The Angry American Men Who Choose Fascism

Forget analogies with Nazi Germany; American fascism is homegrown.

Well, now that the generals have said it, we all can easily and openly speak about American fascism. Many of us have long known that Trump was a fascist, of course. But it took the top brass admitting as much to make it hit the headlines. 

Now, retired general Mark Milley has called Trump “fascist to the core,” while Trump’s own former chief of staff John F. Kelly said his former boss meets the dictionary definition of fascism. 

Unfortunately, some armchair intellectuals are still arguing over that dictionary. They nitpick differences with the European fascists of the 1930s, quibbling over whether or not the MAGA movement meets the mark. 

Because history never repeats itself, American fascism is not like Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy. 

American fascism, rooted in our history and culture, has two streams.

One is rooted in the vast importation of enslaved Africans to establish the foundation of our economy—racialized capitalism. And we know that it did not just cover agriculture. As Edward E. Baptist has shown, northern business interests—banking, mill owners, loggers, insurance companies, etc.—were also invested in slavery. The plantation system was the laboratory for the work regime that defined capitalism, and even neoliberalism: how to boost production and profits while minimizing costs—especially the costs of sustaining a workforce. 

The second stream is rooted in the arrival of the Puritans, coterminous with the import of 20 enslaved Africans into the American South in 1619.  More than 20,000 Puritans came to the northern parts of what is now the US in 20 years between 1620 and 1640. The Puritans were a theocracy: wealth accumulation was a sign of being God’s chosen, who should use that position to control and order society. Their focus on wealth, a virtue in itself, made them the backbone of the forces investing in slavery. 

Like other Christians of that period, they deemed women subordinate to men, the “helpmeets” of their husbands and the rearers of their children. Stepping out of line was met with severe repression: scarlet letters, shunning, and worst, being labeled a witch. These are the folks who waterboarded teenage girls—ducking. If you sank you were not a witch, no matter if you died. If you did not sink and survived, coming to the top you were then burned alive as a witch. And we all know what they thought of the Indigenous people who were already living in “New England”—subhumans to be dominated or rooted out. 

“Punishing a woman accused of excessive arguing in the ducking stool” (1834) (wikimedia commons)

This stream has flowed on for 400 years and now feeds white Christian nationalism, rising in influence today. It’s worth noting that at a recent 10,000-person Trump rally in Dalton, Georgia (the carpet capital of America, and Marjorie Taylor Green’s district) the crowd’s refrain was not “lock them up” but “Christ is King.” 

Much has been made by pundits of an emerging gender gap in support for the 2024 presidential candidates. Why are angry men of all ages and races getting on the Trump train? Sure, many of them know their diminished status and wealth are the result of neoliberal capitalism. And they know that immigrants aren’t eating cats and dogs or taking the jobs they shun. But Trump’s violent and cartoonish display of “conventional masculinity” appeals to some young men who have little hope of fulfilling a traditional role of supporting a family. Trump also plays into fears that women advance at men’s expense. Then there are the explicitly patriarchal Christian nationalist men who would like to “overturn the 19th amendment, bring back public flogging, and make America white again.”

In a 1938 sermon, a US minister warned: “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, Americanism.” 

Today’s Make-America-Great-Againism, with its virulent sexism and white Christian nationalism, is the latest outburst of American fascism’s two streams.

Elly Leary is a long-time labor activist, now retired. She was bargaining chair of her UAW local and co-chair of New Directions, the first national reform caucus. She has been a member of Liberation Road for more than 40 years.