Trump, his political soulmates elsewhere, and the f-word

Thomas Zimmer is a good analyst and is very focused on the stakes for liberal democracy in the US Presidential election and in elections in Europe and other places.

But in a recent post¹, he winds up grumping about how the hippies over at Jacobin are worrying about the definition of fascism. Of course, “fascism” is a notoriously difficult concept for political scientists, historians, and pretty much everyone else to define clearly.

On the other hand, pretty much everyone can agree on a variation of Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography, which would be: I can’t define fascism, but I know it when I see it!

“It” in the case of fascism was pretty clearly there in 1922 when Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy. Because his party was called the Fascist Party, taking its name and symbol from the ancient Roman fasces which we see here in the form of a symbol used by the Italian air force during the Mussolini period (from Wikipedia):

Mussolini staged the famous March on Rome as a show of force before he became Prime Minister. But he had already gotten the Italian king to appoint him to the office. The March on Rome was a PR stunt. (And, no, he didn’t actually make the trains run on time either!)

This short 2017 documentary gives a good glimpse and the antidemocratic tendencies of the Trump movement, then in its first year of his Presidency²:

Here is a current one from the Financial Times focused on Europe³:

Now, when it comes to the know-when-I-see it test, Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” comment (included in the 2017 video starting at 1:02:45) about the crassly antisemitic neo-Nazi “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville that included the murder of a counter-protest, Heather Heyer, was more than enough to convince me that Trump was a straight-up fascist.

Those annoying lefties …

Zimmer defines his gripe with the hippies this way:

… the stubborn refusal by a specific camp of leftwing intellectual Skeptics to engage seriously with the fascism argument and the radicalizing tendencies on the Right. Their overriding concern is not to get the diagnosis right. They are engaged in a political struggle against what they believe is the real enemy: The (neo-) liberal elites, which they define in very broad and unspecific terms to include basically the entire mainstream of American politics from Center-Left to Center-Right, and particularly the Democratic establishment.

He focuses in particular on arguments made by Daniel Bessner, Ben Burgis, and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins.⁴ The Bessner-Burgis article is from several days after the January 6 coup attempt. Basically, they are saying that people need to be thoughtful about what constitutes fascism and not use the term loosely, which is good advice. Still, I don’t share the reservations that they express about using the f-word to describe Trump himself.

From today’s perspective when there is much more in the public record about Trump’s coup attempt, I would argue that they understate the seriousness of that event. But I wouldn’t say they were being frivolous about it, either. They even make a point that one might think Zimmer would find sympathetic, “While there is a long and noble tradition of left -wing anti-fascism, it was liberal anti-fascism that has had the most consequential impact on US history.”

But as Zimmer makes clear, what gripes him the most is a point they make in the immediately following sentence: “liberal anti-fascism, from its beginnings, has been defined by a skepticism of mass politics, a skepticism that directly led to the creation of a post–World War II American state defined far more by technocratic than representative governance.” Zimmer also seems to be irritated by their criticism of the far too many illiberal actions of centrists like Bush and Obama, both of which had bad records on civil liberties issues. Bessner and Burgis were clearly warning about slipping into the trap of not criticizing real failures by the Biden Administration – the uncritical support of Israel’s current Gaza war being the most dramatic one to date – because that only helps Republican fascists.

The Bessner/Steinmetz-Jenkins article from last month is much more current. They argue that the fascism-vs.-democracy framing of this years elections is superficial and overblown. My own worry about that framing is not that it’s wrong as such, but that the Democrats have to be focused on connecting their defense of democracy to specific issues: abortion rights, labor rights, voting rights, access to college without debt servitude, combating climate change. Focusing on maintaining a peaceful world and promoting nuclear arms control ought to be in the list, but Biden’s fiasco with Netanyahu’s Gaza war will make it very tricky to campaign heavily on any foreign policy issue. And to the extent that fighting for liberal democracy almost means supporting international law, neither the Gaza war nor his at-least-not-as-bad-as-Trump immigration policy are at all encouraging on the liberal-democracy front.

But in election campaigns, democracy also has to be democracy-for-what. Bessner and Steinmetz-Jenkins in that sense are correct in arguing that the centrist “language of acute crisis has not been an effective means to address US democracy’s pervasive problems.”

On the other hand, their conclusion makes it look like they are caught in the same blind spot that neoliberal centrists have, “If we really want to improve our democracy, we must lay the fascism debate to rest and turn to face our uncertain future.”

Uh, no. Laying the “fascism debate to rest” is the opposite of what is needed to confront that uncertain future. On that point, I would side more with Zimmer’s perspective.

The liberals’ dilemma over describing fascism

Centrists (both conservatives and liberals) have a chronic dilemma in describing the threat of fascism to liberal democracy. Max Horkheimer famously formulated the problem this way: “Whoever does not want to talk about capitalism should also stay quiet about fascism.”⁵ Centrists prefer to think that liberal democracy is something like the natural form of government for a capitalist society. There certainly is a historical connection there.

But admitting an inherent tension between democracy and capitalism is a hard pill for them to swallow. “But,” as Horkheimer put it, “the totalitarian order [fascism] is nothing other than its predecessor that has lost its constraints.” He regarded fascism as a chronic tendency in capitalist societies, whether they were pristine liberal democracies or not.

In other words, fascism is always a reserve option to preserve a capitalist system when it becomes endangered. But it’s not an inevitability. But if we look at the world outside the countries who claim to be operating a classical Marxist socialist system (e.g., China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba), it would be hard to claim that there is an overpowering element of determinism driving to provide liberal democracy as the ruling system in capitalist countries.

Even in the European Union, which currently operates on thoroughly neoliberal principles, the widely-used rankings of the V-Dem Institute for 2023 show a bare majority of 14 of the EU’s 27 members nations qualifying as full “liberal democracies.” Hungary ranks as an “electoral autocracy, and the 12 others as “electoral democracies.”⁶ So if there is some historical determination pushing capitalist countries to be pristine liberal democracies, its effect is less than universal.

The excellent Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka in a 2022 book looks at the notion of inherent capitalist tendencies toward fascism.⁷ He notes than in the Second World War, all the major nations adopted a much higher degree of central planning as in peacetime. (The same was true in the First World War.) In the cases of Germany and Italy, the notion of fascism as the backup option for capitalist countries in crisis was actually put into practice. But he observes, “Above all, one thing is certain. If German, Italian, and Japanese [industrial capital had been focused on the maximization of profits, they chose the wrong option.” In other words, however tempting the fascist model may look to oligarchs as a way to maintain their profits and power, in practice it hasn’t always had that effect:

The USA, number one in capitalist ranking, remained devoted to liberal democracy despite the economic crises and mass unemployment [of the Great Depression]. That goes for the United Kingdom, as well, and – at least until 1940 – for France. One can conclude from that there is no causal connection can be derived between capitalism and fascism.

In other words, we can observe historically that fascism could become, and in some countries did become an option, that the ruling elites adopted, there is no inevitability involved. In his reading, liberal democracy always remains an option for capitalist countries though fascism is always a temptation for those who see their power and wealth as endangered. We might saw that in this view, fascism is always a dark shadow cast by capitalism, or even a perpetually serious risk, but not an inevitable development.

How the dark shadow shows up in the US

On the other hand, the tendency toward authoritarianism is not just a matter of a few bad apples of the Donald Trump and Steve Bannon variety.

The German historian Annika Brockschmidt in her current book⁸ recalls the good ole days of that nice moderate Republican George H.W. Bush, the patrician Episcopalian whose campaign in 1988 notoriously used the image of the black rapist Willie Horton to generate racial fears among white voters and pander to the non-inconsiderable number of Republican base voters who were looking for such racially-charged symbols. Michael Nelson noted in 2018, “In some ways, the Willie Horton ad is the 1.0 version of Trump’s relentless tweets and comments about African-Americans.”⁹ It was generally held to be a decisive factor in Bush’s win over the Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis.

Bush’s victory in 1988 was a lesson for the Democrats that would have far-reaching consequences for American domestic politics. The Democrats drew the conclusion from the Dukakis disaster that they were vulnerable on the crime issue. But instead of denouncing the Republicans’ tactics and presenting a counter-proposal  to the authoritarian Law and Order politics, under Bill Clinton [elected President 1992] they would then attempt to outdo the political opponent in this field. Joe Biden, then still grey- and not white-haired, was one of the co-authors of the 1997 Crime Bill, the most comprehensive criminal law in US history.

It prompted high investments in prisons, preventive programs, and an increase in staff, but also had fatal consequences, which are still denounced today by racial justice advocates. The sentencing was increased drastically in some cases, with the death penalty alone being introduced for sixty other crimes. According to civil rights organizations, the law is partly responsible for [the US having] the highest percentage of incarcerated people in the world, including a disproportionate number of Black Americans. [my emphasis]

The Republicans were primarily responsible for the increasing authoritarian in US politics, but the Democrats made their own contributions. We see that also in the restrictive immigration politics in the Obama Administration and even more restrictive ones in the Biden Administration.

The Democrats in 2024 clearly represents the liberal-democratic alternative to Trump’s authoritarianism with fascist goals. But the Democrats also need to present much better alternative to Biden current rightwing immigration policy, his ridiculous policy on police responsibility (“Fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them.”¹⁰), and his Administration’s support of Israel’s hideous war on civilians in Gaza.

Conclusion

Addressing the substantive problems of US democracy, including the unrepresentative Electoral College system and the role of oligarchs in funding political campaigns through (legalized) bribery, means being realistic about them. Saying we should never criticize Democrats because the Republicans are so much worse is not going to achieve that, ever.

It also means, though, that we cannot “lay the fascism debate to rest and turn to face our uncertain future.” Because that dark shadow still is a part of “our uncertain future.” Or, once again: “Whoever does not want to talk about capitalism should also stay quiet about fascism.”

1. Zimmer, Thomas (2024): The Anti-Liberal Left Has a Fascism Problem. Democracy Americana 05/24/2024. (Accessed: 2024-26-04).

2. The Far Right In The US And Europe | The Politics Of Hate (2017). Journeyman Pictures YouTube channel 01/28/2024. (Accessed: 2024-26-04).

3. Why the far right is surging in Europe. Financial Times YouTube channel 05/24/2024. (Accessed: 2024-26-04).

4. Bessner, Daniel & Burgis, Ben (2021): Trump Is a Threat to Democracy. But That Doesn’t Mean He’s Winning. Jacobin 01/15/2021. <https://jacobin.com/2021/01/trump-capitol-riot-fascist-coup-attempt> (Accessed: 2024-26-05).

Bessner, Daniel & Steinmetz-Jenkins, Daniel (2024): Liberals’ Heated Fascism Rhetoric Sidesteps Self-Reflection.  Jacobin 04/18/2024. <https://jacobin.com/2024/04/liberals-fascism-rhetoric-democrats-election> (Accessed: 2024-26-05).

5. Horkheimer, Max (1939-40): Die Juden und Europa. Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung/Studies in Philosophy and Social Science 8:1939-1940, 115-137. My translation from German.

6. Miller, Bruce (2024): Prosperity for the majority and the future of liberal democracy. Bruce’s Contradicciones Newsletter 04/01/2024.

7. Pelinka, Anton (2022): Faschismus.Zur Beliebigkeit eines politischen Begriffs, 29-33. Wien & Köln: Böhlau Verlag. My translation from German.

8. Brockschmidt, Annika (2024): Die Brandstifter.Wie Extremisten die Republikanische Partei übernahmen, 12131. Hamburg: Rowohlt. My translations from German.

9. Baker, Peter (2018): Bush Made Willie Horton an Issue in 1988, and the Racial Scars Are Still Fresh. New York Times 12/03/2018. <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/us/politics/bush-willie-horton.html> (Accessed: 2024-26-05).

10. WATCH: ‘Fund the police,’ Biden says at State of the Union. PBS Newshour 03/01/2022. <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-fund-the-police-biden-says-at-state-of-the-union> (Accessed: 2024-27-05).