Is Donald Trump a fascist? General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, thinks so. Trump is “fascist to the core,” he warns.
John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, agrees. So does Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent in this year’s presidential election.
But political commentators who have a grounding in history are not so sure. Writing in The Guardian, Sidney Blumenthal calls Trump “Hitlerian” and his rallies “Naziesque”, but stops short of calling him a fascist.
Michael Tomasky of The New Republic understands the reservations, but he is tired spending time debating the difference between “fascistic” and just plain “fascist”. “He’s damn close enough,” Tomasky writes, “and we’d better fight”.
I understand this logic. It’s the reason Harris uses the term “fascist” to describe Trump – to send “a 911 call to the American people”. But there’s a problem.
I have spent the past six years researching right-wing, authoritarian political communication in America. I can say with confidence how these kinds of labels can misfire. They can very easily be made to look like liberal hysteria, playing straight into the hands of the far right.
Here are the two reasons why it is crucial to call Trump exactly what he is.
Calling Trump a fascist, and then instantly adding, “or close enough,” plays directly into the hands of the far right. “See?” they might say. “Anytime anyone steps outside the liberal consensus, they get labelled a fascist. This is how political correctness silences dissent.”
Trump’s kind of authoritarianism thrives on ambiguity about what sort of right-wing populist figure he is. Its success depends on the fact that “fascist” is the only name we have right now for authoritarian politics.
In my view, Trump is not a fascist. Rather, he is part of a “new authoritarianism” that subverts democracy from within and solidifies power through administrative, rather than paramilitary, means.
This brand of new authoritarianism hides in plain sight because there is no name for it yet. It looks like something else – for example, right-wing populism that is anti-liberal, but not yet anti-democratic. And then suddenly, it shows itself as anti-democratic extremism, as Trump did in refusing to accept the 2020 election result and encouraging the storming of the Capitol.
This moment starkly revealed Trump as a new authoritarian. Supplementary debate about whether Trump is like Adolf Hitler risks being pointless. But the problem is that fascism is the only name we have now for anti-democratic extremism.
All fascists are authoritarians. But not all authoritarians are fascists. It’s crucial to understand there are other types of authoritarianism – and how they differ.
This is not just important for preventing Trump from seeking to subvert American democracy. It is also vital for stopping Trump imitators, who will now spring forth in other democracies. If there is still no name for what they are other than “fascist,” then they, too, will thrive on ambiguity.
I suggest we focus on what Trump actually is – an anti-democratic, “new authoritarian” – and understand what this means and how he is gaining wider support using right-wing populism.
The new authoritarians don’t necessarily take a sledgehammer to a nation’s institutions, for example, by doing away with elections. Rather, they hollow out democracy from within, so it becomes a façade draped over a one-party state.
We have many examples of this kind of ruler today: Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, Tunisia’s Kais Saied and, of course, the poster-figure for the new authoritarians, Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s admiration for Putin is a matter of public record. For alt-right thinkers who are influential with Trump, such as Steve Bannon, Putin provides a blueprint for how new authoritarianism works.
Authoritarians like Putin must govern through the state, not the people, because, as social psychologist Bob Altemeyer explains, they ultimately represent a tiny minority of the population.
Military dictatorships rule through the armed forces. The fascist regimes of 20th century Europe were ultimately police states. They relied on converting paramilitary death squads into secret police (like the Gestapo) and state security (the SS in Nazi Germany).
The new authoritarians, however, govern through the transformation of the civil service into their own personal political machines.
That is why Trump is obsessed with the “deep state”, by which he means the way in which democratic institutions have built-in legal safeguards defended by civil servants, who can potentially frustrate executive orders. The new authoritarian strategy is to appoint a stratum of political loyalists to key positions in their administrations, who can circumvent institutional checks. But that is no easy matter.
If Trump is elected, he has vowed to “crush the deep state”, for example, by purging thousands of nonpolitical civil service employees. As part of this, he has pledged to establish a “truth and reconciliation commission” oriented to punishing those he thinks opposed him the past.
Trump has been following this new authoritarian playbook for nearly his entire political career. These are the three steps he is taking to lay the groundwork for authoritarian rule:
The first key to new authoritarianism: subvert democracy by undermining electoral integrity. The acid test here? Authoritarians do not accept election results when the opposition has won. As Trump has very bluntly put it, “I am a very proud election denier”.
Trump’s opening move in this regard was to take over the Republican Party. He used election denialism to do this, while also marginalising any moderates who opposed him.
The Trump Republican Party is now a minority party, oriented to white grievance, resentment of immigrants and the anti-democratic idea that a country should be run like a company.
Its only hope for winning government as a minority party is by trying to suppress the vote of its opponents. To do this, pro-Trump Republican states have passed a number of laws since 2020 to make voting more difficult.
These states have also aggressively removed people from the voting rolls. Texas alone has stricken one million voters off its rolls since 2021, only 6,500 of whom were deemed non-citizens.
If Trump wins, he will likely make it even harder for people to vote. Civil rights groups fear he may introduce a citizenship question to the census, use the Department of Justice to conduct a massive purge of voter rolls, and launch criminal investigations of electoral officials.
As a backup, Trump will likely resurrect the “election integrity commission” he established in 2017 to justify his claims of alleged voter fraud in the 2016 election and support his election denialism narrative.
The second key to new authoritarianism: circumventing the checks-and-balances function of the legislative branch of government. The goal here is to rule by executive fiat or govern through a stacked legislative majority.
The new authoritarians often govern through executive orders, including the use of emergency powers. For instance, Trump has envisaged a scenario in which a Republican Congress could enact emergency powers to empower the president to overturn the authority of state governors to fire their prosecutors and use the National Guard for law enforcement.
Such a development would depend on a number of factors, including the complicity of the judiciary. This is why new authoritarians also attempt to stack the judiciary with loyalists.
In his first term, Trump not only appointed three Supreme Court justices, he also placed judges to the federal appeals courts, district courts and circuit courts.
This leads to the third pillar of new authoritarianism: decapitating the political opposition and suppressing dissent.
Trump’s threats to investigate and prosecute his enemies, including leading figures in the Democratic Party, should be taken very seriously. His calls to target the “enemy from within” were pointedly directed at what he deemed “radical left lunatics”.
Journalists and the news media would also likely be targeted. Trump’s statement that the broadcast licenses of national networks should be revoked, for example, needs to be understood in the context of his pledges to dismantle federal regulatory agencies if elected.
That matters, because the next step for new authoritarians to solidify their power is through suppressing dissent. Trump has proposed using the military in civil contexts to target criminals and prevent illegal immigration. He has reportedly even questioned why the military couldn’t “just shoot” protesters.
It is important to understand how this differs from fascism, because it is central to Trump’s ability to retain electoral support.
Classical fascism under dictators like Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini was based on street-fighting, paramilitary movements, which used violence to intimidate and crush the opposition. The equivalents of this today are right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
Trump keeps one foot on the edge of this camp. But alt-right figures like Bannon understand that swastika flags and paramilitary uniforms are a political liability. Their preference is for new authoritarianism, which is able to push a right-wing extremist agenda by reducing democracy to sham elections, rather than openly setting up a totalitarian regime.
As such, Trump can dodge accusations of being a “fascist” by telling the Proud Boys to “stand by”, while throwing up a smokescreen of equivocations about the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He can distance himself from kind of paramilitary violence that is reminiscent of classical fascism.
It is about time to call things by their true names. Trump has the anti-democratic tendencies of a new authoritarian – and, as his opponents point out, he seems likely to put his words into actions if elected a second time.