The Art of Selling 21st-Century American Fascism

 When Donald Trump's longest-serving White House Chief of Staff, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, has the definition of fascism queued up for a conversation with the New York Times to be able to confidently assert that his former boss and the current Republican presidential candidate is a fascist, we should believe him. Not because John Kelly is some kind of heroic figure illuminating a previously unknown truth. Far, far, from it. Even after describing his former boss as a fascist who had praised Hitler, Kelly still is publicly sitting on the fence and is on the record as having been a ferocious defender of Trump’s family separation policy. But Kelly’s reluctant conclusion that Trump is campaigning as a fascist is still extremely significant for its power to undermine the plausible deniability constructed into the sales pitch for American fascism.  

True, Trump’s fascism is comically weak in its disguise. The truth is easily discerned by anyone who is not looking to find an excuse to deny the reality in front of their face. It confuses the ill-fitting $10 Captain America Halloween costume with the real thing.  Or as CNN analyst Brian Stelter recently put it, “Everyone who paid attention in high school history class knows that Trump’s anti-immigration language is the language of fascists and white supremacists throughout history.”

But as obvious as the costume might be, their 2024 campaign is not one of goose-stepping in the streets with swastika armbands explicitly embracing fascist politics. They deny the label and refute the charge, however weak. It is this plausible deniability created by that weak disguise that forms the lynchpin for selling 21st-century American fascism. 

Instead of campaigning on explicit fascist appeals, Republicans led by Trump are running a billion-dollar campaign to hide their fascism under the thin veneer of anti-immigrant demagoguery. 

The strategy to sell a conspiratorial fiction about elites manipulating a disfavored minority to popularize a justification for throwing out democracy and start internal round-ups of disfavored minorities and political opponents is a core part of the early pages of the fascist playbook. What Trump and Republicans are doing is not unique. But it is precisely because we know where they are likely headed that we have to be clear-eyed about their strategy. The billion-dollar campaign isn’t one about addressing the challenges of forced global migration, it is the means to sell 21st-century American fascism. And we mustn’t confuse the two. That confusion is a fascist trap.  

Take a look at the billion dollars of paid political messaging, as we have, and you will find most of the appeals are the sort of anti-immigrant fearmongering and scapegoating that have dotted Republican ads for the last several cycles.  The strategic xenophobia is ugly, but most of the disinformation in them are versions of the persistent nativist myths that have been around for decades – immigrants bring crime and create downward pressures on the economics of working families. These nativist lies don’t become true no matter how much money is spent to tell them. Engaging in the strategic racism of telling these lies through coded means for cynical and selfish political ends, as is the case with the billion dollars being spent this cycle, is gross but not inherently fascist.  

What is distinctly different about the billion-dollar investment into strategic xenophobia this cycle isn't just the scale but that it is being weaponized for the purposes of bringing 21st-century American fascism to power.  It acts as the poor disguise to allow those looking for plausible deniability the chance to claim that it isn’t the fascist agenda, but instead, it's the concerns about immigrants threatening the solvency of Social Security or that they are bringing drugs and crime that are the real issues motivating them.

But the lies about immigrants have also taken on two other distinctive elements carrying the weight of selling fascism to a segment of the American people this election cycle. 

Under the guise of protecting the integrity of American democracy, Trump, the GOP, and a vast well-funded network of their allies have been selling the bigoted conspiracy theory that there is a cabal of liberal elites “importing” an “invasion” of non-white immigrants that they can manipulate into casting fraudulent votes to steal the upcoming election. The massive effort to sell the Big Lie 2.0, where immigrants are alleged vehicles for this nefarious plot, holds multiple purposes for selling fascism. It is the lie that provides the justification for overturning unfavorable election results. It also sets up the argument that the “will” of “real Americans” cannot be interpreted by a fraudulent democratic process and is instead best interpreted by an authoritarian leader named Donald Trump. And it creates the pretext for an ever-escalating set of procedures to restrict access to the ballot box and to throw out inconvenient votes. The hundred million-dollar-plus campaign across the American right throughout this year to sell this conspiracy theory was the effort to cloak the active assault on American democracy in the plausible deniability of the noncitizen voting lie. That was the point and purpose of systematically hiding behind the nativist lie.  

The immigrant boogeyman also was the foil for selling the justification for deploying the military onto the streets of American cities and towns for round-ups and political crackdowns, a critical part of any fascist state. “It’s a literal invasion” became the main talking point for Republicans when describing immigration to the United States. The adoption of the white nationalist conspiracy theory not only courts the sort of deadly political violence characteristic of fascist projects, it has become the justification for rolling troops into American cities. Moving from the margins of racist street rallies to the mainstream rhetoric of Congress and cable news segments over the last several years, the replacement theory language of a literal invasion underwrites the justification for invoking old wartime laws for sweeping internal crackdowns, round-ups, and detention camps. “Mass Deportation Now” and a “literal invasion” provide a cheap cover to obscure who may be on the list as humvees start rolling into the neighborhood. But it is cover enough for far too many to pretend that that list isn’t something more than deporting violent criminals. 

But this gets us back to the importance of John Kelly joining the decisively robust chorus of those correctly fingering Trump as a fascist. He joins a chorus that includes General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, retired U.S. National Guard Major General Randy Manner, and former House Republican Chair Liz Cheney. Kelly was also quickly backed up by another 12 top Trump administration officials in a letter backing his comments. That chorus is loud and robust, providing rich detail on the accuracy of the fascist label, rendering future discussion to prove his fascism redundant. But Kelly’s recorded interview published by the Times strips away so much of that plausible deniability. 

He was the visage of the “adult in the room” but has now loudly stated that the emperor's clothes are fascist. No Republican can now pretend Trump is campaigning on anything else. They most assuredly will try. But the defense only becomes more blatantly absurd. Especially if there is the courage to challenge Trump's Republican allies on the point. Like New York U.S. House candidate John Avlon, who in the debate this week called out his Republican opponent, Rep. Nick LaLota, for his unequivocal support for the fascist at the top of the ticket. 

As we wrote last week, the fascist label matters and is not merely a cheap synonym for bad or dangerous. Part of the urgent significance that the label demands is understanding the strategy of how the fascist project seeks power. As it often has been the case, it is not by outright force, but the 21st-century American fascism as being packaged in coded appeals that falsely assert that working people’s problems can and will only be solved through the purge of their immigrant neighbors. 

In these final weeks of the election, the words of Umberto Eco, written more than two decades ago, continue to resonate with urgent importance. Eco wrote:

“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plain clothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, ‘I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.’ Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world.”

The billion-dollar campaign to sell nativist populism in the hopes of winning power and installing a fascist regime led by Trump, is far from his project alone. The project needs many collaborators and many who silently nod along for their own personal and political gain. It is dressed up in a familiar and thin disguise, but fascism is on the ballot. Even Trump’s former top man agrees with that.  

And with fascism on the ballot, it becomes the central question of this election. How can it be anything else? Meaning that this one is different. And every Republican on the ballot has a scarlet letter F next to their name. 

That is the choice. One we cannot afford to ignore.