MAGA: A Show About Fascism
Recently, Trump was indicted for storing nuclear secrets, military strategy documents, information on Macron, and plans for retaliation against Iran in his shower in Mar-a-Lago. When the nerds at the government asked for them back, timidly adding “we won’t tell” he said no. Then they raided his little Gatsby mansion in Florida. Donald Trump is the Ohio train derailment of American ideology. But is he a fascist? I’m not sure, and I’m not sure I care.
When Donald Trump was elected, a debate emerged, with one author noting that “in contrast to his multiple business failures, Donald Trump’s presidency spurred at least one growth industry: commentary on fascism.” Early on, the press had to go back to the basics: What is fascism, anyway?
Eatwell said that “generic fascism, transcending place and time, is identified as an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way, though in practice fascism has tended to stress style, especially action and the charismatic leader, more than a detailed program, and to engage in a Manichaean demonization of its enemies.”
While many commentators cited Eatwell, others made the case that any conservative revolution, in some sense, is at least a little bit fascist, and more cited literature looking even further right than fascism. Many cut the author of The Art of the Deal some slack because he seemed like a bumbling idiot.
Things calmed down for a while, and then January 6 revitalized the debate, with the same authors that wanted to cut him slack penning headlines like, “I Hesitated to Call Donald Trump a Fascist. Until Now.” The sense that political violence had become a legitimate political strategy for the MAGA movement was what triggered these reassessments, and for good reason.
The MAGA movement checks a lot of fascist boxes, but there is no real theory of a “holistic-national” sensibility. But there is also the problem that, other than some tax cuts, the truth about the Trump years was that not much happened. No revolution came. QAnon conferences came and went, extracting thousands of dollars from poor white people who’d fallen down the advertising rabbit hole of a new reality and mostly serving as a financial vortex for the bloated pocketbooks of America’s most tragic generation — Boomers — who Silicon Valley left behind in their constant desire to disrupt. One author has called the MAGA movement “a show about nothing.” Perhaps a more accurate characterization is that it is “a show about fascism.” MAGA is peak reality TV.
Corey Robin points out that “Hitler fought his way to power as the culmination of a decade-long ascendency of the right battling back against a triumphant left.” Today there is no triumphant left to battle, and so there can be no fascism: “Without a genuinely emancipatory left to oppose, Trump’s rage seems to be nothing more than what it is: the ranting and raving of an old man.” At least he’s a good performer. Trump has done a good job playing the victim, speaking on behalf of those who have experienced or are experiencing loss. The MAGA movement was predicated on revolutionary change, but all it delivered was triumphant neoliberalism. It is a story that preys on specific psychological anxieties that remain latent and tabooed in the American population, just in the same way traditional reality TV preys on psychological desires that are latent and tabooed in younger American populations.
The reality TV dynamic of MAGA-ism was the most telling in Trump’s foreign policy. During the early years of his presidency, he got some traction on the idea that China was an enormous military threat and that the United States had to “get tough on China.” And yet, his propositions for intervention were entirely economic: “We need a president that will sign bipartisan legislation to force a proper valuation of China’s currency. We need a president that will slap the Chinese with a 25 percent tax on their products entering America.” Trump is a WWE fighter, not a Jiu-Jitsu master. When push comes to shove, nothing changes: it’s neoliberalism all the way down; anything and everything is ultimately reduced to the emasculating reality of economics.
The MAGA reality show was a solution to the political dilemma all conservative parties always face in modern democracy: the challenge of building a 50% voting coalition that advances the material demands of elites. Past innovations include the Southern Strategy (be racist, secretly) and Nazism (be racist, explicitly), but the MAGA solution for entrenching elite power was brilliant in its recognition of the power of the internet and social media to manipulate the sense of reality of those who did not grow up in it and those who do not have the psychological maturity and emotional resources to navigate it with care.
As Peter Pomerantsev has repeatedly pointed out, this has been the Russian model since Putin took over. The MAGA movement is not a fascist movement; it’s a Russian movement. It is a political reality show based on the Russian model. Its purpose seems to be distraction and nothing else. And thus the MAGA movement represents something new on the American right, namely a political project based on the aesthetics of reaction but that is materially committed to the status quo. It is not fascism, but a show about fascism.
