Neofascism and the Trump Phenomenon-- A Guest Post By Liam O'Mara

 

Liam O'Mara is a history professor running for a Riverside County congressional seat held by Trump enabler and crook Ken Calvert. Because there are so many incorrect conceptions about fascism floating around, and because Professor O'Mara teaches his students what it actually is, I asked him to do a guest post on how fascism and the Trump Regime intersect.

The video up top is an ad Blue America is running in Riverside County right now and has nothing whatsoever to do with the post below. The video at the bottom contains a number of lectures Liam sent us from classes he has given on fascism and you might want to watch after you read his essay. Another thing I hope you'll want to do after you read his essay, is contribute to his campaign. Although he is being supported by the California Democratic Party, the DCCC is not enamored of independent-minded progressives taking on Republican incumbents in red districts-turning purple (like CA-42). So, to win this contest, O'Mara is going to need some grassroots love. He has an uphill but winnable battle against a corrupt right-wing slug who is self-serving and without a care when it comes to the benefit of working families in Riverside, in California or across the country. Time for Calvert to go. That's why I've included the Blue America 2020 Making California Bluer thermometer on the right. Please give it a click and consider contributing to Liam O'Mara's campaign.


Neofascism and the Trump Phenomenon
-by Liam O'Mara

Trumpism did not come out of no-where. Forty years of neoliberal policies have shrunk the middle class and strangled the American Dream. That decline has fuelled a reactionary politics that plays on fears, grievances, and insecurity about the future. But is it fascism?

The label of ‘fascism’ is thrown around a lot these days, despite people on all sides of the political spectrum often having an incomplete, or dead-wrong, understanding of the term. I am certainly guilty of using the term myself.

But as a historian of ideas, I often feel it is both necessary and warranted to raise the issue, given the global resurgence of the reactionary and nationalist right, and because I want more people to know what it means and where it ought to be used.

And we should better know what it means, given how many current leaders fit the mould of neofascism, despite rejecting the label. Vladimir Putin tends to call his enemies ‘the real fascists’, while literally quoting Russian fascist thinker Ivan Ilyin in his speeches!

We need to get better at recognizing what pulls together figures as diverse as Putin, Bolsonaro, Erdoğan, and Trump. The simplest way I can think of to frame an article on this is to outline the nine essential characteristics I use in my lectures. I will, along the way, point to some applications of those ideas in contemporary geopolitics.

Fascism is anti-liberal – Fascism argues against democracy and/or makes supportive gestures towards authoritarianism and authoritarian rulers, and supports greater policing powers over people. It is critical of human rights discourses and individual rights, and sceptical about universal moral values. It attacks the free press, and argues that respect for difference, for the Other, and often common courtesy, are just a scam to emasculate us.

Have you heard someone arguing, ‘You have nothing to fear if you did nothing wrong’, ‘Don’t resist and they won’t shoot you’, or ‘It’s okay he killed those people because they were commies / gays / criminals /etc.’..?

I Can't Breath by Nancy Ohanian

Have you seen public figures eschew all pretence of civility and ‘political correctness’ in order to delegitimize institutions, the media, and opposing parties? Trump’s constant attacks on the news, and the far-right’s crusade against universities (which they call ‘Marxist indoctrination camps’) are examples of illiberal thinking.

Fascism is anti-conservative – Fascists are often socially conservative, but are reactionaries, not political conservatives. Conservatives believe in preservation for the status quo and for slow, managed change that respects tradition. Fascists argue for a radical regeneration of the nation, and restoration of an earlier golden age.

When someone argues that contemporary culture is ‘degenerate’, or that we need to ‘Make American Great Again’, they are saying that something is wrong and needs major change. In doing so they sometimes call for a return to traditional values, but just as often will innovate in the values they wish to instill in the population.

Fascism does not promise a conservative social vision, but a revolutionary one, with near-messianic promises of rebirth.

Fascism is nationalistic – Fascists focus on the ethnic nation and/or ethné and/or nation-state over the individual, disdain minorities and scapegoats them for problems, and either oppose outright or seek to limit immigration..

Fascism idolizes the military, or at least a particular ideal of military power, and gets caught up in symbolic displays of enthusiasm. Consider the way that Erdoğan shifts attention to the Kurds to cover up criticism of his domestic policies, and unifies the nation by bombing innocents across the border in Iraq and Syria.

To really get this one, we need to distinguish some commonly-confused terms. Nationalism is not like patriotism – they have entirely different objects.

A nation is a group of people with some features in common (shared history, ethnicity, religion, language, culture, etc. – which features are used varies). A state is a collection of institutions (the military, the courts and laws, civil administration, parliaments, borders, etc.). And a country is a state with sovereign control of territory.

A patriot is someone who loves and serves their country or state. A nationalist is someone who loves and serves their nation.

Nationalisms are, by definition, exclusionary, and while based on actual cultural elements and history, are always selective and artificial in their construction of a political identity. Consider the way that Trump’s view of the nation seems to embrace white supremacists but not Muslims or immigrants.

Wrapping oneself in the flag, preaching distrust of foreigners, calling for an ‘America First’ policy that disdains alliances, and blaming problems on perceived Others in society are characteristic of nationalism. Lost your job? ‘Mexicans took it’! Company closed down? ‘Competition with China is to blame’! Need to justify a war? ‘Muslims all support terrorism, donchaknow’!

Fascism is conspiracist – Fascism is defensive, and sees the world in terms of mortal struggle between the forces of good and a nebulous, hidden enemy. It sets up a mix of internal and external enemies which must be opposed by patriots and challenged aggressively by the nation.

But those enemies cannot be so strong as to be a real threat – fascists use them to motivate fear, but it must be a flexible fear without real consequence, and thus the enemy must appear rhetorically as an all-powerful existential danger, but one that can easily be contained by state policy and the Great Leader.

Conspiracies are illogical by definition, and not dependent upon empirical evidence. You can read between the lines and find support for the beliefs in almost anything, since it is the emotional satisfaction of the conspiracy that matters most. Belief in élite paedophile rings run out of pizza places by Satan-worshipping liberals determined to eliminate all borders and turn the country over to Jewish financiers is somehow appealing to people confused by a more interconnected world. But such Illuminati-style nonsense only works if it isn’t real. It has to be something that you can address by voting for your side, joining a ‘patriotic’ organization, and sending e-mails to your friends.

Fascism is anti-rational – One of the reasons fascism is so hard to understand is that it does not have a strong philosophical foundation that can be supported logically. Instead, it focusses on emotional appeals and rhetoric, setting aside the need for statistics or evidence and calling for belief instead.

Fascism addresses the fears of working people by talking about their victimhood, about how things are changing and seeming to up-end their idealized picture of the world. Building on public fears, fascism distracts from them with big rallies and patriotic displays, and puts on events that celebrate the nation’s power, such as military parades.

Folks like Duterte, Bolsonaro, or Trump do not depend upon reason, facts, or policies for their appeal, but rather on simple messages & images, on slogans, etc. It doesn’t matter if their ideas are incoherent or if they would bankrupt the nation – the details are invisible to their fans because of their presentation.

Human beings have an almost infinite capacity to rationalize beliefs and paper over contradictions. It is possible for someone simultaneously to claim support for liberty and individual rights, yet ignore the presence of literal concentration camps and the systemic abuse of innocents within. These things are either ‘not happening’ – it’s just ‘fake news’ – or they are entirely justifiable for this or that reason, and do not call into question their commitment to freedom.

Fascism is charismatic – One of the things that helps to sell the contradictions and hypocrisy is the charisma of the Great Leader. Fascism requires a leader-cult focussed on a central figure, showing that leader as the solution to problems great and small, and slapping his name and/or image everywhere. Fascists will argue that his/her pronouncements are more valid than the media or experts, so they denigrate the media and tell people to trust the leader and/or the party first, and to disdain higher education and/or experts and/or the universities. It thus builds on a long history of anti-intellectualism on the reactionary right.

While running for office, Trump sold himself as a god-like figure, a saviour, telling us that ‘only’ he could ‘save’ us, that only he knows what has to be done. He said that knows ‘more than the generals’, ‘more than the scientists’, that he has ‘secret plans’ to defeat our enemies and that the scientists don’t actually know anything.

Because there is no substance to the claims, he sells everything with ‘believe me’ appeals to his own credibility, and disparages any source which undermines his narrative, including his own government. This kind of leader-cult is not a feature of democratic societies, but of failed democracies and totalitarian states.

Fascism is corporatist – Fascism is both capitalistic and anti-capitalistic; it argues for private enterprise and markets, sometimes mixed with state-owned businesses, but geared always toward serving the nation. This means that it can criticize big banks and corporations, but refuse to address the private nature of them and their profit motive, since it views the cut-throat competition in markets to be beneficial, in the same way that it favours competition among individuals.

Consider again the ‘America First’ rhetoric – fascists tend to support tariffs and trade wars, viewing all foreign exchange in terms of competition and dominance or submission. The US is not buying from Chinese companies – China is taking advantage of America!

Corporatism is another commonly misused word in American politics, with many thinking that it means support for corporations (meaning, the business model). The corporations that it means are a kind of public middle-man layer where something like a guild will speak for the workers in the place of trade unions.

The reason for this is that fascism opposes utterly the idea of class consciousness, favouring national consciousness instead. Fascist corporatism is meant to neuter the labour movement, weakening the ability of workers to challenge the powerful, and instead suggesting that all Germans – regardless of class – are allies against all French people, for example.

This is, of course, one of the reasons it is utterly absurd to consider Nazism (or any kind of fascism) to be socialistic. Socialists talk about the world and the economy in terms of class struggle, with the workers held back as a permanent underclass by the bourgeoisie and the capitalists. Fascism throws this distinction out completely, subordinating both the workers and the bourgeoisie to the shared interests of the nation.

Fascism is populist – Fascists talk frequently about working class interests and fears. This is the other area of overlap sometimes seen, falsely, between socialist and fascist movements. Socialism can be seen as a form of left-populism, while fascism is a form of right-populism.

Whereas the socialists point to the class enemy as the source of trouble, fascists point to foreign and domestic enemies of the nation. It will talk about the ‘left behind’ and the ‘forgotten man’, but often with a racist or nativist component (whether dog-whistled or overt). And it builds a shared sense of persecution, of the common man as an entitled, aggrieved victim of strange forces beyond his control.

Neofascists movements, from Alternativ für Deutschland to the Rassemblement National in France to the Trumpists in the US will make their appeals to working class, mainly high school-educated voters, by explaining the world in terms of competition with nefarious enemies at home and abroad.

The immigrants are bringing crime and drugs and sexual assault, they are influencing your children and destroying your culture, they are bringing about a ‘white genocide’! And who supports these immigrants? Why, the universities and the left! Communism, socialism, and even liberalism are seen as an existential threat, and the left must be resisted by any means available, including violence, because to leave them alone is to watch them poison and destroy the nation.

All totalitarian movements depend upon fabrication of internal and external enemies to justify the power of the party – but fascism is distinct in merging nationalism and populism to create a philosophy ideally suited to a working class suffering decline in the face of neoliberal globalization and automation.

Instead of addressing the economic structures and bipartisan policies which have created this decline, it offers a a scapegoat, and easy promises of a return to prosperity if only the Great Leader is granted more power and time.

Fascism is misogynist – Another way that fascists exploit the fears and grievances of working class men is through sexism and literal misogyny. All fascist movements have been anti-feminist, because women have been such an easy target for worker fears – ‘She’s taking your job! Shouldn’t she be at home raising your children instead?’.

The fascists offer men an easy way to decrease competition for good work by supporting ‘traditional’ gender rôles and the patriarchy, and suggesting that women are naturally better suited to being mothers and caretakers.

This is intimately tied to nativist and nationalist rhetoric, since a female sex restricted to birthing duties could help to eliminate immigration entirely, allowing populations to replace themselves and grow without ‘harming’ the nation through ‘interbreeding’.

Fascist movements are obsessed with demographic decline, which makes a certain amount of sense given its origins in the early twentieth century. By the early 1900s, the major powers of Europe were already dependent upon immigration for the population growth needed to fuel industrialization, and the movement of peoples from within and without Europe provided an easy target for fear-mongering about a cultural Other who would undermine the nation.

Needless to say, this continues in the anti-immigrant hysteria of neofascist parties in Europe, the US, Australia, Canada, and beyond.

On Trumpism and the GOP – I hope that this run through of the key features present in fascist and neofascist movements has helped, both in clarifying how and when the word should be used, and in underscoring the danger in which we find ourselves in much of the developed world. Nationalist and right-populist movements have been in steady resurgence for decades, moving from tiny fringe parties in the ‘1960s and ‘70s, to forming governments and coalitions in countries on every continent by the early twenty-first century. The present crisis has been a long time coming.

Again and again I try to remind people that Trump himself is neither surprising nor unique, but instead the product of a steady drift on the American right which goes back many decades, and arguably all the way to the same moment in the early twentieth century which spawned the original fascists. In movements as distinct as that of Father Coughlin and the German American Bund we see prototypes for the arguments which began pushing into the mainstream under Reagan, in the campaign of Buchanan, and finally with Trump.

Beating Trump in November may be critical to the survival of our republican institutions, but it is not enough. We need to confront the very real fears and systemic failings that leave so many American vulnerable to the rhetoric of the far right. Until we manage to toss the faulty neoliberal consensus, and begin to build an economy that works for all of us, far too many will be tempted by the easy answers of neofascist demagogues..

Regardless of when we manage to escape Trump himself, the Trumpist movement will carry on, with new right-populist leaders stepping up to claim the Great Leader’s mantle. Whether they succeed in remaking America in their image is up to us.