I’ve previously written on how Robert Paxton’s 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism identifies a series of characteristics of fascism that the Trump movement fits remarkably well when it attempts to justify itself intellectually.
• a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; (“knowing what time it is,” denigrating the Constitution, calls for authoritarianism from Yarvin and Haywood)
• the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; (individual liberty must give way to forcing virtue on the public and removing all immigrants)
• the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external; (white grievance politics, conservatives being hunted and killed, exaggeration of DEI, elites are selling your country to foreigners through immigration and free trade)
• dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; (foreigners as figuratively and literally polluting American culture, liberalism and consumerism making people weak, selfish, and disgusting, women in institutions ruined everything)
• the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; (demands for mass deportation, calls to round up leftists, all in the name of building a “high-trust society”)
• the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny; (Trump cult, in the process of being transferred to Vance)
• the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; (Trump, trust the plan, election denial as a litmus test because it’s the leader’s will despite no evidence for it at all)
• the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; (every problem can be solved by strength and not being a cuck)
• the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle. (the ideology of Heritage Americans, Stephen Miller channeling the Melian Dialogue, law can’t be allowed to interfere with preserving white demographic dominance and defeating the left)
Again, this was all published over a decade before Trump became president. Yet it seems to describe the movement that he leads perfectly. Trump, nearly universally opposed by intellectuals and other elites, even among those on the right, achieved power first. Then came the process of reverse engineering justifications for his instincts and prejudices, which he shared with his electoral base. Naturally, more serious intellectuals who glommed onto the movement were disappointed, as MAGA over time morphed more completely into mindless leader worship and a vehicle for those with fascist sensibilities.
Trump’s movement resembles those of Mussolini and Hitler not because he or those around him are students of history. Rather, there is an underlying human nature that is alienated from organic elites, but occasionally overwhelms democratic politics when a particularly charismatic and ruthless figure comes along at the right time. It wants spectacle and it wants to hate. This happened in Italy and Germany in the aftermath of the First World War and the breakdown of their parliamentary systems, and again in the United States with the rise of the internet and social media.
On the intellectual roots of fascism, or lack thereof, Paxton writes the following:
Putting programs first rests on the unstated assumption that fascism was an “ism” like the other great political systems of the modern world: conservatism, liberalism, socialism. Usually taken for granted, that assumption is worth scrutinizing.
The other “isms” were created in an era when politics was a gentleman’s business, conducted through protracted and learned parliamentary debate among educated men who appealed to each other’s reasons as well as their sentiments. The classical “isms” rested upon coherent philosophical systems laid out in the works of systematic thinkers. It seems only natural to explain them by examining their programs and the philosophy that underpinned them.
Fascism, by contrast, was a new invention created afresh for the era of mass politics. It sought to appeal mainly to the emotions by the use of ritual, carefully stage-managed ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric. The role programs and doctrine play in it is, on closer inspection, fundamentally unlike the role they play in conservatism, liberalism, and socialism. Fascism does not rest explicitly upon an elaborated philosophical system, but rather upon popular feelings about master races, their unjust lot, and their rightful predominance over inferior peoples. It has not been given intellectual underpinnings by any system builder, like Marx, or by any major critical intelligence, like Mill, Burke, or Tocqueville.
In a way utterly unlike the classical “isms,” the rightness of fascism does not depend on the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name. Fascism is “true” insofar as it helps fulfill the destiny of a chosen race or people or blood, locked with other peoples in a Darwinian struggle, and not in the light of some abstract and universal reason. The first fascists were entirely frank about this.
Paxton points out that Hitler and Mussolini had early intellectual supporters, but they were bound to be disappointed. Fascism made compromises with established forces in its rise to power, and was ideologically flexible in terms of the things intellectuals tend to care about, even as its hatreds and oppositional attitude toward the enemies it focused on remained constant.
There’s a good demonstration of these lessons in the recent spat over Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders releasing a video about a white welfare mooch. I thought my opinion of the right couldn’t get any lower, but even I found this controversy, which seemed to suck in nearly every influential MAGA figure on X, depressing. Read the comments and look at the replies, and there’s nothing to indicate that these people care about the underlying issue at all. Instead, they’re upset that the welfare bum being portrayed was the wrong race and sex. This isn’t just internet nonsense, as Huckabee Sanders felt a need to respond, though her not backing down in the face of the moronic hordes crying out “GIVE US SHANIQUA” is a bright spot, and fills me with hope that politicians can start to brush these people aside.
The rightists don’t even feel the need to pretend like they have a take on welfare. This is different from wokeness on the left, which is also race obsessed but combines its demands for acceptable representation with an actual policy checklist and at least hints at attempts to incorporate what it believes into a rational worldview. To these people, the only thing that matters is that the Arkansas governor insulted the collective honor of the white race, whose superior position relative to other groups must be maintained. In this case, conservatives demand using blacks to push an anti-welfare message, but JD Vance proved that you could praise Elizabeth Warren’s economic views and appeal to the same group of people as long as you keep the enemies constant. The vice president has constructed an ideological structure in which every group of poor people coded as white is sympathetic and every group of minorities is portrayed as a threat to the nation’s finances and culture regardless of their socioeconomic status, managing to find a way to demonize everyone from urban criminals to immigrant engineers. You can’t have enough contempt for this as an intellectual project.
Fascism harks back to a glorified past, yet it is in a certain sense ahistorical, without a real intellectual legacy or rootedness in the political tradition of a nation. The right’s demand that Republicans embrace explicit racialism in all its messaging, its alienation from most mainstream politicians, and its hatred for every previous generation of conservative leaders are signs of that. Fascism also doesn’t build institutions. Trump can temporarily bar the prestige press from the White House, but the MAGA media that he’s handpicked can’t even provide a decent sound system to replace it. Within days, a federal judge – a Trump appointee no less – ordered the administration to let them back in anyway.
The administration has given special access to propaganda outfits like Lindell TV and compliant social media influencers in the hope of raising their profiles, but traditional news organizations still have the prestige and credibility. They’ll be around for a long time after this president is gone, while the Trump-favored outlets and influencers have nothing but their relationships to power.
We see the same thing in the think tank world. After Trump lost in 2020, the America First Policy Institute was established. It served as a center for networking and organizing for the purpose of being in position to staff a second Trump term, often called a “White House in waiting.” Heritage was captured and MAGAified. But even that has been deeply controversial internally, and, in general, the think tank space looks like it did before Trump came down the escalator. Serious people in Washington who have done decades of institution-building are still there, just as the real media remains in place. The spirit of fascism appeals to those seeking immediate gratification, and this, along with its human capital problem, prevents it from laying down lasting foundations.
One encouraging difference between Trumpism and fascist movements of the past is that MAGA has little appeal to the youth, and even less ability to mobilize them. On their way to power, fascist leaders of previous generations sent muscle into the streets, where they intimidated opponents and made their presence felt. Trump supporters don’t commit much violence; they’ll barely get off their couches. Part of the reason is that Trumpism appeals to the old. The president is currently underwater with all age groups, but is doing worst among the young.
Trump supporters generally get their cruelty fix by watching social media clips of immigrants being arrested or college snowflakes being triggered. The one incident of mob violence MAGA has been responsible for is the storming of the Capitol on January 6, which was in effect a top-down call from the president himself in order to serve his own narrow ends rather than any wider goal. The law came down hard on the perpetrators, even though they all eventually received a blanket pardon or had their sentences commuted. The lack of a real Trumpist youth movement is another reason MAGA will have limited staying power.
Trump has accomplished his main goals: he filled his pockets, sucked up all the attention the country could possibly give him, and held onto power as long as possible. Yet while we know that democratic socialists, libertarians, social conservatives, and liberal elites will all be part of the conversation within a decade or two, the same can’t be said about Trumpism. Unlike more rooted political movements, fascism needs a leader, and it needs to make politics exciting. Neither the issues themselves nor an ideological vision is enough to motivate the more ignorant sector of the public that it relies on for its strength.
The forces that created and supported Trump will of course still be there, and ambitious politicians will try to mobilize them. Changes in communications technology have made this much easier to do. But the institutions that resist authoritarianism are far from dead, and have a consistency of purpose that keeps them going even when others have stopped paying attention. That is what separates them from populist movements and remains one of the secrets to their enduring success.
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Richard still doubling-down on his bizarre argument that if you think a depiction of Welfare abuse should depict it's most realistic user demographic instead of "Woke" obfuscation of the issue, that you are a white supremacist, or whatever. A long strawman.
Nor can he explain why another demographic group, probably the largest group of net taxpayers, should should be happy with being portrayed as the go-to villain in every media depiction of undesirable characters, when the evidence does not warrant it.
I'm not white yet I'd be upset if a group I was part of was consistently the only acceptable one to portray in a negative light and used in place of other groups in various negative scenarios, the reality being that my group is one of the least or indeed the least likely to actually be involved (e.g. grok claims 2% of welfare users are young white males).
Anyone who saw that ad and got angry that the person was white needs help.