Like most historians of Modern Europe, I have studied fascism as it developed in the 1920s and 1930s; I have even developed and taught a course on the subject over the years, most recently in the fall of 2024. A question that comes up in class often is whether fascism can happen today in the United States. This question became prominent after the 2016 elections and, as one can imagine, became even more topical in my fall 2024 class.
What is fascism? This is a difficult ideology/system of government to define clearly, in part because of its many variations; Italian Fascism differed from German Nazism, and both differed from Romanian fascism, etc. In short, there are many kinds of fascism and there are a number of attempts to explain it. One of the best definitions of fascism is provided by the historian Robert Paxton who, in his book, “The Anatomy of Fascism,” calls it:
“…[A] form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restrains goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Even a casual reading of the above reveals that most of the elements Paxton enumerates have been present in segments of the American people; especially the sense that “our country has been taken away from us by the other” and the willingness to use violent methods to achieve certain goals such as “take our country back.” It appears then that what motivated segments of the Italian and German people in the 1920s and 1930s is also present in the United States today.
The above definition fits many of the actions and pronouncements of the current administration. We have already witnessed the “preoccupation with decline” and “cult of unity, energy, and purity” as well as “collaboration with traditional elites”; what we are only now seeing emerging is “redemptive violence” aiming at “external expansion.” The external expansion part is still limited to verbal threats on Panama, Canada, and Greenland, but the violence portion is taking place even as we speak; this includes past attacks on the U.S. Capitol but also the recent assassinations in Minnesota, which are also characteristics of fascist regimes when “aggrieved” individuals feel empowered to acts of violence.
Some of my students have noted that unlike “classical” fascism, MAGA has neither its own party nor its private paramilitary force. While that might have been true in 2016, by now the Republican Party has been taken over by the MAGA movement. Senators are voting exactly as the White House wants, often against the interest of their constituents, and a number of GOP elected officials lost primary contests because they were not close enough to the ideology and its leader. And while there is not a private MAGA paramilitary force (yet), let’s not forget that the fascists, once in power, weaponized and used elements of the state security forces to achieve their ends. This appears to be similar with the use of federal law enforcement agencies today to achieve the administration’s goals, especially what Paxton calls “internal cleansing,” not only by arresting immigrants who are in the country illegally, but also in order to spread fear by arresting legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens “by mistake.”
One could argue that the president was duly elected and thus his administration differs from fascist regimes. We should remember here that fascist regimes took power not by coup but by legal means. Once in power, fascists used the courts and the legislature, but especially emergency powers ordinarily reserved for special times, to gain more power. Eventually, they took over the country by such means as outlawing opposition parties, jailing dissidents of any kind, etc. We should also remember that some of the means used by fascism were illegal before it gained power but were legalized either through emergency powers or the capitulation of the legislative branch of the government.
Fascism is also an all-encompassing system seeking control of the state’s administrative apparatus, educational and cultural institutions, and the media. Fascist regimes even forced private businesses to act in a particular pro-government way or face adverse consequences. Currently, we see the administration taking over the state administrative apparatus by firing thousands of civil servants and replacing them with individuals faithful to MAGA ideology and its leader. The administration also uses threats to take direct or indirect control of educational and cultural institutions, and the media. It also uses the federal powers, and the threat of government interference, to force businesses to support its policies.
We are left then with the task of deciding: is the current administration fascist? To be sure, as of now it has not openly disobeyed court orders thus the “abandons democratic liberties” mentioned by Paxton has not come to pass. Can one claim, though, that this country, under the current administration, is on its way to becoming fascist? My job as a professor is not to tell people what to think but rather to bring issues to their attention, explain them, and let individuals decide for themselves. Read the definition provided by Paxton, and others, compare it with the actions and pronouncements of the administration and its allies, and draw your own conclusions.
John Mazis is a professor of European History at Hamline University.
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