In an article this week about how history can help us understand our new reality, historian Jane Caplan opens by echoing the common query: “Is Trump a fascist?” And then goes on to ask: Why do we want to know?
The article is incredibly useful as a distillation of what people need to be thinking about in this moment. But because Caplan is using it as a rhetorical tool, she doesn’t ever actually answer that second question. And I think it’s a very important one. So that’s my starting point here. Why do we ask if Trump is a fascist? What does that answer get us that simply identifying him as a bad man doesn’t?
My suspicion is that the reason why people keep asking that question is because it’s short-hand for: “Are we going to have to stop him?” If Trump were simply incompetent, or someone whom liberals thought held bad policy positions, then they could continue to rail against him, share posts that ridiculed him, complain about him at parties, and wait out the four years until, hopefully, they could vote him out of office with the help of Republicans who by then were suffering from buyers’ remorse.
But if the answer to that question, Is Trump a fascist? is Yes… well, then that sets in motion an entirely different set of imperatives. Then we actually have to do something. If Trump is a fascist, and his advisors, appointees, and financial supporters are fascists, then he and they are an existential threat to an entire moral structure. If that is now at risk, then the political, social and economic systems that are built around that central moral premise are also under threat. For the purposes of this article, we won’t examine whether any or all of those are fundamentally flawed and brought rise to Trump in the first place.
What we know is that it is very difficult for people to absorb substantial changes to their routines. Endless studies have been done that show people have a really hard time switching into emergency mode. Whether it’s during fires, terrorist attacks, or simply in response to an unexpected encounter, we are hard-wired to fall back on the habitual.
So, in this moment, when the absolutely extraordinary is happening, every previous instance of winners and losers in an election cycle is pushing us to adopt certain kind of behavior. Typically, in the No Man’s Land of the transition, those on the losing side vow to redouble their efforts to protect and push forward their agenda. And those on the winning side promise that the new government is there to serve all citizens. There is a choreography that both sides follow that is determined by the framework of Constitutional law, the bylaws and protocols of Congress, the Executive branch, and the military/security community.
There are powerful, centripetal forces at work – both psychological and institutional. So to ask the question: Is Trump a fascist? is an oblique way to ask if we are going to have to resist all of that, wrench ourselves out of the vice-like hold of normality, and fight. We haven’t yet wanted to ask it plainly and directly, as if just by articulating it as a possibility we might accidentally make it so. And because we’re so used to the answer to that question being No, we are hoping against hope that it is again.
Sorry.
Is Trump a fascist? Yes.
Are you going to have to fight? Yes.
Martini Wisdom 