Top historian: Trump conceded on Election Night —but the danger isn’t over

Is President Donald Trump a fascist?

Despite repeatedly threatening to use federal force to rig the 2026 midterm elections, Trump ultimately conceded the Democrats' takeover of Congress on Election Night. On the other hand, as fascism expert Dr. Federico Finchelstein reminds us, Trump may have simply realized the overwhelming popular vote against him made those elections "too big to rig."

Finchelstein, who famously authored histories of fascism like "A Brief History of Fascist Lies" and "The Wannabe Fascists," also points out that the same man who attempted a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election is still trying to impose his will on America through authoritarian means.

Yes, Democrats will soon have commanding majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives. As Finchelstein told AlterNet in an exclusive interview, this will not dampen his desire to realize fascist goals.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length.

Rozsa: I am shocked that President Trump has not done more to contest the results of the midterm elections. He did recently post that he thinks they were rigged, but this is nothing like his coup attempt when he lost the presidential election in 2020. As a student of fascism, can you explain his behavior through the context of fascist ideology, or is there a more personal explanation?

Finchelstein: Well, I think both. I think his personality is that of a very erratic individual. And in addition to that, he was himself surprised by the reality check. As some person close to him said, it was too big to rig. And that’s probably why there was this delay in reacting as one would presume Trump would react, which is by further denial of reality and by rejection of any kind of concession. So if you think about it, his response was, I would say, more congenial in the very beginning, and then that was followed by the normal radicalization of Trumpism, which is to actually put this person who can be defined as maybe one of the most fascist individuals within the Trump administration, which is Miller, in such a position of power.

So at the end of the day, even if the strategies are yet to be defined, and they would be erratic as they have been, the ultimate response, and almost immediate response, is that of radicalization.

Rozsa: Now I want to talk about the future. Trump has two years left during which he will be a lame duck. He has already made it clear by choosing Stephen Miller as his chief of staff that he does not plan on being conciliatory to the Democrats even after they take over Congress. What can the American people expect, again, given the dual prisms of both his fascist ideology and his deteriorating psychology?

Finchelstein: Well, regarding Trumpism, as you know, I talk about wannabe fascism as a sort of Trumpist aspiration to fascism, which so far has remained quite incomplete, quite erratic, and maybe can never be accomplished, and yet he’s trying, and he has been trying. Then there’s this combination of, as we were talking about, his extreme authoritarian personality, which defines his psychology, and his narcissism, his own belief in his own cult of the leader, plus the reality check, a contradiction that he refuses to acknowledge. That is to say, between his idea that he’s extremely powerful and the reality that he’s a lame duck. Then we might expect more conflict and more polarization, insofar as this is a person who doesn’t even want to acknowledge what the majority of voters have expressed, which is a rejection of his extremely radical authoritarian policies.

So this logic, or this dynamic, of radicalization will continue.

To put it in a different way, the less power he has, the more potential for violence, erratic behavior and illegality we might have.

Rozsa: I now want to talk about the Roger Griffin book “The Nature of Fascism,” in which he described it as palingenetic ultranationalism. Trump seems fixated on describing himself as returning America to a previous glory day, and yet at the same time reinventing it, whether through his architectural renovation projects or his scrubbing of so-called DEI content from public monuments. The bottom line is, it seems like this particular aspect of Trump’s agenda is explicitly fascist. Do you agree with my analysis? And either way, do you think he will continue moving forward with it despite being a lame duck?

Finchelstein: Well, to me, there is no question that there are fascist tendencies in Trumpism, and that’s why I talk about wannabe fascism. In my own work, I stress these connections between the cult of personality and the mythical ideas that fascism presents of both the past and the present. And when we talk about the past within Trumpism, which, as I said, has fascist tendencies, it’s important to point out that that past never existed in the first place. This is a fantasy, a myth. So the idea that things were great in America at some point is extremely problematic, insofar as they might have been great for some people and way worse for others. So these fantasies about the past relate to a past that never existed.

Now, the problem with that is that this past that never existed is then projected into the present and into the future with more fantasies, and now, in a way, less attached to reality. And that is not what democratic politicians do, and that’s why Trump, who is an authoritarian, is so problematic. His idea of the American nation is extremely chauvinistic, and it implies the exclusion of many others, both in the past and in the present.

Rozsa: In that case, what do you think Americans should anticipate in terms of Trump attempting to literally destroy our democratic infrastructure? Has he been permanently stopped from doing so by the results of the midterm elections? Or could he still try to become a dictator, or at least ensure one-party rule indefinitely, or use his power in such a way, like declaring a national emergency and implementing martial law, or in some fashion achieving his fascist ideal?

Finchelstein: Well, given what we know about Trumpism in the past, and unfortunately about authoritarian movements, including fascism, in the past, we cannot rule out all those conflicts and anti-democratic situations that you are presenting as possibilities. That cannot be ruled out, given the fact that this is a person who attempted it. And I guess the lesson from all this, including the naming of Stephen Miller, is that Trump should never be normalized. You might recall that in the first hours after his defeat — and this is a defeat for him personally, because he asked voters to think that he was on the ballot — there were all these expectations and fantasies in the media and among pundits about Trump accepting the results and becoming a kind of presidential leader.

This attempted further normalization of Trump — it seems that we never learned from that. Trump will not be a normal democratic politician. In terms of democracy, he’s not. And he should not be normalized like that, because he’s a person with whom all these conflicts and anti-democratic situations we are talking about cannot be ruled out. He tried it before. There is no reason to think that he will not try that again.

Rozsa: My last question is, what advice do you have for ordinary Americans in how they can resist?

Finchelstein: Well, Americans have expressed their rejection of the Trumpist model of government, which is an authoritarian one. And you remember we were talking recently about this: It provides this combination of the lack of justice and the lack of income. It basically pushes income inequality to the extreme, at the same time that it pushes democracy to the border, or to the frontier, of its destruction. And the lesson is that voters should make clear that they have expressed their take and that the government should respect their take. Trump should not be normalized, because we cannot expect that he will do so, and yet there are many avenues of resistance toward those possibilities.

And hopefully, both representatives in Congress and other members of the state apparatus will recognize that this is the case, and that Trump cannot do what he wanted to do, for example, on January 6th.