The term “fascism” is often used in the modern age to describe various political phenomena, from the regime of Vladimir Putin and its irredentist claims on Ukraine to the rise of far-right politicians more generally like Donald Trump who adopt theatrical and nationalistic approaches to politics. The extent of the atrocities and destruction carried out by fascist regimes in Germany and Italy in the early 20th century has certainly left its marks on history. As consumers of modern-day politics, it is logical that we would want to draw comparisons between the modern age and this dark age of human history, as we hope to ensure that such a scourge as fascism can never again gain a hold over society.
We should nonetheless caution ourselves from analogizing the past to fit the present day. No modern phenomenon will ever perfectly match the militaristic and aesthetic styles of Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, and the more peculiar ethnocentrism and genocidal antisemitism of Nazi Germany is likewise unlikely to be repeated in the modern age exactly as it was realized in the 1930s and 40s. Indeed, these regimes constitute unique historical forms.
There are, however, still broader trends and characteristics common to the fascist regimes of Italy, Germany, and other countries that allow us to form an approximate understanding of fascism. Rather than adopting a checklist-style approach in order to evaluate modern phenomena binarily as “fascist” or “not fascist,” we should rather acknowledge that fascism is a broad assortment of characteristics which need not be entirely present in a single regime or leader for that regime or leader to be fascist. Archetypal fascism, even if we classify Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as specific examples of such, will never emerge in the present day or future; the most visible peculiarities of the militaristic regime of Mussolini and the racial regime of Hitler cannot be divorced from their historical and geographical contexts.
Certain regimes and leaders can follow some core fascist trends and develop a family resemblance to these historical fascist regimes and leaders while not perfectly replicating all of their characteristics. However, some fascist tendencies are more distinctly fascist than others. For instance, extreme aestheticism, modernism, and a quasi-revolutionary vision of the future are more specific to “fascism” than mere nationalism or colonialism, which can exist outside of fascism. It is precisely in these concepts which are central to fascisms that we can attain a modern use of the term, rather than in concepts which are merely incidental and exist apart from fascism.
Many political commentators and politicians are quick to denounce Donald Trump as a fascist. They will latch onto certain characteristics of historical fascism that they identify in the now former American president, such as his brand of extreme nationalism, and draw an effective analogy between the political styles of Trump and fascist dictators like Hitler and Mussolini. Indeed, an article in The New Republic on Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s use of the term “fascism” at the 2020 Democratic National Convention stresses that Trump’s brand of nationalism, if he were a fascist, would be distinctly American, asserting that “all fascisms are extreme forms of nationalist exceptionalism” (Finchelstein et al.).
While true, it is first necessary to distinguish fascism from related terms like nationalism and ethnocentrism. While nationalism is bound up with fascism, the terms are not synonymous by any means; any fascist is likely a nationalist, though not all nationalists are fascists. Trump is not a fascist simply by virtue of touting American exceptionalism and nativist immigration policies, just as his administration’s anti-democratic tendencies of “[generating] violent images that would justify its use of dictatorial means to control politics” might be authoritarian but not necessarily fascist (Finchelstein et al.). Fascism is a loose association of characteristics that may come together in any number of combinations in a contemporary phenomenon, but these loose characteristics that regimes or political actors might show, while supported by ideas like nationalism and authoritarianism, are nonetheless more peculiar to fascism than either idea, both of which can be adopted apart from fascism.
A more appropriate use of the term “fascism” when describing the phenomenon of Trump can be found when analyzing the theatrical approach to politics that Trump adopts, in relation to historical fascism’s tendency to aestheticize politics. A core feature of the historical fascist regimes in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was their development of a certain aesthetic, composed not just of a militaristic style of dress, but also of propagandistic films, which sought to convey an overwhelming beauty to the fascist order, and grandiose architecture, which attempted to draw aesthetic links between their regime and the great classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. It is in the context of this intense form of aestheticism that Walter Benjamin writes that fascism “sees its salvation in granting expression to the masses—but on no account granting them rights… The logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticizing of political life” (Benjamin 269). Fascism for Benjamin is crucially about distracting the masses from the discontents of modern life (specifically from property relations, if we adopt Benjamin’s Marxist critique) by focusing on the aesthetics of politics rather than its actual content.
The apparent “ideological vacuum” that is Trumpism, as highlighted by Peter Gordon in his reevaluation of Adorno’s “authoritarian personality,” beyond just his nationalism and illiberalism, more concretely corresponds to a definitional feature of fascism, especially if we take Benjamin’s analysis seriously (Gordon 73). Just as historical fascism for Benjamin does not rely on the strength of its ideological or rational appeal for swaying the masses but instead relies on an emotional attraction to its aesthetic, so too does Trump’s appeal not lay necessarily in the conservative policies he promotes, but instead in the insubstantial and diversionary political theater in which he engages. Gordon continues on to note that “Trumpism is less the ‘undoing’ of repression than it is an event of political theater, in which everyone gets to experience the apparent dismantling of repression without anything actually changing” (Gordon 71). Fascism insofar as it offers an aesthetic and quasi-liberating experience for its believers is, therefore, exceptionally useful in understanding the modern political phenomenon of Trump.
Vladimir Putin is another contemporary political figure whose tendencies and behavior have been denounced as fascistic, particularly in light of his imperialistic conquests against former Soviet states like Ukraine, his crackdown on political dissent, and the masculine leadership cult that has seemingly formed around him in Russia. As with Trump, however, much of the similarities drawn between Putin and the fascist dictators of the 20th century are similarities that are common across authoritarian dictatorships more broadly, far from being unique to fascism.
Dr. Timothy Snyder claims in the New York Times that “today’s Russia meets most of the criteria that scholars tend to apply. It has a cult around a single leader, Vladimir Putin. It has a cult of the dead, organized around World War II. It has a myth of a past golden age of imperial greatness to be restored by a war of healing violence—the murderous war on Ukraine” (Snyder). All the same, these supposedly fascist features of Putin’s Russia, while certainly associated and often working in tandem with the unique tendencies of historical fascism, are, again, nothing that can be designated as particularly fascist. While cults of personality are regular features of the fascist regimes of Mussolini and Hitler, it is also a key feature of other strongman dictatorships, like those of Saddam Hussein and Mao Zedong. For this reason, more evidence is necessary to convincingly suggest that Putinism is a distinct movement toward fascism.
It is likewise a stretch to call either Putin’s past or current invasion of Ukraine “a war of healing violence” rather than a typical irredentist venture to regain lost territory, a much less overtly fascist gesture. Marlene Laruelle highlights this point when she writes: “moving from an empire to a nation-state is a long process: coming to terms with a colonial past takes several decades, during which the relationship to the former colonized is still ambivalent” (Laruelle 148). Russia has not launched a war against Ukraine because of an obsession with dying a glorious death or healing the world through violence; instead, Russia, and Putin more specifically, continue to regret the relatively recent loss of Soviet territory and hope to regain a colonial empire that is all but gone. Surely, if the healing effect of war that Snyder discusses was so central to Putin and the Russians, Putin would have publicized the Ukraine invasion and glorified it.
As an article in the New York Times reveals, “Mr. Putin planned the invasion in such secrecy that even Dmitri S. Peskov, his spokesman, said in an interview that he learned of it only once it had begun,” and other top Russian officials were similarly left in the dark about invasion plans (Troianovski). The war in Ukraine seems, therefore, to be more the bid of a sporadic and unpredictable personal dictatorship than a carefully executed plan to achieve healing. Fascism might be a more useful term to describe Putin’s regime in Russia if Putin subscribed to a revolutionary vision of the future. Laruelle clarifies that “fascism does not aim to preserve or restore the past but instead seeks to create a radically new society,” yet nothing of Russia’s post-colonial agenda in Ukraine suggests a revolutionary outlook (Laruelle 145). Instead, Putin’s regime emerges as conservative and hopelessly regressive.
Common across both the Trump and Putin regimes, as well as a significant component of historical regimes of fascism, is a certain conception of misogyny and overall male domination. In Fascist Italy, Mussolini was a figure venerated as the peak of masculinity, frequently shown with wild or exotic animals in order to emphasize his brand of machismo. Furthermore, women under Fascist Italy, though ascribed a role of importance for their reproductive abilities, were nonetheless only valued insofar as they could bear offspring; they were even subject to attempts to apply the efficiency of capitalist production to physical reproduction, suggesting the mechanical perception of women under fascism. Vladimir Putin is likewise infamous for being depicted with wild animals to convey his enduring masculinity. The apparent detest for women under Putinist Russia is similarly well recorded; in 2017, Russia’s legislature, acting with Putin’s approval, “decriminalized domestic violence that does not require hospital treatment,” seemingly mocking the fact that 20% of Russian women experience domestic abuse each year. Donald Trump is yet another figure who has touted his masculinity at every opportunity, whether in his 2016 campaign or in his rhetoric around the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The rampant masculinity of these figures, from actual fascists like Mussolini to contemporary leaders who have been denounced as fascist like Trump and Putin, seems to suggest a larger importance of this misogyny in the fascist ideology. While other figures like Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni might be women, they too perpetuate anti-feminist and misogynistic rhetoric; as noted in a France 24 article, “‘Marine Le Pen’s programme is misogynistic… She has no concrete proposals for tackling violence against women, nor for addressing wage inequality. She only talks about women’s rights from a racist perspective, when she uses them to attack foreigners.” It is hard to conceptualize a fascist regime, fascist leader, or contemporary figure with fascist tendencies who has not touted misogyny and male dominance to some degree. These characteristics therefore also emerge as potentially definitional to an understanding of fascism and warrant being denounced as such. Fascism is a web of associated features that need not be found together in any one phenomenon for that phenomenon to still be fascist. Nonetheless, the features which are distinctly fascist are not as commonplace as we might think. Fascism can be a useful term for understanding modern phenomena like Trump or Putin, but we must be precise in what we mean and evaluate them and their actions based on their distinctly fascist idiosyncrasies.
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