There will always be a Trump hiding in the shadows — if we don't break the cycle

Suddenly, it seems, the American mainstream media has figured out, or thinks they’ve been given permission to discuss, the fact that Donald Trump is a fascist. That he literally wants to imprison and even execute his enemies including other politicians like Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris and former employees who have betrayed him, including General Mark Milley.

Multiple commentators (including me) have wondered out loud if the defeat of Trump this fall will chasten Republicans and cause the Party to revert to its old “merely corporate and billionaire friendly” form, or if Trump has done permanent damage to the GOP and our system of government and the GOP’s embrace of fascism and its lies will continue long after he’s gone.

Sadly, there’s more than enough evidence for the latter, although crediting (or blaming) Trump for it all is far too facile an argument.

It’s a virtual certainty that four years from now we’ll have multiple Republican candidates trying to “pull a Trump” again. There are at least four reasons, although we’re not without resources to fight back or even prevent such an event.

First, there’s always been an authoritarian strain in American politics, dating all the way back to President John Adams arresting journalists and shutting down newspapers because they dared criticize him. Fortunately, President Jefferson pulled us back from that brink, as historian Dan Sisson and I documented in The American Revolution of 1800.

The Confederacy that declared war against America was also a fascist movement run and funded almost entirely by the wealthiest men of that region and era, as I lay out in detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. Lincoln put an end to that.

The Klan of the 1880s-1940s was a fascist movement, and Senator Joe McCarthy’s short-lived 1950s crusade was not only supported by American fascists but, as Rachel Maddow brilliantly points out, was also funded and supported by actual German Nazis.

So far, we’ve been able to handle authoritarian movements in America: Adams was defeated by Jefferson, in part because of revulsion against his heavy-handed use of the Alien and Sedition Acts; the Confederacy was defeated in a bloody Civil War; the Klan lost popular support during and after World War II’s battle against fascism; Joe McCarthy was done in by Joseph Welch and Edward R. Murrow.

Second, though, five Republicans on the US Supreme Court put a fascism-friendly time bomb into our body of constitutional law when Lewis Powell wrote the 1978 decision in First National Bank v Bellotti, saying that billionaires and corporate “persons” had a First Amendment right to pour money into politics because, Powell claimed, money in politics was the same thing as “free speech.” That crime was massively amplified when a different set of five Republicans on the Court doubled down on legalizing corruption and bribery with Citizens United in 2010.

As a result, today a large handful of American billionaires have been quite willing to fund Trump’s despotic message because they believe their businesses will prosper and their taxes will stay low under a fascist regime. This shouldn’t surprise us: the long history of fascist movements, dating all the way back to ancient Rome, shows there have always been morbidly rich individuals willing to put their own wealth above the interest of their nations.

Third, the six corrupt Republicans on today’s Supreme Court have clearly thrown in with Trump’s fascist agenda, granting him immunity from crimes committed in office and gutting Section 3 of the 14th Amendment which, unambiguously, says:

“No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who … shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Finally, we see evidence that the GOP could continue to embrace fascism in the simple examples provided every day on national television and in our newspapers. Greasy Republican politicians from Ted Cruz to Lindsey Graham to Mike Johnson happily go on television every week to peddle unctuous lies on Trump’s behalf, essentially endorsing and promoting his brand of 21st century American fascism.

Trump has the advantage — which he used to destroy his Republican opponents in the 2016 primary — of being a remarkably glib lifelong liar, as well as benefiting from the millions NBC spent training and coaching him to perform on television. But, as we can see on any of the Sunday political shows, other members of his Party have been eager to learn and imitate; it’s probably only a matter of time before one emerges with a skill set close or even equal to his.

To prevent a repeat of the close call we’re currently experiencing, America should look back to how we galvanized and mobilized American public opinion against fascism during the era when Mussolini and Hitler were rising to power in Europe and the fascist America First movement was growing here.

We did it once; we can do it again. Here’s how.

Hollywood got into the act, with its Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and Warner Brothers’ anti-Nazi films Black Legion(1937),Confessions of a Nazi Spy(1939) and, in the 1940s, Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series. Henry Fonda starred in the anti-fascist film Blockade in 1938 as did Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator in 1940.

In 1942, the War Department (today the Defense Department) created the Office of War Information and produced a flood of books, posters, brochures, short films, and newspaper articles warning about the danger of fascism here in America. One of the most famous, which enjoyed a huge revival after the “Unite The Right” fascist march in Charlottesville, was the film Don’t Be A Sucker, released by our government in 1943 and again in 1947. We should do it again; fascism isn’t Americanism.

One of the leading publications during that era warning about the dangers of fascism was The New Republic, with President Harry Truman even privately echoing the editorial stance of the magazine. TNR is still around, along with a healthy ecosystem of progressive writers and publications from old-line magazines to Substack.

Another challenge we face is the post-2010 crisis of money (particularly dark money) in politics legalized by five treacherous Republicans on the Supreme Court. Citizens United and its antecedents must be reversed through an act of Congress.

Finally, if America is to step back from our engagement with modern-day fascism, we must regulate social media by requiring, at the very least, transparency in their algorithms and, as Josh Hawley (yeah, that guy!) and I have both advocated in our books, reducing or eliminating the protections against liability Zuckerberg and Musk were granted by Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The authoritarian lure of fascism has always been with humanity and isn’t going to go away with the defeat of Donald Trump. But there are things we can do as a society and a nation to reveal its dangers, diminish its power, and educate the next generation about its consequences.

If Trump loses, communicating the dangers of fascism should be among the first efforts we undertake.