ is out for now, I’ve settled on populist white-identitarianism. In an earlier post, I defined ‘identitarianism’ as ‘any politics or movement that reduces political issues entirely or almost entirely to issues of identity.’ There are versions on both the ‘left‘ and right.
Trump’s politics rely almost entirely on real or imagined affronts to white identity, particularly white male identity. This has helped him cultivate a base heavily consisting of white men with racist sentiments. Trump’s ‘populism’ is a pseudo-populism aimed mostly at wealthier people who pretend to be working class.
And so, there you have it: populist white-identitarianism. It’s an ugly term, suitable for an ugly movement and an ugly man.
