The Historical Analogy for Trump is the Gilded Age, Not Nazism
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I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who is a historian of fascism. He said on the first day of his history of fascism class, he got a question from a student asking if Trump was fascist. He responded that it was an irrelevant and pointless question–it doesn’t actually matter. What he’s doing is terrible and that’s what matters. Moreover, while it’s entirely possible that for Vance and Thiel and Musk, the goal is more about something that looks global fascism, for Donald Trump the goal is his vision of the Gilded Age, both on issues of race and corporate domination. I mean, he’s just saying this now:
Trump: "We were the richest relatively — think of this — from 1870 to 1913. That was our richest. Because we collected tariffs … we had so much wealth. Of course, now we give it away to transgender … everybody gets a transgender operation."
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) February 22, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Of course the details are moronic and Trump is wrong about everything, but that hardly matters here. Trump and team are trying to reestablish their version of the Plessy and Lochner Era. That’s the historical analogy we need to be using, not using our national fetish for World War II documentaries as a way to ineffectively channel our fears. What Trump is doing is extremely 100% American. This isn’t some foreign ideology. It’s the dream of the Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley presidencies.