As the 2024 presidential election winds down to the finish, the political left in this country has fallen in love with the “F” word — fascism. You can hear it virtually every day on MSNBC and CNN. You can read it in virtually every political article in the Atlantic. Hillary Clinton has taken to the airwaves to pronounce Donald Trump a fascist, even likening the recent Trump rally in Madison Square Garden to the infamous American “Nazi” rally held in 1939. NBC News, NPR, ABC News, the New York Times, the Nation magazine, have run stories about former Trump administration officials who agree that Trump is a fascist. Unsurprisingly, Kamala Harris agrees that Trump is a fascist. Is it any wonder that ABC News released a poll a few days ago with the headline “Half of Americans see Donald Trump as a fascist.”
Trump, of course, was labeled a fascist back in 2016 by the likes of Robert Kagan, Brett Stephens, and others. Back then one of the great scholars of fascism, Michael Ledeen (who acknowledged he was no fan of Trump), put the lie to their claims. In 2016, Ledeen provided a brief lesson on historical fascism of the Mussolini/Hitler variety and concluded that calling Trump a fascist “distorts the history of the last century.” (Interestingly, in 2021, The socialist International Committee of the Fourth International called Ledeen one of Trump’s “fascist co-conspirators.”) The irony of the Trump as fascist claim is that the supposed would-be fascist dictator Trump was repeatedly investigated by the very government that he presided over for false claims that he colluded with Russia. Does anyone think that Mussolini or Hitler would have tolerated that? Newspapers and other media outlets led the charge that Trump colluded with Russia, but Trump the supposed fascist never tried to shut them down or put them out of business. All he did was call them the “fake news.” Contrast that to liberal hero Woodrow Wilson who not only sought to shut down newspapers that opposed his war policies, but also prosecuted political enemies and others who spoke out against his war policies. Even Andrew Morantz, no fan of Trump, wrote a few months ago in the New Yorker that Trump was not a fascist. (“Trump isn’t Hitler. Trump isn’t Mussolini.”) He quotes Yale University historian and law professor Samuel Moyn (also no fan of Trump) who wrote that some on the left find it convenient to “scapegoat Trump, as if he were an alien in our midst.” Morantz also notes that Corey Robin, a leftist Brooklyn College professor (are there any other kind?) has pointed out that Trump as president had his policy agendas thwarted time and again by Congress and sometimes the Supreme Court — fascists don’t tolerate such interference.
But reasoned historical analysis doesn’t fit well with the demands of politics. The word “fascist” is being used against Donald Trump (and some of his supporters) in an effort to persuade the American people that a vote for Trump is a vote for Hitler or Mussolini. It feeds into the “threat to democracy” claim that has already resulted in two assassination attempts against Trump. Throwing around the “F” word is a way to avoid discussing issues and policy differences. How ironic that many of the people who ubiquitously use the “F” word are the same voices that promoted endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without a congressional declaration of war as mandated by the Constitution; the same voices who assured us that the illegal immigrants who have been allowed to pour into our country during the past four years — even though the Constitution commands that the laws be faithfully executed — pose no threat to our country despite the tens of thousands who have serious criminal convictions and the many who have been charged with committing unspeakable crimes; the same voices who cheered as Democratic district attorneys and attorneys general brought criminal charges and civil lawsuits against Trump and several of his supporters; and the same people who tried to keep Trump off the ballot in several states so that voters could not exercise their democratic right to vote for him.
Perhaps when some liberals shout “fascist,” they should look in the mirror.