Not all authoritarians are fascists.

A few days ago I responded to a post about Trump being a fascist on one of my friend’s social media page, then made a few comments on the consultancy social media page by way of follow up. Given the subsequent back and forth (including with regular KP reader Diane under her other social media moniker) I figured I might as well share my thoughts here. I realise that it may seem pedantic (it is) and inconsequential (it is not), but the misuse of value added terms is a trigger for me. So, with my political science/comparative politics hat on, let me offer some thoughts on the matter.

First, by way of prelude and backdrop to why I have decided to opine about this particular subject, let me explain something about analytic precision, specifically the notion of conceptual integrity. Conceptual transfer is an analytic tool where a concept is taken out of its original context in order to explain a different phenomenon that replicates the original meaning intact. The integrity of the original meaning is upheld in spite of the transfer. Say, a wheel back when is a wheel today even if its specific features are different. Conversely, conceptual stretching is a situation when a concept is stretched beyond its original meaning in order to describe a different, usually related but not the same, phenomenon. It loses explanatory and analytic integrity as it is stretched to explain something different. For example, when a hawk is called an eagle or an orca is called a killer whale. As an analytic tool the former is methodologically sound and intellectually honest. The latter is not. Conceptual integrity and precision is particularly important when using loaded or charged words, especially in contentious areas like politics.

There are plenty of authoritarians but only few were fascists or neo-fascists. There are Sultanistic regimes like those of the Arab oligarchies. There are theocracies like Iran (which used elections as a legitimating device). There one party regimes like the Belarus, PRC, DPRK, Syria and Cuba, one party dominant/limited contestation regimes like Algeria,Egypt, several of the K-stans, Hungary, Russia, Singapore, Tunisia, Turkey, Nicaragua and Venezuela and Egypt, military-bureaucratic regimes like those of the Sahel, and a variety of personalist and oligarchical leaders and regimes elsewhere. The way in which leadership is contested/selected and exercised, the balance between repression and ideological appeals in regime governing approaches, the mixture of inducements (carrots) and constraints (sticks) when it comes to specific key policy areas (say, in labor, tax, sexual preference and reproductive rights laws). There are many manifestations of the authoritarian phenomenon, so mislabeling some types as others compounds the practical and conceptual problems associated with the conceptual imprecision and confusion.

That is why it is unfortunate that Trump is being labeled a “fascist.” He clearly is a dictator wanna-be but fascism was a political movement specific to 20th century interwar Europe that combined charismatic leaders at the head of a mass mobilisational one party regimes with specific economic projects (state capitalist heavy industrialisation in the case of Nazi Germany) and state-controlled forms of interest group representation (state corporatism, to be specific). Fascist gain power via elections, then end them. Trump may lead the MAGA movement but he has no ideological project other than protectionist economics, diplomatic and military isolationism and nativist prejudice against assorted “others.” He prefers to manipulate rather than eliminate elections as a legitimating device. Barring an outright military takeover at this command, he will not be able to control the three branches of government even if he wants and tries to. He cannot control how interest groups are organised and represented unless he changes US laws governing interest representation and intermediation. Most fundamentally, he is just about himself, using tried and true scapegoating and fear-mongering in an opportunistic push to gain power. It worked once in 2016, so he is at it again, this time with a “better” (Project 2025) plan. That is scary but not fascist per se.

The closest he gets to a proper political category is national populist. As seen in the likes of Juan Peron in Argentina, Getulio Vargas in Brazil and Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico, these were charismatic leaders of mass mobilised movements as well, but who had different economic projects, different social bases (e.g. German Nazism and Franco’s fascist regime in Spain were middle class-based whereas Italian fascism and Argentine Peronism was urban working class-based and Mexican populism under Cardenas was peasantry-based), and who did not use warmongering to restore their nations to a position of global dominance (as did the European fascists). Trump’s base is low education working and lower middle class rubes encouraged by opportunistic business elites who self-interestedly see short-term benefit from supporting him. In other words, his supporters are the greedy leading the stupid.

It appears that respected people like Generals Milley and Kelly, who served in the Trump administration, are mistaken when they ever to him as a fascist. What they are describing is no more than garden party electoral authoritarians such as that of Viktor Urban or Recep Erdogan. Trump may admire despots like Putin, Kim and Xi, but he is a long way from being able to copy them, and none of them is a fascist in any event. Dictatorial ambition and authoritarian approaches come in many guises beyond the often misused term fascism. In fact, superstructural affinities like rhetorical style, corruption and bullying tendencies aside, Trump is less a fascist than he is a lesser moon in the authoritarian universe.

If I had to label him, I would say that Trump is a populist demagogue who has strong authoritarian ambitions such as purging the federal government of non-loyalists and persecuting his political opponents. Perhaps he will graduate into becoming a full-blown dictator. But what he is not is a fascist, at least not in the proper sense of the word. He is too ignorant to implement a modern variant of fascism in a place like the US, and there are too many institutional and social counters in the US to any move he may make in that direction. What I will admit is that he has neo-Nazis in his inner circle (Stephen Miller) and evil Machiavellians as his consiglieri (Steve Bannon, soon to be released from jail for contempt of Congress). Along with assorted lesser ogres equipped with the Project 2025 playbook, it is possible that they could turn the US political system into something resembling a modern variant of a national populist regime. But there is a ways to go before that happens.

I therefore feel that it is unfortunate and counterproductive to call him a fascist. It is like how he and his minions call Kamala Harris a “communist” or “socialist.” The labels are absurd and betray a profound ignorance of what those terms mean (and the differences between them), but they make for good red meat rallying points for a MAGA base that lacks the education or common sense to see the smear for what it is or the reality that communists and socialists do not get to hold the positions of California Attorney General, US Senator and Vice President (the closest they have come in recent times is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and he is no communist).

If the good generals and Vice President Harris decided to take a page out of his fear-mongering smear playbook by calling him a fascist, that may be understandable given the danger he poses for US democracy. But it is also dishonest (given Milley and Kelly’s educations, I find hard to believe that they do not know what fascism is and is not, but then again, many general grade officers major in military history, international relations and/or security studies rather than comparative political science and so may not be familiar with the proper definitions of the term. As for Harris, she is trained as a lawyer. Enough said).

Anyway, the point of this undoubtably boring exegesis is to get a pet peeve off of my chest, which is the resort to conceptual stretching in order to negatively frame narratives about political phenomena.