In a time-honored tradition that is far older than I am (36 years), we are just over two weeks out from Election Day and have fully committed to losing our minds as a country.
One of the current talking points being kicked into overdrive by people who are losing their already staticky connection to reality is the idea that a second Trump administration would mean the rise of fascism in America would be complete. It is a claim accompanied by the insane ramblings of those who feel mildly inconvenienced by the very idea of Donald Trump, and usually lacks any historical context whatsoever.
Take former AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer, who wrote such a screed on Substack.
One of the most puzzling questions of the cycle is how, with less than three weeks to go to Election Day, polling shows the race in a dead heat despite Trump’s obvious authoritarian intentions. Consider how unlikely you would have thought that to be the future on January 7th, 2021, or in November 2022 when responsibility for Republicans’ dashed midterm hopes was laid at Trump’s feet, or in December 2023 when it appeared Trump could face four criminal trials in 2024.
The above excerpt comes from an item he wrote titled “Sleepwalking Our Way to Fascism.” More:
This is the case even though Americans have many more reasons to be alarmed by Trump this cycle than in 2020. Before November 2020, Trump had not yet led a deadly insurrection. He had not yet made clear his intentions to replace the civil service with his own loyalists. And he had not yet appointed any of the judges who have proven more loyal to him than to the law.
What Podhorzer doesn’t do in his piece is actually list anything that would drag America into the throes of fascism.
The idea that Trump’s second term would usher in fascism isn’t just absurd—it’s a slap in the face to the millions who have suffered under actual fascist regimes throughout history. Fascism, by definition, involves the total suppression of opposition, the abolition of free elections, and the merging of state and corporate power into authoritarian control.
Think Benito Mussolini’s Italy or Adolf Hitler’s Germany, where dissent was brutally crushed, political opponents were jailed or executed, and the press was reduced to a government propaganda machine.
In comparison, Trump’s four years in office look like a model of democratic dysfunction, not dictatorship. During his first term, Americans were free to protest, criticize him openly, and vote him out of office. The 2020 election happened as scheduled, and despite the noise about election challenges, Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021. No coup, no military takeover, no indefinite suspension of power—just Trump boarding Marine One and Biden taking the oath of office. The peaceful transition may not have been pretty, but it happened.
If Trump was aiming for fascism, he did a spectacularly poor job.