Fascism in the United States?

Many Americans felt anxious and fearful about the Trump administration long before it assumed power in January. Three months after Trump’s inauguration, that disquiet is no longer simply fueled by recommendations from Project 2025; many of its suggestions have been born out in real-world ways.

Shuttering life-saving programs abroad, firing federal workers without cause, arresting lawful migrants for protesting, and effacing people’s gender identities are just some of the administration’s activities. Many of the president’s Executive Orders are patently illegal and downright cruel.

Things may become much worse.

The word fascism comes up a lot in connection to the current executive, and naturally so do the names Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

In contrast to Germans and Italians of the 1920s and 1930s, it should be obvious that we face far fewer obstacles to oppose encroaching authoritarianism and can do so at less risk to ourselves. Evoking the images of Hitler and Mussolini might create a kind of social paralysis, one that conjures up deep-seated fear that there is nothing one can do to confront an increasingly repressive government.

It is important to consider some of the conditions in Germany and Italy that led to and bolstered those dictatorships and compare them to twenty-first century American politics. The differences are illuminating and oddly heartening.

No Threats from the Left

Conservative political elites in Germany—with the support of high-ranking military figures and powerful businessmen—installed Hitler as Reich Chancellor. He did not enjoy majority support among the population. In Italy, the threat of widespread violence and the backing of rightwing figures propelled Mussolini to power. Italian King Victor Emannuel III signed off on Mussolini’s premiership.  Why did they do that? Because they were fending off the growing influence of leftist parties, as well as the social instability and conflict that resulted from political impasses.

By the “Left,” I mean the aggregate of socialist and communist parties in Germany and Italy. They collectively had many seats in their respective parliaments (the communist party had fewer than the socialist-inspired ones in Germany, though). Socialist and communist party membership in those two countries numbered in the hundreds of thousands. It’s difficult to imagine it today, but during the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, socialism was a real force.

To win concessions from their governments, leftists often successfully shut down or took over factories, public transport, and garbage collection. In the German state of Bavaria, they even started a revolution. In Italy, ordinary workers sometimes took effective control of many of the factories in the country’s industrial north.

The ultra conservative right and upper middle classes in those countries were terrified that their privileges would be taken away, so they sought strongmen who headed paramilitary organizations to stop the leftward drift. Mussolini and Hitler fit the bill. They had the manpower, organization, and notoriety to put a lid on developments and quieten society.

By contrast, the United States has no political left in positions of power. Only about 15, 000 people belong to the organization Communist Party USA. They have not run a presidential candidate in many years. Membership in the Democratic Socialists of America stands at about 90,000 people according to its website. In a country of over 340 million, that’s not a remotely threatening number. They don’t have any seats in Congress.

Despite what he calls himself, Senator Bernie Sanders is not a socialist. He is a Social Democrat. In fact, he’s a New Deal FDR Democrat. Of course, he is situated to the left of Trump and his allies in the US Congress, but Bernie is not calling for the abolition of private property or outlawing corporations.

As author and political analyst Gregory Harms has argued in his book No Politics, No Religion?, the center is the left edge of the viable political spectrum in the United States. That was simply not the case in Germany and Italy in the first thirty years of the twentieth century.

In other words, there is no serious leftist threat whatsoever to the interests of the big business community or other dominant institutions either from inside the government or from the streets. There is therefore no motive to silently nod at a strongman to make unlawful arrests, disappear citizens, order extrajudicial executions, or build a network of forced labor camps.

Rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans are two factions of a business party oligarchy. With some exceptions, they generally take the same money from the same people. They are already the establishment and happy with conditions as they stand, even though the Democrats are a bit less happy these days in the wake of a lost election.

 It is highly probable that if President Trump starts costing Wall Street money because, for example, he makes good on his campaign promise to deport an incredibly inexpensive and highly exploitable labor force, or if he attempts to control the military establishment for his own political ends, the show will be over. They will tolerate his reality show-style shenanigans only so far.

Lack of Loyalty in Military Circles

Speaking of the military, Hitler and Mussolini had direct control of their military forces for a long time. Generals and enlisted personnel swore loyalty to Hitler. In Italy, the armed forces swore an oath to the king, but Mussolini was effectively in command. Here, members of the US military swear fealty to the US Constitution.

More importantly, after it lost the first world war, the German military had a serious axe to grind. It wanted to regain its power and prestige after the Treaty of Versailles, which stipulated severe reductions to its size. Hitler endorsed a massive rebuilding of Germany’s army, navy, and air force. Many Germans, including the military establishment, viewed those efforts as ways to amend what they viewed as a set of dishonorable and insulting restrictions on their power and influence.

The US military, however, is in no such comparable position. Far from it. It is the most powerful, well-funded, and technologically equipped military in the world; it needs no radical, outlier advocate. Both establishment political parties, despite their other disputes, usually agree on funding the US military to extravagant and unnecessary degrees.

Also, Hitler and Mussolini were highly decorated war veterans, and that played well among many career military personnel, as well as the paramilitary organizations that they led.

By contrast, Trump was not inducted into the army during the Vietnam War because of bone spurs. Furthermore, his negative remarks about martial sacrifice and his antipathy to being photographed with injured veterans have not gone over well. Consequently, Trump is not popular in military circles, at least if the polling data can be believed. It’s important to note that many high-ranking officers dislike him very much and have said so publicly.

It’s difficult to unleash the US military on its own population when, in addition to a lack of legal obligation to the president as a person, most armed services personnel do not think well of Mr. Trump.

No Interest in Cultivating Mass Popular Support

Improving the material quality of life for citizens was a priority for both fascist regimes for a variety of reasons, not least of which was to increase the dictators’ personal popularity and bolster fascist ideology.

Importantly, Hitler kept and developed educational and healthcare reforms that had been instituted many years before he came to power. Starting in the late nineteenth century, free public education had been the norm. Under the Weimar Republic—the post-World War I government that preceded Hitler—universal health care was available to the German population. Backtracking on or defunding entitlements would have been politically unwise.

As a relatively recent example shows, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s efforts to defund public services for the British population did not go over well. Once people have important benefits, they are not keen to see them taken away, and they remember when politicians attempt to dismantle them. It’s important to recall that in Britain the reaction to Thatcher’s death was often celebratory. Sometimes, people have longer memories than is comfortable for the political establishment.

By contrast, the Trump administration offers comparatively little or nothing. It just abolished the Department of Education and supports greater school privatization. They want to gut public education by “school choice” or “vouchers.” That translates to less access and greater rationing of education by wealth. Both the later and former problems already exist, but Trump’s decisions will likely make them worse.

Trump and the GOP also want to get rid of what’s left of the Affordable Care Act. The Republican budget (not the reconciliation, keep-the-government-running bill that just passed), calls for steep cuts to entities that administer Medicaid and SNAP. Tax cuts for the super-rich and corporations are likely coming soon.

In other words, Trump and the GOP are not interested in providing people with much at all. In fact, they want to reduce already-existing benefits while further enriching the wealthy. How far they can or will go with that is anybody’s guess. The larger point is that this is not the behavior of a government that wants to cultivate mass popular appeal.

In their first several years in power, Hitler and Mussolini’s popularity skyrocketed partially because of greater domestic social support, more public infrastructure programs, and dramatic gains in employment. Trump’s popularity is already declining. It may get a lot worse as his hodgepodge of cuts starts to negatively affect more people.

Trump himself has said many times that he will never receive much more political support than he already has. The polling numbers show he is correct; it’s usually been 60 percent against him and 40 percent of various flavors of favorable. That means he neither requires fealty to himself nor to the party from the direction of the entire population.

Hitler and Mussolini required mass expressions of support, and that always requires coercion. It is impossible for unanimity of feeling among 10 people, much less millions.

Trump’s lack of interest in compelling everyone to love him (he seems to enjoy any attention, good or bad) and no subsequent requirement for public displays of North Korea-style adoration of Dear Leader mean there is no need for physical coercion and knocks on the door at 3:00 am to take away a disobedient neighbor.

Make no mistake. Trump is an authoritarian figure. He loves strongmen, but he does not demand absolute loyalty from all and that spells a different hardwiring than a Hitler or a Mussolini.

We should remember that we are not helpless prisoners of fate or trapped in a cyclical history. The numerous civil liberties we still possess suggest constructive ways forward to deal with the many problems we face.

The post Fascism in the United States? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.