Before the result of the U.S. Presidential election was known, much of the U.S. and the rest of the world was holding its breath. Since the results were announced on Nov. 6, there is concern among Americans about the direction their country is heading. The major concerns are over civil rights and liberties, the division of church and state, tolerance of one another and a turn toward isolationism and exclusion. Leaving many to wonder: Is the U.S. becoming a fascist state? Is its incoming president a fascist?
To discuss these questions and to shed light on what we can expect for the future, on Nov. 13, the Center for Political Economy brought together experts in the field to discuss where we go from here. Michael Gould-Wartofsky, the Center’s postdoctoral research scholar, introduced and moderated the discussion between Joseph Lowndes, visiting distinguished lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Hunter College and Connie Razza, executive director at Future Currents.
To begin, Gould-Wartofsky asked the question, “what do public figures ... mean when they talk about fascism today? With far-right candidates on the ballot and far-right movements on the march – from the MAGA movement in the United States, the Identitarian movement in Europe to Hindutva in India – many of us are looking for answers to these questions.”
Joe Lowndes opened his remarks by pointing out that the word “fascism” can at the same time “illuminate and obscure” what we are trying to talk about. He also called attention to the rise of authoritarianism around the world, in countries as varied as France, Italy, the Philippines, Hungary and Germany, in addition to here in the U.S., each of which have “close comparisons and actual connective tissue.” Lowndes drew the audience to the definition of fascism used by historian Roger Griffin: “fascism is a political ideology whose mythic core, in its various permutations, is a palingenetic form of populist, ultra nationalism.” Lowndes focuses here on the word “genetic”, which points to a national rebirth, as many of the above movements harken to.
In the U.S., the national rebirth has been associated with Trump and his administration. His supporters champion him as an underdog who, according to them, has had every obstacle placed in his way to remove him from power and has prevailed despite this (relative to his impeachment). To the MAGA movement, Trump has become a mythic figure who keeps coming back and cannot be defeated, much like a superhero or a messiah.
More broadly speaking, the language of exclusion and of violence from Trump himself and within the MAGA movement is also troublesome. It encourages both state-sanctioned and vigilante violence, as we have seen in recent years. As Lowndes effectively argues, members of the movement exclude those groups who are not like them and on their side: “whoever's being excluded is described in severely dehumanizing terms, in terms of violence, in terms of abjection and disgust and, in terms of retribution, in terms of what the movement wants to do to them.”
On an even more ominous note, Lowndes called our attention to the future administration, perhaps only half joking: “just today, Biden invited the person they call the fascist into the White House and promised a smooth transition, presumably into fascism.”
Connie Razza, who has just spent 10 months at Future Currents scenario planning for such an outcome, struck a more positive chord. Future Currents is a movement utility that provides progressive leaders with the space and tools to plan for the long term, helping them build resilient relationships, tackle systemic challenges, and prepare for future crises and opportunities, all while fostering new strategies for lasting social change. Razza began by pointing out the context that we are living in, saying we're in the midst “of a political realignment and an economic paradigm shift and our shared common sense that underlies the decisions that we make together has been eroding, and is in a period of heightened contestation. And so because of that, it's even more important for us to anchor, not in the threat, but in the world we're building.”
Razza described how authoritarianism has been present in the U.S. for centuries and how she and others had been fighting against it for decades, pointing out that we have still not reached the place where we had hoped to be when the Black National Anthem was written in 1900. Razza encouraged the audience to take a long view of the struggle saying, “It is a long haul and we have to ... set our horizon further than two years out or four years out, or even 10 years out ... we are actually facing I think, a generational opportunity to build the robust and reparative and radically inclusive democracy that we want.”
In closing, she offered up a positive vision for the future, “I want to invite you to just breathe for a second and to imagine a just and joyful future where we actually get to determine together the world that we live in, the ways that we take care of each other, the ways that we provide for one another, and the ways that we make decisions together even though we disagree with each other. Imagine a radically inclusive, joyful, reparative democracy, where you really get to voice your opinion and trust that even if your opinion doesn't hold sway, you will be safe.”