Gage Skidmore
U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, and some of his Republican colleagues, have defended racist conspiracy theories and other hallmarks of fascism.
Former President Donald Trump is no longer in power, but as he gears up for 2024, allied members of Congress and popular propagandists continue to advance his dangerous program.
Republican representatives such as Matt Gaetz of Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, and Paul Gosar of Arizona argue for the validity of the “Great Replacement Theory,” a conspiracy theory that elites are seeking to dilute white power and wealth through multiculturalism and mass immigration. Tucker Carlson, without explicitly using the phrase, articulates the same message on his Fox News television program.
The Proud Boys were instrumental in the planning and execution of the January 6 insurrection, and they too have gone mainstream. At least six self-identified Proud Boys are now members of the GOP executive committee in Miami-Dade, the most populous county in Florida. Meanwhile, rightwing “Stop the Steal” activists are attempting to fill a variety of election positions, including Secretaries of State, in battleground states, threatening to demolish electoral integrity.
“Authoritarian,” “extreme,” “illiberal,” “anti-democratic,” and “populist” are the preferred mainstream terms for rightwing extremism. The problem is that none of these words mean much to the average American.
Republican Governors and state legislators are also cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights, banning books about Black history and the gay rights movement, and eliminating academic freedom in elementary and secondary schools. Trump’s plan for a second term, should he win the presidential race in 2024, according to a report by Axios, is to fire civil service workers throughout the government, including in the Department of Defense and Department of Justice, and replace them with loyalists.
Evidence of the rightwing threat to national security and democracy accumulates on a daily basis, but the mainstream media, and even left of center critics, continue to tread lightly. “Authoritarian,” “extreme,” “illiberal,” “anti-democratic,” and the most incoherent, “populist,” are the preferred terms of the Democratic Party, journalistic establishment, and commentariat when discussing rightwing extremism. The problem is that none of these words mean much to the average American.
The one word that effectively communicates the danger of the contemporary rightwing program is evidently forbidden: fascist.
A few mainstream figures have used the term in reference to the American right—Howard Dean, Robert Reich, George Conway, Joy Reid, and Steven Schmidt—but leading publications almost never print it. CNN recently declared a moratorium on the phrase, “Big Lie,” due to its Nazi origins. A feature in Vox considering the accuracy of “fascist” as descriptive of Donald Trump included the perspective of several academics, all but one discouraging use of the appellation. Curiously, Vox omitted the arguments of most academics and journalists who argue in its favor. As the Vox analysis shows, there is a widespread bias that “fascism” refers solely to the murderous and dictatorial governments of Europe in the mid-twentieth century.
Historian and journalist Paul Street responds to this narrow conception of fascism in his book, This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America. Fascist governments, Street argues, begin as fascist movements. Because of this, it is crucial to impede the advancement of fascist movements before they take power. This preventive measure is increasingly difficult without plain, accurate language.
Fascist movements have many common traits even if they do not share an exact political agenda.
I recently asked Anthony DiMaggio, political scientist at Lehigh University and author of Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here, why “fascist” is the best word to describe the Republican Party. His response: “Because it entails the cult of personality surrounding an aspiring dictator, rising anti-intellectualism, white supremacy, and eliminationist efforts to target or wipe out political enemies and ‘undesirable’ minority groups. That is a unique combination that includes, but goes beyond white nationalism.”
Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher, social critic, and novelist, identified traits of this “unique combination” in his 1995 essay, “Ur-Fascism.” Eco’s list of fourteen qualities reads like a dissection of the American right. Among Eco’s traits are “rejection of modernism,” “irrationalism,” “obsession with an enemy plot,” “contempt for the weak,” “selective populism,” and rhetorical reliance on “Orwellian Newspeak.”
Another common quality of fascism that DiMaggio and Eco respectively suggest is acceptance of violence as a political instrument. Republican collaboration with the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and Three Percenters, along with worshiping guns and celebrating Kyle Rittenhouse, more than check off that box.
Referring to the fascist governments of twentieth century Europe, DiMaggio highlights that “you’re never going to get a carbon copy of the past.” The question, he adds, is “whether there is enough overlap to make comparisons. I believe there is.”
Advocacy of “The Great Replacement Theory,” the findings of the January 6 Committee, and Republican sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin and praise for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán prove that there is plenty of room for comparison between the contemporary U.S. right and fascist movements of the past.
Indeed, “fascist” might be the only term that can make those connections clear.