Fascism in America
For the last three-and-a-half years, Mr. Trump’s behavior has not inspired confidence in those of us who value democracy. Over the last week, this lack of confidence has exploded into alarm, as he angrily denounced Black and White Americans protesting the murder by the police of George Floyd and other young Black men and women.
Mr. Trump is now threatening to use his emergency powers to federalize the National Guard and, perhaps, to authorize regular active duty soldiers to patrol the streets. He’s urging governors to aggressively suppress demonstrations, and to arrest and jail as many people as possible.
Is this fascism? Robert Paxton, professor emeritus at Columbia University, defines fascism as “a form of political practice distinctive to the 20th century that arouses popular enthusiasm by sophisticated propaganda techniques for an anti-liberal, anti-socialist, violently exclusionary, expansionist nationalist agenda.” President Trump has long used rallies and propaganda outlets, including Fox News and, of course, Twitter, to “arouse the popular enthusiasm” of about 40 percent of the electorate. And the stated beliefs of Mr. Trump and his supporters match all of the points in Dr. Paxton’s definition.
So yes, there is fascism in America today, and it’s popular for many of the reasons it was popular in the 1930s:
(1) Economic depression and the resulting social dislocation.
(2) Fear of communism/socialism.
(3) The successful economic and political example of fascism in Nazi Germany.
All three points are relevant today.
The U.S. economy has been devastated by the disruption of normal activity caused by the COVID-10 pandemic. Economic distress drives people to seek quick answers to looming problems, and fascism’s totalizing ideology (simple answers for everything), combined with racism and xenophobia, reduces the uncertainty many people feel about the future and their identity as Americans.
Communism and socialism are the bête noire of American politics, and President Trump himself warns darkly about the “Radical Left” and “Antifa.” His rhetoric creates the impression “they” are a monolithic group possessed of demonic powers, ready to erect guillotines across from the White House on Lafayette Park. Red baiting is nothing new in America, of course, but fascists are especially prone to the violent suppression of the Left.
Mr. Trump most admires those leaders in the world — Mr. Putin of Russia and Mr. Erdoğan of Turkey, among others — who are successful authoritarian “leaders for life,” much like Adolf Hitler was once perceived. Mr. Trump clearly relishes the idea of being a strongman leader for life, and his followers and the Republican Party as a whole seem to enthusiastically endorse his ambition.
The Washington Post article, “These are the three reasons fascism spread in 1930s America — and might spread again today,” provides a good outline history of fascism in America. Time magazine has an article that is a good general history about the origins of fascism. Here is a discussion of Dr. Paxton’s definition of fascism.
For a more detailed consideration of fascism, I recommend Madeline Albright’s recent book, Fascism: A Warning (The New Yorker magazine review). Tim Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is a short “how to resist” guide that’s pithy and timely (Washington Post review).
There were probably never more than 100,000 fascists in America in the 1930s but, under their slogan of “America First’ (sound familiar?) the movement attracted more than a few luminaries, such as the aviator Charles Lindberg and Ambassador Joseph Kennedy (father of the political dynasty that includes JFK, Robert, and Edward). The high point of the movement, to date anyway, was a 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City that attracted 20,000 people. Once the U.S. entered the fight against fascism in WWII, support for American fascists died.
