this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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I do think that in an academic sense, Trump is not fascist. I mostly agree with Daniel Bessner on this front. The purpose of creating a category or ideology called fascism and not just what a weird Italian party called themselves because they are Roman LARPers, is that there was something new with this strain of European politics in the 1920s. So I do feel that any definition of fascism has to embrace that part, that it is something that is unique to Europe in the 1920s and not pre-existing political positions or precedents. So, to some extent, the lack of mass politics or the use of a party paramilitary being involved can lead one to say that Trump isn't fascist.
To a lesser extent, I do think that maybe Bessner is correct in that there is real stakes to this discussion, in that this is trying to make Trump's ideology and actions a foreign, European import and ignoring how it is a natural extension or direct conclusion of the American Right-Wing.
I don't usually push back on people calling Trump or American politicians fascist, since most people think fascism is just racism and reactionary politics. But as I said, I am mostly just looking at an academic classification, and even though all political terms being contested, any definition of fascism has to take into account that the use of the term as a category was because Europeans in the 1920s said "wait, this is something new and unique". Why people get worked up about this is that fascism, due to the united front, is something that is almost universally agreed as a bad thing. Anarchists, Communists, Socialists, Liberals, and even some Conservatives were united against fascism in allied countries. So fascism fulfills the roll of the political bad, so when people hear you say "Trump isn't a fascist", what they think or hear is "No, he isn't really that bad". Despite the fact that things can be bad in multiple ways, so Trump doesn't have to be fascist to be really racist, "authoritarian" and bad. The Belgian Congo under King Leopold wasn't necessarily fascist, but it was extremely evil and bad.
by what definition does Trump lack a mass movement? by what definition does the political use of militarized police not qualify for having a paramilitary? the administrative details of which department governs the goons is not what makes fascism.
Mass politics is more about actual political involvement like regular party meetings, party social clubs, and enrolling your children in something like the Hitler Youth. Again, modeled after the socialist parties having social organizations, sports clubs, theater troupes, etc. Having people regularly interact with the party and can be called out for mass action with a days notice. It isn't just a double digit percentage of people vote for the party.
The fascist paramilitaries are outside of the government and independently, only answerable to the party. Not that the party takes over the state and can make the state apparatuses do what the party wants.
Trump gets MAGA fuckers out to events in droves, they lack traditional organization (to the extent hijacked republican organization lacks a mass character) but they have significant social media support, which seems to make up for it. we can't use 1920s definitions for social relevancy in a world where legit communist parties have less in-person participation than they had back then.
the devotion to the idea the paras must come from out of the state is myopic. a) fascist movements are not democratic so there is no great difference between things being under 'party' rule and the direction of a head of state. b) fascist paras were incorporated into the state when they take power c) not all fascists followed this exact model.
re: c) it is within your right to deny Franco was a fascist but i'm not going to take anybody like that seriously. nobody but hitler and mussoloni were fascist is a useless analysis
So the Czar was fascist? King Leopold of Belgium was fascist? King Friedrich the Great was fascist?
It really does matter for circumventing or over-ruling the constitutional order that you have another "card" to play that your paramilitary is independently answerable to you and not just because your guy is currently head of state.
i didn't say police = fascism i critiqued using nonstate paramilitaries as a definitional point of fascism. a recurring point of ICE using unmarked personnel is to grant carte blanche to nonstate actors--what a comfort it will be to be black bagged by a neonazi with the reassurance it isnt fascism since a three-letter agency did it first