Fedja Buric writing at Salon.com makes the case that Donald Trump is a fascist. Buric is an actual historian, so we should take him seriously. What’s more, unlike me, he specializes in modern Europe, so he’s far more qualified than I am to make this assessment.
But despite all that, I think he’s wrong. Donald Trump is not a fascist.
Buric’s essay is very good and worth reading. He serves up a compelling case about certain similarities between Trump’s antics and Italian fascism of the 1920s and 1930s. For example, he makes interesting comparisons between Trump and Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
I am disputing none of the facts Buric presents, and I agree very strongly with some of his insights. For example, I think Buric’s absolutely right to say “It is no coincidence that the Trump phenomenon emerges during the tenure of the first black President.”
However, in the end I think Buric comes to the wrong conclusion because he has fallen into a logical trap. He tallies up lots of similarities between Trump and Mussolini, and between today’s environment and the atmosphere that produced European fascism, but too many of those similarities are superficial. And more importantly perhaps, the differences are profound.
To his credit, Buric is careful to list the many differences. But he doesn’t do enough with them.
For example, as Buric points out , Mussolini was a much more serious thinker than Trump. Unlike for Buric, however, for me this is at the heart of why Mussolini was an actual fascist politician and Trump just sounds like one.
Benito Mussolini was not only very smart, but also something of an intellectual. A former teacher and political journalist, he developed actual fascistic political theories that he believed in. His rise wasn’t just a power grab; he had real political goals, as horrible as they were.
It’s not that stupid or uneducated people can’t be fascists. Lord knows they can be. And anyway, Trump’s not stupid. But then again, it’s pretty clear that he’s not a political theorist looking to manifest his ideas on the body politic.
Donald Trump’s primary goals seem to be to burnishing his brand, stroking his ego, and making more money; if running a presidential campaign like a reality show accomplishes that, then so be it. But he doesn’t seem to have any real political values, and certainly has shown no real commitment to fascist theories on governance.
Mussolini stood for very real things, and he worked very hard to accomplish them. Donald Trump doesn’t seem to stand for much of anything beyond himself. Make no mistake: this is an important difference.
Mussolini was dedicated to advancing a fascistic program, whereas Trump is employing fascist-like (fascist lite?) rhetoric to gain popularity. Sounding like Mussolini works, so he does that. If sounding like Knute Rockne worked better, then he’d probably do that. And that Trump is pretty good at sounding like Mussolini is more a reflection of his personality than his alleged political ideology.
In other words, Mussolini sounded like Mussolini because it was part of his fascist agenda, which he was hell bent on implementing. Trump merely says whatever he thinks will garner him a following, and shows no real commitment to any actual ideology generally or fascist ideology specifically. Hell, you can barely pin him down on particular policies.
Like Mussolini, Trump plays to the crowd with angry, nationalistic proclamations. But unlike Mussolini, it’s not at all clear how much he actually believes this stuff, to what extent he wants to implement any of it, or if he would be willing to do so in the face of political opposition.
Here’s an example. Trump said at one point that he supports torture and if he were president, he would order the use of torture. But when it was pointed out to him that that U.S. troops would be engaging in criminal activity if they committed torture, Trump immediately backed off and said he would not do it.
So Donald Trump supports torture to the extent that it sounds good and people cheer, but he’s not actually going to follow through if it means asking people to break any laws.
An real fascist, believing that democracy weakens national will and perverts national character, would make an impassioned speech about the ineffectiveness of the current government, the outstanding dangers to the people from foreign enemies of the state, the virtues of violence in the cause of furthering national glory, and then proclaim that he would simply break the law to engage in righteous torture if need be, or better yet, discard weak-kneed relics of democracy such as a ban on torture.
Now, are some of people at Trump’s rallies displaying disturbing fascistic proclivities? Absolutely. And is Trump, through his racist and nationalistic bombast, attracting people with fascistic inclinations. No doubt. But as awful and ugly as this is, it is not the same thing as Trump himself being a fascist.
That’s what an actual fascist would do.
And anyway, can you be an adherent of something if you’re largely ignorant about that thing? I would argue No. So we have to think about what Donald Trump actually understands about fascism.
At one point, Buric notes that Mussolini “read voraciously and was heavily influenced by the German and French philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Marie Guyau, respectively. I doubt Trump would know who either of these two people were.”
In fact, I’d guess that Trump has probably heard of Nietzsche (although certainly not Guyau). Lots of people have heard of Nietzsche. But more to the point, Nietzsche and Guyau influenced Mussolni’s understanding of fascism. So who influenced Trump’s understanding of fascism?
Honestly, how much could Donald Trump possibly know about fascism? Think about it. What are the odds The Donald could come up with an even semi-coherent, basic definition of fascism?
I would guess almost zero.
So can Donald Trump be a fascist if he doesn’t really know what fascism is? I say No.
If you say Yes, if you believe that someone can be something they know nothing or very little about, then you’re in the camp that says: If it quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. And that’s what Buric’s argument about Trump’s fascism essentially comes down to. But that’s simply not good enough for me.
Think of it like this. Just because someone is really anti-authoritarian, perhaps because they’re selfish and immature, it doesn’t mean that person is an actual a Libertarian merely because Libertarianism is an anti-authoritarian ideology.
The anti-authoritarian person’s actions might fairly reflect certain aspects of Libertarian doctrine. However, the similarities between that person and an actual Libertarian are really quite superficial.
The anti-authoritarian person who knows little or nothing about Libertarianism, and (mis)behaves in ways that seem Libertarian but are actually driven by selfishness and immaturity, as opposed to understanding and promoting a Libertarian agenda, is not an actual Libertarian.
An actual Libertarian is a thoughtful person with whom you might disagree. The person described here is just a selfish, petulant, spoiled brat.
Like Donald Trump.
And why is this distinction important? For a lot of reasons. But for starters, if Donald Trump were a fascist, he would hate democracy and his ultimate goal would be to overturn our constitutional republic and install himself as dictator.
If you think that’s Donald Trump’s plan, then you and I are just gonna have to agree to disagree. Because from where I stand, he’s a lot of unsavory things, including a demagogue, but he most certainly not America’s Mussolini.