Trumpism Is Closer to Nazism Than Fascism

 Is Trump a fascist? This question has been repeatedly asked, and largely left without a definitive answer, since Trump first came to power in 2016. There are many reasons why one can think of Trump as fascist – his pandering to the lowest instincts of the crowds, his authoritarianism, his disregard for democratic norms – just as there are many why one should not – chiefly among them the fact that, having been in power for almost six years now across two terms, he has not dismantled democracy in the meaningful sense of the word. To this day, those calling him fascist seem to use the word more in its colloquial, loose meaning, denoting his brutishness, hatefulness and disregard for the truth, rather than measuring him against an objective yardstick of fascism.

Fascism is an elusive term even if, or perhaps precisely because, it was historically a time and place-bound phenomenon: the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in Italy between 1922-43 (with Mussolini ruling in a rump statelet propped up by the Nazis until 1945). Yet at the same time, there has always been the urge to describe fascism as a universal phenomenon, a distinct form of right-wing politics based on strong nationalism, mass adulation of a paramount ‘leader’, aggressive foreign policy and targeting of deviant minorities. For various reasons, even after World War II fascism maintained this semantic primacy, subsuming Nazism, an objectively much more tyrannical and criminal phenomenon than Mussolini’s fascism had ever been.

Perhaps one reason we feel comfortable with fascism in political discourse is precisely because it was, in relative terms, less malign than Nazism. Describing someone as a Nazi is resisted lest the unspeakable horrors of Nazism become relativized. The bar for someone to be considered Nazi is so high – support for mass extermination camps, an inhumane theory of racial stratification, the deranged mysticism – that using it today is from the outset an exercise in hyperbole. Yet if we treat fascism on the same terms and analytical strictness as Nazism, as actual practice rather than an ever-expanding metaphor, it is possible to see why, in some key respects, Trumpism is closer to the Nazi methodology and mindset than fascism. And while this means that Trump is not (and almost certainly never will be) Hitler, it allows us to assess his actions under a different light. 

Historians are of course familiar with the multiple differences between Nazism and fascism. It is often forgotten that for a few uncertain years, Hitler and Mussolini could not decide if, beyond their ideological proximity, they were not geopolitical foes, with Austria being their main bone of contention. As RJB Bosworth shows in his latest book on Mussolini, the fascist dictator only threw in his lot with Hitler once all other options for recognition of Italy’s ‘great power’ claims by the winners of World War I had been exhausted, while at home his regime’s legitimacy was dwindling. It was only then, Bosworth claims, that Mussolini’s fascism became ‘fascism’ the way we understand it today, and it did so by falling under the sway of Nazism, which exhibited much bigger ideological confidence and benefited from Germany’s economic prowess relative to agrarian Italy. It was in this latter phase of fascism that Mussolini became a caricature of Hitler. Ironically, it is in this caricaturistic, sub-Nazi form that we mostly remember fascism today.

How does all this matter for Trump? One key characteristic we associate with fascism is its expansionism and imperialism. Indeed, in many ways Mussolini seemed to be the initiator of right-wing totalitarianism’s global push for imperial expansion with his war on Ethiopia in 1935-36 which presaged Hitler’s similar movements in Europe. In Trump’s first term this was actually the most demanding criterion that detractors of the use of ‘fascism’ used to claim that Trump actually was no fascist. In his first four years in power, Trump demonstrated an aversion to foreign affairs and expansionism, one could even call him a retrencher of US imperialism. His philosophy was close to a ‘live and let live’ doctrine, content to accept the sovereignty of other authoritarian leaders – Xi, Putin, Kim – as long American national sovereignty was recognized in return.

As Bosworth claims however, expansionism was not intrinsic to fascism in its first decade in power, if anything Mussolini was something of an isolationist and a diplomatic dealmaker as he tried to present himself as a strong sovereign leader of a great power on par with the victors of World War I. Such imperialist project that he pursued as in Libya were an inheritance from Italy’s earlier royal-nationalist regime. And he had few qualms to deal with Soviet Russia, despite the latter’s otherwise anti-fascist rhetoric. In all these ways, Trump’s first term can indeed be considered fascist in its foreign policy, yet in the opposite way most people understand fascism today!

In contrast, Trump’s second term exhibits much more the traits of expansionist imperialism we associate with Mussolini, with his aggressive moves against Canada and Greenland, the abduction of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and the campaign against Iran. Yet this conforms only to post-1932 Fascism 2.0, which itself emerged from a mix of reaction, fear, admiration and jealousy towards Hitler’s Germany. The maps shared online by White House-adjacent and MAGA accounts colouring the entire North American continent with the US flag, the effort to rename the Gulf of Mexico, the rediscovery and rebranding of the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, all carry the smell of a Nazi-like Lebensraum view of the world much more than anything Mussolini had ever contemplated. 

Similarly, the deployment of America’s awesome military machine against Tehran has a much closer analogy to the Nazi industrial capacity than everything Mussolini had ever achieved. In his second term Trump’s foreign policy has been much closer to the fascism of popular imagination, but in real historical terms this was the latter fascism of Mussolini trying to catch up with Hitler. In so many ways, from the aggressive expansionism and dreams of swallowing up territory in North America to the sadistic destruction of lives and infrastructure in Iran to the fetishization of violence, war and military technology seen in the pronouncements of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s foreign policy in his second term comes much closer to Nazism’s impulses than fascism’s. Even the fetishization of ‘peace’ by Trump until recently was not completely inimical to Hitler’s early days propaganda, which presented him as well as a ‘peacemaker’ who would ensure stability by forcing the victors of World War I to acknowledge the legitimate demands of Germany (Kenny, p. 146).

A second element concerns the transnational exportability of the Trumpian project. Here as well, Trumpism has moved much closer to Nazism than fascism. In his first decade in power Mussolini was adamant that fascism was a peculiarly Italian phenomenon that might offer some solutions for the problems of the mass society of the early 20th century, but it was not a readily exportable one-size-fits-all model. This attitude had strong echoes in Trump’s own perception of his ideology and international alliances in his first term. After 2016 the alleged universalism of Trumpism existed more in the anxieties of the international press and the efforts of some politicians to associate themselves with Trump, than anything that he himself attempted. 

As with his foreign policy, Trump’s ideology back then was purely sovereigntist and US-centric, and while he certainly expressed affinity with likeminded leaders (Modi, Bolsonaro, Orban), there was little organized effort from his camp to create lasting networks of political influence abroad. Steve Bannon pathetically tried to export his so-called Movement to other European far right parties, most however rebuffed his overtures. By the same token, in his first decade in power Mussolini’s closest ideological allies were Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and Miklos Horthy in Hungary, two classical conservatives focused on maintaining the social order of two unstable post-Habsburgian states. Rather than aggressively pushing the ideology of fascism as a pretext to upend European geopolitics, Mussolini associated himself with two inward-looking leaders anxiously trying to create nations out of lost imperial pasts. For a presumed ‘revisionist’, Mussolini in his first decade in power seemed as much committed to stability in central Europe as the status quo powers Britain and France were.

Here as well however the pattern remains the same. Just like Mussolini in the second half of his tenure discovered the ‘universality’ of fascism, Trump in his second term has been much more aggressive in pushing his ideological project internationally. Interestingly, Mussolini even tried to create a fascist international in the 1930s, but this effort completely failed as it quickly became obvious that committed totalitarians (and not merely conservatives like Dollfuss and Horty) saw in Hitler a much more attractive model to emulate, and a much better endowed hub from where to draw legitimacy and resources. Even Spain’s Franco, a fellow Catholic authoritarian in a neighbouring Mediterranean state, was dismissive of Mussolini and his military assistance during the Spanish civil war, looking increasingly to Hitler as the future of right-wing totalitarianism. After Hitler’s ascent to power, he quickly overshadowed Mussolini, the original totalitarian, as the guiding light for similar politicians around Europe. This dovetails more with the second Trump administration’s activist international presence, from JD Vance’s Munich speech and direct meddling in European elections to the cultivation of ideological allies linked to the Republican party through conferences, educational institutions and think tanks around the world.

An underappreciated feature of Nazism’s perniciousness was its universalistic potential. As Hannah Arendt argued, pan-Germanic antisemitism morphing into full-blown racial Aryanism was a pan-European ideological proposition, as evidenced by the huge numbers of (especially Western) Europeans who flocked to the Nazi call to invade the USSR in 1941 and ‘save European civilization’. Nazism in many ways superseded German nationalism, positing the ideal of a racially pure Europe. This contrasted with fascism’s state-centrism which made any attempt at universalism a contradiction in terms: a ‘fascist Europe’ could only ever be an assortment of multiple fascist states, each with its own ambitions of territorial aggrandizement, which would make disputes between them inevitable. Nazism on the other hand always proposed to abolish borders and sovereignties in a future society led by the racial avant garde.

In this way, the global ideological confidence of Trumpism in its second iteration is much closer to Nazism’s pretences. Although not as dangerous as Nazism’s dreams of global racial purity, transnational Trumpism’s attempted global reach is no more different in how it tries to undermine local sovereignties, democratic processes and social cohesion by spreading a pernicious ideological message, as evidenced for example in the constant incitement of racial tensions in the UK by Elon Musk’s X.

Finally, a third key dimension where Trumpism has an uncertain position between fascism and Nazism is their relationship with the state. In some ways, Trumpism resembles fascism in its objectifying and adoring of the sovereign state, as evidenced in Trump’s migration and protectionist policies – tariffs being the one main policy overlap with classical interwar fascism. It is also important to remember that Mussolini, for all his ‘absolute leader’ bravado and buffoonery, never was something more than a temporary steward of the Italian state, operating under the Savoy king who after all in the end dismissed him when military disaster was looming in 1943. In this sense as well, Trump’s travails with the ‘deep state’ and the ‘swamp’ evoke Mussolini’s sense of betrayal by the ‘establishment’ of his time. 

It is in this way however that we must relativize modern populists’ purported apotheosis of the sovereign state. As international relations scholar Ayse Zarakol argued, today’s populism is a negation of the state-centrism of the last five centuries. It rather looks back to an era of personalized political rule, where decisions are tied to the whims of individual leaders. In this sense, populists hollow out the modern state, sometimes indirectly by emasculating or allowing state bureaucracies and expertise to atrophy, and other times by directly attacking them. 

Again, this is more reminiscent of Hitler than Mussolini. The Italian dictator was a hyper-statist, ironically in a country deeply fragmented by localism, familialism and clientelism. Hitler was quite the opposite: the deranged dictator who saw the strong bureaucracy, the robust military establishment, the aristocracy and the powerful industrial interests of his country as obstacles to his total personal rule from which the vision of a racially pure and mystic Reich would emerge. While opportunistically using the resources of the German state, Hitler very much saw them as obsolete after his victory. And even during the war, the orderly functioning of the state and military was undermined by Nazi party operatives with their ideological agendas which diverted critical resources, not least towards the extermination of the Jews. 

While Trump harbours no such ambitions, his Hitler-like relationship with the American state must be noted. In his second term, Trump has enthusiastically used the gigantic military resources at the disposal of the president, all the while he gutted large parts of the bureaucracy, most notably the State Department. Unlike Mussolini, who until 1943 faced no resistance from the Italian state, Trump is hardwired to think of the American state as his mortal enemy. He is in an ambiguous relationship with it, much like Hitler was with his, contemptuous of its operatives and experts, disdainful of its checks and balances, but also fascinated by its power to oppress at home and destroy abroad. As a typical populist, Trump seeks to personalize the state, which means that he looks to make it stronger in the things that help his agenda, but hollow it out in the parts that contradict his ideological agenda or interests of his cronies.

It is a thought too scary to contemplate, even for Trump’s most devoted opponents, but we may well have to acknowledge that ‘fascism’ is too weak a term, too convenient a rhetorical tool to describe him. For all his crimes, Mussolini was, especially in his first decade in power, much less of a threat (to his own country and the world) than what Trump is shaping out to be in his second term today. In his principled support for the impersonal state, his isolationism and diplomatic prevarication, his wish to be respected by the great powers of his time, and the acceptance of the limited universality of his ideological project, Mussolini posed very different challenges to the ones we face today by Trump. In his efforts to hollow out the American state, his increasingly deranged militarism and his consistent efforts to export his ideological brand as a vehicle to upend societies and democracies elsewhere, Trump very much operates like the Hitler of our times: a mortal enemy at once to democracy, society and international peace.