Testing the Fascism Thesis

Keeping Myself Honest

A big question for myself is what to do with the fascism thesis now that Trump has been elected fair and square, without considerable violence, and with the popular vote on his side? My position so far has been to treat fascism as a framework or heuristic: a kind of hypothesis that lets us understand and even make guesses about the behavior of Trump and his movement. But in order to remain a piece of viable intellectual work rather than something cooked up by a crackpot or demagogue, a theory must have certain empirical conditions where it could be falsified and abandoned. For its critics, the theory is already falsified: Trump has too many anomalies from historical fascism to make the comparison anything more than a piece of cheap and, apparently, not very effective rhetoric.

So, at what point will I, by minimum standards of intellectual honesty, be forced to abandon a fascism-inflected theory of Trumpism? Instead of giving specific events or the absence of certain events as definitivelyt falsifying, I’m going to continue to treat the fascism thesis as something like what the Hungarian philosopher of science Imre Lakatos called a “scientific research programme.” According to Lakatos, a research programme has a “hard core,” a foundational set of assumptions like, say, Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, and a “protective belt,” made up of auxiliary hypotheses. When faced with anomalies or contradictory data, practitioners of a research programme will adjust the protective belt rather than throw out the core. How is this different from covering one’s tracks and making an increasingly elaborate series of justifications to account for observed anomalies? Well, for Lakatos the way to tell what he calls a “progressive” from a “degenerating research programme” is the former are able to make “dramatic, unexpected, stunning predictions.” Lakatos’s favored examples from the history of science are the return of Halley’s comet, the discovery of Neptune, and Einstein’s prediction that gravity would bend lightwaves.

From my perspective, the fascism thesis has already one major prediction to its credit: if Trump truly had something in common with fascism, he would attempt to make some sort of illegal seizure of power or abrogation of the Constitution, this would not just include elite members of the security state or military apparatus as in other right-wing dictatorships, but would feature some kind of popular mobilization element, like the participation of a mob or paramilitary cadre. I think January 6th fulfills this despite its failure. It’s pustch-like behavior. What else? Well, that Trump’s rhetoric would continue to designate and dehumanize internal enemies. And so on and so forth.

But how does my research programme deal with disconfirming information? It’s always been my complaint about the critics of the fascism thesis that they ignore empirical events that hurt their cause. I’ll try not to. The fascism thesis would seem to suggest that paramilitaries and street fighting would become an increasingly salient part of the fascists’ seizure of power. But group the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys more relevant today or less? I admit here that this prediction is not fulfilled, but I have an auxiliary hypothesis: in the social media age, such formations are not a particularly useful part of mass politics. Still, if paramilitary groups are mostly sidelined isn’t that just not fascism? Again, another auxiliary hypothesis: in historic fascist seizures of power, the paramilitaries have been more or less important at different stages and usually the leader has to restrain or neuter their power. Fascist regimes usually go through periods of constitutional “normalization” where existing parties and institutions attempt to absorb rather than reject the fascist movement: the paramilitaries in this phase can be a big liability.

But how do I explain the apparent calm and friendliness of the Biden administration in welcoming Trump back to Washington? Surely, their equanimity shows that they didn’t really believe it and that it’s just demagoguery. Well, not necessarily. Here’s an explanation: When you have one party that’s disloyal or semi-loyal to democratic norms, they will grab on any violation by their opposition to justify their own abandonment of them. So a party dedicated to their maintenance faces a difficult task: how to avoid actions that legitimize and indirectly support the attackers on the system. If they themselves begin to abuse or bend norms to fight the anti-democratic threat, they undermine the very system they claim to be upholding. Arguably the Democrats have already taken such steps. But let’s say the Biden-Harris administration said, “We are not gonna meet with Trump’s people and we are gonna stymy the transition.” Well, then critics could equally say, “They’ve complained about the peaceful transfer of power and the violation of democratic norms and now they doing it themselves. Hypocrites! Fascists!” So, it may not be that they did not really believe their own rhetoric, but that they just believe in democratic practices more. Unfortunately, parties with a shaky commitment to democracy just have an advantage here: they benefit from legitimacy-conferring acts and can use attacks on them as signs of unfair treatment. In an advanced stage of democratic breakdown, pro-system parties desperately act like semi-loyal ones. As the political scientist, Juan Linz writes, “One characteristic of the final stage of the breakdown process is that to one degree or another the parties whose main aim should be to defend the authenticity of the constitutional, democratic, political process engage in actions that justify other participants' perception of them as semiloyal.”

Am I just engaging in sophistry here to save a clearly failing framework? Maybe! But that’s sort of what I’m supposed to do in order to keep the research programme going: adjust the belt of auxiliary hypotheses and keep the core safe. And I’m willing to specify other predictions. If they fail to come true I’ll be happy to admit mine is a degenerating rather than progressive research programme. You’ll note that I’m not making any of these up: they are things that Trump and his surrogates have already threatened. I would say if three or four of these are attempted then fascism is perhaps not the worst theory of Trumpism we have:

• The use of state-tolerated or encouraged mobs, either organized into paramilitaries or quasi-organized, to physically intimidate, maim, or kill political enemies and even unreliable allies. This is a big one and arguably already has come true. If this is a regular part of the politics of the next few years, I think the fascism thesis is in pretty good shape.

• The use of mobs/paramilitaries as deputies to general state repression of dissent. This also would be a big red flag, but I have less confidence in this coming true. I think the cops will be enough.

• Suspending elections or using violence, particularly assisted by paramilitaries or mobs, to disrupt elections. I don’t really see elections being in serious danger—at least, at first.

• The use of the state security apparatus on domestic political rivals. This one needs no explanation.

• The use of federal troops and officers for mass deportations; the creation of a system of detention camps for the same purpose

• The purging of “old regime” military officials and bureaucrats and replacement with new regime loyalists.

• The use of extreme, dehumanizing rhetoric against regime opponents. Again, something already arguably fulfilled.

• A “state of emergency:” a suspension of civil liberties in the case of civil unrest or a terrorist attack. Invocation of Insurrection Act, troops on the streets of American cities. This is the "Reichstag fire” scenario. I think this would just simply prove the thesis, but not actually among my biggest fears.

• The use of questionable constitutional “hardball” to ram through executive actions and circumvention of the separation of powers, i.e. proroguing Congress and doing recess appointments of cabinet members. These are sort of yellow flags: this is strongman behavior, and concerning, but sort of generally authoritarian than necessarily fascist.

• An aggressive, jingoistic war to cover up a domestic failure. Trump’s supposed dovishness may come into play, but there are a lot of “neocons” in that administration already: if we intervene in Mexico to go after cartels, say, or pick a fight with Iran, I think fascism is back on the menu.

• Attacks on the rights of citizenship, in the form of abrogation of birth right citizenship and/or mass denaturalizations. This is a big one for me, as it would involve a suspension of the Constitution. Trump’s people want to cancel the 14th Amendment by executive fiat and then hope the Court ratifies this move. Big red flag.

• “Cultural fascism:” A marked uptick in hate crimes, interpersonal sadism, the return of the casual and routine use of slurs to humiliate minorities, etc. Sort of hard to test, but more a kind of atmosphere. If this other stuff is happening, I imagine the feeling in the country will get a lot uglier.

Am I missing anything? Do you have other conditions or fears? Sound off in the comments. I’ll try routinely update this and we can see how the theory is faring.