From: jeffreydanielrubard@gmail.com   
      
   Post-Fascism   
   By Enzo Traverso   
      
   Is Donald Trump a fascist? Answering this question, frequently put in both   
   Europe and the US, means speculating about what fascism would look like in the   
   twenty-first century. Historical comparisons allow us to sketch analogies   
   rather than homologies,    
   and Trump is as far from classical fascism as Occupy Wall Street, los   
   Indignados, and La nuit debout are from twentieth-century communism. This is a   
   historical analogy, not a genealogy.   
      
   A few months ago, Robert O. Paxton, one of the most important historians of   
   European fascism, ironically (and pertinently) affirmed that Trump probably   
   never read any single book on Mussolini or Hitler. In other words, speaking of   
   Trump’s fascism is    
   not a matter of establishing a historical continuity. He does not come from   
   this political tradition and this distinguishes him from most European   
   far-right movements that come from this matrix, sometimes proudly claiming   
   it—mostly in Central Europe—   
   and sometimes trying to achieve respectability rejecting or distancing it,   
   like the Front National of Marine Le Pen in France.   
      
   During his electoral campaign, Trump revealed many fascist traits: a   
   charismatic conception of politics, authoritarianism, hatred for pluralism,   
   nationalism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, and a populist style   
   that considers citizens only as a    
   crowd to mesmerize and mislead. His campaign reproduced some features of   
   fascist anti-Semitism, which defined a mythical, ethnically homogeneous   
   national community by opposing it to its enemies: for the Nazis this was the   
   Jews, but Trump enlarged the    
   spectrum, including Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, and non-White immigrants. In   
   Trump’s rhetoric, the “Establishment” reproduced the old anti-Semitic   
   cliché of a virtuous community rooted in land and tradition opposed to the   
   anonymous, corrupted,    
   intellectual, and cosmopolitan metropolis.   
      
   All these features have an incontestably fascist taste, but they remain   
   superficial and simply concern the personality of Trump. Fascism is reducible   
   neither to the temperament of a political leader nor to the psychological   
   predispositions of his    
   followers. The fact is that behind Trump there is no fascist movement: he is a   
   TV star. From this point of view, he is much more reminiscent of Berlusconi   
   than Mussolini. Differently from Mussolini, he does not come from the left and   
   differently from    
   Hitler, he is not a lumpen who discovered politics in a society devastated by   
   war; like Berlusconi, on the contrary, he is a billionaire whose political   
   activities will permanently collide with his private business. Thus, he never   
   thought of leading a    
   march of black (or brown) shirts on Washington, simply because there are not   
   organized troupes behind him. Temperamentally, Trump is a “dec   
   sionist”—a leader who acts without any parliamentary, legal    
   onstraints—but he probably never heard the    
   name of Carl Schmitt, the fascist theoretician of “decisionism.” And   
   paradoxically, he was the nominee of the GOP, a historical pillar of the   
   establishment itself.   
      
   Nobody knows Donald Trump’s “program,” except for his famous promises of   
   expelling Muslims and Latinos and building a wall at the Mexican border. He   
   simply announced an authoritarian turn, confirmed by his choices for the new   
   administration.    
   Economically, he eclectically merges protectionism and neoliberalism: on the   
   one hand, he wishes to annul the free trade agreement with Mexico; on the   
   other hand, he aims at deregulating finance and privatizing social services,   
   which means abolishing the    
   modest achievements of Obama’s healthcare policies. From this point of view,   
   he is much more neoliberal than the European radical rights opposed to the   
   euro, which claim a kind of xenophobic welfare state. Trump defends a form of   
   authoritarian    
   neoliberalism. He opposes ordinary people to the “establishment,” but he   
   does not propose any social policy for defending them.   
      
   Classical fascisms worshipped the state, defended imperialism and promoted   
   military expansionism. Trump, by contrast, seems more oriented towards   
   isolationism, insofar as he criticizes the war against Iraq and supports an   
   alliance with Putin’s Russia.    
   In the field of foreign policy, his vision does not transcend his own business   
   interests, as proven by his choice of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.   
   Instead of fascism, which strongly affirmed the idea of national or racial   
   community (stirpe, Volk),   
    Trump preaches individualism. All in all, he embodies a xenophobic and   
   reactionary vision of Americanism: a social-Darwinist self-made man, the   
   avenger bringing arms, the resentment of a White population that cannot accept   
   becoming a minority in a    
   country of immigrants. He won the votes of only a quarter of eligible voters,   
   i.e. a minority, and recalls the old WASP reaction against the Catholic,   
   Orthodox, and Jewish immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.   
      
   Fascism was a product of the Great War and the collapse of the n   
   neteenth-century European order. In this cataclysmic context, it offered a new   
   project of society and civilization, causing many scholars to speak of a   
   “fascist revolution” or a “   
   third way” opposed to both liberalism and communism. Trump does not propose   
   any alternative model of civilization; he simply offers a slogan: “Make   
   America Great Again.” He does not wish to change the American social and   
   economic model, if only    
   because he has enormous private interests to defend in it. He simply wishes to   
   make it more unequal, discriminatory and unjust.   
      
   Differently from fascism, which appeared in the time of a global crisis of   
   capitalism and massive state intervention in the economy, Trump emerges in the   
   age of financial capitalism, competitive individualism, and endemic social   
   precariousness. Instead    
   of mobilizing the masses, he attracts a huge audience in an atomized society.   
   He does not wear a uniform as did Hitler and Mussolini, but rather prefers   
   exhibiting his luxurious lifestyle like a Hollywood star. More than a new   
   political project, he    
   embodies a neoliberal anthropological model. The Bolshevik threat no longer   
   exists.   
      
      
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