Date: 2025-07-01 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00024820
OPINION
ROBERT REICH
TheGuardian: Robert Reich ... Trump and the Republican party exemplify these five elements of fascism
ROBERT REICH
TheGuardian: Robert Reich ... Trump and the Republican party exemplify these five elements of fascism
Original article: https://www.alternet.org/reich-trump-republicans-five-fascism/
and
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/17/trump-republican-party-fascism
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 16: Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich testifies before the Joint Economic Committee January 16, 2014 in Washington, DC. Reich joined a panel testifying on the topic of 'Income Inequality in the United States.Ó (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images).
Brandon Gage
June 17, 2023
Former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on Saturday identified five factors that underscore how far down the right-wing rabbit hole twice-indicted ex-President Donald Trump and the Republican Party have dragged American politics.
''Authoritarianism' isn't adequate' to 'describe what Trump wants for America,' Reich wrote in a Guardian opinion column. 'It is fascism. Fascism stands for a coherent set of ideas different from – and more dangerous than – authoritarianism.'
Reich noted what he believes differentiates fascism from mere authoritarianism.
According to Reich, Trump and the GOP have embraced the following:
- Rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman depends on galvanizing popular rage.
- Popular rage draws on a nationalism based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity.
- That superior race or ethnicity is justified by social Darwinist strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.
- Strength, violence and the heroic warrior are centered on male power.
- Those tenets, Reich concluded, 'are not the elements of authoritarianism. They are the essential elements of fascism.'
READ MORE: Robert Reich: 'Corporate price-gouging' can be a strong issue for Democrats in 2024
Reich's full editorial continues here.
#story_page_post_article
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES
- Fascism expert explains why Ron DeSantis is one of the most dangerous men in the GOP ›
- 'Fascism': Critics rebuke Trump’s claim that America’s 'biggest problem' is its own 'sick radical people' ›
- 'Full-blown fascism': Donald Trump envisions a 'civil service test' for 'every federal employee' ›
- I've Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. Until Now | Opinion ›
- America needs to confront its 'Mussolini moment' | Will Bunch ... ›
- Biden calls Trump's philosophy 'semi-fascism' - POLITICO ›
- Report typos and corrections to: feedback@alternet.org.
- Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?
- 'Long arc of progress': Conservative website celebrates Jun
Trump and the Republican party exemplify these five elements of fascism
Trump is often described as ‘authoritarian’. But that doesn’t really capture the more alarming aspects of his movement
Written by Robert Reich
Sat 17 Jun 2023 06.05 EDT
The Washington Post calls Donald Trump’s vision for a second term “authoritarian”.
That vision includes mandatory stop-and-frisk. Deploying the military to fight street crime, break up gangs and deport immigrants. Purging the federal workforce. Charging leakers.
“In 2016, I declared I am your voice,” Trump said at his first 2024 campaign rally in Waco, Texas. “Today, I add I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
How do we describe what Trump wants for America?
“Authoritarianism” isn’t adequate. It is fascism. Fascism stands for a coherent set of ideas different from – and more dangerous than – authoritarianism.
To fight those ideas, it’s necessary to be aware of what they are and how they fit together.
Borrowing from the cultural theorist Umberto Eco, the historians Emilio Gentile and Ian Kershaw, the political scientist Roger Griffin, and the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, I offer five elements that distinguish fascism from authoritarianism.
1. The rejection of democracy, the rule of law and equal rights under the law in favor of a strongman who interprets the popular will.
“The election was stolen.” (Trump, 2020)
“I am your justice … I am your retribution.” (Trump, 2023)
Authoritarians believe society needs strong leaders to maintain stability. They vest in a dictator the power to maintain social order through the use of force (armies, police, militia) and bureaucracy.
By contrast, fascists view strong leaders as the means of discovering what society needs. They regard the leader as the embodiment of society, the voice of the people.
2. The galvanizing of popular rage against cultural elites.
“Your enemies” are “media elites”, … “the elites who led us from one financial and foreign policy disaster to another”. (Trump, 2015, 2016)
Authoritarians do not stir people up against establishment elites. They use or co-opt those elites to gain and maintain power.
By contrast, fascists galvanize public rage at presumed (or imaginary) cultural elites and use mass rage to gain and maintain power. They stir up grievances against those elites for supposedly displacing average people and seek revenge. In doing so, they create mass parties. They often encourage violence.
3. Nationalism based on a dominant “superior” race and historic bloodlines.
“Tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border.” (Trump, 2015)
“Jewish people that vote for a Democrat [show] great disloyalty.” (Trump, 2019)
“Getting critical race theory out of our schools is … a matter of national survival.” (Trump, 2022)
Authoritarians see nationalism as a means of asserting the power of the state. They glorify the state. They want it to dominate other nations.
Authoritarianism seeks to protect or expand its geographic boundaries. It worries about foreign enemies encroaching on its territory.
By contrast, fascism embodies what it considers a “superior” group – based on race, religion and historic bloodlines. Nationalism is a means of asserting that superiority.
Fascists worry about disloyalty and sabotage from groups within the nation that don’t share the same race or bloodlines. These “others” are scapegoated, excluded or expelled, sometimes even killed.
Fascists believe schools and universities must teach values that extol the dominant race, religion and bloodline. Schools should not teach inconvenient truths (such as America’s history of genocide and racism).
4. Extolling brute strength and heroic warriors.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong. (Trump, 6 January 2021)
“I am your warrior.” (Trump, 2023)
The goal of authoritarianism is to gain and maintain state power. For authoritarians, “strength” comes in the form of large armies and munitions.
By contrast, the ostensible goal of fascism is to strengthen society. Fascism’s method of accomplishing this is to reward those who win economically and physically and to denigrate or exterminate those who lose.
Fascism depends on organized bullying – a form of social Darwinism. For the fascist, war and violence are means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors.
5. Disdain of women and fear of non-standard gender identities or sexual orientation.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” (Trump, 2005)
“You have to treat ’em like shit.” (Trump, 1992)
“[I will] promote positive education about the nuclear family … rather than erasing the things that make men and women different.” (Trump, 2023)
Authoritarianism imposes hierarchies. Authoritarians seek order.
By contrast, fascism is organized around the particular hierarchy of male dominance. The fascist heroic warrior is male. Women are relegated to subservient roles.
In fascism, anything that challenges the traditional heroic male roles of protector, provider and controller of the family is considered a threat to the social order.
Fascism seeks to eliminate homosexual, transgender and queer people because they are thought to challenge or weaken the heroic male warrior.
These five elements of fascism reinforce each other:
- Rejection of democracy in favor of a strongman depends on galvanizing popular rage.
- Popular rage draws on a nationalism based on a supposed superior race or ethnicity.
- That superior race or ethnicity is justified by social Darwinist strength and violence, as exemplified by heroic warriors.
- Strength, violence and the heroic warrior are centered on male power.
They are not the elements of authoritarianism. They are the essential elements of fascism.
America’s mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about Trump’s authoritarianism. In describing what he is seeking to impose on America, the media should be using the term fascism.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
Don’t be fooled – Trump’s presidential run is gaining more and more momentum ... Lloyd Green
You've read 21 articles in the last year Article count on
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I was hoping you would consider taking the step of supporting the Guardian’s journalism.
From Elon Musk to Rupert Murdoch, a small number of billionaire owners have a powerful hold on so much of the information that reaches the public about what’s happening in the world. The Guardian is different. We have no billionaire owner or shareholders to consider. Our journalism is produced to serve the public interest – not profit motives.
And we avoid the trap that befalls much US media – the tendency, born of a desire to please all sides, to engage in false equivalence in the name of neutrality. While fairness guides everything we do, we know there is a right and a wrong position in the fight against racism and for reproductive justice. When we report on issues like the climate crisis, we’re not afraid to name who is responsible. And as a global news organization, we’re able to provide a fresh, outsider perspective on US politics – one so often missing from the insular American media bubble.
Around the world, readers can access the Guardian’s paywall-free journalism because of our unique reader-supported model. That’s because of people like you. Our readers keep us independent, beholden to no outside influence and accessible to everyone – whether they can afford to pay for news, or not.
If you can, please consider supporting us just once from $1, or better yet, support us every month with a little more. Thank you.
Betsy Reed ... Editor, Guardian US