I have seen this term used in various media outlets recently, so I looked it up. Basically, the claim is that to be “true fascism” Palingenetic ultranationalism has to exist, which is when some great supposed “decadent injustice” is used as an excuse to tear down the entire country so that it may be “reborn”. Those in power direct public hatred towards various scapegoats with the goal not of changing the minds of those being scapegoated but to destroy their very existence. These scapegoats are painted not as a minor problem, but as an almost unsurmountable obstacle that will require an almost total dismantling of the entire system to get rid of the “EVIL”. The self-described heroes will then set up a new society free of these “evils”.
Am I correct, somewhat correct, or totally off-base in thinking this is pretty much what is going on here?
I thought at first it meant something involving Sarah Palin.
I don’t think think Trump-style MAGA-ism is well-thought-out enough to qualify. It does flounder somewhat in the direction of what you described, but is too haphazard and poorly organized. They don’t even have a cohesive vision. My experience is that if you get 10 Trumpers in a room, aside from perhaps common dislike of illegal immigrants and support for guns, they’d have surprising difficulty agreeing on things.
But having that many different “enemies” actually plays into this, perhaps. No easy single enemy to overcome means the overall fight continues eventually leading to an almost total teardown of the social structure. It is the unstructured vagueness itself that is part of this.
When I hear “Decadent injustice tearing down a country”, I think of Lenin, or Tito, or (at a pinch) the High Sparrow from Game of Thrones. I don’t think of a fat billionaire with a gold toilet. The idea of Trump railing against the very decadence that he embodies doesn’t seem likely to me.
Trump does rail against the great injustice of the “rigged” 2020 election, the “radical left” who want to transgender our kids, and complains about how Christians are attacked for no reason. In his first campaign, he didn’t explicitly telll us he was going to tear down the system, just drain the swamp.
In his second campaign he lied to us about what he planned to do. Project 2025? Never heard of him. He didn’t specifically tell us he was going to tear it down, but it was implied I thought.
From what I’ve seen, I think you’re on base. It naturally leads to another question, that of why the base thinks any of it is a good idea / why they think these things will solve their problems. But that’s a topic for a different thread. As far as this one goes, yes, I’m in agreement with you as to what is happening.
That term is from Roger Griffin, a British theorist with a career of writing on fascism. He is one of many theorists who have tried to define fascism and give lists of practices that need to be present. They overlap but disagree overall, because that’s how academics make careers.
I found a response on Reddit from a Ph.D. student who appears to be knowledgeable on fascist theories and is very much worth reading. An excerpt:
But even in the realm of Generic fascism, we see significant divides between definitions. Griffin, focusing on paligenetic nationalism, also includes three ‘cores’, which include the rebirth myth, ultra-nationalism, and a myth of decadence. Fascist groups, by Griffin’s definition, must have these things. However, many have noted that this is too simplistic, as it allows for many ultra-nationalistic groups who aren’t ‘fascist’ to be considered as fascist groups. Griffin even has an entire, massive, edited volume titled Fascism Past and Present, West and East: An International Debate on Concepts and Cases in the Comparative Study of the Extreme Right where multiple historians write chapters critising his definition, and he provides responses. Now, this isn’t to say that Griffin’s definition is completely useless, or even that its academically unsound, even in my area (the New Guard and Australian fascism in the 1930s) many authors do find that Griffin’s definition can often be the most useful. But what we must understand is that it is only one of many definitions going around, even in the grouping of Generic Fascism.
I agree that Trump’s fanatics, like Hegseth, Miller, and Voight, preach a new America involving “the rebirth myth, ultra-nationalism, and a myth of decadence”. Trump himself is not sufficiently coherent to keep to a constant ideology. The overall message is therefore larger, more encompassing, and more varied than that, IMO. That we’re seeing those three democracy-destructing trends at all is horrifying whether it’s defining or not.