Future of fascism in America?

Great Debates
1

I don’t see much, really. There’s been a lot of talk comparing the Trumpers to a fascist movement, but I don’t think Trump’s nativist populism really qualifies. Fascism, being a product of the hubristic 20th Century, is essentially a revolutionary, futuristic, forward-looking ideology, even though it also involves nostalgia for a golden national past. Franco was not really a fascist – he has been called “a cop, not an artist” – just an old-fashioned authoritarian, who would have put Spain back to the 18th Century if he could, with the Church and landlords in charge. I think to qualify, a fascist movement needs to offer the people some ambitious, inspiring vision for enhancing the national greatness. In the case of Italy and Germany, that took the form of military glory.

But what further greatness would an American fascist have to offer? We’ve reached a point where the only way to make America greater would to be to make it 1) richer, 2) more just, and/or 3) more sustainable. There’s not much to be done with military glory. We already have the mightiest military establishment in human history, and no obvious advantage to be gained by making it mightier still. There is no place left that might be considered fair game for territorial expansion. Trump is sometimes compared to Hitler, but if Trump were Hitler, his ambition would be to conquer Mexico, exterminate the Mexicans, and settle their territory with white Americans – that’s what Hitler would do. Trump doesn’t have that much imagination, and neither does his movement. To the WWC, greatness would mean a job within their skillsets that pays like such jobs did in the 1950s and '60s – but no one can realistically offer them that.

As for the actual, outright fascists in American politics, such as those we saw at Unite the Right – I don’t think they have very good prospects for growth – not enough potential appeal even to white Americans.

2

You seem to mix what a fascist promises with what a fascist delivers.

Hitler promised to dominate at least Europe & maybe the world. He delivered disaster. That didn’t stop his followers from putting him into the position to deliver that disaster.

Trump is promising to deliver the WWC back to an imagined glorious past far better than the 1950s really were. As you say, he will fail in that given the realities of the world in 2020+. But that doesn’t mean that meanwhile his followers won’t put him in the position to deliver that inevitable failure with all the other equally inevitable collateral damage that will entail.


Also, I would not get too wrapped around the axle about exactly what the word “Fascist” means. Like “Nazi”, in the modern non-academic lexicon it’s really just shorthand for “authoritarian”. Xi, Putin, Bolsonaro, Duterte, Lukashenko, Kim, and Khamenei are each examples of current authoritarians. There’s no deeper commonality. Nor need there be.

Populism is usually part of the appeal that persuades notionally democratic societies to usher in authoritarians. But once the authoritarian and his (usually his) enablers have subverted the state to their ends, populism need not be a big part of the policies they enact. Though it will probably be a large part of the continuous propaganda barrage needed to keep the public at large placated enough.

3

I am currently reading a book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari. I’ve read his prior book, Sapiens, which looks at human evolution and how it relates to the societies we have all built up since.

Sapiens’ main point is that what we humans do is tell each other stories – everything from creation myths to the ideas of truth and justice to our plans for the future, and humans use these stories to coordinate everything we do.

The into to 21 Lessons makes much the same point that you do. In the last century and a half, as the story of Imperialism (the story we used to tell each other – see The White Man’s Burden by Kipling) declined, we replaced it with three new stories about humanity.

The first held that freedom of the individual was most important – Liberalism.

The second held that equality was most important-- Communism.

The third held that ethnic bonds and a shared culture were most important – Fascism.

Like you’ve pointed out, all three ideologies offered grand sweeping ideas for the future. The Liberalists believed that through democracy all nations could live in peaceful self-determination. The Communists believed that the oppressed proletariat class would rise up and overthrow their masters in a glorious worker’s revolution. And the Fascists believed that their peoples’ natural superiority would lead them to the top, where they could rule over their lesser subject peoples or eliminate them as they see fit.

Fascism as an ideology for the most part died after WW2. Communism, too, would be mostly discredited after the fall of the Soviet Union. For the last few decades, we have only had one story available. To some, this has meant we’re reached the “end of history” (definitely not something overconfident people have declared over and over again through history, lol) and that Liberalism has won, but now our society is raising questions that Liberalism, as we practice it, isn’t doing a great job of answering. Hence, unrest.

There are two interesting points Harari makes about this. First, this is not necessarily the demise of Liberalism or anything like that. He points out that in the past, Liberalism was very different. It wasn’t very concerned with women, or with the civil rights of minorities. When our founding fathers said that “all men are created equal” they were, of course, referring to straight white men. Harari points out that Liberalism co-opted these ideas from their supporters, who early on were more aligned with the Communist ideology than the Liberal one. But at different times in the past Liberalism adapted, declared that women’s rights and civil rights were important to their platform too, and grew because of it.

The second point he makes is very similar to the one you made. Today even people who are clearly not Liberals use the language of Liberalism to grant themselves legitimacy, because it IS the last remaining ideology. Someone like Putin or Trump clearly doesn’t hold democracy dear; and yet Putin has to pretend his nation is a democracy and that it is the peoples’ will that he rule over them. He denies the broad powers he has because they go against the ideology of Liberalism and Democracy, so despite his control over the country, he has to pretend he is still following democratic norms.

Neither Trump nor Putin has their own ideology. Putin wants to restore the USSR but not because he believes in Communism; only because Russia was more powerful then, and power is what he cares about. Trump will take any position on any issue if he thinks it will help him. Neither of these is a true ideology that can compete with Liberalism, the way that Communism or Fascism did.

And yeah, you’re 100% correct. People like that have no view for the future. They just have a vague sense that they’re not happy now and things were better in the past, so can’t we just go back?

Yes, Trump isn’t a Fascist. A Fascist would have a plan for that future, vile and horrific as that plan might be. A Communist has a plan for the future, and it may not even be a bad plan in and of itself, just one that’s not likely to work effectively. What plan for the future does a Trump Conservative or Putin Loyalist have? “Make America Great Again” or “Reestablish Russian Hegemony” are not real plans for the future.

4

Nice work @Babale. I enjoyed Sapiens and will hunt down the other book here in a few minutes.

I’d caution everyone that capital L “Liberalism” means several things, most of which are very different from current US mainstream leftist thought and definitely different from the RW “librul” caricature. Lots of well-read Dopers know that as obvious, but not everyone is well-read in political science & ~3 centuries of political history

Historical big-L Liberalism was about the right of the free people (landed gentry) to be free of monarchical interference; to exercise self-determination using their absolute property rights.

There certainly are echoes today in the left-leaning argument that people who are “wage slaves” (or un-/under-employed) might have intellectual freedom but they lack practical = economic freedom. Hence arguments for UBI, redistributionist approaches to capital rather than income, etc., so that everyone has property to exercise their rights with.

5

I tend to look at fascism and communist authoritarianism as two sides of the same coin. Even though Marx wasn’t so much writing about nationalism, communism eventually became a model for how to use power to govern a modern nation-state.

I don’t think we are necessarily heading toward fascism, but we’re definitely heading into a world that is becoming more and more authoritarianism. Moreover, it’s a world that, unlike that of the late 19th and early 20th Century, when nation-states were becoming more centralized, much of the world may be gravitating toward relative decentralization, un-bundling, and de-coupling.

6

The point isn’t the form of government that would arise among people who follow the worldview; the comparison is of the worldview itself and the ideas it presents. The future world that a fascist dictator sells to his people in order to get them to follow him is very different than the future world that a communist motivates his people with.

7

So, after all the dust settles from the election - Trump trying to hijack the Post Office, the dozens of bogus fact-free lawsuits, the bullying of Republicans who didn’t de-certify results, the SCOTUS lawsuit where Republican AG’s & Congressmen signed up, the multiple states where the GOP held meetings to appoint fake electors, then what I’m assuming will be an ugly January 6th - is there any doubt that the GOP is now a full-on Authoritarian party? I don’t know if they qualify as Fascists, but we now have a party that’s supported by almost 50% of the country which has tried to overthrow a Democratic election.

Given what we’ve just gone through as a country, and which looks to continue, I think we’re still not out of the woods on avoiding Fascism in this country.

8

Since this zombie has been reopened, I’d just say that I disagree with the OP’s redefining of fascism.
Personally I’d stick more with the standard dictionary definition, for which we can tick off one by one that Trump qualifies.

It is necessary to be careful labeling Trump as a fascist though, as for some people it is simply a pejorative equal to saying he’s Hitler and therefore hysterical. In some situations we need to clarify we mean the first definition of fascist that comes up, not the second.

9

semantics aren’t very important, what is important is the right will keep pushing America into an authoritarian state that mistreats minorities and other outsiders while making economic life harder and harder for the 99%. whether you call it fascism or something else isn’t Uber important.

I think cities and blue states will refuse to go along with genuine authoritarianism. they pay most of the tax revenue, I think they’d have a tax protest under an authoritarian state.

10

Well sure, the name does not make the thing. But at the same time not every non-marxist authoritarianism is “fascism”. To borrow from Walter Sobchak, “at least it’s an ethos”, we’d have some sort of sense of predictability of where they’d stand and what they are for or against. But the authoritarian right in the USA seems to be a thrown-together assemblage of a whole bunch of single-issue types, and the “ideology” is whatever serves to Pwn The Libs, exert power, and nake profit this minute. Their great current standardbearer is notorious for changing his mind from this morning to this afternoon as to what he supports/accepts/demands and none of his followers seem to even notice or care.