“For the last decade, there’s been a debate among people who don’t like Donald Trump about whether he’s a fascist,” writes Michelle Goldberg in a January 2026 New York Times article. This rhetoric, which began during his first term, reached a fever pitch during the 2024 campaign when Hillary Clinton compared his Madison Square Garden rally to the infamous Nazi gathering held there in the 1930s. In 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris and half of the American public, according to ABC News/Ipsos polling, embraced the label for Trump, while many others dismissed it as hyperbolic. A year into Trump’s second term, Goldberg suggests that those who sounded the alarms are being vindicated.
The debate over fascism has become more pervasive following the killing of Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross in Minnesota. The video of Good’s death was seen by 80% of Americans, and polls from Data for Progress, Quinnipiac, CNN, and YouGov/Economist reveal that the majority of Americans do not think the killing was justified.
Nonetheless, the Trump Administration has ramped up the assault in Minnesota. The internet is flooded with viral videos of ICE agents violently detaining a U.S. citizen child at a Target and warning peaceful bystandersthat they will end up like Good. Other footage shows agents punching citizens for legally recording them, assaulting a woman whose disability prevented her from exiting her car, and using flash bangs and pepper-sprayingpeaceful protesters. As they were driving, a Minneapolis couple and their six children were reportedly caught in a chaotic clash between federal agents and protesters. According to the parents, officers deployed flash-bang munitions and tear gas that filled their vehicle, causing their 6-month-old baby to stop breathing and lose consciousness before emergency responders arrived.
These violent acts are not just limited to Minnesota. Since 2025, ICE has been responsible for nine fatal shootings and about 40 deaths in custody, including one ruled a homicide. The agency has also detained nearly 200 U.S. citizens, including Native Americans.
It is no wonder that the concept of abolishing ICE is more popular than ever. Social media is increasingly filled with videos of everyday citizens who emphasize that they are not overtly political and rarely, if ever, protest, yet feel compelled to speak out because they believe the President’s version of events is demonstrably false.
Even traditionally sympathetic voices like Tim Dillon and Joe Rogan have raised concerns, specifically comparing the administration’s use of federal agents to the “Gestapo”: the secret police of Nazi Germany known for their brutal suppression of dissent and lack of judicial oversight. Rogan further leaned into this comparison by arguing that forcing residents to prove their citizenship status on the street is tantamount to the infamous Nazi practice of demanding “your papers,” to identify and disappear undesirables. Relatedly, in the understatement of the year, former ICE Director Sarah Saldana recently warned on CNN that the situation has reached a breaking point, noting that it is “way past time for de-escalation.”
As his first year comes to a close, much of what has occurred in Minnesota and elsewhere has led critics to label Trump a fascist. They point to the fact that he lied to the public about Good’s death. After the incident, Trump immediately made the false claim that Good “viciously ran over” an agent, forcing the officer to be hospitalized. In reality, Good’s car did not run overanyone, and Ross walked away from the scene unassisted. New York Times reporting casts doubt on the idea that Ross even visited a hospital after Good’s death.
Critics argue that Trump warrants the fascist label due to his efforts to direct the U.S. military against American citizens. Trump and his Administration have threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, which, unlike in Trump’s National Guard deployments would allow armed forces to carry out law enforcement functions, such as making arrests and conducting searches. According to military intelligence sources, the Minnesota crackdown serves as more than an immigration initiative; it is allegedly part of a broader campaign targeting “anti-American’ elements,” such as Antifa and the radical left. Reports indicate that 1,500 Alaska-based troops are prepared to deploy to Minnesota at Trump’s command. This escalation coincides with a federal court ruling this week that significantly restricted the tactics ICE may employ against peaceful protesters. Meanwhile, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz mobilized the state’s National Guard this weekend to maintain order. The deployment occurs against the backdrop of a criminal probe by the Justice Department into both Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly impeding federal immigration operations.
Critics contend that the Trump administration has effectively weaponized ICE, transforming it into a tool of executive power rather than a public service agency. They cite a convergence of aggressive incentives and diminished oversight as evidence of this shift. In mid-2025, the administration introduced substantial financial inducements, including $50,000 signing bonuses and $60,000 in debt forgiveness, to attract recruits whose primary motivations may be economic rather than civic. This, coupled with policies allowing agents to remain masked, withhold identification, and conduct stops based on subjective criteria like “accents,” has largely insulated the agency from accountability. Moreover, the imposition of strict arrest quotas to meet a target of 11 million deportations has escalated routine daily activities into high-stakes confrontations for many residents.
Despite claims that professional standards prevent abuse, an undercover report from Slate describes ICE training as “sloppy” and lacking substantive background checks. Trainees reportedly expressed more interest in physical assault and making arrests than in mastering the legal requirements of the job.
As the line between law enforcement and political weaponry continues to blur, the American public is left to determine whether these actions represent a temporary crisis or a permanent systemic shift toward something like fascism. To navigate this uncertainty, one must look past the headlines and evaluate the administration’s trajectory against the historical markers.
Is the American System Immune to Fascism?
Fascism has always had supporters in the U.S. In 1939, 26% of Americans preferred fascism, in October 2024, it was 17%. However, some such as Tyler Cowen, a Professor of economics at George Mason University wrote in 2018 that “American fascism cannot happen anymore because the American government is so large and unwieldy.” Four years later, Political scientist Anthony DiMaggio disagreed, arguing that it was already happening in the U.S.
Before the U.S. entered World War II, scholars not only believed the emergence of fascism was possible in the U.S., they predicted the exact mechanics of how it would occur. In 1935, the scholar and former U.S. Marine Arthur H. Steiner warned that American fascism would materialize once six specific components were realized: the rejection of democracy, adoption of dictatorial techniques, repression of individual freedoms, suppression of organized labor, stoking of intense nationalism, and mobilization of a popular reactionary perspective.
Steiner’s academic warnings were grounded in the volatile political climate of the 1930s, most notably the “Business Plot,” which involved a fellow Marine and two-time Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Smedley Butler. The conspirators, a group of financial elites, believed they could leverage Butler’s immense influence over veterans to lead a military coup against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, Butler remained loyal to the Constitution; he exposed the plot and forced a Congressional investigation that effectively quelled the coup. This historical episode, recently dramatized in the 2022 film Amsterdam, served as the catalyst for Butler to document the corrupt intersection of corporate interests and military power in his seminal pamphlet, War is a Racket.
While scholars were still debating whether fascism could ever take root in the United States, poet Langston Hughes argued that Black Americans were already living through its domestic equivalent. Addressing the Second International Writers’ Congress in 1937, Hughes contended that the traits now labeled as “fascist” were the founding realities of the Jim Crow South. “We Negroes in America do not have to be told what Fascism is in action. We know,” Hughes declared, noting that “theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression” had long been a lived reality.
After World War II, Americans largely viewed fascism as an “Old World” relic, a theme explored in the new film Nuremberg. The film rightly tells the story of how psychologist Dr. Douglas Kelley was dismissed by American audiences for suggesting that his work with Nazis revealed that fascism could take root in the U.S. Still, in the decades ahead, scholars like Theodor W. Adorno as well as artists such as Pier Paolo Pasolini warned that nations like the U.S. that privileged capitalist consumerism had the potential to resuscitate fascism.
Is the “Fascist” Label Historically Accurate or Just Partisan Rhetoric?
“It’s striking how much the arguments that Trump is not a fascist have suffered in just the first few days of this year,” Goldberg noted. This observation highlights a deepening divide: while some commentators dismiss the fascist label as mere partisan hyperbole, others contend it accurately captures the current trajectory of the United States. To understand this debate, one must look at the origin and evolution of the term itself.
The term “Fascism” was coined in 1919 in reference to Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy, and later used to describe the regimes of Germany and Spain. In the decades following World War II, scholars agreed that fascist regimesdominated Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, but they found little consensus on a generic definition of the term. Ernst Nolte, a premier scholar on the subject, rejected efforts at defining fascism because he believed the political ideologies of the researchers made the practice futile.
In the post-World War II U.S., efforts at defining fascism were overshadowed by the Cold War (1945-1991). While Marxists and conservatives debated whether capitalism was responsible for the rise of fascism, liberals continued to blame “totalitarianism.” Marxists rejected this as a politically charged attempt to marginalize progressives by conflating fascism with the leftist, Communist Soviet Union. Nonetheless, by the late 1970s, the lack of a unified concept led many to believe that fascism was a unique set of historical circumstances that would not recur. Still, for those who want a dictionary definition, the Merriam-Webster definition is:
“Fascism: a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”
What Are the Defining Characteristics of a Fascist Government?
Rather than focusing on a dry dictionary definition, the debate concerning the appropriateness of the fascist label centers on the specific behaviors and attitudes of the Trump presidency. Goldberg noted that those who contend Trump is a fascist point to his territorial aggrandizement in Greenland and Venezuela, the utilization of state violence via ICE, his appeals to nationalism, and an emphasis on hyper-masculinity. They further cite his pardoning of January 6th participants and a “fetish for technology” as evidence of this shift. Meanwhile, other commentators highlight Trump’s strategic alliance with corporate power and his systematic dismantling of institutional independence, including efforts to curb autonomy in higher education, co-opting legal processes, and intimidating the press.
To provide a framework for these observations, scholars have sought to categorize the underlying traits that allow such movements to take root. In 1995, Umberto Eco introduced a framework for ‘eternal’ fascism. He posited that fascism functions as a ‘coagulation’ of contradictory elements rather than a single, cohesive system, categorized by fourteen primary characteristics:
1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
He famously noted that “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.” Eco’s framework shifted the focus from specific government structures to a set of psychological and rhetorical traits.
Eco’s list was later emulated by Lawrence Britt in 2003, who identified fourteen characteristics of fascist regimes:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4. Supremacy of the Military
5. Rampant Sexism
6. Controlled Mass Media
7. Obsession with National Security
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
9. Corporate Power is Protected
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections
The examination of features of fascism accompanied the research on how fascism was not a European phenomenon because these features are universal. As a result, in the late 20th century, scholars moved the research beyond Europe, arguing that fascist regimes operated across the globe in Argentina, Chile, and Japan. However, as the digital age and globalized economy reshape the ways power is seized and maintained, many wonder if these classic markers are being updated for a new era.
How Has the Fascist Playbook Evolved for the 21st Century?
While the classic markers of the 1930s provide a baseline, many experts argue that modern movements require a new vocabulary. In November 2025, Stefanie Prezioso warned that traditional fascism analogies may not be entirely helpful today because Trump’s actions, “while echoing the darkest chapters of the twentieth century, remain in many ways radically new.” Prezioso cites historian Eric Hobsbawm, who observed, “When people face what nothing in their past has prepared them for, they grope for words to name the unknown, even when they can neither define nor understand it.” Indeed, when fascism first emerged in the early 20th century, thinkers like Antonio Gramsci drew upon history to name the phenomenon, initially referring to it as “Caesarism.” This 19th-century concept described autocrats who, like Julius Caesar or Napoleon III, claimed to embody the “popular will” while systematically dismantling the institutions that protected it.
Still, scholars have sought to bridge the gap between 20th-century history and today’s political shifts through the term “neofascism.” Galadriel Ravelli and Anna Cento Bull define neofascism as a revival of activism by groups striving to keep fascist ideals alive in the post-war international context.
Jason Stanley argues in How Fascism Works (2018), that 21st-century fascists share tactics with their 1930s predecessors: the construction of a mythic past, reliance on propaganda over reason, and the exploitation of sexual anxiety. However, crucial differences remain. Modern neofascism is fueled by globalization rather than total war, and its rhetoric has shifted from old-world antisemitism toward xenophobia aimed at immigrants.
Neofascism’s appeal is rooted in its ability to reframe political contests. Where the Marxist left struggled to build intersectional coalitions, the radical right has succeeded in reframing the struggle of good versus evil. They pit a deindustrialized working class against a collection of bad actors: immigrants, racial minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities, feminists, leftists, journalists, and the intelligentsia. In this framework, the good people are defined as anti-feminist, uneducated, xenophobic nationalists who aggressively oppose the emancipatory promise of the Enlightenment in favor of a world governed by hierarchy and hyper-masculine violence.
Is the American Crisis a Temporary Setback or a Final Stage of Fascism?
The contemporary debate over Trump is less about his personality and more about the specific timeline of American decline. Analysts like Monika Bauerlein of Mother Jones contend that the transition to fascism is “not over” because citizens still possess rights worth using. Similarly, contributors to The Nation argue that a window remains to prevent total consolidation, provided the public aggressively defends those currently targeted by state violence. Goldberg describes the United States as being trapped in a liminal space: “the space between the liberal democracy most Americans grew up in and the dark, belligerent authoritarian state that our government seeks to impose.”
This belief that the U.S. is “transitioning” suggests that fascism is a process rather than a single event. Researchers such as historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt argue that fascism emerges from specific societal conditions. It often begins with what Arendt calls the “politics of inevitability,” the naïve belief that democracy is guaranteed to endure, leaving citizens unreflective and vulnerable to creeping authoritarianism.
This complacency often coincides with a deadlocked democracy, where traditional liberal and conservative parties become unable to govern effectively or solve national crises. This leads to a “paralysis” of the state that a fascist movement exploits by stoking a sense of overwhelming victimhood and a need for “purity” to prevent national decline. In these moments, when the future seems bleak, leaders point toward a mythical, “pure” past, a “Golden Age,” and frame the present as a constant cycle where “innocent” people are under attack by outsiders.
Fascism also gains momentum when there is no viable left-wing alternative to champion the needs of poor and working people. As Professor of Economics at The New School for Social Research, Clara Mattei notes, fascists rarely seize power in a vacuum; instead, conservative elites often decide to invite fascists into power specifically to help crush the Left. Mattei argues that austerity, which refers to policies like wage cuts and social service reductions, is a deliberate tool used by elites to break the power of the working class. When the status quo fails and the left is marginalized, the public often turns toward fascist rhetoric out of desperation.
When democracy fails to solve a national crisis, elites may view fascism as a technocratic solution that can enforce economic discipline by force where democratic processes have failed. Fascism thus emerges to “tame” the public and ensure that the logic of profit remains unquestioned, often presenting brutal economic choices as scientific necessity. This transition is made easier by the death of truth. As University of Toronto’s Timothy Snyderemphasizes, fascism begins with the abandonment of facts; if nothing is true, no one can criticize power, and citizens eventually trade their freedom for the “sensual experience” of belonging to a tribe or following a leader.
Once a movement emerges, it follows a trajectory that Robert Paxton delineated in his 2004 seminal work, The Anatomy of Fascism. Paxton contends that fascist regimes evolve through five distinct stages:
- The emergence of a populist movement.
- Successful rooting in the political system.
- The achievement of power.
- The exercise of power.
- Radicalization or eventual failure.
While Paxton observes that several movements have emerged throughout history, only Italy and Germany reached the third stage of achieving power, and only Germany successfully expanded through its full exercise. He contends that fascist regimes carry the seeds of their own “inherent self-destruction” because they are built on fundamental contradictions. They position themselves as movements for the people while simultaneously legitimizing the deep inequalities of modern capitalism. Ultimately, fascism is a self-terminating system, yet it collapses only after a period of profound violence, suffering, and systemic instability.
Leading global voices in the study of fascism, such as Jason Stanley, Marci Shore, and Timothy Snyder, recently left their positions at Yale University for academic appointments in other nations. They characterized this move not as a mere career transition, but as a calculated survival strategy. Drawing on their own research, they suggested that the safest course of action is to exit a country at the earliest stage, before a fascist regime fully consolidates its power and closes its borders.
Conclusion
The escalating violence in Minnesota and the administration’s shift toward military intervention have transformed the debate over fascism from a theoretical academic exercise into an urgent national crisis. While critics point to the crackdown as proof that the country has entered the later stages of authoritarian consolidation, others maintain that these actions are necessary measures to maintain order within a polarized democracy. This divide suggests that the “fascist” label remains as contested as it is consequential, leaving the public to reconcile the disturbing events in the streets with the historical frameworks provided by scholars. While the debate persists, the nation waits to see if its institutions will bend or break under the current pressure.
