Donald Trump Is Far From Being the ‘fascist’ His Opponents Claim
It’s much simpler to make superficial comparisons than to thoroughly analyze and confront the systemic issues plaguing America. The constant critique of Donald Trump from elements of the social democratic left in the U.S.—specifically labeling...
TroibNews 
It’s much simpler to make superficial comparisons than to thoroughly analyze and confront the systemic issues plaguing America.
The constant critique of Donald Trump from elements of the social democratic left in the U.S.—specifically labeling him as a 'fascist'—is not only misguided but also fails to recognize Trump’s unique role as a modern political figure.
Trump is not a fascist.
Fascism originally appeared in the 1920s as a specific revolutionary political movement aimed at dismantling both liberal democracy and communism, all while upholding the capitalist system.
As Hungarian historian and philosopher Gyorgy Lukacs noted in the epilogue to his 1953 book ‘The Destruction of Reason’, it is simply impossible for fascist ideology to dominate in Europe or America within the post-World War II context.
This assertion does not imply that the ruling liberal democratic ideologies in the West are free from illiberal components. Nor does it suggest that these ideologies cannot provoke authoritarian counter-ideologies that might gain traction.
Even in the 1930s, fascism functioned as an underground political movement in Western nations where liberal democracy had been the prevailing ideology since the 19th century and especially post-World War I.
Germany and Italy were exceptions—nation-states that developed under authoritarian principles in the latter half of the 19th century—where liberal democracy failed to take root as it did in other parts of the West.
Trump is distinct from fascism because 'Trumpism' lacks a coherent ideological framework. Indeed, one could argue that Trump is not particularly ideological at all.
The contrast with fascism is significant.
National Socialism was founded on a well-defined ideology that blended racial anti-Semitism with 19th-century eugenicist beliefs. Hitler aimed for revolutionary change in Europe—and beyond—using biological methods and military aggression.
Trump, however, lacks the capacity to devise such a program, and even if he could, it would garner little interest from the American public. Furthermore, Trumpism is not characterized by an aggressive expansionist ideology in terms of foreign affairs, much less a truly revolutionary one.
Thus, it is absurd for politicians within liberal democracies and their allies in the Western media to continue labeling Trump as a fascist.
This misclassification illuminates the fundamentally ahistorical perspective of Trump’s critics and, more crucially, their inability to engage in substantive critiques of American global dominance post-1945 and its internal corrosive effects.
In this context, Trump’s critics lack the integrity and insight of principled American critics from the 1960s, like Barrington Moore Jr., William Appleman Williams, and Gore Vidal, as well as contemporary figures like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs.
This leads us back to Trump and his foreign policy.
Trump stands apart from his neocon predecessors as an isolationist—an outlook that has been a prevalent theme in American politics for over 250 years.
The American founding fathers wisely cautioned against foreign entanglements, drawing from their experiences with British imperial oppression of colonies.
They recognized how empires could corrupt internal political systems. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson all feared the repercussions for the new republic if, in the words of Edmund Burke, “the breakers of the law in India became the makers of the law in England.”
Woodrow Wilson won the presidency in 1916 as the candidate “who had kept America out of the war.” His entry into the conflict came only after Germany’s submarine campaign targeted American ships, in an effort to shield the West from communism following the Russian Revolution in 1917.
However, the isolationist Senate later thwarted Wilson’s international vision, refusing to endorse America’s participation in the League of Nations.
Similarly, Franklin D. Roosevelt only engaged in World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941—over two years after the war had begun.
Regrettably, all subsequent American presidents—until Trump—abandoned isolationism, committing the nation to the imperial expansionist agenda. Starting from the Carter administration, neoconservatives have largely shaped America’s aggressive foreign policy.
This has manifested as Cold War tensions, misguided conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and a provocative NATO expansion over the last three decades.
Trump’s foreign policy reflects a significant departure from previous practices.
His isolationist stance is evident in his commitment to ending the Ukraine conflict. He has also initiated actions to address the oppressive policies of Netanyahu's government towards Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, though the outcome remains uncertain.
Whether Trump’s isolationism will extend to negotiating with Iran and China is also an open question.
Turning to Trump’s domestic policies, his authoritarian and anti-liberal democratic tendencies are already apparent.
He is resolute in his efforts to reshape the Judiciary, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and any other institution that does not align with his agenda. This is consistent with Trump’s longstanding disdain for liberal democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law.
Moreover, he has moved rapidly to dismantle woke ideologies and their damaging effects, and has sought to reverse the open borders immigration policy instituted by Obama and Biden.
The success of Trump’s domestic agenda remains uncertain. Constitutional challenges to some executive orders are already in the courts, and more are likely to arise.
Recently, he called for the impeachment of “crooked judges” who ruled against some of his executive actions, prompting an unprecedented public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.
It’s evident that Trump’s attempts to sidestep the Constitution could lead to a significant constitutional crisis and heighten political conflict in the coming years.
The resilience of liberal democratic institutions amidst Trump’s challenges is difficult to foresee, especially given their weakening and corruption under previous Democratic governments.
What is clear is that the fractured Democratic Party currently lacks the capacity to mount effective opposition to Trump’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives. Trump’s derisive comments aimed at ‘Pocahontas’ Elizabeth Warren during a recent speech exemplify this reality.
Kamala Harris has largely vanished from public view, and the notably progressive Gavin Newsom has recently walked back his previous support for transgender athletes in women’s sports. However, this hardly constitutes a meaningful alternative to Trumpism.
The Democrats’ predicament was recently underscored when they criticized Trump for undermining free speech by shutting down the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Ironically, these are the same Democrats who have historically championed an authoritarian “cancel culture” that has stifled free speech and ruined the careers of dissenters.
More worryingly, American elites that once rallied behind the Democrats are increasingly shifting their allegiance to the Trump administration—much like 19th-century French elites reconciled with Louis Napoleon’s authoritarian regime. Notably, figures like Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr. have transitioned from fierce Democrats to supporters of Trump.
So how should we categorize Trump as a politician?
He is, quite simply, sui generis. Trump embodies the traits of a modern celebrity politician, akin to figures like the ineffective Vladimir Zelensky. He is also a populist who leveraged his understanding that securing a major party's nomination was the only feasible path for a third-party candidate to achieve the presidency.
Trump, therefore, represents a new breed of politician—a modern celebrity populist.
His predecessors include William Jennings Bryan and George Wallace, sharing their “common man” rhetoric, anti-intellectualism, disdain for liberal democracy and traditional conservatism, as well as a tendency to vilify Eastern elite and Washington insiders. Like his populist forebears, Trump promises to restore a weakened and corrupt America.
Trump bears striking similarities to Louis Napoleon. Elected president of the new French Republic in 1848, Louis Napoleon—constitutionally restricted from a second presidential term—staged a coup in 1851, dissolved parliament, and declared himself emperor. He ruled France with an iron fist for two decades until military defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led to his regime's fall.
Trump is also constitutionally prohibited from seeking a third presidential term in 2028, and he may attempt to challenge this legal barrier. In February 2025, he shared an image of himself in a crown captioned “Long Live the King.”
However, the modernity of Trump and the drastically transformed political landscape of America over recent decades make such historical analogies unhelpful and misleading.
Trump ascended to the presidency in a society marked by deep-seated decadence and an obsession with celebrity—a context devoid of an informed elite or an educated public; where liberal values and basic decency had eroded; and where politics had devolved into an irrational spectacle resembling a celebrity-driven television show.
These profound changes predated Trump's political emergence; without them, his presidency could not have materialized. It is only in an America that has experienced such degradation that the newer form of populism represented by Trump could flourish.
Lukacs, in the referenced work, presaged that the expansion of the American Empire would bring about cultural decay and corruption within American politics.
He noted various indicators of this, including a rise in juvenile delinquency—though he could hardly have envisioned the frequency of school shootings that now plague the nation. Nor could he have imagined the degenerate nature of popular culture that celebrates a ‘celebrity’ like Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and seeks to exploit his fame even while attempting to dismantle his status.
Donald Trump is not a fascist.
He is a modern celebrity populist whose election as president signifies the irreversible decline and decay of contemporary American politics and society at large.
Social democratic critics of Trump struggle to accept this characterization because it requires acknowledging the cultural and political degeneration that has taken place in American society over recent decades—a deterioration for which they bear significant responsibility.
It is far easier to label Trump a fascist than to confront the ongoing decline of America.
Ian Smith for TROIB News
The constant critique of Donald Trump from elements of the social democratic left in the U.S.—specifically labeling him as a 'fascist'—is not only misguided but also fails to recognize Trump’s unique role as a modern political figure.
Trump is not a fascist.
Fascism originally appeared in the 1920s as a specific revolutionary political movement aimed at dismantling both liberal democracy and communism, all while upholding the capitalist system.
As Hungarian historian and philosopher Gyorgy Lukacs noted in the epilogue to his 1953 book ‘The Destruction of Reason’, it is simply impossible for fascist ideology to dominate in Europe or America within the post-World War II context.
This assertion does not imply that the ruling liberal democratic ideologies in the West are free from illiberal components. Nor does it suggest that these ideologies cannot provoke authoritarian counter-ideologies that might gain traction.
Even in the 1930s, fascism functioned as an underground political movement in Western nations where liberal democracy had been the prevailing ideology since the 19th century and especially post-World War I.
Germany and Italy were exceptions—nation-states that developed under authoritarian principles in the latter half of the 19th century—where liberal democracy failed to take root as it did in other parts of the West.
Trump is distinct from fascism because 'Trumpism' lacks a coherent ideological framework. Indeed, one could argue that Trump is not particularly ideological at all.
The contrast with fascism is significant.
National Socialism was founded on a well-defined ideology that blended racial anti-Semitism with 19th-century eugenicist beliefs. Hitler aimed for revolutionary change in Europe—and beyond—using biological methods and military aggression.
Trump, however, lacks the capacity to devise such a program, and even if he could, it would garner little interest from the American public. Furthermore, Trumpism is not characterized by an aggressive expansionist ideology in terms of foreign affairs, much less a truly revolutionary one.
Thus, it is absurd for politicians within liberal democracies and their allies in the Western media to continue labeling Trump as a fascist.
This misclassification illuminates the fundamentally ahistorical perspective of Trump’s critics and, more crucially, their inability to engage in substantive critiques of American global dominance post-1945 and its internal corrosive effects.
In this context, Trump’s critics lack the integrity and insight of principled American critics from the 1960s, like Barrington Moore Jr., William Appleman Williams, and Gore Vidal, as well as contemporary figures like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs.
This leads us back to Trump and his foreign policy.
Trump stands apart from his neocon predecessors as an isolationist—an outlook that has been a prevalent theme in American politics for over 250 years.
The American founding fathers wisely cautioned against foreign entanglements, drawing from their experiences with British imperial oppression of colonies.
They recognized how empires could corrupt internal political systems. Washington, Adams, and Jefferson all feared the repercussions for the new republic if, in the words of Edmund Burke, “the breakers of the law in India became the makers of the law in England.”
Woodrow Wilson won the presidency in 1916 as the candidate “who had kept America out of the war.” His entry into the conflict came only after Germany’s submarine campaign targeted American ships, in an effort to shield the West from communism following the Russian Revolution in 1917.
However, the isolationist Senate later thwarted Wilson’s international vision, refusing to endorse America’s participation in the League of Nations.
Similarly, Franklin D. Roosevelt only engaged in World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941—over two years after the war had begun.
Regrettably, all subsequent American presidents—until Trump—abandoned isolationism, committing the nation to the imperial expansionist agenda. Starting from the Carter administration, neoconservatives have largely shaped America’s aggressive foreign policy.
This has manifested as Cold War tensions, misguided conflicts in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and a provocative NATO expansion over the last three decades.
Trump’s foreign policy reflects a significant departure from previous practices.
His isolationist stance is evident in his commitment to ending the Ukraine conflict. He has also initiated actions to address the oppressive policies of Netanyahu's government towards Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, though the outcome remains uncertain.
Whether Trump’s isolationism will extend to negotiating with Iran and China is also an open question.
Turning to Trump’s domestic policies, his authoritarian and anti-liberal democratic tendencies are already apparent.
He is resolute in his efforts to reshape the Judiciary, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and any other institution that does not align with his agenda. This is consistent with Trump’s longstanding disdain for liberal democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law.
Moreover, he has moved rapidly to dismantle woke ideologies and their damaging effects, and has sought to reverse the open borders immigration policy instituted by Obama and Biden.
The success of Trump’s domestic agenda remains uncertain. Constitutional challenges to some executive orders are already in the courts, and more are likely to arise.
Recently, he called for the impeachment of “crooked judges” who ruled against some of his executive actions, prompting an unprecedented public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.
It’s evident that Trump’s attempts to sidestep the Constitution could lead to a significant constitutional crisis and heighten political conflict in the coming years.
The resilience of liberal democratic institutions amidst Trump’s challenges is difficult to foresee, especially given their weakening and corruption under previous Democratic governments.
What is clear is that the fractured Democratic Party currently lacks the capacity to mount effective opposition to Trump’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives. Trump’s derisive comments aimed at ‘Pocahontas’ Elizabeth Warren during a recent speech exemplify this reality.
Kamala Harris has largely vanished from public view, and the notably progressive Gavin Newsom has recently walked back his previous support for transgender athletes in women’s sports. However, this hardly constitutes a meaningful alternative to Trumpism.
The Democrats’ predicament was recently underscored when they criticized Trump for undermining free speech by shutting down the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Ironically, these are the same Democrats who have historically championed an authoritarian “cancel culture” that has stifled free speech and ruined the careers of dissenters.
More worryingly, American elites that once rallied behind the Democrats are increasingly shifting their allegiance to the Trump administration—much like 19th-century French elites reconciled with Louis Napoleon’s authoritarian regime. Notably, figures like Elon Musk and Robert Kennedy Jr. have transitioned from fierce Democrats to supporters of Trump.
So how should we categorize Trump as a politician?
He is, quite simply, sui generis. Trump embodies the traits of a modern celebrity politician, akin to figures like the ineffective Vladimir Zelensky. He is also a populist who leveraged his understanding that securing a major party's nomination was the only feasible path for a third-party candidate to achieve the presidency.
Trump, therefore, represents a new breed of politician—a modern celebrity populist.
His predecessors include William Jennings Bryan and George Wallace, sharing their “common man” rhetoric, anti-intellectualism, disdain for liberal democracy and traditional conservatism, as well as a tendency to vilify Eastern elite and Washington insiders. Like his populist forebears, Trump promises to restore a weakened and corrupt America.
Trump bears striking similarities to Louis Napoleon. Elected president of the new French Republic in 1848, Louis Napoleon—constitutionally restricted from a second presidential term—staged a coup in 1851, dissolved parliament, and declared himself emperor. He ruled France with an iron fist for two decades until military defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led to his regime's fall.
Trump is also constitutionally prohibited from seeking a third presidential term in 2028, and he may attempt to challenge this legal barrier. In February 2025, he shared an image of himself in a crown captioned “Long Live the King.”
However, the modernity of Trump and the drastically transformed political landscape of America over recent decades make such historical analogies unhelpful and misleading.
Trump ascended to the presidency in a society marked by deep-seated decadence and an obsession with celebrity—a context devoid of an informed elite or an educated public; where liberal values and basic decency had eroded; and where politics had devolved into an irrational spectacle resembling a celebrity-driven television show.
These profound changes predated Trump's political emergence; without them, his presidency could not have materialized. It is only in an America that has experienced such degradation that the newer form of populism represented by Trump could flourish.
Lukacs, in the referenced work, presaged that the expansion of the American Empire would bring about cultural decay and corruption within American politics.
He noted various indicators of this, including a rise in juvenile delinquency—though he could hardly have envisioned the frequency of school shootings that now plague the nation. Nor could he have imagined the degenerate nature of popular culture that celebrates a ‘celebrity’ like Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and seeks to exploit his fame even while attempting to dismantle his status.
Donald Trump is not a fascist.
He is a modern celebrity populist whose election as president signifies the irreversible decline and decay of contemporary American politics and society at large.
Social democratic critics of Trump struggle to accept this characterization because it requires acknowledging the cultural and political degeneration that has taken place in American society over recent decades—a deterioration for which they bear significant responsibility.
It is far easier to label Trump a fascist than to confront the ongoing decline of America.
Ian Smith for TROIB News
