How incompetence delivered the US from fascism

 

There is no doubt that Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are right wing populists [1]. Only a year and a half ago it seemed reasonable to go one step further and describe them as fascist. In this post I suggested two criteria that differentiated right wing populists from fascists: the use of violence for political ends and a rejection of democracy. With his enabling and failure to stop the insurrection of 6th January 2020 Trump crossed the line of both. After regaining office in 2024 he showed no inhibition in using violence to both secure territory or resources overseas or (via ICE) to intimidate parts of the country that didn’t vote for him.

If you prefer a more detailed analysis this post by John Ganz is well worth reading. He looks back at an earlier post written two years ago where he outlined twelve developments that would confirm Trump and MAGA as fascist in character. While most have happened, what didn’t was the development of January 6th into a generalised use of paramilitary mobs for political intimidation or worse.

Ganz sums it up by saying that while Trump certainly led a fascist government, his attempts to create a fascist state were only partially successful, and there was no real sense in which the US has become a “fascist society, where fascist institutions and attitudes constitute the national ‘spirit’.” While I think there is plenty of scope for disagreement about degrees of success here, I think it is significant that the midterms, despite Trump’s many efforts, were pretty normal elections [2], and that Trump didn’t engineer civil unrest as a pretext to declare a state of emergency.

I don’t think this failure to create a fascist state and society reflects any lingering respect for a non-violent democracy on behalf of Trump or much of the MAGA movement. Instead I think it reflects lack of time to dismantle the legal protections the electoral process has in the US. Trump did try to interfere with the midterm elections in many ways, but was defeated in most cases by legal challenges. It takes time to overturn laws that protect democratic rights, and it takes time to completely take over institutions like the judiciary or the police. It takes time to reduce the powers of elected officials in blue states. Perhaps it could have been done in two years, but it would require smart people to do that.

Why did a leader and movement that won a popular mandate in 2024 do so badly in the midterm elections? The underlying answer is that Trump is and always has been incompetent. For someone who campaigned on bringing prices down it was crazy to raise trade tariffs across the board. He so overestimated his own abilities and so craved sycophancy that he appointed fools as advisors, so they hid bad news and gave terrible advice. He allowed Netanyahu to persuade him to attack Iran. He let the corruption of his family and his advisors become so open that it became a serious electoral liability.

None of this was inevitable. If Trump had done nothing he would have benefited from the gradual return of inflation to near target. He could have ensured that ICE restricted its attention to those who had actually committed crimes. He could still have done everything he did to weaken resistance in government and elsewhere, without seriously weakening his electoral support. In short, he could have been much more strategic. Instead he did what he felt like doing, convincing himself with the help of his advisors that his popularity would not be seriously dented. Trump rushed out presidential edicts (many of which were unlawful) on every item in the MAGA wishlist and on his own personal whim.

The result was a landslide midterm defeat. The size of the defeat will make things very difficult for Trump over the next two years. It will make it harder to rig the next presidential election, or to somehow give Trump a third term.

What a Democrat controlled Congress should do before that election is pretty clear. First, it should propose a series of popular, and among Democrat politicians uncontentious, bills that force Trump to enact his veto. Paul Krugman has a list. Second, it needs to set up investigations into the corruption under the Trump regime. Both serve a simple political purpose of increasing the chances of a Democrat president and Congress from 2028.

Should that prospect alter the attempts by other democracies to reduce their dependence on the US? No and yes. No, because as long as the Republican party can so easily be captured by the likes of Trump then the chances of a right wing populist being elected in the future remains high. Although the blue wave last week was large, the Republican core vote remained substantial. Among white voters a small majority still voted Republican. While a majority may have rejected Trump a week ago, they still voted for him two years ago, in part because the media deliberately does a poor job of informing voters, and that failure is only getting worse. For this and other reasons the US still remains very vulnerable to right wing populist rule, and so cannot be a reliable international leader.

Yes, because unfortunately most liberal democracies are at risk from right wing populism, a danger currently exacerbated by the impact of Trump’s war with Iran. (While that war may have been bad for Trump in the US, its effects on the cost of living will almost certainly be helpful to populists currently in opposition in other countries.) France may well have a right wing populist president next year. In other countries, like Spain for example, the centre-right may form a coalition government with right wing populists. Those countries that remain liberal democracies need to form flexible alliances that may need periodic adjustment after elections, with no country being able to take a leadership role permanently. A Democrat US after 2028 should certainly be part of that alliance.

One final lesson of the midterms is about the limits of both money and racism on politics. In Texas Elon Musk spent at least $212m on trying to keep Texas Republican. Musk’s...