Failing or faltering fascism

Here’s an interesting indirect debate between two of our most important critics of the Trumpist disaster, Timothy Snyder and Paul Krugman. The two largely agree that Trumpism is currently in a decline phase, although Snyder is somewhat more optimistic about the long-term trajectory than Krugman.

It’s worth noting how far we’ve come when these two impeccably credentialed brahmins of the academic and media elite simply take it as a given that Trump is a fascist, that his attempt to create a fascist regime has resulted in at least a kind of competitive authoritarianism, and that his coup attempt against liberal democracy is very much ongoing. I’m so old, i.e, old enough to enjoy Blue’s Clues, that I remember when such observations were considered hysterical over-reactions by all serious people, including most unfortunately the president of the United States and in particular his feckless attorney general.

Snyder:

Trump wants it both ways. He wants to be the warlord whom everyone fears, but he also wants to make lots of money and to have his corruption defined as peacemaking. The word “deal,” which he always uses in the context of Iran, means: “we can be bribed.” And if there is a common thread running through American foreign policy under Trump, it is this. And then Trump wants to be told that the combination of threats and bribes makes him a great peacemaker and that he deserves a prize.

Consider the biographical trajectory. A guy from Queens wants to break rules and make money in real estate so that he will be accepted and admired in Manhattan. He fails at that. And then he attempts the whole venture again on a larger scale. He breaks rules and does make money as the president of the United States. But at the end he wants the acclamation, the acceptance, the bourgeois recognition of a remodeled house and gold trinkets.

And so the state of Trump is that he is stuck. He is failing at fascism. He can break things, but he cannot make things. He can bluster, but he cannot triumph. He is tired, and every day is harder than the day before, and there are rivals in the wings, and elections coming.

Between now and November 2026 he has two moves: win a war, which he cannot; and suppress the vote, which he has telegraphed that he will try to do. This is a man, after all, who has already tried to steal an election. But he failed then. And the fact that he tried and failed once means that he should certainly fail again.

There is one more (obvious) trick which Trump can try, a combination of the two: he can claim that the very disaster of the war that he himself started in Iran (or elsewhere) means that there can no elections because of the associated terrorist threats. But if journalists and judges and others are prepared for this gambit it will fail.

What is the state of the Union? Fascism does not fail on its own. People have resisted: millions in protests, thousands or tens of thousands in cities when it mattered. Individual expressions of courage and commitment are everywhere. Even as many major media outlets collapse and concede, others do good work, and local reporting keeps us informed. Civil society groups make plans and file lawsuits. Trump has brought us to a threshold that he cannot cross. But there is no such thing as normality. There is no going back. What comes next is open.

Trump is stuck, but he is stuck in a terrible place. The United States remains in competitive authoritarianism, with fascists in positions of authority, and federal institutions carrying out policies of oppression that cannot be reconciled with the rule of law. There will be more bad news in the next six months, and more moments of courage and organizing.

There will be elections in November, but they will not be unusual elections, requiring an unusual effort. The opponents of authoritarianism can certainly win, in an uphill struggle, involving building big coalitions and thinking about better futures. We cannot go back but we can do much better.

I assume the “not” in the first sentence of the last graph is a typo.

Snyder’s central point is that fascist regimes normally need a successful war to consolidate themselves, and Trump can’t produce one, because he’s lazy and stupid and unfocused. Snyder even predicts that if Trump actually launches a full-scale invasion of Iran, rather than lobbing a few missiles, then negotiating a “peace deal” to end a 17th war in his unending quest for the ultimate rainbow gold star of a Nobel Peace Prize (seriously, can you believe this shit? I can’t), then he won’t last another three years or maybe even another ten months.

Krugman makes a closely related point, which is that successful authoritarian regimes generally come to power during some sort of economic crisis, which they can for awhile at least claim credibly to have “fixed.” Trump of course is shouting from the rooftops that this is exactly what’s happened, but it’s an absurd lie, even by his astonishingly degraded standards:

Because there was no crisis when he regained the presidency, Trump — his bombastic lies in the State of the Union notwithstanding — hasn’t been able to preside over a clear economic improvement. Indeed, his approval on economic issues has plummeted:

Disclaimer: I am not saying that all was well with the Biden economy. I don’t want to revisit the vibecession debate at length today. Suffice it to say that, as Mike Konczal documents, there were reasons American families felt stressed despite good conventional numbers, although the depth of their discontent remains startling. But because America wasn’t suffering a Germany 1932 or Russia 1998-type crisis, it was impossible for Trump to deliver rapid economic improvement – that is, it would have been impossible even if he were competent (which he isn’t). So his efforts to consolidate power aren’t succeeding the way he and his fellow authoritarians expected.

In this particular context, the Mariana Trench-like idiocy of America’s marginal voters, which put Trump back in office, is now coming to our aide, as these people apparently assumed that Trump was going to “solve” inflation by returning prices to their 2019 levels. And although the administration trumpets every day that the weekly chocolate ration has been increased to 20 grams, even the most heroic efforts of the right wing scream machine can’t hide the truth from the common clay of the west.

Things are balanced on a knife edge at the moment: Trumpism remains a thoroughly fascist movement, that even now is busily coming up with schemes to rig or cancel November’s elections. But here again Trump’s fundamental laziness, stupidity, and the Will to Grift are, as Snyder and Krugman suggest, on our side.

Strength and honor everybody (and blogging and substacking).