The five elements of fascism
And how Trump and much of today’s Republican Party embrace them
Friends,
The Washington Post calls Trump’s vision for a second term “authoritarian.” That vision includes mandatory stop-and-frisk. Deploying the military to fight street crime, break up gangs, and deport immigrants. Purging the federal workforce and charging leakers.
“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference and repeated at his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
How do we describe what Trump wants for America? “Authoritarianism” isn’t adequate. It is “fascism.” Fascism stands for a coherent set of ideas different from — and more dangerous than — authoritarianism. To fight those ideas, it’s necessary to be aware of what they are and how they fit together.
Borrowing from cultural theorist Umberto Eco, historians Emilio Gentile and Ian Kershaw, political scientist Roger Griffin, and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, I offer five elements that distinguish fascism from authoritarianism.
1. The rejection of democracy, the rule of law, and equal rights under the law in favor of a strongman who interprets the popular will.
“The election was stolen.” (Trump, 2020)
“I am your justice. … I am your retribution.” (2023)
Authoritarians believe society needs strong leaders to maintain stability. They vest in a dictator the power to maintain social order through the use of force (armies, police, militia) and bureaucracy.
By contrast, fascists view strong leaders as the means of discovering what society needs. They regard the leader as the embodiment of society, the voice of the people.
2. The galvanizing of popular rage against cultural elites.
“Your enemies” are “media elites,” … “the elites who led us from one financial and foreign policy disaster to another.” (Trump, 2015, 2016)
Authoritarians do not stir people up against establishment elites. They use or co-opt those elites in order to gain and maintain power.
By contrast, fascists galvanize public rage at presumed (or imaginary) cultural elites and use mass rage to gain and maintain power. They stir up grievances against those elites for supposedly displacing average people and seek revenge. In so doing, they create mass parties. They often encourage violence.
3. Nationalism based on a dominant “superior” race and historic bloodlines.
“Tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border … The United States has become a dumping ground for Mexico and, in fact, for many other parts of the world.” (Trump, 2015)
“I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” (2019)
“Getting critical race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it’s also a matter of national survival … If we allow the Marxists and Communists and Socialists to teach our children to hate America, there will be no one left to defend our flag or to protect our great country or its freedom.” (2022)
Authoritarians see nationalism as a means of asserting the power of the state. They glorify the state. They want it to dominate other nations. They seek to protect or expand its geographic boundaries. They worry about foreign enemies encroaching on its territory.
By contrast, fascists see a nation as embodying what they consider a “superior” group — based on race, religion, and historic bloodlines. Nationalism is a means of asserting that superiority. They worry about disloyalty and sabotage from groups within the nation that don’t share the same race or bloodlines. These “others” are scapegoated, excluded or expelled, sometimes even killed.
Fascists believe schools and universities must teach values that extol the dominant race, religion, and bloodline. Schools should not teach inconvenient truths (such as America’s history of genocide and racism).
4. Extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong. (Trump, January 6, 2021)
“I am your warrior.” (2023)
The goal of authoritarianism is to gain and maintain state power. For authoritarians, “strength” comes in the form of large armies and munitions.
By contrast, the ostensible goal of fascism is to strengthen society. Fascism’s method of accomplishing this is to reward those who win economically and physically and to denigrate or exterminate those who lose. Fascism depends on organized bullying — a form of social Darwinism.
For the fascist, war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors.
5. Disdain of women and fear of non-standard forms of gender identity and sexual orientation.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.” (Trump, 2005)
“You have to treat ‘em like shit.” (1992)
I will “promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers and celebrating, rather than erasing, the things that make men and women different.” (2023)
Authoritarianism imposes hierarchies; authoritarianism seeks order.
By contrast, fascism is organized around the particular hierarchy of male dominance. The fascist heroic warrior is male. Women are relegated to subservient roles.
In fascism, anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider, and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order. Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexuals, transgender, and queer people because they are thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.
***
These five elements of fascism reinforce each other.
Rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman depends on galvanizing popular rage.
Popular rage draws on a nationalism based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity.
That superior race or ethnicity is justified by a social Darwinist idea of strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.
Strength, violence, and the heroic warrior are centered on male power.
These five elements also find exact expression in Donald Trump and the White Christian National movement he is encouraging. It is also the direction most of the Republican Party is now heading.
These are not the elements of authoritarianism. They are the essential elements of fascism.
America’s mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about Trump’s authoritarianism. In describing what he is seeking to impose on America, the media should be using the term “fascism.”
The ironic comment “I am your warrior... I am your retribution...” comes from a coward who got five deferments during Vietnam for bone spurs. He couldn’t tell you which foot if you paid all his legal bills.
He denigrated John McCain’s service because he was a p.o.w. He’s really the schoolyard bully who puts others up to fight his fights while he stands back clean as a whistle. His valet and Allan Weisselberg fall on their swords for him along with other sycophants.
He is as unstable as they come. Who in their right mind would go on a cable news network after losing a defamation case and again defame the same woman who you were found liable for sexually abusing her.
He rarely follows legal advice in his own interests. He swats at every gnat buzzing around that ridiculous hairpiece. He continually confesses to the very crimes he’s accused of.
The worst thing is he let the world know he was a traitor the day he asked Russia to interfere in the country’s election by finding Hillary’s
so-called missing emails.
That there are tens of millions of people that lack common sense and common decency who follow what he says religiously is the greatest danger and tragedy of our time.
The madman must be stopped. I agree with you and others on invoking the 14th Amendment Sec. 3 by keeping his name off the ballot. It’s well past time to make the Constitution work for the imperfect democracy we all grew up knowing.
Fascism and race hatred cannot prevail!!!
Yesterday I read Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack “DONALD TRUMP UNDER ARREST, IN FEDERAL CUSTODY.”
Her historical recount of how we got where we are today. Everyone has heard that no one is Above The Law! However as far as what penalties that are handed out if you break the law and are found guilty, that’s when who you are makes a big difference!
After the Civil War, officials charged Confederate president Jefferson Davis and 38 other leading secessionists with treason but decided not to prosecute. Between President Andrew Johnson’s pardons and Congress’s granting of amnesty to Confederates, no one was convicted for their participation in the attempt to destroy the country.
The same quest for reconciliation drove President Gerald R. Ford to grant a pardon to former president Richard M. Nixon for possible “offenses against the United States” in his quest to win the 1972 election by bugging the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Washington, D.C., Watergate.
In an echo of 100 years before, Nixon himself never admitted wrongdoing, telling the American people he was resigning because he no longer had enough support in Congress to advance the national interest. Although his support had collapsed because even members of his own party believed he was guilty of obstructing justice, violated constitutional rights of citizens, and abused his power, Nixon blamed the press, whose members had destroyed him with “leaks and accusations and innuendo.” Sound like someone else you know?
Government officials who chose to ignore the rule of law in order to buy peace gave us enduring reverence for the principles of the Confederacy. Confederates reclaimed supremacy in the South.
It also gave us the idea that presidents cannot be held accountable for crimes!
Now it is time if we want to save our preferred way of life!