If Trump and the GOP Are Fascist, This Election Probably Doesn’t Matter Much

 

(CNN)

The debate over whether Donald Trump is a literal fascist has been going on for close to a decade now. It’s one I’ve weighed in on a few times, at first (back in 2015) to argue that he is, then in greater length about half a decade ago, concluding that he’s not a fascist in the academic sense but is in a more casual sense (but that it still may be wise to avoid using that label). I don’t really have any new arguments to make on that front: I still largely agree with what I wrote in 2019.

What I want to discuss here is a particular argument that’s been made with seemingly greater vigor in every election where Trump is on the ballot: that he is, indeed, a fascist, and therefore it’s absolutely crucial to defeat him in this election. If we grant the premise of this argument, it does seem superficially convincing. Fascism is, in fact, very bad — certainly worse than the squishy centrist liberalism the Democrats represent — and it is accordingly very important to keep it from ascending to power. So you should vote for the Democrat, given that they’re the only candidate with a realistic shot of beating the fascist. QED.

The thing is, I think that even if you grant the premise of this argument, the conclusion doesn’t actually follow. In fact, I would argue for the exact opposite conclusion: the outcome of this presidential election (and the last two) probably matters little in the long term and voting Democrat is largely futile if Trump is, indeed, at the head of a genuine fascist movement. 

Calling Trump a fascist is almost by definition to analogize him and his supporters to the major fascist movements of interwar Europe: Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and (debatably) Franco in Spain. So it makes sense to look back the history of these fascist movements and try to take some lessons there. But here’s the thing: people in each of those countries did elect non-fascist (or even anti-fascist) political parties, and it didn’t prevent fascism’s rise to power! 

In the last election before Mussolini marched on Rome, his coalition came in third place and got less than a fifth of the votes cast. When Hitler ran for president of Germany in 1932, he lost soundly, and in Germany’s last free election before World War II the Nazis actually lost seats and ended up with a smaller presence in the Bundestag than the two leading left-wing parties. And in the Spanish election preceding Franco’s coup and the civil war, the left-wing Popular Front came out on top. In each case, the fascists still ended up coming to power. Not shockingly, losing elections didn’t stop the fascists! Franco and Mussolini staged coups and Hitler managed to worm his way into power through political maneuvering that exploited the rivalry between previous chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. 

One of the centerpieces in the argument that a second Trump term will be worse and more destructive than the first is that he’s assembled a core of operatives who are both competent and loyal enough to put all of his worst plans into effect. But if that’s true, why wouldn’t he use that same cabal to find a non-electoral path to power, like the fascist leaders of old? We’ve spent years hearing about how close we came to… something (I’m never quite sure what) on January 6, 2021. If that “coup attempt” (as it’s been branded) was nearly successful and Trump is now bigger and badder than ever, why would an election loss stop him? 

You could criticize this argument for being defeatist, which is fair enough. So let me qualify it a bit. If you’re voting for Biden just as a dilatory measure, hoping it will buy us some time to implement a long-term plan to keep the fascists at bay, ok. But then what’s the long-term plan? The people most likely to be using this “Trump-is-fascist-so-vote-blue-no-matter-who” argument are (not surprisingly) also pretty likely to argue that Biden’s actually doing an ok job and the Democrats are good already. So what’s your plan, then? If three and a half years of Biden has somehow left us with an even more dangerous, fascist Trump who’s neck and neck with him in national polling, why will four more years of Biden prevent the fascists from coming to power? Sorry to break this one to you, but a broadly unpopular centrist president whose own supporters mostly don’t like him that much sounds like exactly the sort of leader a fascist coup would overthrow. 

As noted, I do not think Trump’s a fascist. I think his brand of racist, socially reactionary conservatism is pretty noxious, but I’m not concerned about this being the last presidential election we ever have (we should be so lucky). However, if I were, my focus probably wouldn’t be on yelling at people online who say they’re not going to vote for Biden. You can blame purity test leftists or the New York Times or Russia for his unpopularity, but even if you’re right, whining isn’t actually a political strategy! And if you really think that the fascists are this close to power in the United States, “vote blue no matter who” really doesn’t cut it as a political strategy, either.

I personally have no intention of voting for Biden. For one thing, I live in a state that Trump carried easily in both 2016 and 2020, and which he’s quite likely to win again, therefore (because of the electoral college) making a vote for Biden totally inconsequential. But even if I lived in a more competitive state I wouldn’t be planning on voting for him. Disgust with his unflagging support of Israel as they decimate Gaza is a strong reason not to, but I also just think Biden’s brand of establishment liberalism has no ability to actually fix problems like climate change and economic inequality, and that (based on election patterns post-WWII) if Biden wins this election some Republican — maybe Trump, maybe someone worse — will win the White House in 2028. 

That being said, I do think there are reasonable arguments you can make in favor of voting for Biden even if they don’t ultimately convince me. It is true that Trump would be as bad or worse on pretty much every issue, certainly including Israel-Palestine, and that on economics Biden probably has the (unimpressive) distinction of being the best president of my lifetime. 

I also think that there’s an argument to be made that the outlook for American democracy, such as it is, is pretty bleak (this argument I happen to wholeheartedly agree with). But Trump is not a fascist who will install himself as president-for-life, and if he were, re-electing Biden would be completely insufficient to stop him. So let’s maybe just take it down a few notches.