Since taking office in January, United States President Donald Trump has undertaken policy after policy that has shocked Americans and the world. From launching an immigration crackdown and persecuting legal residents sympathetic to the Palestinian people to dismantling diversity and inclusion programmes and assaulting higher education and free speech, Trump has fully embraced far-right agendas. His critics at home and abroad have readily called him a fascist.
But fascism is not the ideology of choice for the US president. Fascist movements varied in their approaches to political and economic issues, but they have had several elements in common: The good of the nation is elevated above all, and the state plays an overarching role in society and the economy.
In other words, fascism was an attempt to reformulate the socialist ideal into a strong nationalistic framework. And as a historical reaction to communism and liberalism, it remains exiled in the 20th century, in “the age of extremes,” as the British historian Eric Hobsbawm famously called it.
Trump may be using the language of “America first” in his rhetoric, but he is not really pursuing the “good of the nation”. He is pursuing the good of the 1 percent.
Trump and his cheerleaders want to go beyond neoliberalism, which maintains that a minimal state is ideal for economic prosperity, and establish hypercapitalism by dissolving any controls the state has over the accumulation of wealth by the extremely rich.
They understand that we are living in times when extracting profit from society is not as easy, so they want to free capitalism from the hindrances of democracy and the demands of the people that their rights – political, social and human – be protected by the law and by the state.
The tech bros that Trump has surrounded himself with have wrapped this hypercapitalism in a technological cover, claiming that technology can solve all woes and unlimited growth – read unlimited profits for the rich – is the only way to progress.
This is clearly outlined in writings produced by the likes of Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley billionaire, who penned a Techno-Optimist Manifesto a year before US elections brought Trump to power for a second time. With an almost religious conception of technology and markets, he wrote: “Techno-Optimists believe that societies, like sharks, grow or die. … We believe in ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness – strength. … We believe in agency, in individualism. … We believe that there is no material problem – whether created by nature or by technology – that cannot be solved with more technology.”
This view combines unrestrained capitalism with transhumanism – the belief that humans should use technology to enhance their abilities – and an individualistic interpretation of Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest. It is easy to see that this sharp individualistic vision is the opposite of historical fascism, which prioritises the nation and the community over the individual.
Some may point to Trump’s tariff policies as proof that he has statist tendencies. But if you scratch the surface, you would see that the trade war the US president is waging is really not about “bringing jobs back”, “defending national interests” or reversing globalisation.
Trump is using tariffs as a coercive tool to force various countries into negotiating with him. When he announced a 90-day pause on some tariffs, he himself bragged about 75 governments reaching out to his administration. It is far more likely that these bilateral talks will be used to extort concessions that will favour big capital closely associated with the Trump administration rather than to defend the rights of American workers and to create the conditions for the return of manufacturing jobs to the US.
It is true that Trump has attracted the support of postfascist politicians in Europe and uses fascist language and tools, but that is not enough to brand him a “fascist”. European postfascists, like Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, have themselves veered away from fascist conceptions of state and economy. Meloni and others have readily embraced “free market” policies of cutting taxes for the rich and wiping out social security provision for the poor. Her economic policies differ little from Trump’s.
The US president has fully embraced xenophobic and racist language reminiscent of fascist rhetoric and launched a vicious campaign against immigrants. He does so not only to scare and win over marginalised parts of society but also to divert their growing discontent towards a racialised “other” rather than the wealthy class.
This strategy is working not only because of the growing resentment for liberal elites that the impoverished majority has accumulated but also because the left has failed to act.
Leftist and progressive politicians have condemned themselves to fruitlessly repeating the old right and left cliches, going on tirades about “Trump’s fascism” and debates about the Nazi or Roman salutes of his associates. Engaging in such rhetoric is futile and a waste of time and energy.
Instead, the left should focus on developing concrete strategies to counter Trump’s popularity and hypercapitalist drive. It should go back to the root of problems that ordinary people face in their lives: jobs, healthcare, education and the ever-deepening cynicism about politics. It needs to not only expose Trump for who he really is – a champion of big capital interests – but also to provide a solid, realistic alternative.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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