Authoritarianism, ultra-nationalism, white supremacy, anti-egalitarianism, immigrant bashing, the erosion of liberal institutions, and Christian nationalism run amok, are all features of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a gateway to fascism American-style. Despite denials from Trump, a host of former Trump administration officials have been working hand and glove in creating Project 2025’s toxic blueprint for a second Trump term.
In a 2019 piece called “Trump and the Legacy of a Menacing Past,” Henry Giroux wrote: “… Central to understanding the rise of a fascist politics in the United States is the necessity to address the power of language and the intersection of the social media and public spectacle as central elements in the rise of a formative culture that produces the ideologies and agents necessary for an American-style fascism.” With programmatic juice provided by Project 2025, it is not a stretch to see Trump spearheading a twenty-first century American-style fascism.
Over the past nine decades of American history there is more than just traces of authoritarianism and fascist tendencies. Corporatist opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, the rise of a pre-World War !! German American Bund, a huge movement supporting the Nazi regime in Germany, cold-war anti-communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the rise of the Religious Right, ultra-right militia groups, foreshadowed today’s MAGA movement and the far-right’s Project 2025 (https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/12/2246287/-Leonard-Leo-Project-2025-Is-Coming-for-Your-Rights-If-You-Don-t-Believe-it-Ask-its-Organizers?_=2024-06-12T09:11:14.000-07:00).
In 1935, the novelist Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here, a dystopian tale of how a fascist dictator comes to power in the U.S. Here’s a brief summation of Lewis’ novel:
During his campaign for the presidency, Berzelius Windrip seemingly cares about the concerns of the American people and promises to restore America to greatness. After being elected, Windrip takes complete control of the government and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, in the manner of European fascists Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
Windrip outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the "Minute Men" -- named after the Revolutionary War militias -- who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of a corporatist regime.
The plot of It Can’t Happen Here sounds very much in line with Donald Trump’s authoritarian predilections, and the right wing’s Project 2025, whose all-encompassing Christian nationalist political, economic and social agenda – spelled out in its publication “Mandate for Leadership” -- is the blueprint for a Trump administration.
At the time of the publication of It Can’t Happen Here, reviewers emphasized the resemblance to Louisiana politician Huey Long, who used strong-arm political tactics while building a nationwide “Share Our Wealth” organization. Long was assassinated in 1935, just before the 1936 presidential election. The inspiration for Windrip backer Bishop Prang was the popular and venomous Roman Catholic radio-priest Charles Coughlin, who vilified “the Jews” and conspired with Long to oust Roosevelt in the 1936 Presidential election.
Eighty years ago, The New York Times published an article by the sitting vice president, Henry A. Wallace, called on “The Dangers of American Fascism.” Wallace defined a fascist as one whose “lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.” For democracy to crush fascism, Wallace warned, “It must put human beings first and dollars second.”
Another fictional character with mega maniacal fantasies appeared in Elia Kazan’s film, A Face in the Crowd. In January 2020, just after the January 6 insurrection, Cinema From The Spectrum’s Jaime Rebanal described the film as the portrait “of someone who started out as being nothing more than [a face in the crowd] only to be launched into their own stardom out of nowhere”
When watching A Face in the Crowd -- inspired by a 1953 Budd Schulberg short story titled “Arkansas Traveler” -- “it only becomes more astonishing as you take into account how prophetic it feels even today…” Rebenal noted. At one point Lonesome Rhodes, declares: “I am not just an entertainer, I am an influence, a wielder of opinion, a force.”
Learning from history is not America’s strong suit. Not only are too many people unaware of much of the country’s history, currently there are multiple right-wing efforts underway to wipe the not so good parts out of our collective consciousness. Some have maintained that USA stands for the “United States of Amnesia.”
Long ago, Alexander Hamilton wrote: “The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion.” Hamilton’s assertions are evident at every one of Donald Trump’s rallies.