For his short-lived Chief of Staff John Kelly, the US President Donald Trump fits “the general definition of fascist.” Trump’s final Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley believed he was “fascist to the core.” Like many leading American figures before and since, neither Kelly nor Milley are likely to know fascist ideology well. Undoubtedly, though, they have known Trump very well. Their warnings are alarming. 

Just under two weeks before Election Day, Vice-President Kamala Harris also went there. In a televised speech, she declared that Donald Trump was even worse than a garden-variety fascist. “It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler,” she said, “the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is a window into who Donald Trump really is, from the people who know him best.”

Fascism — especially its most radical form, Nazism — is still (just about) more than a political slur. For scholars, fascism signifies something historical, and something that still exists today. Few put Trump in this camp even after the doyen of fascism studies, Robert Paxton, quite remarkably changed his mind in 2021 after the chaos of January 6 “removed [his] objection to the fascist label.”

These are important voices. But they are mistaken.

Fascists know Trump isn’t one of them

Since 1919, fascists have wanted a “New Order.” One purified by blood (ideally of their enemies, but martyrdom works too). Fascism is aggressive and propagandistic. Manliness and violence are less needs than musts. This has been the case since Benito Mussolini launched the first “Italian fascist combat groups” (fasci italiani di combattimento) right after World War I. 

Above all, fascism is proudly of the revolutionary right — albeit with some leftist makeup. Anything truly left-of-center isn’t tedious; for them, it’s treasonous. 

Like liberals and socialists and every other ideology under the sun, fascists know their own. They are unequivocal: Trump not one of them. And for once, they are right.

I should know, as I’m writing fascism’s first biography for Yale University Press.

Trump is no fascist, and certainly no Hitler. Instead, a better comparison is with Franz von Papen. Von Papen was Germany’s Chancellor the year before the Führer took power in 1933, heading a servile “cabinet of monocles.” (Remember those billionaires Rex Tillerson, Betsy DeVos and Steve Mnuchin?) Nazism’s leading chronicler today, Richard Evans, rightly called von Papen’s six-month rule a “coup.”

Fiddling while the country burned around him, von Papen reversed the ban on Hitler’s brownshirts, dissolved the government of Germany’s largest state (Prussia — imagine something like that happening to California) and also gave the Nazis access to the national radio network.

By that time, the Nazis didn’t much need the radio, having for several years enjoyed glowing media coverage provided by press magnate Alfred Hugenberg. That latter scenario has been replayed online, every day, ahead of November 5, 2024. 

But let’s go back to the future (and make it Part II, since the 1989 film’s Biff was explicitly modelled on Trump). 

Amongst fascists, believe it or not, there are different “faces.” One prominent face is what the UK government calls “self-directed terrorism,” as horrifically witnessed in Brazil as in Bratislava, New York and New Zealand. This last terrorist was succinct on Trump: 

Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump? 

As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no. 

On this point, he spoke for fascists around the world.

American fascists see Trump as an opportunity

So what do American fascists actually think about Donald Trump?

The first answer is “multiple things.” But their differences can be simply summarized. The further to the extreme right these democracy undertakers are, the less likely they are to support him. In contrast, the closer to the mainstream they are, or aim to be, the more they are willing to forgive Trump’s supposed sins (having Jewish children, world-beating narcissism, playing the electoral “game” and an inconsistent embrace of white supremacy).

One American fascist put it simply: “If you support Donald Trump, you’re a cuckservative … This struggle requires and will be won by fanatics, not by reactionary, nostalgic cowards pining for the reform of a hostile system.” Trump could never be extreme and bloodthirsty enough for violent neo-Nazis.

Another key face of American fascism engages with elections, if grudgingly. Take Richard Spencer, the alt-right’s main mouthpiece, crowing after Trump’s 2016 victory that his more extreme supporters should “party like it’s 1933.” Within a year they were marching on Charlotteville with tiki torches, bellowing “Jews will not replace us!” 

From the chaos and murder that August 2017 weekend, one group rebranded around fascist symbols swaddled with Americana: the Patriot Front. They represent one of scores of political movements trying to break into the mainstream. In scenes recalling the Nazis’ “winter relief” (Winterhilfswerk) for the needy during the Depression, they were on the ground aiding in hurricane relief efforts in North Carolina and elsewhere. This was an open goal for them, as few others were doing that work.

Simply put, the Patriot Front finds Trump’s coattails big enough for them to ride. The 400-strong group complained only this month that Trump’s campaign was nicking their ideas. While they took a starkly different view of “Reclaim America” from Trump’s (“unwavering support for Israel, race-blind and unrestricted legal immigration” and so on), there could be no doubting their glee after identifying “Reclaim America” signage at a recent campaign rally. 

Like most US fascists, spanning the American Freedom Party to the American Nazi Party (and make no mistake, they exist in every American state today) electoral fascists have long seen in Trump a “real opportunity for people like white nationalists.” Unlike every decade since 1945, they may have a point in 2025.

The brainier fascists, finally, dub their project “metapolitics” (for them, a mind-shift must come before a political shift). Their line is broadly supportive. In 2015, one US fascist website-turned-publisher claimed that, while “Donald Trump is neither a Traditionalist nor a white nationalist, he is a threat to Jewish economic and social power in the world. For this reason, and only to the extent that Mr Trump sticks to his positions on deportations and limiting immigration, we might support his candidacy.”

Six years later — in the very month of Trump’s would-be coup on January 6, 2021 — that outlet’s boss, author of The White Nationalist Manifesto, said this: “You started something … if we win, historians looking back at the restoration of popular government [i.e., white supremacy] in America will say that it began with Donald Trump.” Amongst these would-be fascist aristocrats, “Trumpism” represents a tiny flame that needs more petrol — lots and lots more petrol.

Taken together, the pattern is undeniable. Except those at fascism’s most racist and terroristic end, fascists see in Trump opportunity. It is one they have not had for almost a century. Make no mistake, they plan to seize it. Expect violence and other tricks of the fascist trade in the coming months.

How can Americans respond?

What those who resist fascism do in response will be pivotal. As for the 2024 presidential cycle, immediate tasks are obvious: Yes, Trump needs to be defeated. But those welcoming him as a Trojan Horse-like possibility also must be counted, and countered. There is too little sign of that today.

Ultimately, Trump isn’t a fascist but fascism’s facilitator. When the Patriot Front — or the Proud Boys, or III Percenters, or any one of a number of wannabes — move from hundreds to thousands to even millions of supporters, only then will we realize that calling Trump “Hitler” or “fascist” was rash.

By then, of course, it would be far too late. It may feel like we are there now, but we aren’t. Fascism is much, much worse. Despite Harris’s well-intentioned warnings, overstating the problem helps only actual fascists. Between normalization and hyperbole, this is one judgment call vital to get right.

Seeing fascism aright has rarely been more important. Doing so means preparing for a long slog that may start in the US — but most certainly won’t end there. As the doomed Weimar Republic made plain, democracy is just so much spilled ink without democrats to defend it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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