The Rise of American Fascism
The Fascist Party and Project 2025
There has been an attempt to dilute and obfuscate the meaning of the word "fascism," which—despite expert's arguments over more nuanced details—has both a clear definition and historical context that can be used to frame the word and compare it’s meaning to current events. The Encyclopedia Britannica has a good deal to say on the subject, but I want to highlight a few particular phrases:
"Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from one another, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation."
Lets break that down:
"...extreme militaristic nationalism,"
[ie. Proud Boys, The Patriots, etc]
"contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism,"
[ie. Claiming false elections without evidence, committing actual election fraud, voter suppression by both individuals and lawmakers, and hateful, demonizing rhetoric against liberals that uses words like "communist" and "socialist" as slurs.]
"a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites,"
[ie. hero worship of the billionaire class, tax breaks for the rich, support of exploitative labor, and a free pass for immoral and illegal behavior by the party members in office.]
"and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”),"
[ie. MAGA]
"in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation"
[ie. forcing abortion bans, anti-LGBTQ, and laws decided by their false Christian ideals.]
The attacks on the LGBTQ community are right out of the Nazi playbook, although it should also be noted that the Nazis took inspiration for their laws against immigrants and people of color—and ideas on eugenics—directly from the US. We ignore our shameful past to our own detriment, allowing history to repeat itself. The Trump admin had a long list of attacks on civil rights and what the party has planned will allow for much worse.
There are clear reasons to objectively label the current Republican party as fascist in nature, even just based off the similar behavior shown here. There are more reasons to do so, however, that include what laws they have recently passed, their proposals for the future, and even their own words. Believe them when they tell you who they are.
I would first like to point out that the religious aspect is just a tool and completely unassociated with actual Christianity, the leaders of which have denounced them ([Open Letter, Removal of Texas Bishop by Pope), as do the very words of the Bible they pretend to follow (1 Cor 5:12, John 18:36, Mark 12:17, Hebrews 13:17, 2 Cor 10:4). False prophets within Christian Nationalism have also been stoking violent rhetoric, pushing election lies and prophesying of times of “blood and death,” and “Shock and Awe.” just before Jan6, while also demonizing the opposition with Satanic accusations. Their use of religion is and always has been only an excuse to gain power.
It is important to make clear that fascism is not truly a political party. They take part in the political process only as a means to an end, similar to their use of the judicial system. The goal is to seize power and then make that power absolute so that they must never concede it. Taittinger stated the mindset openly:
“We defend the hierarchy of classes.…Everyone knows that there will always be different social levels, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the governing and the governed.”
By this, of course, he meant that the rich and powerful should have free and unregulated ability to control and exploit everyone else. The ideals of liberalism and socialism is the opposite of this—that the people should work together towards bettering society, towards real progress and the sharing of resources. Thus, it is antithetical to everything the fascist movement seeks to accomplish and must be resisted at all cost. There is no “reaching across the isle” between a democracy that values individual liberties, human rights, and the social good, with that of a fascist movement that values only power over others. They are not just contradictory, they cannot coexist—one is always the destruction of the other. They cannot compromise the same as liberalism and conservatism within a democracy.
Because the goal is to gain ultimate power and the mindset is that the ruling class is inherently superior, any violence and criminal action is justified to achieve that goal; a fascist movement cannot and will not ever concede power or admit that they lost fairly. To do so is to subject themselves to the lawful consequences of their hateful, violent, and illegal actions carried out to gain that power. This is crucial to understanding the next point; if Trump or any Nationalist should gain the White House, it will be the last presidential election of the country as we know it. Whatever happens, our country as it stands now will not survive and we will be forced to recreate something anew—or else live under fascist rule (at least for those they allow to live).
We have seen this to be true from their own words and actions. We have seen a systematic attempt to attack education via reduced funding and voucher programs (aka Education Savings Account Program). Voter suppression laws began hitting the books immediately after the failed insurrection of January 6th and have continuously called for raising the voting age to restrict the younger generation from voting against them.
Trump’s language has always been full of inflammatory dog whistles, including racism, intimidating witnesses, and even calling for vigilante retribution against the prosecutor and judge of one of his many court cases. Not only he has been unfazed by comparisons to Nazi rhetoric, he seems to welcome it. Trump telling people, “if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore,” was only the beginning. Calling the January 6th convicted “hostages” sets the stage to violently fight against the lawful consequences of those who listened to him the first time.
As we have seen with the Christian Nationalists currently leading the Republican party, it’s not just Trump—everyone is on board, Trump is just the current captain. Their willingness to excuse every crime and invitation to violence and insurrection, every incident of stolen documents, sexual assault, and misuse of government funds, every lie and disinformation campaign, every foreign donor, lobbyist bribe and conflict of interest, every Nazi flag and white supremacist, all shows how little they care for our country and its citizens. Insurrection 2.0 is coming and they already have plans for if they succeed.
Project 2025
The current efforts by Tuberville, Paul, and Vance to halt military, State Department, and DOJ appointees is to keep those positions open to be filled by extremists if Trump wins the next election. It’s the same playbook they used for the Supreme Court, which has worked out quite well for them. Then they will enact Project 2025, a sweeping revision not just of laws, but the entire structure of our government. They see Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society as detrimental to their vision of the future, two things that helped get this country through extremely difficult economic times—similar to what we’re facing now.
Not only that, but they want to dismantle or defund any and all accountability structures within the government, including the DOJ (which their man Clark argues should not be independent), the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Departments of Education and Commerce. Then they want to give what remains—including control of the FCC to allow disinformation—securely into the hands of the executive. Giving more and more power to the executive branch will weaken or destroy any remaining checks and balances, allowing them to maintain power indefinitely. By building a legal team of “conservative warriors,” they plan to squash any and all legal repercussions against this plan to blatantly establish a fascist system of control. A move that experts agree will involve carefully placing sycophants that will value the Party over the rule of law.
Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, tasked with implementing the Project 2025 policy program, has said that we have an “imperial Congress” and are holding “political prisoners” by jailing the January 6th insurrectionists. Vought says the plan is “to be thinking mechanically about how to take these institutions over,” by doing “whatever is necessary to seize control of the administrative state.” The plan is total control.
That control will be driven by their Conservative Governance Training, which aims to correct their longtime inability to actually govern. Something that will be necessary once they fire all of the honest government workers who have up till now refused to participate in their schemes. The term “conservative” is only a buzzword to draw in Republican constituents, the truth is that they are training die-hard party loyalists who will not balk at their abuse of the system (and the people) as they dismantle everything and rebuild it according to their grand fascist vision. The new party is unlikely to resemble anything that actual moderate conservatives value.
Vought claims that cutting social welfare programs like social security, the VA, Medicare and Medicaid are not the primary target, despite the party being vocal about doing just that. Probably because once they have complete control, they will be able to easily enact that agenda, by defunding or dismantling the agencies that handle them. It has only been put on the back burner because it’s so unpopular with even their own base, but that hardly means they’ve given up on the idea. Funding the rich at the cost of the poor has always been the plan.
Politico author Michael Hirsh thinks that little of the Project 2025 agenda is “even remotely likely” to happen, because of the problems it would cause and the inevitable collapse of our government as a result. One does not follow the other, however, just as the Soviet Union’s inability to govern did not stop them from trying and eventually collapsing. With a party that has repeatedly praised the leaders of US adversaries, particularly Vladimir Putin, undermined investigations into Russia’s influence, rejected aid for Ukraine, and held CPAC in Hungary, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that collapse may well be part of the plan.
However it plays out, one thing is certain, if a Heritage Foundation candidate—whether Trump or any other—manages to take the White House, it will be the last presidential election of our country as we know it. Even if we were to somehow remove the fascist regime from power, the process of doing so, coupled with their systematic dismantling of our governmental system, will leave us with little more than a husk. The union will be broken and we will have to recreate ourselves as a nation—if such is possible at all. Our current system is far from perfect; corruption in politics is rampant, with the oligarchy leading the majority of policy, police brutality continues largely unchecked, and we remain on a collision course with total climate collapse.
The way forward, though, does not come through destruction and scorched earth policies. In truth, the collapse and reconstruction of our system is something that would let the rich and powerful simply continue what they’ve been doing—exploit the planet and the poor both, entirely deaf to the consequences. Real change, actual progress, comes through refining the system, enforcing regulation, creating new anti-corruption laws and securing people’s basic human rights. All of which requires getting more progressive candidates in place, not giving up on the system entirely. We need to secure our democracy if we have any hope of securing a future for our children. Anything less will only result in chaos and destruction.
Edit: As of December 5th, 2023, Donald Trump has officially stated the quite part loud, admitting that he would be a dictator “only on day one.” By this, of course, he means that he will immediately abuse his authority to the utmost extreme, dismantling our democracy and replacing it with the fascist vision of the Heritage Foundation and Christian Nationalists. It is tantamount to an abuser telling you that they will only beat you when you step out of line. He has told us plain as day what he and the Republican party have planned. If we do not step up to prevent it, then we have only ourselves to blame.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/06/donald-trump-sean-hannity-dictator-day-one-response-iowa-town-hall
See the full source list for this post here: