Some participants in the Fascism Debate lodge a different objection: that using the term “fascist” to describe Trump makes him seem like a foreign imposition, rather than a product of American culture and institutions. But why should it? The Nazis borrowed parts of their race laws from the U.S. South. Langston Hughes told a Paris congress in 1937 that “in America, Negroes do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know.” The United States has lived with subnational authoritarian enclaves since its founding, primarily for the purpose of maintaining white supremacy. The democratic qualities of our political system (which are also real) have always coexisted with them, and insofar as we can see progress over the country’s history, it has been because of the hard work of politics to unbind its authoritarian units and exclusions. But they can be (and have been) bound up again. Instead of asking whether “it can happen here,” we can recognize that it has, but not to everyone equally. The same would presumably be true in a second Trump administration, as it was in other historical fascisms.
Some leftists fear that describing Trumpism as fascism serves a tool for disciplining the left. To label him fascist works as a kind of “threat inflation” that implies that the left must fall in line behind a liberal mainstream. This is a serious concern, but its proponents still make an intellectual and political error. As the denial appears increasingly ridiculous, so do its advocates. Of course, the fascism label can be used sloppily or in ways that are overwrought. But even under non-emergency conditions, until there are major changes to the political system, the U.S. left will always need to be in a coalition with liberals with whom they have fundamental disagreements. The lessons I take from cases where a broad coalition was able to use an election to defeat authoritarianism (such as the 1988 Chilean plebiscite that rejected Augusto Pinochet) is that doing so required minimizing elements of the program that were supported only by the left and accepting participation in a broad front. The point of preserving liberal democracy is that you can go back to disagreeing when victory is achieved. Being part of the coalition—as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez know—makes it possible to continue to raise concerns, provide ideas, and demand concessions.
With its rally in Madison Square Garden, the Trump campaign dared the audience not to see the parallels to 1939. And if you can’t see them now, they can see you. If the objection to seeing Trumpism as a fascist political and cultural formation is that it lets liberals off the hook, use the label instead to persuade them of the dangers of business as usual. If the objection is based on quibbles about small differences from classic fascism, remember that the point is not that history should repeat itself, but that similar energies swirl in ever-changing streams. Evidence accumulates like logs blocking the current. At some point, the dam might burst. And when it does, what will it wash away?