Has Fascism Really Come to America?

Describing fascism is one thing, but seeing it ingratiate itself into a formally healthy political system is another.

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part article series, if it’s long enough to be called a series, on the same book. There were too many followup questions to not do a second article. If this format proves popular, expect more articles on the same book. It’s easy to not do again if this falls flat.

“Only when the state and existing institutions fail badly do they open opportunities for newcomers.”

This is a haunting warning for citizens of any country worried about keeping extremists out of power. An imperfect government can be mended through elections of policy-minded individuals or two parties with a shared interest in combating corruption, of limiting the ability of people to use public office to enrich themselves.

But as Robert Paxton writes in The Anatomy of Fascism, a broken system creates room for violent political parties to amass enough support to seize power. It’s not a coincidence that fascist parties grew out of the broken world left after World War I, when European countries struggled to rebuild a prosperous world for their citizens and returning veterans.

Allowing violent parties into power didn’t put new solutions to post-war — and later post-depression problems — on the table. Instead, it sowed the seeds of the next catastrophe that began in 1939. As Paxton wrote:

“Bringing new parties into the system is usually a profoundly wise political step, but not when it rewards violence and an unrepentant determination to abolish democracy.”

While we concluded in an earlier post that Trump was not a fascist, there are fascist elements of his base that embrace violence and obsess over issues of purity, like who is a real American, even among native-born Americans. Trump’s continued overreach could lead the United States into fascism. The challenge will be recognizing it if it arrives.

Fascist Regimes Destroy Themselves — and Take Everyone with Them

One of the gravest warnings about fascism isn’t just how it arrives — traditional conservatives agree to share power, then continue making concessions until it’s too late — but how fascism ends is also a stark warning about the stakes of allowing a fascist regime into power. Paxton explains:

“The final outcome was that the Italian and German fascist regimes drove themselves off a cliff in their quest for ever headier successes. Mussolini had to take his fatal step into war in June 1940 because Fascist absence from Hitler’s victory over France might well fatally loosen his grip on his people. Hitler never stopped imagining further conquests—India, the Americas—until he committed suicide in his besieged bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945. The fascisms we know seem doomed to destroy themselves in their headlong, obsessive rush to fulfill the ‘privileged relation with history’ they promised their people.”

One of the promises fascists make to the people is that they will use military force to restore the prestige that was lost to them. In reality, that means launching new conflicts until the party burns itself out. It resembles the human waves that Vladimir Putin has launched against Ukraine in his effort to restore the might of the former Soviet Union.

So, what would a movement that consumes the United States look like?

Fascism Looks Like its Country, not History

One of the fundamental features of fascism is its camouflage. Since it’s built around a need to violently reclaim lost prestige, fascist leaders invoke symbols that their countrymen can rally around. Paxton describes what a fascist movement could look like in the United States:

“Around such reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State (creches on the lawns, prayers in schools), efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecretaions of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that could be labeled antinational or decadent.”

An American fascist party would embrace the American flag, the troops, Christianity, and anything else that could be construed as traditionally American. Its assault on American law would selectively target internal and external enemies while ensuring its own side remained culturally and legally dominant. A fascist gun control policy would leave guns in the hands of supportive militias but removed from those considered political threats.

It’s not that opposing gun control or supporting the culturally important place Christianity makes someone a fascist. Rather, a fascist party would use those issues to defend indefensible policies like enforcing party loyalty through violence and purging enemies by imprisoning or killing them.

The United States isn’t currently under the control of a fascist regime, but continued assaults on the rule of law and an embrace of violence similar to the January 6 attack on the Capitol could quietly change that.

One of the most dangerous things about fascism is how far the danger will be for ordinary Americans for a long time. Trump already has the subservience of the Republican Party. Anti-government militias still support him. Whether the most violent parts of his movement will be allowed to gain influence remains to be seen.