Donald Trump and fascism

Protest sign at a rally in 2018, describing Donald Trump as a fascist

There has been significant academic and political debate over whether Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and 47th President-elect of the United States, can be considered a fascist, especially during his 2024 presidential campaign. Critics of Trump have drawn comparisons between him and fascist leaders over authoritarian actions and rhetoric. Others have argued that Trump is not fascist but an authoritarian populist, or have accused critics of using the term as an insult rather than making legitimate comparisons.

Background

Further information: Fascism in North America § Donald Trump and fascism

An October 2024 poll held by ABC News and Ipsos indicated that of the candidates in the 2024 United States presidential election, 49% of registered voters considered Trump to be a fascist.

Donald Trump is an American businessman and politician who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. He lost in the 2020 United States presidential election to Joe Biden, and defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 United States presidential election.

Fascism is an ideological term which refers to a broad set of aspirations and influences that emerged in the early 20th century, exemplified by the European dictators Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Francisco Franco; and include elements of nationalism, enforcement of social hierarchies, hatred towards social minority groups, opposition to liberalism, the cult of personality, racism, and the love of militaristic symbols. According to the anti-fascist and socialist writer George Orwell, the term Fascist was oftentimes rendered meaningless in common parlance by its frequent use as an insult.

Since Trump was elected to office in 2016, many academics have compared Trump's politics to fascism. Several have pointed out that contrasts exist between historical fascism and Trump's politics. Many also argued that "fascist elements" have operated within and around Trump's movement. Following the January 6 attack, some voices within the academic community felt that things had changed and that Trump's politics and connections with fascism deserved greater scrutiny.

According to an October 2024 poll held by ABC News and Ipsos, 49% of American registered voters considered Trump to be a fascist, defined in the poll as "a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents". 23% considered Kamala Harris to be a fascist. Another YouGov survey from the same year reported that about 20% of Americans believed that Trump saw Hitler as completely bad; among Republican respondents, four in ten believed that Trump held such position. The same poll reported that nearly half of Trump voters would continue to support a political candidate even if he or she stated that Hitler had done some good things, a position that was held by a quarter of all respondents.

Comparisons

Anti-democratic sentiment and illiberalism

Further information: Trumpism § Parallels with fascism and trend towards illiberal democracy

See also: Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign § Authoritarian and antidemocratic statements

During his 2016 campaign, Trump implied that he would not accept the results of the 2016 United States presidential election if he did not win, preemptively claiming that he could only lose due to electoral fraud. Following his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election, Trump and other Republicans tried to overturn the results, making widespread false claims of fraud. Due to these false claims, in addition to the January 6 United States Capitol attack that Trump allegedly incited, political opponents have labeled Trump as a "threat to democracy".

Journalist Patrick Cockburn stated that Trump's politics risk turning the United States into an illiberal democracy similar to Turkey, Hungary, or Russia. According to civil rights lawyer Burt Neuborne and political theorist William E. Connolly, Trump's rhetoric employs tropes similar to those used by fascists in Germany to persuade citizens (at first a minority) to give up democracy, by using a barrage of falsehoods, half-truths, personal invective, threats, xenophobia, national-security scares, religious bigotry, white racism, exploitation of economic insecurity, and a never-ending search for scapegoats. Some research has highlighted Trump's connections to neoliberalism and has argued that his policies represent an intensification of such policies as part of a "fascist creep" on American politics.

During his 2024 campaign, Trump has made numerous authoritarian and antidemocratic statements. Trump's previous comments, such as suggesting he can "terminate" the Constitution to reverse his election loss, his claim that he would only be a dictator on "day one" of his presidency and not after, his promise to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, and his plan to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy the military in Democratic cities and states, have raised concerns over Trump's rhetoric.

During his tenure as president, Trump and his allies attempted to designate Antifa, an opposition movement, as a terrorist organization. Previous attempts at framing opponents of fascism as terrorists were also done by 1930s fascists.

Trump has stated that he would deploy the military on American soil to fight "the enemy from within", which he describes as "radical left lunatics" and Democratic politicians such as Adam Schiff. His political rhetoric since 2016 has been based on a us vs them framework, with the in-group being defined as "real Americans" and the rival, out-groups including Muslims, leftists, intellectuals and immigrants. He has repeatedly encouraged weaponized chants at his rallies, including calls to imprison 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and has promoted the conspiracy theory that Jewish philanthropist George Soros was responsible for a large influx of illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States.

Trump has repeatedly voiced support for outlawing political dissent and criticism he considers misleading or challenges his claims to power. After General Mark Milley said that Trump would start persecuting his political opponents if he won the 2024 presidential election, Trump suggested that Milley should be executed for treason, with Republican representative Paul Gosar further stating that, in a better society, "sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung". Retired general Barry McCaffrey said, regarding Trump's statements, that "what we are seeing is a parallel to the 1930s in Nazi Germany". Trump's formal policy plan for a second term, Agenda 47, has been characterized as fascist. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat stated that the similarities between the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 and Mussolini's "Laws for the Defense of the State", which transformed Italy into a repressive regime, are "striking", citing the elimination of judicial independence and the strengthening of executive authority.

How Democracies Die author Daniel Ziblatt said that Trump's combined employment of false allegations against his political opponents and allusions of retribution by American patriots is similar to tactics used by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and 1930s European fascists. An analysis by NPR found that between 2022 and October, 2024 "Trump has made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents."

Political violence

Trump has repeatedly expressed support for violent actions by law enforcement and his supporters since the early days of his first presidential campaign in August 2015. He was reported to, during his presidency, have called for undocumented immigrants to be shot in the leg as a way of deterrence. He suggested that his hecklers be "knocked the hell" out by his supporters and praised then-House candidate Greg Gianforte after he body-slammed The Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs while he was asking questions, stating that "any guy who can do a body slam is my kind of guy". Trump said at a 2016 rally that "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters". He had previously joked about the topic of killing journalists several times prior, including when he said that he "would never kill them", before reconsidering: "Uh, let's see, uh? ... No I wouldn't. I would never kill them, but I do hate them. And some of them are such lying, disgusting people, it's true." Some historians consider Trump's praise of violence against his critics, among other behaviors, as fitting a characteristic of fascism.

In a Missouri rally that resulted in multiple fights and arrests, Trump complained, after being interrupted by protesters, that there were no longer any "consequences" for protesting and stated that "You know, part of the problem and part of the reason it takes so long is nobody wants to hurt each other anymore, right?" In a 2017 speech directed a law-enforcement officers, Trump encouraged them to be "rough" on suspects. Trump has described, in 2016, instances of violence at his rallies as "appropriate".

He said during the 2016 election that "the Second Amendment people" could prevent the nomination of Democratic Supreme Court justices. In 2019, he stated that "I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump, I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough, until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad". In a 2018 interview with Axios reporter Jim Vandehei, the interviewer asked: "when you're saying 'enemy of the people, enemy of the people', ... what happens if all of a sudden someone gets shot, somebody shoots one of these reporters?", to which Trump answered: "it is my only form of fighting back". Trump has praised modern authoritarian leaders several times. In 2016, he expressed respect for Kim Jong Un for murdering his uncle, saying "It's incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one." He has praised Vladimir Putin several times, and, in 2018, he spoke positively of Xi Jinping's ability to eliminate his term limits. About the Tiananmen Square protests, he said that "When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength." Trump has often used negative terms to describe democratic leaders, calling Germany's Angela Merkel "stupid", Canada's Justin Trudeau "two-faced" and France's Emmanuel Macron "very, very nasty". He called Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi "my favorite dictator".

During the George Floyd protests, Trump urged his general Mark Milley to take charge of dealing with the protesters. After Milley resisted, saying that the National Guard should be deployed instead, Trump told his staff "You are all losers!" and asked Mark Milley "Can't you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?" Subsequently, Milley wrote a letter of resignation for Trump, which stated, referring to America's role in the Second World War, that "That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism... It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against." He ultimately decided not to send the letter to Trump and stayed on his position.

After general Milley refused to engage with George Floyd protesters, Trump staged a dramatic walk alongside him (in the green uniform at 0:17) and his other staff through Lafayette Square in order to take a picture holding a bible. Both Milley and defense secretary Mark Esper, who also participated in the walk, feared that this stunt would politicize the military. Milley then drafted a resignation letter stating that Trump betrayed the values of the American generation that "has fought against fascism".

Protesters being dispersed by police ahead of Trump's arrival. Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat said that "this was an authoritarian spectacle... A cocktail of all the elements authoritarians have used in history: a lawless ruler attacking protesters."

Three Percenters at a Virginia rally, January 2020

Bob Dreyfuss, writing for The Nation, notes that Trump has been offered support and security by paramilitary groups including the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters, and Dreyfuss proposes a parallel to the civilian militias that Hitler and Mussolini engaged. He describes Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento, which was established in the early 1920s as a decentralized street militia that would attack his political opponents, and Hitler's Sturmabteilung (SA), which provided protection to Hitler during his street events and engaged in violence against political opponents, violently taking control of the city of Coburg in November 1922. Trump told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" in 2020, before the group participated in the January 6 attack, and during Trump's presidency, several of his armed supporters occupied several state capitols, organized around the Mexican border, and engaged in street fights with Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters. After a Black protester was beaten by his supporters during a 2015 rally, Trump said that the man "should have been roughed up". Fascism scholar Steve Ross said that, although he did not believe that Trump was Hitler, "We had the same thing happening in Germany in the 1920s with people being roughed up by the Brownshirts and they deserved it because they were Jews and Marxists and radicals and dissidents and gypsies. That was what Hitler was saying."

During the 2016 election, several fights broke between Trump supporters and those of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Both Clinton and Sanders distanced themselves from their violent supporters. Trump, conversely, has praised violent actions by his supporters several times and offered to pay their legal fees. In the same year, Trump accused Sanders of sending "his disruptors" to his events and tweeted "Be careful Bernie, or my supporters will go to yours!"

After a protestor was removed from his rally in 2016, Trump said "Try not to hurt him. If you do, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it." In the same year, he said "If you see someone getting ready to throw tomatoes knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously. OK. Just knock the hell... I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees." He said "I love the old days, you know? You know what I hate? There’s a guy totally disruptive, throwing punches. We're not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks." Trump said in the same year, about an anti-Trump protestor that was being removed from his rally, that "I'd like to punch him in the face".

January 6 attack

The January 6 United States Capitol attack has been compared to the Beer Hall Putsch by some academics.

The attack on the United States Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, has been compared by some academics to the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed coup attempt in Germany by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler against the Weimar government in 1923.

Anatomy of Fascism author Robert Paxton, a political scientist and historian specializing in the study of fascism, previously denied that Trump should be labeled a fascist but changed his views following the January 6 attack. Paxton saw the attack on the capitol as similar to both Mussolini's 1922 march on Rome, in which his blackshirts successfully took over Italy's capital, and the 1934 far-right anti-parliamentary riot in Paris; however, he also believes that "the word fascism has been debased into epithet, making it a less and less useful tool for analyzing political movements of our times". Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote that, just as Mussolini eventually pardoned the blackshirts who helped him ascend to power, Trump has also vowed to pardon his supporters who were convicted of crimes related to January 6.

Storming of Michigan state capitol

See also: April 30 storming of the Michigan State Capitol

On April 30, 2020, less than a year prior to the January 6 attack and two weeks after Trump published social media posts urging his supporters to "liberate" the state of Michigan from COVID-19 policies, hundreds of Trump supporters, including militia members, gathered around the Michigan state capitol to prevent a public health measure from coming into effect. About 100 protesters entered the capitol, where they displayed nooses and carried confederate flags, as well as signs that read "Tyrants Get the Rope". During the incident, Trump endorsed the protesters and urged governor Gretchen Whitmer to negotiate with them, tweeting that "These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal with the protesters". The protesters successfully convinced Republican state senators to kill the measure.

American Journal of Public Health editor Alfredo Morabia cited the Michigan attacks, the plot to kidnap Whitmer and other incidents of disruption by armed political groups as build ups to the January 6 attacks.

Dehumanization and racism

Further information: Racial views of Donald Trump and Rhetoric of Donald Trump § Violence and dehumanization

See also: Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign § Violent and dehumanizing statements

Trump's embrace of far-right extremism and several statements and actions have been accused of echoing fascism, Nazi rhetoric, far-right ideology, antisemitism, and white supremacy. In 2018, Dr. Mike Cole, Emeritus Professor in Education and Equality at Bishop Grosseteste University (UK) stated that Trump's racist and fascistic rhetoric and accompanying agenda targeted at people of color in the US and elsewhere, and his use of Twitter promoted a public pedagogy of hate to add legitimacy to fascism. Cole highlighted neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin's connections to the alt-right to claim it is a new (neo-) fascist movement, but with links to older fringe white supremacist movements, rather than just a component of right-wing conservatism. Mattias Gardell has argued that Trump's "key fascist vision of national rebirth" featured "banal nationalism, Americanism, nativism, white supremacy, manifest destiny, and racialized discourse and practice". Gardell argues that while most Trump voters were not fascist, his rhetoric featured a return to "fascist elements" of political nostalgia and that a "heterogenous milieu of white nationalists, radical traditionalists, alt-right identitarians, conspiracy exposers, militias, neo-confederates, and sovereign citizens" were knowingly catered to by Trump, which related to an important "affective dimension which fascism frequently caters to".

Trump's comments comparing his political enemies to "vermin" who will be "rooted out" have been compared by several historians to fascistic rhetoric made by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. During a rally in 2023, Trump stated:

In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country—that lie and steal and cheat on elections, and will do anything possible; they'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and to destroy the American Dream.

The comments were compared to comments made by Nazi politician Wilhelm Kube in February 1933 in a Nazi propaganda publication where he stated, "The Jews, like vermin, form a line from Potsdamerplatz until Anhalter Banhof ... The only way to smoke out the vermin is to expel them." They were also compared to Oswald Mosley's British fascists referring to Jews as "rats and vermin from the gutters of Whitechapel" and a 1934 Hitler interview where he stated "I have the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin!"

Responding to critics, Trump's campaign later said that "their sad, miserable existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House", which was also criticized for echoing the rhetoric of authoritarian leaders, along with Trump's statement that "the threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within." According to The New York Times, scholars are undecided about whether Trump's more fascist-sounding language is to antagonize the left, an evolution in his beliefs, or the "dropping of a veil". When a reporter asked Trump in 2015 about how his proposed national registry of Muslims would differ from Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, Trump responded "you tell me".

Since the fall of 2023, Trump has repeatedly used racial hygiene rhetoric by stating that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country", which has been compared to language echoing that of white supremacists and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. He later claimed that immigrants who commit murder have "bad genes". According to Politico, his rally speeches contain "what some experts in political rhetoric, fascism, and immigration say is a strong echo of authoritarians and Nazi ideology." Other fascistic comments include statements that immigrants are the "enemy from within" who are ruining the "fabric" of the country. Trump has stated that some immigrants are "not people", "not humans", and "animals". At rallies, Trump has stated that undocumented immigrants will "rape, pillage, thieve, plunder and kill" American citizens, that they are "stone-cold killers", "monsters", "vile animals", "savages", and "predators" that will "walk into your kitchen, they'll cut your throat" and "grab young girls and slice them up right in front of their parents". Donald Trump called for the "remigration" of undocumented immigrants in the United States during the 2024 election, a term that is commonly used by European white identitarian movements as an euphemism for ethnic cleansing. On October 27, 2024, Trump held a rally in Madison Square Garden that featured speakers making various racist and dehumanizing remarks, including Tony Hinchcliffe's statement that Puerto Rico was an "island of garbage". The event drew comparisons from media and politicians to the 1939 Nazi rally that took place in the same location. In 2020, Trump told a nearly all-white crowd, "You have good genes ... The racehorse theory. You think we're so different?"

Internment camps

See also: Remigration, Opposition to immigration § United States, Immigration reduction in the United States, and Deportation and removal from the United States

A migrant detention camp in 2019

The Trump administration family separation policy was compared to the use of internment camps by previous fascist regimes. In 2018, Trump instituted a "zero tolerance" policy which mandated the criminal prosecution of all adults who were accused of violating immigration laws by immigration authorities. This policy directly led to the large-scale, forcible separation of children and parents arriving at the United States-Mexico border, including those who were seeking asylum from violence in their home countries. Parents were arrested and put into criminal detention, while their children were taken away, classified as unaccompanied alien minors, to be put into child immigrant detention centers.

Although Trump signed an executive order which ostensibly ended the family separation component of his administration's migrant detentions in June 2018, it continued under alternative justifications into 2019.

By the end of 2018, the number of children being held had swelled to a high of nearly 15,000, which by August 2019 had been reduced to less than 9,000. In 2019, many experts, including Andrea Pitzer, the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, have acknowledged the designation of the detention centers as "concentration camps" particularly given that the centers, previously cited by Texas officials for more than 150 health violations and reported deaths in custody, reflect a record typical of the history of deliberate substandard healthcare and nutrition in concentration camps. There has been significant disagreement as to whether or not to label these facilities "concentration camps".

In 2023, Current Affairs profiled how Trump in his 2024 campaign likewise pledged to build internment camps, warning that Trump's plan was to "build huge camps and put millions of people in them without any semblance of due process", which might include political opponents and critics.

Connections to self-identified fascists

Former KKK leader and Louisiana representative David Duke endorsed Trump in 2016, pledged to "fulfill the promises of Donald Trump" at a neo-Nazi rally in 2017 and endorsed Trump again in 2020. Trump disavowed Duke in August 2015, refused to disavow him in a January 2016 interview and disavowed Duke again later that month. Duke decided not to support Trump in 2024 due to his "subservience to Israel".

In the 2016 United States presidential election, Trump was supported by multiple self-described Nazi or fascist groups, including the National Socialist Movement and Ku Klux Klan. These groups engaged in voter intimidation by monitoring polling locations in 2016, claiming to have done so both "informally" and "through the Trump campaign". In 2016, Trump was endorsed by self-identified Nazis such as David Duke, alt-right activist Richard Spencer and Nazi activist Andrew Anglin. Trump disavowed Duke in August 2015, refused to disavow him in a January 2016 interview, and wrote a tweet disavowing the former KKK leader shortly afterwards. Trump has shared social media content linked to neo-Nazi websites, refused to condemn antisemitic attacks on Jewish journalists, and, after winning the election, appointed Steve Bannon, an admirer of Mussolini, as his chief of staff. During the Charlottesville protests in Virginia, Trump stated that there were good people on both sides. Duke endorsed Trump once again during the 2020 presidential election and criticized him in 2024. In September 2024, CNN reported that Mark Robinson, whom Trump endorsed in the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial election, had previously identified himself as a "Black Nazi". Trump's Inaugural Address was written by alt-right activists Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon.

Trump condemns neo-Nazis after the Unite The Right Rally, August 2017.

Stormfront founder Don Black supported Trump for, he said, fighting against white demoralization and building a long-term movement that would outlast him. Trump was described by alt-right activist and millionaire donor William Regnery II as someone who helped white nationalism go "from being conversation you could hold in a bathroom, to the front parlor". American Nazi Party chairman Rocky Suhayda said that Trump provided a "real opportunity" for his cause. White Nationalist Jared Taylor supported Trump for "talking about policies that would slow the dispossession of whites" and said that "all of his policies, at least those pertaining to immigration, align very nicely with the sorts of things we’ve been saying for many year". Anglin, who founded The Daily Stormer, had multiple pro-Trump articles published on his website and said that "virtually every Alt-Right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign". In November 2016, Spencer shouted "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!" during a speech at a National Policy Institute convention. By November 2017, and throughout 2018, many alt-right activists expressed disappointment at Trump after he started supporting Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Jews in Israel. Trump's decision to remove Bannon from the National Security Council also impacted their impression about him.

Following Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election, Blood Tribe leader Christopher Pohlhaus celebrated by thanking Trump that "cheaper gas will make it easier to spread White Power across the whole country". Far-right activist Lauren Witzke thanked "men, especially white men, who turned out in force to put women back in their place". Turning Point USA ambassador Evan Kilgore said in his 100,000-followers X account: "Women, back to the kitchen; Abortions, illegal; Gays, back in the closet; Interracial marriage, banned; Illegals, pack your bags; trannies, back to the asylums; Jesus, back in our schools". In November, an investigation by Politico found that a Pennsylvania-based field staffer hired by the Republican Party to work at the Trump campaign was a co-host alongside Richard Spencer at a white nationalist podcast. The podcast host, Luke Meyer, confirmed to the news organization that he was indeed a worker for the Trump campaign and was fired shortly afterwards. In his podcast, he stated "Why can’t we make New York, for example, white again? Why can’t we clear out and reclaim Miami?... A return to 80%, 90% white would probably be, probably the best we could hope for, to some degree". He also told Politico that "in a few years, one of those groypers might even quietly bring me back in, with a stern warning for me to 'be more careful next time'."

In 1990, Ivana Trump, Donald Trump's former wife, stated that he kept a copy of My New Order, a collection of speeches written by Adolf Hitler, by his bedside. According to Vanity Fair reporter Marie Brenner, Trump told her in a 1990s interview that it was "my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew". When Brenner asked Davis if he had given the book to Trump, he said that "it was My New Order, Hitler's speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I'm not Jewish". Trump further told Brenner that "if I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them". After saying that illegal immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country" in 2023, Trump said "they said Hitler said that". He further stated that Hitler used those words in a different way and said "it's true. They're destroying the blood of the country, they're destroying the fabric of our country, and we're going to have to get them out". John F. Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, stated in October 2024 that Trump spoke positively of Hitler during his tenure as president, including by saying that "Hitler did some good things" such as rebuilding the economy. Kelly also stated that Trump had told him that he desired military generals similar to the generals who served Hitler. Kelly's statements came after Trump's statements about Hitler and his generals were reported by several books a few years prior.

In early 2016, Trump tweeted Mussolini's quote that "it is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep", attributed to social media account @ilduce2016 (Il Duce was Mussolini's honorific), an anonymous account secretly set-up by Gawker that posted #MakeAmericaGreatAgain tweets alongside Mussolini-related content and whose profile picture featured Mussolini's face with Trump's hair edited over it. When Trump was asked about the social media post in an interview with Chuck Todd, he said "Chuck, it's OK to know it's Mussolini. Look, Mussolini was Mussolini... it’s a very good quote, it's a very interesting quote, and I know it... and I know who said it. But what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else? It's certainly a very interesting quote". In the same year, Trump shared a Twitter post from neo-Nazi account @WhiteGenocideTM and, three weeks after, he retweeted the same account again. Two days after, he retweeted another account with the handle @EustaceFash, whose profile banner included the words "white genocide". Trump's second retweet of @WhiteGenocideTM was shortly deleted. Andrew Anglin, from The Daily Stormer, said that Trump was "giving us the old wink-wink" and that "it isn't statistically possible" that Trump could have retweeted the two accounts "back to back" by accident. Also in 2016, Trump posted an image that showed the Star of David with the words "most corrupt candidate ever" written on it, juxtaposed with the face of Hillary Clinton in front of a pile of money. The image was later deleted and replaced with another version that featured a circle instead of the Star of David.

According to NPR, Trump's golf club in Bedminster twice held speeches by Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who had previously said that "Hitler should have finished the job". In 2022, Trump was visited by Kanye West and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago. West said shortly after the diner that "I like Hitler". Trump said after the incident that he did not know who Fuentes was.

Historical parallels

The U.S. experienced a proliferation of fascist movements during the Great Depression. The Madison Square Garden pro-Nazi rally (pictured) drew about 20,000 participants in 1939.

The idea of modern America being analogous to Weimar Germany before Hitler's seizure of power was brought up by New York Times reporter Roger Cohen and journalist Andrew Sullivan in 2015. American professor John Russo stated in 1995 that public concerns over job loss would lead to a resurgence of fascism in the United States in the future. (The U.S. had previously seen a rise in fascist movements during the 1930s, partly due to the Great Depression, with Leon Milton Birkhead identifying 800 Nazi-friendly organizations in 1938.) In a 1995 interview with Dale Maharidge, Russo predicted the emergence of a new American leader similar to Donald Trump, a prediction on which he doubled down in the 2020s.

Jonathan Chait stated that the decision by American conservatives of embracing Trump is analogous to that of German conservatives of supporting Hitler with the hope that they could "tame" him. The same argument was made by historians Nathan Stoltzfus and Eric Weitz. Paul Robin Krugman, in a 2016 article titled How Republics End, stated that "it takes willful blindness not to see the parallels between the rise of fascism and our current political nightmare". Geoff Eley, despite believing that Trump was not Hitler, also drew parallels between societal fears regarding globalization and immigration in contemporary America and in the 1930s. American historian Timothy Ryback, author of Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power, wrote in 2024 that "our republic appears to be plagued by the myriad ills that doomed Weimar: political fragmentation, social polarization, hate-filled demagoguery, a legislature gridlocked by partisan posturing, and structural anomalies in voting processes".

American vice-president Mike Pence posing with a police officer (left) wearing a QAnon badge, November 2018

Conspiracy theorist have been a central factor in the emergence of fascist movements. Hannah Arendt wrote in 1951 that "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exists." In Germany, Nazi activist employed conspiracy theories including that of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to portray Jews as attempting to take over the world, an idea that Hitler defended in Mein Kampf. In the 21st century, QAnon became one of the most prominent conspiracy theories among the pro-Trump movement, alleging that Trump has been involved with a years-long fight with the "deep state". Its believers have included House members Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. The conspiracy theory that white people were being deliberately ethnically replaced by immigrants also became prominent and was promoted by Fox News' Tucker Carlson. A 2022 survey involving 1500 respondents reported that 70% of Republicans believed such theory.

In Weimar Germany, Hitler scapegoated the Jews as one of the causes of the Great Depression. During the 1930s, public support for centrist parties diminished and political infighting broke among leftist parties, which resulted in there being no unified opposition to the NSDAP. Time writer Christine Adams said that although the current political state of the United States may seem analogous to that of Weimar Germany, the presence of a cross-ideological opposition to Trump is a factor that makes America different from Germany in the 1930s.

David Dyzenhaus wrote that although the government of the United States, including conservative judges and vice-president Mike Pence, managed to reject Trump's attempts of overturning election results, the state of democracy in Weimar Germany was also "similarly salvageable" until late 1932, for which reason the analogy between Weimar Germany and 2024 America is, he stated, strong. In that year, the Staatsgerichtshof, the court responsible for settling constitutional disputes related to the federal government and the states, upheld the constitutionality of the right-wing German government's decision to change the government of Prussia under an emergency clause of the Weimar Constitution, a decision that is regarded as a precursor to Hitler's rise to power in the following year. Dyzenhaus stated that the decisions of the mostly conservative U.S. Supreme Court during Trump's post-2024 tenure as president will affect the future of American democracy analogously to how the Staatsgerichtshof's decisions affected German politics in the 1930s. Trump has stated that he would, if re-elected in 2024, use the Insurrection Act to suppress dissident protesters.

Historian Christopher Browning wrote that just as German conservatives, including Paul von Hindenburg (pictured), were complicit with Hitler's "big lie", the Republican Party is also going along with Trump's "big lie" about "the criminals of 2020".

Holocaust historian Christopher R. Browning wrote in 2022 that a hypothetical emergence of a minority-ruled, authoritarian government in the United States led by Donald Trump and his Republican allies would resemble more an illiberal democracy than a Nazi-like dictatorship. Browning stated that the appointment of election deniers to key positions in state governments in the United States was an "ominous warning", and that the patterns of behavior of the Republican Party amounted to an attempt at a "legal revolution", a term coined by German historian Karl Dietrich Bracher to describe the legal pathways that the Nazi Party undertook in order to seize power following Hitler's unsuccessful 1923 coup attempt.

After Hitler lost his 1932 run for presidency by a margin of 6 million voters, he claimed voter fraud and went to court in order to overturn the election results. According to Hitler, his party had actually gotten 2 million more votes than what was recorded. His case was ultimately dismissed, with a judge stating that the high margin by which Hitler lost precluded the possibility of any significant fraud. At that time, the New York Times published an article titled Hitler to Contest Validity of Election.

Invocations of the comparison

A protestor with a sign describing Donald Trump as a fascist.

See also: Hiring and personnel concerns about Donald Trump

Invocations before the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack

Trump was described as a fascist by philosophers such as Judith Butler, and Noam Chomsky. In 2017, Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder published On Tyranny, warning about the danger signs of fascism in the Trump era. Political theorist William E. Connolly analyzed Trump's rhetorical appeal to the working class, exploring its affinities with fascist rhetoric. In her 2018 book Fascism: A Warning, former US Secretary of State and then Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service Madeleine Albright referenced Donald Trump several times; she refused to directly define Trump as a fascist, while comparing his rhetoric and methods with fascist leaders, and characterizing him as the first modern antidemocratic U.S. president. In 2018, American-Canadian cultural critic Henry Giroux wrote an essay linking the subjects of fascism, right-wing populism, Trump, white nationalism, education, and politics. In 2018, Ewan McGaughey in British Journal of American Legal Studies denied that Trump's movement was truly fascist as it was "too hostile to insider welfare", and instead highlighted the Supreme Court's decisions in Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo as an assault on democracy and long-term trend towards fascism. McGaughey stated the Court's decisions led to the election of Trump but that Trump's politics were too weak to be fascist, instead calling them "fascism-lite". In How Fascism Works (2018), Jason Stanley wrote that Trump employed "fascist techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions". Douglas Kellner, author of American Nightmare: Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism, wrote that Trump resembled Mussolini more than Hitler.

In 2016, JD Vance said that "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon... or that he's America's Hitler".

After Trump called for a Muslim travel ban in late 2015, he was described as a fascist by some Democratic and Republican figures, including Conservative activists Max Boot, Robert Kagan, Bret Stephens, John Noonan, former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, and Libertarian politician Gary Johnson. Republican former governor Christine Todd Whitman referred to Trump's 2015 calls for the travel ban as "the kind of rhetoric that allowed Hitler to move forward". Conservative commentator Glenn Beck compared Trump with Hitler in 2016, calling him "dangerous" and stating that "we all look at Adolf Hitler in 1940. We should look at Adolf Hitler in 1929... He was a kind of a funny kind of a character who said the things that people are thinking... Where Donald Trump takes it, I have absolutely no idea". Former Republican governor of Virginia Jim Gilmore said that Trump's plans of creating a "deportation force" was "fascist talk". JD Vance said in 2016 that he saw Trump as either a politician like Richard Nixon or "America's Hitler", also calling him "reprehensible". Despite this, he went on to run alongside Trump in his 2024 presidential campaign. Fascist scholar Federico Finchelstein said about Trump that "Fascism sometimes becomes an attribute to describe someone that is intolerant or totalitarian or even racist... When dealing with an important part of the nation such as Hispanics, I think he definitely fits those categories."

Kennedy speaking at a Trump rally in August 2024

American politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has compared Trump to both Hitler and Mussolini, described him as a "threat to democracy" in April 2024 and endorsed the suggestion that some of Trump's base supporters were "outright Nazis". He said in December 2016 that Trump was different from Hitler in at least one way, that being that "Hitler was interested in policy". Kennedy has also compared Trump to Father Coughlin, an American Nazi sympathizer radio host from the 1930s. In 2024, Kennedy endorsed Trump for president, who then nominated him for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schloss said in 2016 that Trump was "acting like another Hitler". In 2020, American journalist Rich Benjamin stated that Trump's political movement is "shot through with fascism". Professor Nicholas de Genova described Trump as the leader of a "white supremacist fascist movement" and examined Trump's birtherism, racist rhetoric, voter fraud falsehoods, anti-immigration policies, terrorist and white supremacist events that happened during his presidency, plus Republican capitulation to Trumpism, signaling the whole as the birth of a civil war ethos, in which "everything is permitted."

Invocations after the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack

Following the January 6 Capitol attack, Robert Paxton, who had initially resisted calling Trump a fascist, announced that the label now seemed necessary. Mattias Gardell argued that Trump's MAGA campaign centered fascist visions of a national rebirth and that Hitler and Mussolini were also dismissed as "egomaniacs, big-mouths, and buffoons" by commentators at the time. David Renton has said that figures such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Mosley became fascists over time and that January 6 served as a warning to America about how vulnerable it is to authoritarianism. Maria Bucur has argued that the "surfacing of fascist sympathies" were facilitated by Trump. Brian Hughes has called for further study of Trumpism and Trump's fascist merits through Lacanian terms, arguing that Trump "not only meets the criteria of charismatic strongman" but "he exceeds them".

Ruth Wodak has said that while Trump's rhetoric applies "salient discursive practices of fascism", it is not useful to lose oneself in "terminological debates", and instead encouraged greater study on Trumpism's socio-political, historical and situative contexts, along with the ideological positions of his close advisors such as Steve Bannon. Raul Cârstocea argues that Trump has "adopted fascist ideological or stylistic trappings without embracing fascism’s revolutionary impetus" and that whether or not Trump is a fascist is less relevant, as "Trump did radicalize the Republican Party considerably and he did mobilize actual fascists to seek a violent overthrow of the establishment" and that Trump may or may not represent a "2.0 version of analogue fascism for our digital post-fascist present".

In Fascism in America, a book published after the January 6 attacks, Ruth Ben-Ghiat stated that "Trump can be called a fascist because he differed from any previous American president in having the explicit goal of destroying democracy at home, disengaging America from democratic international networks, and allying with the autocrats he admires, like Putin". Ben-Ghiat further stated that she "started writing about Trump in 2015 because everything about him seemed familiar to me as someone who had studied fascism for decades: the rallies, the attacks on the press, the lying, the loyalty oaths, the declarations of violent intent, the need to dominate and humiliate".

Trump's former advisor Steve Bannon (center-right, blue shirt) said that he thought "that's Hitler" when he saw Trump descend from the Trump Tower elevator in 2015.

In Jeremy W. Peters's 2022 book Insurgency, former Trump staffer Steve Bannon was repeatedly quoted comparing Trump to Hitler. Bannon said that Trump's aides showing him misleading polling data during the 2020 election was "like showing Hitler fake armor divisions when the Reichstag is burning down". According to the book, Bannon said that the sight of Trump descending from an elevator in New York made a Triumph of the Will scene in which Hitler exits his aircraft to an adoring crowd "flash" through his mind. According to the book, Bannon told Peters that he thought "that's Hitler", meaning it as a compliment to Trump.

Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying author Henk de Berg said that there are "massive differences" between Trump and Hitler, but also that both politicians shared similar rhetorical patterns. He stated that "most of their electorate are dissatisfied with the status quo for a variety of reasons (globalization, automation) so they want to change the system and here you have an anti-establishment candidate who is not politically correct".

Mike Godwin, the creator of Godwin's Law, stated in 2023 that "Trump's opening himself up to the Hitler comparison". He also said that "You could say the 'vermin' remark or the 'poisoning the blood' remark, maybe one of them would be a coincidence. But both of them pretty much make it clear that there's something thematic going on, and I can't believe it’s accidental."

Invocations during the 2024 presidential campaign

Further information: Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign § Authoritarian and antidemocratic statements

Comparisons between Trump and fascism drawn by mainstream media increased substantially in 2023 and 2024, and during his 2024 presidential campaign, a growing number of scholars, historians, commentators, politicians, former Trump officials, and generals described Trump as a fascist.

Former Trump staff members John F. Kelly (left) and Mark Milley (right) have both described Trump as a fascist.

Voice of America coverage of comparisons drawn between Trump and fascism by former Trump staff

Trump was described as a fascist in October 2024 by John F. Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff during his presidential tenure. Referring to the definition of fascism as a far-right authoritarian ideology with elements of ultranationalism and a dictatorial leader, Kelly stated that Trump "certainly" meets the definition of a fascist, making it the first time a president has been called a fascist by a former hand-picked top adviser. Following the statements by Kelly, Karine Jean-Pierre stated that United States President Joe Biden agreed with the assertion that Trump is a fascist. Kamala Harris, Biden's vice president and Trump's opponent in the 2024 election, also stated that she considers Trump to be a fascist. Thirteen former Trump officials signed an open letter agreeing with Kelly's statements. Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense under Trump, also agreed with Kelly, saying Trump meets the definition of a fascist and has fascist instincts.

Additionally, Mark Milley, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described Trump as "fascist to the core".

Cornel West has described Trump as a fascist. Professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has openly defined Trump as a fascist. The Economist said it was reasonable to describe Trump as a modern iteration of fascism. Howard French agrees that Trump is a fascist but wonders whether it is the best message for Democrats to win the 2024 election. Peter Baker described Trump as the president who most aggressively discredited democracy at home while embracing autocrats abroad.

Criticism of the comparison

International Critical Thought stated in 2017 that the Trump's administration was not hegemonic nor fascist, but that it signaled the rise of a right-wing nationalist movement. Benjamin R. Teitelbaum has stated he "unequivocally reject[s] using the term" fascist to describe Trump on epistemological and pedagogical grounds, viewing it as "an end of inquiry". In a Guardian column, Jan Werner-Müller argued, that rejecting the label can be done while acknowledging the dangers Trump creates to democracy. Geoff Boucher, writing for The Conversation, argues Trump represents instead a 'new authoritarianism' that relies on administration instead of paramilitaries to subvert democracy, a definition seconded by The Herald. Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, a historian at Wesleyan University, in an interview with Historian Joshua Zeitz, stated while she thought Trump had an authoritarian and illiberal vision, she was unsure if Trump was a fascist, but that by "not framing him this way, it does not at all mean that he is not a threat". Jacob Sullum argues in Reason that Trump's reckless (and in his view, disqualifying) authoritarian impulses are guided only by self-interest and that he is not ideological enough to be labeled a fascist. Roger Griffin also argued that Trump displayed some but not all traits of fascism, and that his actions on January 6 were not those of a fascist leader but of an "ochlocrat".

Historian Richard J. Evans has rejected comparisons to fascism. In 2018 he wrote a negative review of both Albright and Snyder's books as having a "vague and confused" view of what defines fascism.

In 2020, Vox contacted a group of experts on fascism for their view, with most rejecting the comparison but expressing concern about Trump's authoritarian and violent tendencies.

Following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, some Republicans including vice presidential nominee JD Vance, Stephen Miller, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argued that comparing Trump to a fascist or a Nazi could incite violence. Susan Benesch, founding director of the Dangerous Speech Project, has called such comparisons "a pot calling the kettle black", and noted that Trump's continued use of inflammatory rhetoric against Democrats has not stopped. In response to John F. Kelly and Mark Milley calling Trump a fascist, Vance dismissed their claims and characterized them both as "disgruntled former employees".

See also

• Definitions of fascism
• Democratic backsliding in the United States
• Fascism in North America
• Nazi analogies
• Nazism in the Americas
• National conservatism
• Radical right (United States)
• Right-wing authoritarianism
• Trump derangement syndrome

References

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Further reading

• Edward, Lempinen (September 9, 2024). "Fascism shattered Europe a century ago — and historians hear echoes today in the U.S." UC Berkley News.
• "Once Top Advisers to Trump, They Now Call Him ‘Liar,’ ‘Fascist’ and ‘Unfit’" (Oct. 30, 2024) by New York Times
• "Harris called Trump a 'fascist.' Experts debate what fascism is — and isn't" (October 29, 2024) by NPR
• Robinson, William I. (March 2019). "Global Capitalist Crisis and Twenty-First Century Fascism: Beyond the Trump Hype". Science & Society. 83 (2): 155–183. doi:10.1521/siso.2019.83.2.155. ABSTRACT: Global capitalism faces an organic crisis involving a structural dimension, that of overaccumulation and a political dimension of legitimacy or hegemony that is approaching a general crisis of capitalist rule. Fascism, whether in 20th-century or 21st-century forms, is a particular response to capitalist crisis. Trumpism in the US, BREXIT in the UK, Bolsonarism in Brazil, the increasing influence of neo-fascist and authoritarian parties and movements around the world, represent far-right responses to the crisis of global capitalism. There are similarities but also important differences between fascist projects of the 20th and 21st centuries. The former involved the fusion of reactionary political power with national capital, whereas the latter involves the fusion of transnational capital with reactionary and repressive political power — an expression of the dictatorship of transnational capital. A fightback against the global police state and 21st-century fascism must involve broad anti-fascist alliances led by popular and working-class forces.
• Colasacco, Brett (2018). "Before Trump: On Comparing Fascism and Trumpism". Journal for the Study of Radicalism. 12 (1): 27–53. doi:10.14321/jstudradi.12.1.0027. JSTOR 10.14321/jstudradi.12.1.0027. I have been contemplating a photograph of Donald J. Trump - businessman, bestselling author, and reality television star – shaking hands with Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the While House, one day after being declared president-elect of the United State. I fully confess that I was one of those who thought this image, and this moment, would never come: that Trump would not, could not, win the presidency. (...)
• Love, Nancy S. (April 14, 2017). "Back to the Future: Trendy Fascism, the Trump Effect, and the Alt-Right". New Political Science. 39 (2): 263–268. doi:10.1080/07393148.2017.1301321. I started writing Trendy Fascism: White Power Music and the Future of Democracy following the 2008 election of Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States, and I finished it in 2015 shortly after Dylann Roof murdered nine Black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In a police interview, Roof said that he wanted to start a race war and that the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and racist skinheads were not doing enough. Fast forward to 2016. When Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, many pollsters and pundits expressed surprise and, in some cases, also dismay. Pre-election polling proved stunningly inaccurate, and it increasingly appears that the alt-right contributed significantly to Trump's victory. (...)

External links

• Media related to Comparison of Donald Trump with fascism at Wikimedia Commons