You may have heard that President Biden referred to Trumpism as “semi-fascism” the other day:
“The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security,” Biden said, referencing former president Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “They’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace — embrace — political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.”
“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”
This naturally set off a brouhaha on the right. One of the more interesting responses came from Henry Olsen at the Washington Post. But it wasn’t very convincing.
Classic 20th-century fascism was a political philosophy that comprehensively denounced modern liberal democracy. Fascists believed that multiparty democracy weakened the nation, and that competitive capitalism was wasteful and exploitative. Their alternative was a one-party state that guided the economy through regulation and sector-based accords between labor and business.
Olsen went on to argue that MAGA-land’s nationalism and anti-immigration stances aren’t necessarily, inherently fascist. Which, fair enough. But then he veered into “he protests too much” territory.
Even the attempt to keep Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6 — a refusal “to accept the will of the people” is the principal objection Biden appears to be leveling at MAGA Republicans — does not justify Biden’s use of the inflammatory label “semi-fascism.” Yes, attacks on elections are heinous and autocratic but they aren’t necessarily fascist.
Heinous and autocratic but they aren’t necessarily fascist.
Let’s grant, for just a moment, that Olsen is technically correct1 about the distinctions between Trumpism and fascism. He’s still wrong.
Why?
Because I suspect that when most Americans use the term “fascism” to describe the Trumpist Right, they’re not very interested in making fine-grained distinctions about political science. Instead they’re trying to describe what looks for all the world like incipient right-wing tyranny.
What they’re trying to describe, in fact, is something that might also be called “heinous and autocratic.”
To most folks, that phrase is probably interchangeable with “fascism.”
Now, distinctions are important. The argument over whether Trumpism really does equate to fascism — or maybe something else, like kleptocracy — has been brewing for a long time, often fought over precisely the kinds of narrow definitional criteria that Olsen raises.
But it’s also true that pedantry can sometimes be the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Olsen is a conservative who isn’t really inclined to defend Trumpism — I think he’s honest — so part of what he’s doing here is shifting the fight against Dems to territory where he feels an advantage through nitpicking2.
Fighting over Webster’s dictionary definitions can obscure the real important question, though, which is this: Does Trumpism pose a danger to American democracy?
The answer is undoubtedly yes. Call it whatever you want — “fascism” or something else — but that’s the real issue.
Top o’ the pops
Ungranting Olsen’s point for a moment: Trumpism — or at least a hardy core of Trumpist-adjacent right-wingers like Patrick Deneen and Sohrab Ahmari — rather explicitly “denounce liberal democracy.” And a few of them like J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley want the state to take a stronger hand against “woke capital” and steer capitalism in explicitly rightist directions. MAGAland write large might not be uniformly fascist by this definition, but there are definitely clusters of what looks to be fascist within the broader Trumpish movement. So there.
Conservatives can be equally sloppy in their labeling, as Olsen seems to acknowledge in this piece: “MAGA politicians … tend to attack most expansion of government regulation and spending as ‘socialism.’” We’re so used to it we barely bother to argue it anymore.
I largely agree.
On point two: Trumpists are perfectly happy to support regulations that help their team (as you mentioned, cronyism is fine). The campaign against “woke capitalism,” as you mention, is another example.
Trumpism is more an attitude than anything. Crush the other tribe. In that regard, it takes on aspects that are drawn from the fascist movements of the 1930s. Primarily, Trumpism is illiberal and cruel.