Yes, It's Fascism

Jonathan Rauch argues that fascism has taken root in the American regime.

Jonathan Rauch wrote what I consider one of the most important books of our era. The book is titled “The Constitution of Knowledge” and was written in 2021. In the book Rauch argues that institutions such as universities, scientific bodies, courts, and serious media organizations form what Rauch calls a ‘reality‑based community’—a network living by shared rules of evidence, peer review, and self‑correction. Their job is to maintain shared standards of evidence, peer criticism, and error‑correction. When this system works, it produces three public goods: knowledge, freedom, and peace—allowing deep disagreement without descending into civil war, while still fostering innovation and pluralism. He posits and shows that this system is under attack in what’s essentially a “war on reality” from different directions: disinformation campaigns, conspiracy ecosystems, and trolling on one side, and social coercion, intimidation, and “cancel culture” on the other. Techniques like flooding the zone with falsehoods, networked harassment, and organized shaming all work by bypassing or sabotaging the Constitution of Knowledge’s checking mechanisms, making it harder to maintain shared facts.

Boarder patrol chief Gregory Bovino clad in German WWII style coat flanked by masked ICE agents

The book is certainly an important read and I strongly recommend that everyone read it. I mention it because I believe it gives Rauch the gravitas to weigh in on current events. This week Rauch wrote an article in the The Atlantic titled, “Yes, It’s Fascism”. (A “must read”.) The article clearly lays out various aspects of fascism and how the current US regime checks off each box. Rauch takes pains to explain that he did not arrive at this conclusion easily and, in fact, resisted it for nearly a year. Rauch writes:

When the facts change, I change my mind. Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

He then proceeds to enumerate the various aspects of fascism, such as “demolition of norms”, “glorification of violence”, “police-state tactics”, while providing copious support for each. As one example Rauch states:

Glorification of violence. Every state uses violence to enforce its laws, but liberal states use it reluctantly, whereas fascism embraces and flaunts it. Trump thus praises a violent mob; endorses torture; muses fondly about punching, body-slamming, and shooting protesters and journalists; and reportedly suggests shooting protesters and migrants. His recruitment ads for ICE glamorize military-style raids of homes and neighborhoods; his propaganda takes childish delight in the killing of civilians; and we have all seen videos of agents dragging people out of cars and homes—partly because the government films them. Like the demolition of civic decency, the valorization of violence is not incidental to fascism; it is part and parcel.

Rauch also deals with the critique of people who assert that what’s happening now in the US is not like, fill-in-the-blank, so it can’t be “fascism”.

If historians object that Trump is not a copy of Mussolini or Hitler or Franco, the reply is yes—but so what? Trump is building something new on old principles. He is showing us in real time what 21st-century American fascism looks like.

As in “The Constitution of Knowledge”, here too Rauch chimes an optimistic note.

If, however, Trump is a fascist president, that does not mean that America is a fascist country. The courts, the states, and the media remain independent of him, and his efforts to browbeat them will likely fail. He may lose his grip on Congress in November. He has not succeeded in molding public opinion, except against himself. He has outrun the mandate of his voters, his coalition is fracturing, and he has neglected tools that allow presidents to make enduring change. He and his party may defy the Constitution, but they cannot rewrite it, thank goodness.

The United States is unlike other countries that turned to fascism in many ways. To my mind, one of the most important is that the U.S. is not racially, ethnically or religiously homogeneous. It truly is a melting pot of diverse peoples from every corner of the globe. As such, as much as white Christian Nationalists attempt to paint the country in their image, it is in fact not a White Christian Nation - not close. It is this reality in fact that is driving so much of the MAGA desperation to recast the United States into an idealized image of the past that never really existed. Hopefully, Rauch is right and the country will come out of this terrifying flirtation with fascism with its democratic guardrails intact—and perhaps even standing on a firmer constitutional foundation.