Before the 2022 midterms, President Joe Biden gave a menacing speech with cartoonish black-and-red colors, accusing “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans” of extremism that threatens the “very foundations of our Republic.” Some conservatives thought the aesthetics were close to fascism, complete with dire warnings about an internal enemy. The tactic worked. Abortion overwhelmed economic worries and there was no “red wave.”
President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech on September 1, 2022, in Philadelphia. (Credit Image: © Kyle Mazza/TheNEWS2 via ZUMA Press Wire)
Mr. Biden clearly aimed to use the same strategy in his re-election bid. His disastrous debate performance cut that short, but the Democrats slotted in Kamala Harris, who soon began leading in the polls. She is duplicating Joe Biden’s tactic of calling President Trump a threat to the Republic, but has raised the stakes by calling him a fascist.
The justification for this were comments from former Trump Chief of Staff John Kelly and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley. General Kelly said Donald Trump is “certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators” and thus “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist.” General Milley, who will go down in history for presiding over the defeat in Afghanistan, told Bob Woodward that President Trump is a “fascist to the core” and the “most dangerous person to this country.” One wonders whether these two men, who are hardly battlefield legends, know what “fascism” is.
Now Mrs. Harris says President Trump wants a military that will be a “personal militia.” “Anyone who refuses to bend a knee or dares to criticize him would qualify, in his mind, as the enemy from within. Like judges, like journalists, like nonpartisan election officials. It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
The media coverage of this has been extraordinary.
- “People are calling Trump a fascist. What Does That Mean?,” CNN, October 24, 2024
- “Is Donald Trump a fascist? An assessment from an expert in our Department of History,” Durham University, October 28, 2024 – (The “expert” says Donald Trump would act like a fascist if he could.)
- “So, Is Trump Really A Fascist?,” Foreign Policy, October 30, 2024 – (The original title was much stronger, so you can guess the answer to the question.)
- “Opinion: Harris finally calls Trump a fascist. But don’t take her word for it. Take his.” Detroit Free Press, October 30, 2024
- “Donald Trump’s Fascist Romp,” The Atlantic, October 15, 2024 (Also, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is “complicit.”)
- “Calling Trump a Fascist Is Well Overdue. Why Did It Take So Long?,” The Nation, October 25, 2024
There are countless other articles.
Forty-nine percent of Americans fell in line and now see President Trump as a fascist.
There is often hysteria about conservatives supposedly building a private power base. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis set up a State Guard like those other governors have, some opponents charged this was going to be a paramilitary force. It was for disaster relief. If Ron DeSantis had the nomination, at least some people would be calling him a fascist, too.
Yet there is also something more sinister about the Democrats’ charges. Much of what Kamala Harris accuses President Trump of is already state policy. It was the Biden/Harris Administration that launched a political witch hunt in the military soon after taking office and imposed race-based policies on a greater scale than ever before. The federal government and some local governments (such as New York) are waging lawfare against President Trump, his allies, and groups on the right. Mrs. Harris wants more control over social media and online speech.
Credit Image: © Michael Nigro/Pacific Press via ZUMA Press Wire
Most of all, Kamala Harris promises an expansion of racial set-asides and DEI, essentially championing racial collectivism for her coalition. It is the Democrats who are united by talk of an internal enemy: the white man and his “privilege.” For Mrs. Harris, the United States is “the scene of a crime” because of white racism.
Almost no non-whites in politics seem to believe in a post-racial future; instead, everyone promotes the racial interests of his own group. Mrs. Harris’s support for reparations must be seen in that context. Those of us who see deplatforming, politically motivated investigations, disparate sentencing and prosecutions, and media and government hostility towards against us find it hard to take Kamala Harris’s accusations of fascism seriously.
Yet that does not mean the attacks won’t work. The United States is in the grip of a Brown Scare. Federal law enforcement thinks far-right extremism is the greatest domestic threat. The House passed a resolution saying that “Replacement Theory” leads to violence. President Joe Biden said he ran for President because of the rally in Charlottesville, and repeatedly claimed that President Trump praised neo-Nazis. Even the liberal fact-checkers at Snopes corrected him.
Pop culture has been in a state of panic since 2017, with shows such as The Man in the High Castle, Hunters, The Boys, and video games such as the Wolfenstein sequels that suggest Nazis almost did seize power in America — and could again! Censorship is common in online gaming, on YouTube, and on social media to prevent far-right “radicalization.” The New York Times is working with Media Matters to urge more censorship in the name of curbing “election falsehoods.” Elon Musk’s purchase of X is one bright spot, though Jared Taylor and American Renaissance are still banned. “Punch a Nazi” became a mainstream media message soon after President Trump’s inauguration, with the definition of “Nazi” left up to antifa.
Since World War II, “fascism” has replaced Satan as the ultimate evil, and emotional blackmail works even on people who should know better. During the South African referendum that handed a First World country to the ANC, the pro-black-rule side featured Eugene Terre Blanche and the paramilitary AWB as the villains. “YOU can stop this man,” read one ad featuring a right-winger holding a gun, suggesting that the vote favored by the government, the ANC, the United States, Soviet Union, and big business was a plucky act of rebellion by underdogs.
Today, farm murders, street crime, and everyday chaos lack the moral impact of stopping fascism. Similar appeals in European elections in the final days of campaigns have also proven effective, with populist parties never quite winning enough seats to take power and change policy. It is attractive to tell voters that they are the “resistance” against the bad guys they have seen in movies, television, and video games, and it is even better when resistance involves no danger.
This has happened before in America. While Hollywood and schools lecture us about the supposed evils of the Red Scare and downplay the reality of Communist infiltration, few Americans know about the “Brown Scare” of the 1930s. The House Un-American Activities Committee is a favorite boogeyman of authors and artists because it investigated Communists after World War II, but it was originally set up in 1934 to examine “the extent, character, and objects of Nazi propaganda activities in the U.S.” In 1944, at the urging of President Franklin Roosevelt, it put on the so-called Great Sedition Trial of American opponents of entering World War II, none of whom posed a serious threat or had much influence. Defendant Lawrence Dennis wrote: “One of the most significant features of the Trial was the utter insignificance of the defendants in relation to the great importance which the government sought to give to the Trial by all sorts of publicity seeking devices, one of which was the staging of the Trial in the nation’s capital.” The case was so slapdash it eventually ended in a mistrial, and the government was too embarrassed to try it again.
One of the organizations on trial, the German-American Bund, is back in the news. The group’s most famous event was a rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1939 that drew 20,000 people.
Countless other organizations and candidates have held political rallies at the Garden since then, including about 16,000 Communists one week after the Bund’s rally. Madison Square Garden was also home to the 1976, 1980, and 1992 Democrat National Conventions, and the GOP used it for George W. Bush’s successful 2004 campaign.
But for Donald Trump, holding it there was proof of fascism.
Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said Mr. Trump’s event was a “direct parallel” to the 1939 rally. The DNC also projected the message “Trump Praised Hitler” onto the garden during the event.
Since the collapse of Communism, anti-fascism has been the ideological glue holding Western societies together. Paul Gottfried’s Anti-Fascism: The Career of a Concept argues that the definition of fascism, nebulous even during and after World War II, expanded thanks to “Frankfurt School luminaries” such as Eric Fromm, Theodor Adorno, and William Reich to include “psychological underpinnings of anti-Semitism,” and even “sexual repression.” Abortion, homosexuality, and other forms of sexual “liberation” thus become “anti-fascist.” The Harris campaign has evoked The Handmaid’s Tale to accuse Donald Trump (of all people) of wanting to introduce a theocratic dictatorship. The socially conservative policies in Project 2025 serve the same function, even though President Trump has disavowed them. Tim Walz and Harris surrogates are also trying to make pornography and casual sex political issues: Old white men are trying to repress you.
The psychological reconstruction of postwar Germany, which gave Germans feelings of guilt, shame, and loathing towards patriotism and tradition, launched the modern approach to anti-fascism. Dr. Gottfried argues that this was taken farther in West Germany than East Germany, despite the latter’s more explicit “anti-fascist” propaganda, because in the West, it was part of deconstruction and therapeutic conditioning. Not surprisingly, West Germans are less resistant to multiculturalism, while the East supports the populist right. Progressives champion the deconstruction of Germany as a model for all white countries. Each has its own “original sin:” colonialism, residential school “genocide,” slavery, or just being prosperous. Whether a country had an empire or not — or was part of an empire like Ireland and Eastern Europe — whites must be “decolonized” though mass immigration.
In Return of the Strong Gods, R.R. Reno argued that the West created an anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, and anti-nationalist order in direct response to the world wars. He accurately analyzes the problem, but not the solution. He takes refuge in a vague Christianity. Yet even this retreat to religion captures something. Rather than a creation myth or a sacred origin, the modern West is rooted in shame. The Holocaust takes the place of the expulsion from Eden, Hitler replaces Satan, and World War II is the primordial act of creation of the modern world, built in reaction against evil. While the Allied victory in World War II can still be celebrated, even heroes such as Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle are ripe for cancellation, and the social and racial views of Allied soldiers would today be scorned.
There is a saying that “the woke are more correct than the mainstream.” Normal people often hold views that are incorrect or incoherent but that let them function in society. A normal American will say “Martin Luther King wanted a colorblind society.” It’s a pleasing fiction. A progressive who argues that Martin Luther King favored race preferences and wanted socialism is celebrating King authentically.
Perhaps the same is true about Donald Trump and fascism. Donald Trump is not a fascist like Mussolini. Yet he wants to Make America Great Again, to be a personal leader, and he calls for American wealth, power, and achievement. In a political atmosphere of anti-fascism and deconstruction, this is subversion. Anyone who truly believes in “anti-fascism” must oppose calls to national greatness. A culture of shame and guilt is necessary because it prevents Western nations from becoming great again. Being great again would require being “racist” again. White men, if they are to have a place in this new anti-fascist order, must act like “white dudes” — man-children who take solace in pornography and fornication rather than building families and a future for a country of their own.
The charge of fascism is the most extreme form of emotional blackmail that progressives can use. A fascist is a threat to the constitutional order, and, therefore, outside the law. If someone truly believes Donald Trump is a fascist, why ever concede the election, regardless of the results? Also, if “experts” say Donald Trump is a fascist, isn’t it permissible to attack his supporters?
Conservatives who argue that the progressives are the true “fascists” miss the point. It doesn’t matter that modern progressives argue for government control of speech, the economy, or even the military-industrial complex. “Fascism,” in the way that the word is really used, means having a positive attitude towards white people and the traditional civilization they created.
Years ago, Jonah Goldberg wrote Liberal Fascism to pin the “fascist” label on the Left and attack right-wing critics such as Pat Buchanan. However, the main thing critics took from the book was his statement that the “white man is the Jew of liberal fascism.” The woke are more correct than the mainstream, or even conservatives. The reason non-white ethnonationalists are moral and progressive — and white ethnonationalists are Nazis to be crushed — is because the latter are white. Almost everyone is a nationalist for the people he likes, and the difference between a fascist and freedom fighter is melanin count.
Don’t waste time trying to prove Donald Trump is not a fascist by explaining his free-market views or opposition to foreign wars. Don’t point out that in many ways, the Biden/Harris Regime now behaves in a “fascist” way. “Fascist” is not a political charge, but a racial one. Has a non-white, no matter how brutal or dictatorial, ever been called a fascist? Just as all white people are “racist,” why can’t they all be “fascist” too? Stereotypical “fascism” — strong central authority, censorship, and war against domestic enemies — will come in the name of anti-fascism, except the trains still won’t run on time and will be filled with non-white louts who smell like weed.
The good news is that just as “racist” is beginning to lose its sting, the F-word may also fade — if Donald Trump wins. If he loses, the Left will know that emotional blackmail still works, and the resulting Brown Scare of the next decade will make the one from a century ago look like a school rehearsal. I’ll see you at the next Great Sedition Trial.
Having turned the election into an existential battle, progressives can’t afford to show mercy if they win. That would be an admission they never believed their own propaganda. What should worry conservatives is not that progressives are cynical frauds. In their own way, progressives really do believe Donald Trump and his base are fascists, and therefore, an enemy to be destroyed, not just defeated.
