Trump’s skills and talents go unrecognized when we see him as a conventional candidate—a person who seeks to explain policies that might improve lives, or who works to create the appearance of empathy. Yet this is our shortcoming more than his. Trump has always been a presence, not an absence: the presence of fascism. What does this mean?
When the Soviets called their enemies “fascists,” they turned the word into a meaningless insult. Putinist Russia has preserved the habit: a “fascist” is anyone who opposes the wishes of a Russian dictator. So Ukrainians defending their country from Russian invaders are “fascists.” This is a trick that Trump has copied. He, like Vladimir Putin, refers to his enemies as “fascists,” with no ideological significance at all. It is simply a term of opprobrium.
Putin and Trump are both, in fact, fascists. And their use of the word, though meant to confuse, reminds us of one of fascism’s essential characteristics. A fascist is unconcerned with the connection between words and meanings. He does not serve the language; the language serves him. When a fascist calls a liberal a “fascist,” the term begins to work in a different way, as the servant of a particular person, rather than as a bearer of meaning.
[…]
Fascism is now in the algorithms, the neural pathways, the social interactions. How did we fail to see all this? Part of it was our belief that history is over, that the great rivals to liberalism were dead or exhausted. Part of it was American exceptionalism: “it can’t happen here” and so on. But most of it was simple self-absorption: we wanted to see Trump in terms of his absences, so that our way of seeing the world would go unchallenged. So we failed to see his fascist presence. And, because we ignored the fascism, we were unable to make the easy predictions of what he would do next. Or, worse, we learned to thrill at our own mistakes, because he always did something more outrageous than we expected.
It was predictable that Trump would deny the results of the 2020 election. It was predictable that his Big Lie would change American politics. It is predictable, today, that he will give free rein to the oligarchs who, he knows, will continue to generate the social and digital bases of a politics of us and them. It is predictable that, in returning to power, he will seek to change the system so that he can remain in power until death. It is predictable that he will use deportations to divide us, to accustom us to violence, and to make accomplices of us. It is predictable that he will create a cult out of the martyrs of January 6th. It is predictable that he will coöperate with similarly minded rulers abroad.
When the historian Robert Paxton was asked about Trump and fascism a few weeks ago, he made an important point. Of course, Trump is a fascist, Paxton concluded. It was fine to compare him to Mussolini and Hitler, but there was a larger point. It took some luck for those two to come to power. “The Trump phenomenon looks like it has a much more solid social base,” Paxton said, “which neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have had.”
Fascism is a phenomenon, not a person. Just as Trump was always a presence, so is the movement he has created. It is not just a matter of the actual fascists in his movement, who are scarcely hiding, nor of his own friendly references to Hitler or his use of Hitlerian language (“vermin,” “enemy within”). He bears responsibility for what comes next, as do his allies and supporters.
Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis. Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side. ♦
I wish I could share the whole thing with you but it’s the New Yorker and they don’t do gift links. I recomment you read the whole thing if you can. It’s bracing, to say the least.
Here’s his segment on MSNBC: