When Donald Trump first ran for President in 2015, I said “I think he’s a fascist.” Thus began years of study and reflection about whether my instinct was correct or if it was hyperbole.
Here’s a short list from my recent reading experiences --- by no means exhaustive:
- Frank Bruni, The Age of Grievance. (Avid Reader Press, 2024)
- David Daley, AntiDemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections (Marriner Books, 2024)
- Robert Edwards, Resisting the Right: How to Survive the Gathering Storm. (OR Books, 2024)
- Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017)
- __________ , “The American Fascists,” in Fascism in America: Past and Present ed. Gabriel Rosenfeld and Janet Ward (Cambridge University Press, 2023).
- David A. Hollinger, Christianity’s American Fate: How Religion Became More Conservative and Society More Secular, (Princeton University Press, 2022)
- Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart – Again (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024)
- Mary Nolan, “Women, Gender and the Radical right: Then and Now,” in Contemporary Europe in the Historical Imagination, ed. by Darcy Bueckle and Skye Doney (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023): 79-99.
- Rachel Maddow, Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. (Crown, 2023)
- Ellen W. Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, (Princeton University Press, 1998)
- __________, ed (with Phllip Deery), The age of McCarthyism: a Brief History with Documents, (Bedford/St. Martins, 2017)
- Jason Stanley, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, (One Signal, 2024)
- Miles Taylor, Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from Trump’s Revenge. (Atria Paperback, 2023)
Over the last 9 years, I have read a great deal about Trumpism in the US --- from theorists and journalists and from individuals who worked in the Trump Administration. And I understand that to some people, the word FASCIST is too simplistic or too moored to specific people, too associated with Hitler and Mussolini and mid-20th century Europe.
[A leading theorist Robert Paxton who was VERY SKEPTICAL of the fascism description of Donald Trump back in 2016 has “come around.” According to an article in the NY Times Magazine, he now believes Trump and Trumpism constitute a danger of fascism --- even as he remains somewhat leery of the word. The article is well worth reading. It is available here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html]
Last January, I attended the American Historical Association meetings in San Francisco. There was a panel featuring distinguished historians of mid-20th century fascism, (Mary Nolan of Yale), of the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s and 30s America, (Linda Gordon of NYU) of the Jim Crow South from 1898 to 1964, (Carol Anderson of Emory) and the Christian Nationalists of the religious right (David Hollinger of UC-Berkeley). It was an extremely eye opening panel. I came away believing that whether or not Trump himself is a fascist, his MAGA movement definitely is. I consider TRUMPISM an ongoing threat, even if Trump loses. (If Trump wins, I believe the “powers that be” will figure out a way to use the 25th Amendment to get rid of him and make Vance President.).
I am attaching a report I compiled of that panel which was published in the Union for Radical Political Economics Newsletter earlier this year.
Trumpism is represented by individuals like Steven Miller and Thomas Homan. Miller has a higher profile because he is almost certainly going to be part of a new Trump Administration. Homan was an ICE director for part of the Trump Administration and he is (if that’s possible) more extreme than Miller, as one can see from this portrait:
Though Miller was the public face of the “zero tolerance” child separation policy, Homan is credited with being the “father” of the program.
Trumpism is of course represented by Project 2025 which I have talked about in a number of these commentaries.
To steal General Milley’s comment about Trump the man and apply it to Trumpism – the set of policies they will attempt to implement are “fascist to the core.”
I have been speaking at college campuses since last winter. The prospectus created by my daughter Ivy is called CONNECTING THE DOTS: Fascism Then and Now. When I speak, I compare the so-called McCarthy period, when the American left feared fascism, with the current period where, in my opinion, Trumpism does represent fascism.
Let me give you a characteristic of fascism that I think fits with Trumpism.
First and most important is the fear and hatred of the “other”. In the 1950s it was “godless communism.” The entire culture was focused on convincing us that communists were evil incarnate --- that the Soviet Union was Hell on earth and American communists wanted to make the United States exactly like the Soviet Union.
My parents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were labeled traitors who stole the secret of the Atom Bomb and placed our nation’s survival in jeopardy. Their motive was COMMUNISM --- not money, and certainly not helping an ally win World War II (which in fact is what motivated my father between 1941 and 1945).
Anyone who wants a quick study on my parents’ case, I recommend the following two pieces (one written by me!)
Michael Meeropol, “A Spy Who Turned His Family In”: Revisiting David Greenglass and the Rosenberg Case. American Communist History, 31 May 2018: 247-260. [available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14743892.2018.1467702]
Walter Schneir, Final Verdict, What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case, (Preface and Afterword By Miriam Schneir). (Melville House, 2010)
For Trump and Trumpists, the “other” who must be feared is the criminal immigrant. The lies told about immigrants (they are all criminals poisoning the blood of America) are so outrageous I am amazed (and appalled) that the Trumpists believe them.
I think each Trumpist has developed a personal way of dealing with Trump’s most outrageous statements. They slough them off as “exaggerations” to make a point. (OF course some are just completely delusional and believe everything Trump says!) I feel really sorry for both sets of people who are being cruelly used to create a society they would HATE to live in!
Given the dehumanization of the “other”, the desire to engage in mass deportation fits perfectly with the important idea from the 1950s of rounding up dangerous people and putting them in concentration camps. And of course, Trump is on record as favoring invoking the Insurrection Act so he can order the US military to shoot demonstrators.
When I delivered this commentary over the radio, I imagined there would be some listeners out there who thought I was exaggerating --- or worse, that I was delusional myself (the right-wing calls that “Trump derangement syndrome” to dismiss it as completely false). I imagine that to many Trumpists, calling him a fascist and an admirer of Hitler is bogus and has been debunked (I recently saw a FOX NEWS on air person blithely assert that Trump’s positive statement about Hitler quoted by General Kelly “had been debunked.”)
I know it’s a thankless task, but for those readers who know people who have drunk the MAGA kool-aid, maybe it would be worth a try: Ask them: IS GENERAL KELLY LYING? He is a Republican who willingly served in Trump’s cabinet and as the Chief of Staff. Why would he lie?? Is General Milley lying? Why would he lie??
IN the audio captured by the NY Times, General Kelly even explained WHY he thought Trump would prefer to be a dictatorial authoritarian. It’s because, as the boss of his business empire, he was used to giving orders that everyone had to obey. Interestingly, it was because he was the head of a family business not a giant corporation, he never had to “negotiate” among the various departments and divisions to run the entire company --- which is what CEOs and CFOs have to do in corporate America.
And of course, once he became President, the fact that he is completely ignorant of our Constitution and how to govern in a Democracy, coupled with his lack of curiosity and outright stupidity led to him finding the rules under which he had to function intolerable. For the next incarnation of the Trump Presidency he promises that he will have only LOYAL people around him ---- loyal to him, not to the Constitution.
There’s another powerful significant fact about fascism that will only be revealed if he wins re-election this time around --- and that is, most of the people who put him in office will live to regret it.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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