let’s start with a gut punch: calling donald trump a fascist might be the laziest intellectual move of the 21st century. it’s the kind of label that feels good—like slapping “low battery” on your smoke detector and calling it fixed—but it dodges the messier truth. trump’s not goose-stepping into the history books with a swastika armband; he’s more like a reality tv host who stumbled into the oval office, trailing a cloud of tweets and fast-food wrappers. yet the fascist tag sticks like gum on a shoe, flung by everyone from anarchist zine-writers to buttoned-up neocons. why? because it’s easy. because it’s scary. because it lets us pretend we’ve got a handle on this chaotic, orange-tinted anomaly. but what if we’re wrong? what if trump’s not a rerun of 1930s europe but a glitch in the matrix of modern capitalism—a glitch we can’t decode with dusty history textbooks?
this isn’t about defending the guy (spare me the pitchforks). it’s about cracking open the contradictions in how we frame him. we’re obsessed with pinning trump to the past—hitler, mussolini, pick your dictator flavor—while ignoring how his brand of chaos dances to a different beat. so let’s ditch the lazy analogies and dig into the real question: what is trump? is he a strongman redux, a populist con artist, or something else entirely—something that doesn’t fit our neat little ideological boxes? buckle up, because this ride’s going to get bumpy, and i’m not promising a soft landing.
the fascism trap: why we love a good villain
fascism’s the go-to boogeyman of political discourse, isn’t it? it’s got everything—uniforms, mass rallies, a clear enemy to punch. when trump snarls about immigrants or trashes the press, it’s tempting to dust off the old newsreels and cry “déjà vu!” pundits across the spectrum—left, right, center—nod sagely: “sure, he’s not exactly hitler, but…” and then they list the parallels anyway. it’s a rhetorical sleight-of-hand—disclaim the comparison, then double down. he’s not ruling like a fascist (yet), they say, but his vibes? oh, they’re fascist as hell. it’s like saying your uncle’s not a serial killer, but he’s got that creepy knife collection, so, you know, close enough.
why do we cling to this? partly because it’s comforting. fascism’s a known quantity—we beat it once, right? if trump’s just hitler 2.0, we’ve got the playbook: resist, rally, repeat. but it’s also ideological catnip. for the right, it’s a way to dunk on liberals (“you call everything fascism!”); for the left, it’s a call to arms against the big bad wolf; for the center, it’s a smug “we told you so” about the dangers of populism. everyone gets a prize! except the truth, which gets buried under a pile of 1930s cosplay.
here’s the rub: trump’s america isn’t interwar europe. there’s no shattered post-war economy with millions of starving veterans itching for a fight. no communist uprising threatening to topple the system. no imperial scramble for colonies (unless you count elon musk’s mars fantasies). the 1930s were a pressure cooker of geopolitical desperation—trump’s world is more like a slow-motion car crash fueled by twitter feuds and cable news. so why do we keep forcing the square peg of today into the round hole of yesterday? are we that afraid of admitting we’re dealing with something new—something we don’t have a name for yet?
1930s vs. now: a tale of two crises
let’s play a game of spot-the-difference. picture europe after world war i: cities in rubble, empires collapsing, soldiers limping home to breadlines. inflation’s through the roof in italy; germany’s drowning in unemployment after the 1929 crash. meanwhile, socialists and communists are organizing factory takeovers, waving red flags, and scaring the pants off the ruling class. enter fascism—mussolini’s blackshirts and hitler’s brownshirts promising jobs, national pride, and a good old-fashioned war to fix it all. it’s a brutal, coherent response to a world on fire, backed by industrialists and landowners who see it as their ticket to survival.
now fast-forward to trump’s america. the 2008 financial crisis was a doozy—banks tanked, homes foreclosed, jobs vanished—but it’s not the great depression. unemployment peaked at 10%, not 25%. the government threw trillions at wall street, and yeah, that pissed people off, but it kept the system from imploding. today’s economy’s a weird stew—stagnant wages, ballooning debt, gig-work precarity—but it’s not the apocalyptic wasteland of the 1930s. and where’s the revolutionary left? occupy wall street was cute, but it’s no bolshevik uprising. the closest we’ve got is bernie sanders yelling about medicare, bless his heart.
geopolitics? night and day. interwar fascists were revisionist upstarts—germany and italy clawing for empires in a world carved up by britain and france. trump’s america is the top dog, unchallenged since the cold war ended. sure, china’s rising, but it’s not storming the gates with panzers. the u.s. military’s everywhere—nato, bases in japan, drones over yemen—but it’s a low-casualty empire. no draft, no mass mobilization. americans won’t die for a flag; they’ll barely get off the couch for one. so why do we act like trump’s about to launch a blitzkrieg? is it because we can’t imagine power without a world war attached?
class, nation, and the upside-down politics of trump
here’s where it gets wild. fascism thrived on a specific class cocktail: a nationalist petty bourgeoisie—think bureaucrats, shopkeepers, war vets—teaming up with big capital against an internationalist working class. in italy and germany, the socialists were a real threat, so the elites picked fascism to crush them. trump’s coalition? it’s almost the reverse. his base skews working-class—blue-collar types, evangelicals, rural whites—who feel screwed by globalization. they’re not waving swastikas; they’re waving “made in america” hats. the “new petty bourgeoisie”—the coastal professionals, the tech bros, the ngo class—they’re the globalists here, sipping lattes and preaching diversity while trump’s crowd grumbles about trade deals.
this flip matters. fascism wasn’t populism gone wild—it was a top-down project to save capitalism from the red menace. trump’s more like a bottom-up middle finger to the elite, even as he stuffs his cabinet with gop cronies and goldman sachs alums. he’s not uniting the ruling class—he’s pissing them off. ceos ditch his advisory councils; wall street freaks over tariffs; the cia and fbi leak like sieves. hitler had the german army salivating for war; trump’s got generals rolling their eyes at his parade fantasies. mussolini wooed industrialists; trump’s out here tweeting insults at amazon. is this fascism? or is it a rich guy cosplaying as a working-class hero while the real elite plot his exit?
and the working class? they’re not storming factories—they’re drowning in debt. personal debt’s at 100% of household income, way higher in some spots. it’s not the collective misery of mass unemployment; it’s a lonely, atomized grind—everyone’s a “potato” in their own sack, to borrow marx’s quip about french peasants. potatoes don’t march in lockstep; they roll to a loudmouth promising tariffs and a border wall. so what’s driving this—class rage or cultural resentment? economic despair or fox news brainworms? can we even split those apart?
trump’s chaos: patrimonial vibes in a bureaucratic world
forget fascism—trump’s closer to a medieval lord than a modern dictator. picture him as a king in a tacky gold throne, doling out favors to his court of loyal weirdos—kushner, ross, that coal-lobby guy at the epa. it’s patrimonial rule: the state’s his personal piggy bank, loyalty’s the currency, and screw the “public good.” in weber’s terms, this is pre-modern as hell—no line between private gain and official duty, just a household vibe with extra steps. he’s not building a fascist party with jackbooted cadres; he’s got a twitter account and a rotating cast of sycophants. bannon tried to play ideologue and got booted. sessions had a grand theory about immigration and still got canned. trump doesn’t want disciples—he wants lackeys.
but here’s the kicker: you can’t run a modern state like it’s game of thrones. the u.s. government’s a legal-rational beast—bureaucrats, rules, endless paperwork. trump’s little patrimonial clique can’t staff it; a third of his top team bailed in year one. the feds fight back—mueller’s probe, leaks galore, state department suits clutching their pearls. it’s not “democracy” resisting a tyrant; it’s the machine rejecting a virus. and his charisma? it’s not hitler ranting to a stadium—it’s a reality star breaking taboos on live tv. he’s less mussolini, more kanye: loud, polarizing, unscripted. fox and twitter beam it out, but there’s no ideology to glue it together. when he’s gone, what’s left? a maga hat and a pile of memes?
the midterm mirage: democracy’s adrenaline shot?
the 2018 midterms were a plot twist. trump’s gop took a beating—democrats flipped the house, women and young voters surged, suburbs turned blue. over 60 million picked team donkey; 50 million stuck with the elephant. he held the rural states, sure, but the upper midwest wobbled, and his white-women edge from 2016? poof. turnout hit 49%—wild for a midterm. some screamed “fascism defeated!” others shrugged “just a blip.” but here’s the curveball: trump’s chaos might’ve boosted democracy, not killed it. his nonstop noise—tweeting about caravans, trashing the fbi—dragged people to the polls. is this the dictator we feared, or a clown accidentally waking up a sleepy system?
yet the system’s still a mess. gerrymandering, voter suppression, a senate that gives wyoming as much clout as california—it’s oligarchy with democratic sprinkles. trump’s not the disease; he’s a symptom. the democrats’ “resistance” leans on pelosi and schumer—same old neolibs who paved his way. meanwhile, teachers strike in red states, felons win voting rights in florida, and sanders tops popularity polls. could a real left seize this? or are we stuck with “fascist!” as a rallying cry that just props up the status quo? what’s the move when the enemy’s not hitler but a fractured, flailing empire?
so what is trump? a question without an answer
here’s the dirty secret: trump doesn’t fit. he’s not fascist—lacks the coherence, the mass party, the revolutionary crisis. not populist either—too tied to the gop machine. authoritarian? maybe, but he’s too sloppy to lock it down. he’s a hybrid—a patrimonial loudmouth in a bureaucratic cage, charisma cranked to 11 with no ideology to back it. he’s a walking contradiction: a billionaire “outsider,” a nationalist in a globalist superpower, a ruler who unites his base by dividing his class. he’s less a throwback to the 1930s than a preview of something weirder—postmodern power on a sugar high, crumbling under its own weight.
so why do we keep slapping old labels on him? are we scared to admit we’re lost in uncharted waters? trump’s not the end of democracy—he’s a mirror to its cracks. the real question isn’t “is he hitler?” but “what’s this mess we’re in?”—a decaying empire, a polarized public, a left grasping for traction. history’s no guidebook here; it’s a funhouse mirror, distorting more than it reveals. maybe trump’s just the warm-up act for whatever’s next. sleep tight, folks—the show’s not over.
reference: this text is mostly influenced by dylan riley’s “WHAT IS TRUMP?” from New Left Review 114, Nov-Dec 2018.
