John Donnelly: An exploration of fascism

Please understand that how you vote in 2024 will help determine very quickly how long our American democracy will last.

No. 1: What is fascism?

In our polarized country, it is important to understand the political extremes.

Communism historically has been viewed as on the far left of the political spectrum with its essence being that the government “owns the means of production.” Communist governments also use top-down planning to decide what gets produced instead of free markets.

China today is a hybrid communist country. State-owned enterprises still dominate the Chinese economy, but markets are largely relied upon, and not government planning, for the “allocation of resources.” Communism is a political system lacking personal freedom and political expression with the government dominating the economy. MAGA today would like you to believe that the U.S. is becoming a Communist country.

In reality, we are far from any historical definition of communism and we are not trending in that direction.

Fascism exists on the far right of the political spectrum. What is fascism? Anne Applebaum, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Jason Stanley have a keen interest in studying 20th and 21st-century fascism. Jason Stanley’s father was a young Jewish boy and he was literally on the last boat out of Nazi Germany in August 1939 — just before World War II started.

I would like to share with you what I have learned from reading these three students of fascism.

Most people associate fascism with Nazi concentration camps. Concentration camps were a horrific part of the German Nazi version of fascism, but they are simply one of many possible outcomes of fascism. Many fascist leaders do not create death camps.

So what is fascism? Fascism is a path for achieving absolute power in a democracy and thus replacing democracy with a dictatorship. Fascism has two key components. The first is that there is a fascist playbook for winning elections. The second is the steps fascists take to seize absolute power once they have won an election.

Fascists strive for absolute power. They want no checks and balances, no guardrails, no Congress with power and no more elections. Once you become a dictator, you can attempt to do whatever you want. Some fascist leaders may want to seek revenge for what they perceive as historical injustices to their country by attacking other countries.

Others may persecute (e.g. by creating concentration camps) a minority group they despise. And others may simply want to accumulate vast amounts of wealth for themselves and their family. Some may try to do all those things.

Hitler did the first and the second — he attacked many neighboring countries and tried to annihilate the Jews in Europe. Putin has done the first and third — he has invaded neighboring countries and accumulated vast amounts of wealth. But those actions are not the essence of fascism. The essence is what steps these dictators took to be able to do whatever they wanted to do.

The three best-known fascist leaders of the last 100 years are Mussolini, Hitler and Putin. All three entered their governments when they were democracies, but quickly turned them into dictatorships. They seized absolute power so that they could do anything that they wanted to do.

The playbook fascists use to win elections and/or win control of a government in a democracy has five steps. Let’s look at each one.

1. Focus on a mythical national past: Mussolini said in 1922: “We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion … it is not necessary for it to be a reality. And to this myth, this greatness, we subordinate everything.” Himmler, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, said in 1936: “A people lives happily in the present and the future so long as it recognizes its past and the greatness of its ancestors. We want to make our people proud again of our history.” Jason Stanley said in his most recent book, “How Fascism Works”: “Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past, tragically destroyed … such a glorious past has been lost by the humiliation brought on by globalism and liberal cosmopolitanism. The fascist mythic past exists to aid in changing the present.”

2. Make dominant ethnic groups feel like victims: Hitler said in his “Mein Kampf” in 1925: “The ignorance of the broad masses about the inner nature of the Jew makes our people an easy victim for this Jewish campaign of lies.” Jason Stanley: “Fascism is loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion or nation … with the goal of maintaining a position at the top of the power hierarchy.” Hitler said in 1942: “Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”

3. Destroy truth and promote conspiracy theories: Hitler said in “Mein Kampf” in 1925: “The whole existence of the Jewish people is based on a continuous lie. This is shown incomparably in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ (a fake early 20th-century book purporting to show a plot for Jewish global domination). The Frankfurter Zeitung (Germany’s leading newspaper then and now) screams and moans every week that the Protocols are a forgery. This is the best proof they are authentic.” Hitler promoted a wild conspiracy theory and because the leading German newspaper said it was a lie, Hitler said: “Therefore it must be true!” Jason Stanley: “Fascistic politics exchanges reality for the pronouncements of a single individual. Regular and repeated obvious lying is part of the process by which Fascist politics destroys the information space. Conspiracy theories are a critical mechanism used to delegitimize the mainstream media. Fascist politicians accuse them of bias for failing to cover false conspiracies.”

4. Value pure rural areas over corrupt cities: Hitler said in “Mein Kampf” in 1925: “I hated the mixture of races displayed in Vienna. I hated the motley collection of Czechs, Poles and Hungarians.” Mussolini in 1932: “At a certain point, the city starts growing in a diseased pathological way, not through its own people, but through immigrants.” Jason Stanley: “Cities, to the fascist imagination, are the source of corrupting culture, often produced by immigrants, while the countryside is pure.”

5. Develop cult of the leader/only leader can solve problems: Hitler and the Nazis won a plurality of the vote in the November 1932 German elections. Hitler became the leader of Germany and the actions he took quickly turned Germany into a Fascist dictatorship. Hitler said in 1934: “I am responsible for the fate of the German nation and I am therefore the supreme judge of the German people.” Jason Stanley: “Fascism is the cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, minorities and immigrants who are posing a threat to the character and history of the nation. The fascist leader says only he can solve it, and all his political opponents are enemies and traitors.” Ruth Ben-Ghiat: “Many strongmen have entered office with experience in mass communications. Mussolini was a journalist. Hitler took voice and hypnotism lessons in the 1920s. Having direct communication with the public is the key to maintaining personality cults.”

This is the playbook that fascist leaders use to win over people and to win elections.

No. 2: What do fascist leaders do?

Fascism consists of two parts:

• A playbook for how to win elections.

• A playbook for, once in power in a democracy, how the fascist leader tries to destroy the democracy and seize absolute power.

I would now like to describe what fascist leaders do to seize this absolute power.

The key guardrails that fascist leaders try to destroy in their efforts to seize absolute power are: an independent media, opposition parties, the legislature and an independent judiciary. Fascist leaders want to be able to do whatever they want to do. The only thing stopping them are the opposition media, opposition political parties and an independent judiciary.

That is why the fascist leader believes these institutions must be taken over or destroyed. Fascist leaders have varying degrees of success in destroying these guardrails. Here is what they try to do:

1. Take over and/or destroy opposition media: An opposition media blocks the path for the fascist leader as they try to seize absolute power. They provide an alternative view of the world which the fascist leader cannot tolerate. Fascist leaders spin false conspiracy theories which an opposition media will expose as lies. When Hitler won the 1932 election, his party controlled a small percentage of Germany’s 4,700 newspapers. The owners of the liberal Berlin Tageblatt left Germany the day after Hitler took power. Many opposition journalists, fearing, imprisonment, also quickly fled the country. Many newspaper owners were forced to sell their newspapers at deep discounts to wealthy friends of Hitler. Within a few months, the German media was completely controlled by friends of Hitler. Putin’s destruction of an opposition media did not happen as quickly as it did in Hitler’s Germany. After Putin came to power in 1999, a steady stream of opposition journalists were murdered in unsolved crimes. More recently laws have been passed that make it a crime to report a story that is not consistent with the Russian government’s position. All privately owned TV channels are now banned in Russia except for a few purely entertainment channels. Fascist leaders do not tolerate a free press.

2. Eliminate opposition political parties and future elections: Opposition political parties present a great risk to the fascist leader. They criticize his actions and try to rally support against him. They could even defeat him at a future election. Future elections and opposition parties must be eliminated. In March 1933, the Hitler-controlled legislature made it a crime to speak out against the government or criticize its new leaders. Later that month, the legislature passed another law that allowed Hitler to punish anyone he considered an enemy of the state. In June of that year, Hitler banned all opposition parties. The only party left was Hitler’s Nazi party. Hitler had used the fascist playbooks to win elections and seize absolute power. He could now do whatever he wanted to do and no one in Germany had any power to stop him. There were no more elections in Hitler’s Germany. German democracy was destroyed in four months. Putin has been in power in Russia since 1999. There are some “opposition” parties, but they are generally supportive of Putin. The one opposition leader who was not friendly to Putin was Alexei Navalny, and he died in a Russian prison earlier this year. He had been very vocal in highlighting Putin’s corruption eg his massive homes around Russia. Navalny was poisoned inside Russia in 2020 and recovered outside of Russia. When he bravely returned to Russia in 2021, he knew he would be arrested again and he was. Putin has achieved absolute power. There is no hostile media and opposition parties have been neutered. The only vestiges of democracy are periodic sham elections.

3. Control the judiciary: A well-functioning judicial system is essential for ensuring equal treatment, sanctioning government abuses, preventing arbitrariness including unlawful behavior by the police. This is the last thing a fascist leader wants. In April 1933, a law was passed in Germany that purged all socialist and Jewish jurists and lawyers from the legal system. The federal police started in 1933 operating outside of any judicial review. Those deemed “enemies of the state” were not put in the normal prison system, but instead were placed in the new concentration camps — the first being at Dachau near Munich. Hitler soon had complete control of the German judiciary. In Russia, an iron grip by the government on the judiciary goes back long before Putin, but it continues with him. In 2003, a leading Russian oligarch who had been financing opposition parties was arrested on trumped-up charges of tax evasion. This sent a strong signal that the Russian judiciary was not going to align more with European or American judicial systems. Today’s Russian judicial system strongly aligns with Russian state prosecutors. The pleas of defense attorneys are often ignored and many of those attorneys run the risk of being jailed.

This is the playbook for how fascists try to seize absolute power and to destroy the political system that initially elected them. Hitler and Putin are excellent examples of fascist leaders. Have political leaders in America recently used these fascist playbooks to win elections and then try to seize absolute power?

No. 3: Is Trump a fascist?

Fascism is a playbook for how to win elections and how then to seize absolute power. Donald Trump campaigns like a fascist and he tried to disrupt the bedrock of our political system — the orderly transfer of power in 2020/21 from the loser to the winner. Is Trump a fascist? This old saying is appropriate: “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

Let’s look at Trump’s actions and compare them with the Fascist playbooks discussed in two prior sections.

The fascist playbook for winning elections

• Focus on a mythical national past: Mythic national pasts for Germany and Russia existed before enemies focused on by Hitler and Putin purportedly destroyed them. For Hitler, the villains in the past were many: the traitors who “stabbed Germany in the back” during World War I, the bankers who caused the depression, and, of course, the Jewish people. For Putin, it is the United States and our European allies in NATO and countries like Ukraine and Georgia who used to be aligned with Russia as part of the Soviet Union and are now happy to be no longer aligned with Russia. These are Putin’s enemies. Trump’s movement — Make America Great Again — is all about trying to recreate a mythic national past. A past when government in America was small, crime was minimal, racial harmony existed, and the world was a safe place without need for American security guarantees. When exactly was this?

• Make dominant ethnic groups feel like victims: 70% of Americans are white and 30% of white Americans are Evangelicals. Trump’s campaign messages are focused on making these groups feel like victims. What is his message? Crime is out of control. Immigration is spiking and causing crime. The government is targeting churches.

• Destroy truth and promote conspiracy theories: Politicians are not highly regarded for their honesty, but Trump has taken lying into the stratosphere. Washington Post fact checkers catalogued over 30,000 lies by Trump during his four years as president. That is over 20 lies a day. Fascist leaders create their own truth and get their followers to believe in it. Conspiracy theories helped Nazism grow in the 1920s and Trump is driven by the conspiracy theories that he promotes from Obama being born in Africa to the 2020 election being stolen.

• Value pure rural areas over corrupt cities: Just as Hitler and Mussolini praised rural areas over cities, Trump and his MAGA followers detest large American cities. New York, Chicago, Atlanta and San Francisco are always vilified by Trump and conservative media. Conservative media likes to tout that in the 2020 Presidential race, Trump won 2,500 mostly rural counties while Biden won only 475 mostly urban counties. What they don’t mention is that those 475 counties generated 70% of US GDP/economic activity. The fascists don’t like urban areas, but that is where the economic power is.

• Develop cult of the leader: The MAGA base is not in love with the Republican Party. Their love is focused on Trump. Trump detests our traditional allies eg Canada and Germany, but loves our traditional enemies (e.g., Russia and North Korea). Why? Because he is fixated on the strongman, the dictator. He is always praising Putin and Kim Jong Un at his rallies. Why? Because he wants to emulate them, he wants their dictatorial power. 

The fascist playbook for seizing absolute power

• Take over and/or destroy opposition media: Trump’s “enemies list” for the media includes The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and MSNBC. It sometimes includes Fox News and The Wall Street Journal if they appear less than 100% loyal to him. Here is what Trump has said about MSNBC: “MSNBC uses free government approved airwaves, and yet is nothing but a hit job on Donald J. Trump. Our so-called government should come down hard on them and make them pay for their illegal activity.” Trump has constraints (e.g., the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) for shutting down media he does not like. He will do everything he can to break through those constraints.

• Eliminate opposition political parties and future elections: Trump does not like the U.S. Constitution because it constrains him from doing things he wants to do (e.g., shutting down opposition media and political parties). He promotes his conspiracy theories to justify suspending the U.S. Constitution and giving himself dictatorial powers. Here is what Trump said late in 2022: “A massive fraud of this type and magnitude (the old lie about the 2020 election being stolen from him) allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Hitler and Putin could not have said it better — throw out the Constitution and future elections and put your trust in me. The bedrock of the American political system is the peaceful transfer of power from the losers to the winners. The people get to vote and the loser accepts the results. Trump made it very clear before the 2016 and 2020 election that he would not accept any result except the one that had him winning. For the first time in over 200 years in 2020, the sitting President who lost an election tried to overturn the results of the election and stay in power.

Hitler, Putin and Trump have all used the same fascist playbooks to win elections and attempt to seize absolute power. Hitler and Putin achieved more success than Trump — so far.

Trump has one last shot to achieve absolute power, but first he must win the 2024 election. You are seeing him again campaign now using the already described fascist playbook. If he does win, he will do everything he can do to remain in power even if the Constitution has to be shredded.

If he does achieve absolute power, those who voted for him will no longer have any control over him. He won’t need them or their votes. Elections will no longer take place. He will finally be free to do anything he wants to do like his dictator heroes Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un.

Please understand that how you vote in 2024 will help determine very quickly how long our American democracy will last.  

— John Donnelly is a resident of Holland.