Donald Trump Is A Fascist. Raise Shields!

Why calling Donald Trump as fascist matters and doesn't matter.

Note: This is adapted from an article written in 2023.

Ever since Donald Trump came down that Golden escalator in 2015 many have wondered if the former President is a fascist or not. Those ruminations have only grown louder over the last year as Trump's rhetoric has become far darker than it was nine years ago. His talk about retribution and calling his opponents and immigrants “vermin” have made people start to use the “f-word” with more certainty. Writing in the Atlantic, Tom Nichols thinks Trump has crossed a line and has become a fascist. Jonah Goldberg doesn’t call Trump fascist, opting for the world fascistic, but he at least believes Trump is headed down that road in an episode of his Remant Podcast last year.

As we head into the final days of the election season, the fascist description has come to focus again with Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly saying that the former president fits the definition of a fascist. ““Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure,” he said in an interview with the New York Times. Vice President Kamala Harris agrees, ditching her “joy” theme of the early campaign and leaning into Kelly’s assessment that Trump is a fascist.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Trump’s behavior has me wondering if it is time to use the “f-word.” But I’m also left with this question: so what?

So what if Trump is a fascist? Will it make a difference in preventing him from becoming President again? Will it shame him and his supporters and make them reconsider their actions? Will it make people vote for Kamala for president?

Calling Trump a fascist might make people feel good, but will it make any difference?

In the Nichols article, he talks about how he thought Trump was initially just some kind of South American caudillo wannabe. When I think about South American strongmen, I think of the military dictatorships of the 1970s in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. Knowing a little about the human rights abuses that took place under those regimes, you know that caudillos were hardly harmless. A leader doesn’t have to be the new Hitler to be a danger to American democracy.

Why is it that we want to throw the title of fascist on Trump? One answer is that it might get people to mobilize against the former President. Writing in the leftist Dissent magazine in 2021, Udi Greenberg notes that labeling someone a fascist could have people join their side of the political aisle against a potential threat. “It may have sparked financial contributions by liberal donors, but it hardly peeled support from the right or helped build new coalitions,” he writes. Greenberg cites examples like Swiss theologian Emil Brunner who was not a friend of communism but was also skeptical of anticommunist rhetoric during the Cold War. Aggressive denunciations didn’t stop the communist persecution of Christians when what was needed was political engagement.

As an ardent anti-Trumper, I can understand why it might make sense to call Trump a fascist. How Trump is currently acting makes it very, very hard to prove otherwise. But calling someone a fascist isn’t magic. It isn’t going to stop millions of people from potentially voting for him. The only way you do that is by persuasion.

Of course, persuasion seems rather weak in the face of what many think is the reincarnation of Hitler. What feels right is going after Trump and his supporters hard and without mercy. It is about ramping up our side and attacking the other side. “I have long argued for confronting Trump’s voters with his offenses against our government and our Constitution,” said Tom Nichols in his Atlantic story. “The contest between an aspiring fascist and a coalition of pro-democracy forces is even clearer now.”

Columnist Jack Shafer never uses the word fascist in his column from last year, but he does agree with Nichols that it is time to confront Trump supporters:

Trump, ever the master of evasion, can’t be allowed to fudge who he intends to prosecute nor should we allow him to make such threats without describing in detail what crimes he thinks have been committed and what evidence exists. The same questions should be directed at Trump supporters and his donors. Trump, after all, has put them on notice, too, with his plans. They are as complicit in the plot to throttle our civil liberties as Trump is believed to be.

But going after some guy wearing a MAGA hat in Sandusky, Ohio isn’t going to do anything other than make that person more angry and more willing to listen to Trump. Imagine the members of the media and progressive activists going after Trump supporters. If you somehow think this is going to shame them into not supporting Trump, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

What we call Trump frankly doesn’t matter. What matters is that he will do damage to our society and our democracy if we allow him back in the Oval Office. In the face of an authoritarian, we have to calm down and use our heads to figure out how to thwart his chances.

One of the things that empowers Trump and his acolytes is our polarized age. We are a nation that is very much divided, especially by education and class. As David Brooks noted in a controversial article last year, Trump voters have felt put up by an economic and class elite and Trump has been able to fuel that resentment. The more Trump voters feel alienated by Democrats, the media, and other parts of society, the more they look to Trump and he becomes their “retribution.” Brooks was asking for Trump opponents to stop and think about what might be pushing people to vote for Trump and to really listen to these people instead of demonizing them.

Back in 2018, the Tony Blair Institute wrote a report on the rise of populists around the world. It began by stating that populists like Trump didn’t arise out of nowhere. They gained notoriety because the democratic system was no longer working for everybody:

It is often lamented that populism threatens to destroy independent and objective institutions that are essential to well-functioning democracies.[Yet all too often, by the time populism arises, these institutions — like the media, the judiciary and independent governmental agencies — have long not been working as promised. Populists break onto the scene by pointing to these flaws in the established political system — flaws that mainstream parties may have been sweeping under the carpet for years — and promising far-reaching solutions. Raising political questions that have been too long depoliticised and promising institutional reforms are necessary and important initiatives that political leaders should undertake. The problem with populists is that they raise these issues as a means of riling their base and dividing societies. The solutions they promise, however, are fantasies, characterised by vague ideas and unfulfillable promises.

Democracy is in danger and it is Trump and the Republican Party that is the threat. But democracy is in danger because people have started to believe democracy doesn’t work for them and the party that isn’t a threat to democracy doesn’t really have ideas on how to stop Trump from damaging American democracy save voting to elect more Democrats.

If we want to stop Donald Trump from becoming a fascist president, then we have to do more than just wring our hands or hoping that electing a Democrat will end the threat. What’s going to have to happen is something that I’ve long believed has to be done, but it’s something that no one who is opposed to Trump really wants to do: persuasion.

Most of the talk against Trump has either appealed to whipping up liberal and Never Trumpers fears which does nothing but rile up our own side or it is about confronting Trump supporters. But neither approach is going to do anything. Actually, neither approach has done anything and the time is short.

Maybe it seems crazy to think that we could stop Trump and his fascist tendencies by talking to our neighbors who might support him, but years of demonizing them hasn’t stopped Trump. Neither has important things like the January 6 hearings or even his many legal trials. But maybe, talking to people about their hopes and fears and listening, really listening to them just might.

It will work because that’s what Trump and his ilk have been doing all this time.

As Damir Marusic notes in an essay from 2022, persuasion uses stories and feelings to get people to do something like voting for a former reality TV host. He wrote:

All politics, and especially democratic politics, is inextricably tied to rhetoric — persuasion. Persuasion is however not solely done through syllogism and scientific method. Indeed, it is rarely done that way. Facts are often marshaled, but are never presented without context. We call this “spin” and accept it as an unavoidable part of our politics. Relatable stories, appeals to human emotions and aspirations, and personal charisma all play an even more important role. As do personal attacks and vitriol. (It’s only a partisan naïf who thinks only the other side engages in “dirty tricks”.)

Demagogues have always haunted democracies in no small part because they understand these mechanics all too well. They tell relatable stories about widely (or narrowly) felt injustice, they appeal to fear and prejudice, and they are without fail all very charismatic individuals. They attack, they malign, they slander. But what makes them so dangerous is that they set fewer limits on what they allow themselves to do. They lie more and with greater abandon than is normal for a democratic politician. But they are not qualitatively different. It’s merely a question of degree, a disregard for thresholds.

The difference is that we need to persuade within restraints because Trump and his minions are already doing this without restraints.

There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the crew of the Enterprise encounter a wrecked ship where a young boy is the sole survivor. The crew investigates what caused the ship to be torn apart and also helps this young boy who lost both his parents to put the pieces of his life back together. In the climax scene, the Enterprise is starting to be buffeted by these waves of energy. The crew keeps increasing shield strength to protect themselves from the damaging wave, but each time they up the strength, the waves hit the ship harder. The young boy tells Commander Data that he remembered the crew of the wrecked ship talking about increasing shield strength. The android realizes something and tells Captain Picard to drop the shields entirely. First Officer Riker thinks this is suicidal, but Data remains resolute: drop the shields. Picard orders them to drop the shields. The next wave barely rocks the ship. Data realized that the damaging waves were caused by the shields themselves. Dropping the shields meant that Enterprise averted the fate of the other ship.

The tactic when it comes to Donald Trump, the GOP and his voters over the last few years has been akin to raising shields. We look down at his voters, seek to shame politicians who suck up to Trump, and speak out about the danger of Trump. None of this has worked in stopping his return to power. What might work is trying to reach out, not to Trump or GOP pols, but focusing on Republican voters and talking about their lives and what is it that they are concerned about. What might work is for Republicans opposed to Trump to support non-Trump candidates in the primary-imperfect as they truly are when it comes to supporting Trump- and urging other Republicans to do the same. What might work is when Democrats widen their message to persuade Republicans to vote for Vice President Harris.

The threat of a second Trump term is very real. I am very worried of what could happen to this country. He is running not because he has a better plan for America, but as a way to punish his enemies with the power of the federal government. Is that fascism? I don’t know and when it comes down to it, I don’t really care. What I do know it isn’t American. To take him on we need to fight smart, to fight with humility and grace towards his potential voters.

Is Trump a fascist? I don’t know. What I do know is that he must be confronted and to do that we need to drop the shields and actually talk to his supporters to show them a better way.