The label ‘fascist’ is casually thrown around so often these days, not least regarding the American president. With that in mind, I watched film of the palpably deranged speech by Trump at the 2026 Davos summit.[i] At times, it seemed more a matter of some sort of mental illness at work than anything grounded in any even slightly coherent political ideology. The same goes for many other such incidents such as the letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister.[ii]Yet Trump is also leader of a team, one of full of people who are undeniably sane, albeit dangerously extreme, as the appalling events in Minneapolis show. Arguably, a corner has been turned with the second Trump administration. Jonathon Rauch, for example, has forcefully puts the case for seeing it as a fascist development.[iii]
Certainly, in Trumpland, there is the glorification of violence, the belief that might is right, the brutal politicisation of law enforcement, the rampant abuse of democratic process, the suborning of the judicial system, military aggression, land grab ambitions, nativism, self-glorification, denial of truth and ceaseless resort to barefaced lies. It includes intense manipulation of the media, something aided, of course, by modern computer technology.[iv]
Meanwhile, to its eternal shame, the American Congress has seemingly abdicated all responsibility, with the Democrats being incredibly supine. As seldom, if ever, before in US history, national policy has been subordinated to the caprices and delusions of one man and his toadies. Understandably, some have compared Trump to mad King George III.
Despite the powerful arguments of Rauch and many others, perhaps we still need language other than ‘fascist’. The trouble is that many leaders now match Trump in so many ways that the term ‘fascist’ begins to lose historical specificity. Of course, Mussolini was the first overt ‘fascist’ (as with ‘fasces’). Tt is worth stressing here its links to certain ‘modernist’ drives (particularly Futurism and the cult of the machine, connections very relevant to the so-called Tech Bros of today, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other such billionaires. [v]
The Spanish variant under Franco and the Falange was very repressive, committing many atrocities in and after the Spanish civil war.[vi] Fascist regimes were to emerge elsewhere not least in wartime Croatia and Hungary. There were fascist movements in countries as varied as Chile, the UK, France and Finland in the 1930s.
But the most poisonous variant was Hitler’s variant and it is, I still think, most useful to use that as the yardstick for any comparisons. By that standard, Trump still falls short of being a ‘true’ fascist’. Political analysis has got to be more than just shouting abusive labels. ‘Trumpism’ is still a long way from ‘Nazism’. The comprehensive worldview embodied in, say, Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is largely absent in Trump’s ‘brain’ and the thinking of his coterie. Indeed, it is missing across most of the MAGA movement, significant layers of white supremacism notwithstanding.
At a more practical level, the appalling behaviour of the ICE thugs still falls short of the SS and Gestapo. The real fascists were prepared to make economic sacrifices for the sake of ideological goals such as racial purity. They thus sent vitally needed skilled workers to slaughter in the concentration camps. The Trumps are more concerned with lining their own pockets.[vii] In many ways, a kleptocracy has taken control of the American government, albeit one around which much uglier elements circulate.
The fact remains that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is actually worse than Trump.[viii] Indeed, in some ways, his comparative mental acuity makes him more dangerous. Trump’s aggressive foreign policy follies pale when compared to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin would trash the Arctic, gouge out the seabed, mine fossil fuels and destroy old-growth forests as eagerly as Trump, with fewer constraints on his actions. Unlike Putin, Trump is not yet ordering the murder of critics living abroad.[ix]
For all the talk about Trump tearing up a “rules-based’ world order, Putin and indeed many other rulers around the world today ignore basic decency, let alone proper diplomacy on the world stage. Arbitrary arrest, routine torture, executions, forced marriage, slavery, mass rapes, child soldiers …… such crimes defy assorted protocols yet major violations are documented across a range of countries from South Sudan to North Korea. The hands of all sides in the Palestine conflict drip with blood. (actually, Arab regimes have killed more Arabs than Israel). In that context, Trump’s crimes remain ‘modest’.
Thus China has been plundering Tibet and persecuting Muslim minorities without any thought of international norms. The Chinese dictatorship is pursuing a ‘digital despotism’, where surveillance of ordinary people and enforced conformity is way beyond Trump’s wildest dreams. Iin 2024, it commissioned more coal-fired power stations than the rest of the world put together. While Trump eyes Greenland and probably Canadian water, China is grabbing control of farmland and water resources around the world.[x]
The appalling killings in Minneapolis are also dwarfed by the massacres being perpetrated by the theocratic despots in Iran (an estimate today put the figure of murdered civilians at 25,000 and even possibly much higher, with many more arrests.[xi] That includes widespread use of torture.[xii] The Left has been quiet about such crimes.[xiii]
A misplaced ‘anti-imperialism’ (basically anti-Americanism) had led many on that part of the political spectrum to ignore or deny the political repression, corruption, and environmental destruction under Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela.[xiv] A leading light of the UK Green Party, Derek wall, even hailed Venezuela as a green regime.[xv] This repressive ‘petro-state’ was nothing of the sort. Actually there were parallels between the abuse of power by Chavez and Trump.[xvi]
The Trump administration’s actions regarding climate and other ecological matters are indeed magnifying an already existential threat, though they are scarcely alone in that respect. Indeed all advocates of more growth, no matter how ‘democratic’, ‘just’, ‘grown-up’, ‘sensible’, or, for that matter, ‘popular’, are also responsible, if not to the same extent as the “drill, baby drill” fanatics.
So, many ‘reds’ and ‘greens’ who are quick to denounce Trump as a ‘fascist’ and, of course, rage about Israel are comparatively quiet when it comes to Russia, China, Iran, Yemen and Sudan. This is not a matter of ‘whataboutery’, the lazy trope used to shut down legitimate criticism. Rather it is about proper principles, consistency and clarity of analysis.
The toxic logic of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ seems to be at work. In particular, most ‘reds’ and many ‘greens’ (today they are almost synonymous) seem to have inherited the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that coloured the old Labour Left.[xvii] Fellow travelling of such odious regimes such as Stalin’s Russia was quite common with all fire solely directed at the then western powers.[xviii] Today there is the same one-sided damnation of the USA accompanied by silence, evasion and denial of the crimes of, say, many Muslim regimes as well as Russia and China.
Today’s brutal authoritarianism is of course stifling protest against its abuses. The courage of protestors in Iran is amazing but, in many places, the masses are too muzzled to rise up in rebellion. Thus, in many countries, environmental protestors or those fighting for indigenous peoples are simply killed or ‘disappear’.[xix] In the USA, by contrast, opposition is still possible, not least compared to the other two ‘super powers’, China and Russia. Under Trump, there is still a modicum of real democracy and most human rights survive comparatively intact.
Perhaps most appalling thing, then, is how many (most?) Americans are responding to Trump’s crimes at home and abroad. There has indeed been an admirable and somewhat underreported fight-back in Minneapolis itself but, generally, apathy seems more the rule, at least at the moment. Many people would appear to just shrug their shoulders (as with climate breakdown etc). Despite everything, Trump still clocks up a 40% approval rating, somewhat higher than the hapless but basically decent and intelligent Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the UK.[xx]
In these darkening times, it is tempting to conclude that the ‘bad guys’ have won. Artificial Intelligence seems set to really strengthen their hand. Meanwhile social media and ‘old-fashioned’ TV screens act as weapons of mass distraction. Where there have been surges in support for political parties with politics other than the likes of Reform UK, National Rally or Brothers of Italy, it has been a matter of an alternative populism that promise pie in the sky for one and all (e.g. Polanski’s self-styled ‘eco-populism’) in the Green Party of England and Wales.
Perhaps the most solid crumb of comfort is that things can suddenly change, albeit, of course, not necessarily for the better. Most great changes in history happened quite abruptly, taking most contemporaries by surprise: not just the establishment of the United States but so many more from the Reformation to the French revolution. In December 1916, Lenin publicly said he would not live to see the Russian Revolution but…Throughout the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher was dismissed as a no-hoper yet she swept to power in 1979.
There remains, then, the possibility that all is not lost and there could still be unanticipated developments that serve the sustainable common good. But fingers have to be tightly crossed. In the meantime, careful analysis of Trump and co will help. That includes due consideration of the most appropriate political terminology.
