Is It Fascism Now?

Wayne Price

There is a debate on the Left over whether we are facing fascism with Trump’s MAGA regime. Some say “no,” pointing to all the freedoms and democratic rights which still exist. They have confidence in the U.S.’s democratic heritage.

Others point to the viciously repressive aspects of Trump’s government as evidence of fascism. Some are liberals who have such confidence in the U.S. heritage of democracy that they are shocked to see the state act in anti-democratic ways. “It must be fascism,” they conclude. Who is correct?

To discuss this fruitfully, it is necessary to make some important distinctions. First is the difference between bourgeois democracy (“liberal” or “limited” or “parliamentary” democracy) and fascism.

“Fascism is the antonym of liberal democracy within a capitalist society. Its advocates wish to replace liberal democracy with a different form of management of the capitalist system, removing basic civil rights and limits on executive power, strengthening the repressive apparatus to weaken working class organization, and adopting ethno-nationalist forms of social exclusion. In contrast, socialism is the antonym, not of the liberal-democratic state, but of capitalism itself.” (Foster 2017; p. 61) (Just what the Marxist Foster means by “socialism” is another question.)

Generally, the capitalist class prefers a limited democracy to fascism or other authoritarian system—if there is enough prosperity and stability. For the ruling rich, the advantage of liberal democracy is that their factions can struggle over differences of opinion and interests, and make decisions, without a bloody civil war. And if incompetent fools get into power (!!), they can be peacefully gotten rid of in the next election. Also it makes it easier to trick the population into believing that they are a free people, running society.

For the working class, a limited, bourgeois democracy makes it easier to organize against the capitalists, whether in unions, radical groupings, or in other ways. (Within the general range of authoritarianisms, there are also distinctions between fascism and alternate forms of capitalist, anti-democratic, regimes, such as traditional monarchies.)

A further key distinction is between Donald J. Trump’s government and the Trumpist movement. The *government,* while extremely authoritarian, is not presently fascist. Whatever else fascism is, it is a one-party state with a one-person (or small group) dictatorship. This is not true of the current U.S. government. Rather there is a conflict within the government between the authoritarian Trumpist elements (especially dominating the executive branch) and other sections which are still more-or-less liberal-democratic.

However there is the MAGA *movement.* It includes most of Trump’s administration. It has a section of the big business elite, the “tech bros” of Silicon Valley, the cryptocurrency fraudsters, and the oil and natural gas companies. These have hired a network of paid intellectuals. There is a large minority of the population (30 to 40 percent), composed of a demoralized lower middle class and formerly privileged White workers. These people more-or-less want a one-party state with a one-person dictatorship. Whether they are all fully aware of it, their goal is fascism.

Comparison of Trumpism and Classical Fascism

It is useful to compare the Trumpist government and movement to that of the classical fascist regimes. These were Italian Fascism of the 1920s on, and German Nazism from the 1930s. How is Trumpism different from—and how much similar to—original fascism?

Some see a difference in that Mussolini and Hitler came to power through violence while Trump was elected. This is not true. While Mussolini and Hitler did use violence in the streets, they took power legally and constitutionally. Both ran in elections and had a large number of elected party members in their parliaments. Mussolini was constitutionally appointed premier by the Italian king. Hitler was appointed chancellor by the elected president.

But they had risen to power using lawless mass violence. They had organized followers into squads, with uniforms and weapons—the Italian fascisti or “Black Shirts,” and the Nazi “Brown Shirts”or Storm Troopers (the SA). Limited by no law, these political gangsters beat up (or killed) their opponents, such as Socialists, Communists, anarchists, and unionists. They raided union halls, wrecked the printing shops of leftist newspapers, and kidnapped leading Socialists. Sometimes they were arrested and tried, but the police and the reactionary judges were sympathetic to them and gave them mere slaps on the wrist.

This organization of extralegal mass violence was an important way fascism differed from previous authoritarian movements, such as military coups. To overturn the existing political institutions and drive down popular resistance, fascism organizes violent forces, outside of the established authorities.

The problem was not “free speech for Nazis” but that they got away with violence and murder. Italian anarchists tried to organize a united front of the left and the unions to resist the Fascists physically, but the Socialist and Communist parties would not agree. A decade later, Leon Trotsky similarly urged the German Socialists and Communists to cooperate in combatting the Nazi Storm Troopers, with a similar lack of action by the Social Democrats and Stalinists.

Trump’s minions have not yet organized fascist death squads, fanatics with red-white-and-blue shirts. Yet there is a frightening Trumpist underground. Some are in small fascist organizations or in “militias.” Most are in tiny groups or are unaffiliated “lone wolves.” But when Trump calls—or even without an explicit call by him—they bring their guns and threaten or attack MAGA’s “enemies.” Politicians, judges, local voting registars, employees of abortion clinics, people who criticized Charlie Kirk after his murder—all have been threatened and some attacked. Also immigrants, Latinos, Muslims, Asians, Jews, LGBTQ people, and African-Americans have been murdered.

Meanwhile Trump has organized I.C.E.—a secretive government agency of armed men, masked, uniformed, and lawlessly violent but with guaranteed immunity. Overall then, the MAGA movement and government has similarities to the original fascists, if not being quite the same.

In power, Mussolini and Hitler banned all parties except their own. The U.S.A. has two parties. Traditionally they take turns managing the state and economy. Unlike other politicians, Republican Trump has no respect for the opposition party. He does not treat Democrats as professional opponents to compete with and work with. He has denounced virtually all leading Democrats, with the vilest insults and threats, calling them “crazy radical leftist lunatics.” In office he has repeatedly sought to get political opponents indicted, tried, and jailed (and said he would like to have opponents executed). His attempts so far have mostly failed, but they demonstrate his belief in one-party government, which he would institute if he could.

Hitler ran hard in Germany’s 1932 election, but he never won a majority. However he told his supporters that if he won, “this will be the last election.” Trump too has run in elections. Of his three presidential campaigns, he lost the popular vote twice and won by a hair’s breath once. The archaic and undemocratic Electoral College let him “win” his first campaign in 2016. (This is only one of the many undemocratic aspects of traditional U.S. “liberal democracy.”) Trump and his minions have made it clear that elections were only useful if they could use them to get into power.

After loosing the 2020 election, he tried to seize power anyway. He tried legal and illegal maneuvers. This included whipping up a mob of fanatical followers to attempt to seize the Congressional building, attack the congresspeople counting Electoral College ballots, and try to lynch his own vice president. Since then, he has constantly pretended to believe that he was “cheated” by the Democrats. Now he and his party are doing all they can to cheat on the next (November 2026) midterm elections.

In brief, Trump has a purely transactional attitude toward elections. If they can be used to get power, he uses them, but otherwise he has no belief in their value, as he has no belief in popular self-government. He has repeatedly expressed his admiration for dictators and "strongmen," such as Putin, Kim Jun-un, Xi Jin-ping, Netanyahu, and Victor Orban.

A central part of original fascism is adulation of the Leader—der Fuhrer, il Duce—with a “cult of personality” (as was said of Stalin). Trump’s cabinet members compete for who can praise the Donald more. He is the “greatest president in U.S. history,” we are told. No one contradicts him. He puts up gigantic portraits of himself. He puts his name on government buildings as well as the Kennedy Center. White evangelicals (a large part of his base) declare that this very ungodly man was “sent by God.”

He strives to be a dictator. As soon as he was elected for his second term, he started signing executive orders, declaring this and banning that. Since his Republicans held the majorities in both houses of Congress, he could have legislated most of his program, but he preferred to create it by fiat. The Republican Party follows his orders in Congress and also in most of the “red” state governments—almost always (although those running for re-election are getting a tiny bit more autonomous). One reason he especially loves tariffs is that he has been unilaterally able to declare them without any oversight (until the Supreme Court latest ruling). The same goes for granting presidential pardons.

While the lower courts have often defeated him, the Supreme Court’s reactionary majority (6 out of 9) has mostly been on his side. The exceptions are mainly when Trump does something against the interests of big business (such as on tariffs). Otherwise, they are his partisans (such as their decision that the president—him—has immunity for crimes committed while in office).

Fascism is notorious for its racist ethno-nationalism. Mussolini encouraged Italians toward a hyper-masculine sense of national greatness, to justify aggression against African countries (particularly Ethiopia). Hitler made the superiority of the “Aryan” German “race” central to his ideology, counterposed to the “enemy,” the Jews. These were supposedly a sinister racial conspiracy, whom, we know, he murdered in their millions.

Trump and his top accomplices are openly nationalist (“America First!” “Make America Great Again!”) but not too explicitly racist. He rarely says out loud that African-Americans as such are inferior to Whites; he asks for their votes. As for the Jews, he is closely allied with the far-right government of Israel. His government denounces universities and even mildly pro-Palestinian voices as “anti-Semitic”!

Yet he and his movement has made (dark-skinned) immigrants their number one enemy. From the time he came down the elevator for his first campaign, immigrants were denounced as the main cause of crime, unemployment, illnesses, and cultural decay. In his last campaign, he ran on the slogan of “Mass Deportations!” Africans he calls “garbage” from "shithole countries."

Aside from expelling immigrants, his main domestic policy is to destroy programs for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (D.E.I.)—which is to say, for anti-racism. While specific D.E.I. programs may have real problems, Trump’s response is simply to oppose any and all attempts to oppose racism.

Meanwhile, inside the MAGA movement, there are repeated exposure of white supremacist, anti-Semitic, pro-Hitler, and similar sentiments. This occurs alongside of misogynist, anti-feminist, homophobic, and anti-trans bigotry, freely expressed by Trump and his comrades, as well as less openly stated. These attacks on women and a belief in heterosexual masculine superiority is something Trumpism shares with German and Italian fascism.

With prejudice of all kinds, racism, nationalism, and superstitions, fascism is always irrational and anti-scientific. This has certainly true of the MAGA movement and its ignorant, incurious, and stupid leader. Backed by the most reactionary wing of U.S. evangelical Christianity, this administration has attacked the scientific-research institutions of the country. Putting a quack in charge of national health care, it has denied the value of vaccines and other medicines. And it has waged war on the environment, seeming to be doing everything possible to create a world-wide ecological catastrophe, threatening the survival of humans and other species.

Fascism is “totalitarian.” The earlier monarchies and later police states usually demanded only that their subjects do not challenge the authorities. Otherwise, people were left to go about their private business. This is even more true of the limited democracies. But fascism insists that everyone declare their support for the system, their agreement with the official ideology, and their adoration of the Great Leader. Chess clubs, swim clubs, churches, beauty salons, etc., must all follow the principles of Big Brother.

Trump does not have this power, but he would like to. He claims to know more about science than the scientists and more about war than the generals. He purges scientists and generals according to his whims. If any Republican politician disagrees even a little bit, Trump attacks him viciously. Political opponents are legally investigated and charged with crimes. The shame is true of judges or professional economists on the Fed who disagree with his judgment. He intervenes in mass media, television, the arts, public architecture, and cultural institutions. Nothing is too big or too small for him to meddle with. The same is true of the broad MAGA movement, as appeared after Charlie Kirk was murdered. People who made the slightest criticism of Kirk—even those who made clear their opposition to political assassination—were doxxed, threatened, and fired. It is a “total” political system.

(I have not discussed the relations between Western fascism and “Communist” regimes such as Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. They were both one-party, one-person, “totalitarian,” dictatorships. The workers were exploited by selling their labor power and making them work as hard as possible for as little as possible. The Western fascists had traditional shareholding capitalists—a bourgeoisie—while the Stalinists had a collective bureaucracy ruling a state -capitalist system.)

Conclusion

To summarize, the U.S. government is not presently fascist, as defined by the historical examples of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. It remains mostly a limited bourgeois democracy, or more precisely a limited bourgeois democracy in internal conflict with fascist elements.

Compared to examples of classical fascism, the MAGA movement—as a movement—has some notable differences but many significant similarities. I would call it “fascist” (or “neo-fascist”), but I do not wish to quibble over labels. Those who do not like such terms may prefer to call it authoritarian, anti-democratic, and dictatorial.

What are the chances of such a movement coming to state power? I doubt it will seize power in the near future, but think it has a good chance in the not so distant future. Right now, the big majority do not want it, and is capable of fighting against it. This has been shown throughout the country, such as in the Minneapolis resistance to the ICE agents. Polls have shown a great deal of unpopularity for Trump and his policies. The big capitalists, in their majority, have not agreed with the MAGA program, even if they have tended to capitulate to it under pressure. After all, they have been doing very well under the present set-up.

There have been reactionary periods before. In the fifties, the country went through a time of anti-communist hysteria and repression, represented by Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, and the John Birch Society, as well as Truman’s “security” firings of civil servants. Meanwhile, a quarter of the nation had legal racial segregation, enforced by the police and the Ku Klux Klan. Some on the left (such as the Communist Party) thought that fascism was taking over. It did not.

Unlike today, that was also a time of economic prosperity (at least for most White people). The period after World War II has been called the “Golden Age of Capitalism.” It lasted until the seventies. Instead of fascism, it developed into a period of radicalization and democratization. This was the time of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, among other struggles.

The rise of Trumpism (with or without Trump) is a symptom of an international crisis of the capitalist system. Fascism may be beaten back again and again. It will keep on re-arising, until the system itself—the system of capitalism and its states—has been replaced by a society of freedom, equality, participation, and cooperation. Temporarily upholding one form of capitalism, the limited liberal democracy, will not save us. Destruction of fascism for good requires the methods of independent mass struggle at the workplace and in the community.

References

Foster, John Bellamy (2017). Trump in the White House; Tragedy and Farce. NY: Monthly Review.

*published in Anarcho-Syndicalist Review

Comments

Lebou (not verified) Thu, 05/28/2026 - 20:01

Well then just don't participate in it, don't become part of the binary identity narrative. Be less serious, more humor, amor fati.

Wayne Price@ (not verified) Sun, 05/31/2026 - 18:26

In reply to by Lebou (not verified)

Wow, if only we could! But when ICE invades your building, dragging out your neighbors and their children, or bangs on your own door (you *are* on a list of people who write to an anarchist site, aren't you?), then saying you are non-binary and full of humor won't do you much good. (Ask the people of Minneapolis.)

This is an example of individualistic-egotist thinking, as opposed to working for popular, social, struggle.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2026 - 07:39

In reply to by Wayne Price@ (not verified)

Telling ICE you're working for the mass popular, social revolution when they bang at your door with assault rifles won't do much help either... Might get you a few laughs from these low-tier wannabe pigs, but that's it.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/29/2026 - 07:33

its not only the international gang with the racism including the russian psyops posters. if you look at terms like buck breaking, a slavery meme. they are inside. you can divide the world into:
america sex cannibal inc 50 states and substates overseas., compliant partner states., kill zones, and happy hunting grounds for the elites, and any other free zones you may be lucky to find. I'm given to some literary license though so take it how you may.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/29/2026 - 21:12

beaten back again and again? like we have all the time in the world? the planet is warming (poisoning) up too fast for that. as things get hotter and more out of whack people will (who havent already) lose their marbles. geez, everyone i know is mentally and/or physically ill at this point.

GO3 Sat, 05/30/2026 - 11:40

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Occupy Democrats is all you can do. China may remodel the place at some point. The civil war won't go anywhere but America is bankrupt. The left died in 1968 when they abandoned the class war for the culture war. Democrats became the vanguard party but now it's bought out by big capital. Only game in town. We're really looking at neoliberal totalitarianism that wears many masks and uses many guises. Bourgeois domination and proletarian revolution is all there is and we're all Trotskyites now.

anonymous (not verified) Sun, 06/07/2026 - 09:33

In reply to by GO3

The Far Right tendencies like MAGA, the Euro Neofascists, the Islamic ultra-conservatives and other similar authoritarian tendencies got nothing to do with neolib. They on the contrary the antiliberal branch of post-liberalism. Neolib has been about corporate dominance and plurality (ID pols) as an exploitation gimmick... the post-liberal Far Right is picking up from this, but steering a doomed boat in the opposite direction. Corporate consolidation is being merged with politics and ID pols is being steered as a tool of mass divide, and profiling for ulterior "culling".

These fools believing it's cool, coz it'll bring the Collapse, don't realize they won't have access to the lifeboats. You won't have your place in the Desert's palace.

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