Business as usual

Donald Trump is again the president-elect of the United States, having won both the electoral college—America’s state-based system for choosing its chief of state—and the popular vote, resoundingly. When Trump first won in 2016, an idea flooded into U.S. culture—not only on the left but in establishment or mainstream media and even on the center-right—that, after eight years with the country’s enormously popular first black president, the U.S. had collapsed into a historical moment comparable to the late Weimar Republic in the 1930s, when the Nazis were at the brink of power in Germany. To millions of Americans, and others around the world, it rapidly became obvious from Donald Trump’s rhetoric that he’s a fascist.

The idea surged in early 2021, after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an addled and violent attempt to halt the certification of the 2020 election results—but waned as Trump receded from power, however unwillingly. Still, it remained a central theme in the way Trump’s opponents understood him and his followers. In 2022, President Joe Biden called Trump’s Make America Great Again movement “semi-fascism.”

This year, in a moment of confidence, as the Democratic Party moved toward formally selecting Vice President Kamala Harris as its nominee, its rhetoric shifted. Democrats started referring to Trump’s Republican Party—first its vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance, then Trump, too, and the whole thing—as “weird.” But as election day neared, the somber theme of anti-fascism returned. Just two weeks ago, Harris reminded American voters that Trump is still indeed a fascist.

And now the theme is surging again. On the left: “The Democratic Party has had nearly a decade to convince voters of something that should be obvious. Donald Trump is dangerous, radical, authoritarian—even fascistic.” In the established mainstream: “An aspiring fascist is the president-elect, again, of the United States. This is our political reality.” Even on the center-right, just days before the election: “Donald Trump is running the most openly fascist campaign ever undertaken by a major-party nominee for president of the United States.” Is this all true?

Anton Jäger is a lecturer in the history of political thought and political theory at University College, Oxford, and the co-author of The Populist Moment. Jäger says … no. Trump might say things authoritarians say, some that even sound like what a fascist might say. He might also do things that are dangerous and troubling, as he did on January 6, 2021. But none of it is fascism. Which, Jäger says, isn’t just a kind of academic technicality. Projecting fascism onto Trumpism obscures what it is, where its appeal comes from, and, not least, what its actual risks to American democracy could even possibly be …

Gustav Jönsson: Where did the fascism interpretation come from?