The problem here–and what Democrats need to better understand–is that populism, which the GOP is trying to lean on, is the basis of fascism, and a good one-third of Trump's coalition (what he might call his 'base') is essentially fascist, or fascist-adjacent. And I mean that term in the strictly historical sense, not as the vacuous epithet it has become in campaign rhetoric.
It’s not a carbon copy of the fascism of the interwar years, but it is structurally the same, and it is on the rise all over the world. That’s unpleasant to say, but only because people are too touchy to admit that fascism, like populism, was and is rooted in legitimate political and economic concerns. Most importantly, when a middle class gets hollowed out at the same time social change accelerates, a critical mass of people become overtaken with feelings of alienation, and they lose faith in democratic institutions. They come to believe democracy is a scam run by squabbling elites who don’t care about them, and are rather more concerned with catering to other favored groups. And that is the populist message: all these institutions around you that are supposed to be ‘democratic’ are actually just tools for elites to exploit you and the common folk. With the help, typically, of new communication technologies that augment extremism of various sorts, that message slowly builds up the appeal of the idea of a strongman who, embodying ‘the people’, (rather than these other favored groups) will come in, upend the system, brush aside these cumbersome liberal-democratic ‘norms’ and its cabal of exploitative elites, and use unilateral, unchecked power to ‘fix’ things. At that point, all that is required is an *actual* strongman suited to fill this role and some large shock to the liberal-democratic system–for Mussolini, it was WWI. I would argue, in our case, it was the ‘Lesser Depression’ following the financial crisis of ‘08 (the basis of Trump's first election) and the COVID shutdowns and subsequent malaise. (which just re-elected Trump)
Typically, the strongman is very adept at leveraging new communication technologies to forge a ‘personal’ connection with the disaffected population, and is accompanied by a cult of personality, both of which inflate him into this symbol of ‘the common people’, and stresses the dominant social themes that marked society before the big acceleration in social change–in Mao’s case, it was the cult of the old Chinese imperial system, newly clothed in ‘communism’, after China’s century of humiliation; in Trump, Orban and Putin’s case, as it was with Mussolini, it is the cult of male machismo, because the most recent round of social change has been to the disadvantage of men, (of all races) and particularly less urban, less formally-educated men. (however, it is notable that this cult of personality, although male-centric, often appeals to many women, too) Also, regardless of historical era, the strongman always provides the same specific framing for his authoritarian actions: that “your nation and your culture” (which he embodies) are under attack by internationalist elites abroad (“globalists”) and saboteurs at home. (“the Deep State”, “communists/Marxists/libs”) And ‘democracy’ and its institutions are just synonyms for rule by these elites–again, the populist message.
The key for Democrats, Republicans, or really any politician that wants the U.S. to continue on as a liberal democracy, is to find political strategies for addressing the authentic concerns the fascist wave is appealing to, without using its authoritarian tools or relying on the brittle foundation of a personality cult, which is almost always short-lived. As a start, Democrats would do well to drop the obsessive focus on identity politics and return to a focus on the pan-demographic categories of economic class; Republicans, on the other hand, would do well to drop the fiction that the mythical golden era of pre-globalized manufacturing is coming back, or that something like tariffs can claw it back. Both need to craft policies that focus on enabling people to thrive within the context of a globalized economy centered around information technology and the monetization of data, rather than the older structure of hours-worked-on-the-assembly-line. Because dealing with that reality is the only way you can resurrect and sustain the American middle class. And without a middle class, all societies inevitably wind up reverting back, once again, to autocratic, strongman rule, whether that means Mussolini (on the right) or Stalin (on the left) in the twentieth century, or Chavez/Maduro and Orban/Putin today.
The problem here–and what Democrats need to better understand–is that populism, which the GOP is trying to lean on, is the basis of fascism, and a good one-third of Trump's coalition (what he might call his 'base') is essentially fascist, or fascist-adjacent. And I mean that term in the strictly historical sense, not as the vacuous epithet it has become in campaign rhetoric.
It’s not a carbon copy of the fascism of the interwar years, but it is structurally the same, and it is on the rise all over the world. That’s unpleasant to say, but only because people are too touchy to admit that fascism, like populism, was and is rooted in legitimate political and economic concerns. Most importantly, when a middle class gets hollowed out at the same time social change accelerates, a critical mass of people become overtaken with feelings of alienation, and they lose faith in democratic institutions. They come to believe democracy is a scam run by squabbling elites who don’t care about them, and are rather more concerned with catering to other favored groups. And that is the populist message: all these institutions around you that are supposed to be ‘democratic’ are actually just tools for elites to exploit you and the common folk. With the help, typically, of new communication technologies that augment extremism of various sorts, that message slowly builds up the appeal of the idea of a strongman who, embodying ‘the people’, (rather than these other favored groups) will come in, upend the system, brush aside these cumbersome liberal-democratic ‘norms’ and its cabal of exploitative elites, and use unilateral, unchecked power to ‘fix’ things. At that point, all that is required is an *actual* strongman suited to fill this role and some large shock to the liberal-democratic system–for Mussolini, it was WWI. I would argue, in our case, it was the ‘Lesser Depression’ following the financial crisis of ‘08 (the basis of Trump's first election) and the COVID shutdowns and subsequent malaise. (which just re-elected Trump)
Typically, the strongman is very adept at leveraging new communication technologies to forge a ‘personal’ connection with the disaffected population, and is accompanied by a cult of personality, both of which inflate him into this symbol of ‘the common people’, and stresses the dominant social themes that marked society before the big acceleration in social change–in Mao’s case, it was the cult of the old Chinese imperial system, newly clothed in ‘communism’, after China’s century of humiliation; in Trump, Orban and Putin’s case, as it was with Mussolini, it is the cult of male machismo, because the most recent round of social change has been to the disadvantage of men, (of all races) and particularly less urban, less formally-educated men. (however, it is notable that this cult of personality, although male-centric, often appeals to many women, too) Also, regardless of historical era, the strongman always provides the same specific framing for his authoritarian actions: that “your nation and your culture” (which he embodies) are under attack by internationalist elites abroad (“globalists”) and saboteurs at home. (“the Deep State”, “communists/Marxists/libs”) And ‘democracy’ and its institutions are just synonyms for rule by these elites–again, the populist message.
The key for Democrats, Republicans, or really any politician that wants the U.S. to continue on as a liberal democracy, is to find political strategies for addressing the authentic concerns the fascist wave is appealing to, without using its authoritarian tools or relying on the brittle foundation of a personality cult, which is almost always short-lived. As a start, Democrats would do well to drop the obsessive focus on identity politics and return to a focus on the pan-demographic categories of economic class; Republicans, on the other hand, would do well to drop the fiction that the mythical golden era of pre-globalized manufacturing is coming back, or that something like tariffs can claw it back. Both need to craft policies that focus on enabling people to thrive within the context of a globalized economy centered around information technology and the monetization of data, rather than the older structure of hours-worked-on-the-assembly-line. Because dealing with that reality is the only way you can resurrect and sustain the American middle class. And without a middle class, all societies inevitably wind up reverting back, once again, to autocratic, strongman rule, whether that means Mussolini (on the right) or Stalin (on the left) in the twentieth century, or Chavez/Maduro and Orban/Putin today.