American Fascism

Is America fascist? What does that have to do with Canada? Let's do some historical journalism.

Photo by Mark Peterson for the NYT

This weekend there was another execution in Minneapolis by the state against a white American citizen. Reactions have been (justifiably) emotional, with no use of the Longue Durée historical lens— the premise that history is not a series of events, it is a long, slow development that needs full context to understand. It is important, in these uncertain times, to approach our view of politics and society with this historical lens.

Despite being horrified because of these past two weeks in Minneapolis, I also think it’s my job as a journalist to be calm, and give a comprehensive historical lens to global events, recontextualizing them for Canada.

Today On the Trail we ask two simple questions: is the United States fascist? And how does this affect us as Canadians?

The anatomy of authoritarianism and fascism

The USA is defined as a “competitive authoritarian system”, where two parties are in competition to win the government, despite remarkable similarity. But authoritarian does not mean fascist. Vietnam and China are authoritarian, but they are not fascist. People have a tendency to overuse the term fascist. Trump’s first term had fascist elements, and Trump demonstrated that he himself might have ascribed to the ideology, but he was restrained by people within his administration, but people incessantly called him fascist. This minimized the term when the 2024 election came around. It left people with a kernel of an idea: “last time wasn’t that bad, and at least I could afford groceries.” People did not take the idea of fascism seriously because the term was thrown around too easily. So, let us define fascism.

I called some friends of mine, political scientists, and they helped me break down the definition of this overused term.

Fascism is an authoritarian political movement that seeks to return its nation to a prior, glorious state. It achieves this by seizing control of civilian life and systematically identifying, expelling, or eliminating certain racial or social groups who are cast as “enemies within” often referred to as “vermin”. These people groups are usually identified as undermining the nation’s well-being.

This ideology is defined by an obsession with national decline and victimhood, where the movement justifies the aestheticization of violence and the suspension of human rights as necessary tools to purge “decadent” modern influences and restore a mythologized “organic unity” to the people. The movement often takes place around a central figure, and demonizes the media and characterizes anything that does not support its beliefs as misinformation. It also must be done in opposition to another political movement, socialism, regardless of whether the “opposing” force is socialist.

Just so you know, I tailored this definition around political scientists’ recommendations, not around MAGA and Trump. It just so happens that the MAGA movement perfectly fits in the definition.

The Democrats (other than three or four of them) are not socialists. However, to exist as a construct, fascism must be in opposition to the “danger of socialism”. The existence of fascist projects is a reactionary counter-revolution to the potential of social revolution, despite a concerted effort by modern fascists to convince people that Nazis were socialists because of their name.

We see this “counter revolution” in Europe in the 20th century, but we also see it in 2016. In order to prevent a social democrat, Bernie Sanders, from taking office, the rise of Donald Trump occurred, as a dual effort between the Democratic party and the Republican party. Fascism is, at its core, an “anti-socialist” counter revolution. Read Antonio Gramsci’s letters from jail, and you’ll understand the inner workings of this struggle. Socialists lost against fascism in the 20th century, and thus the rise of the Spanish fascist powers, the Nazis, and the PNF.

So, with an appropriate definition established, we can properly analyse history. It is also fundamental to properly assessing things within a Longue Durée historical lens that we do not compare movements– MAGA is not the same as the Nazis. These are two distinct fascist movements that need to be assessed in their context, otherwise the response will not be the correct one.

Assessing the American fascist social movement

Renée Good was unarmed, and unthreatening. The video of her murder, which I don’t recommend you watch, indicates that she was executed because the ICE officer felt emasculated. It was a perfect example of the type of people who like Trump, and the type who join ICE.

17 days later, about 1 mile (1.6km) from where Good was killed, another white American citizen was executed.

Alex Pretti had a gun, and was licensed to carry. Prior to his execution, he was pistol whipped in the face and disarmed. There does not seem to be any indication that he was threatening the officers. While on the ground, pepper sprayed, disarmed, and unable to fight back or move, at least ten shots were fired at him by two different officers. In the video, you can hear people screaming and yelling as the officers fire repeatedly, murdering the completely disarmed man.

The world is in an uproar, and I myself feel similarly. However, this happens to black American men constantly. Here is a link to a wikipedia article listing the known unarmed African-Americans who have been murdered by law enforcement officers. The list is not comprehensive. It can only list the people who have been killed if it was reported on, either by the state or by journalists.

People didn’t react to the sheer violence of ICE and the state endorsed murder of US citizens until it was two white people who were killed. During the early aughts when ICE was created, it was widely supported by Americans, with shows such as 24 glorifying the idea.

I loved that show growing up, by the way. 24 and House M.D. every Tuesday & Wednesday over at my step father’s house!

The United States has always functioned like this. The Nazi policies on exterminating the Jews during the Holocaust were based on Jim Crow laws– a regime of laws that reinforced a new form of pseudo slavery after the American Civil War. Yes, African Americans were “freed from slavery”, but immediately after the reunification of the States, and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, these laws failed to fundamentally change the trajectory of the country.

Although it was enshrined in their constitution under the fifteenth amendment, black people still had to fight for another 100 years to earn their voting power back in the southern states. The leaders of full emancipation– Dr. King, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X– were then executed– assassinated– by the state.

The United States has long been an authoritarian nation. Previously, its authoritarianism was focused on one subset of the population. Now, it has expanded its view.

This is in part because of rising left wing sentiment in the USA due to the failure of centrist policies under Obama and Clinton. MAGA is a continuation of the direction of the USA, but it is not the same thing as what came before.

The execution of Alex Pretti was quickly compared to the famous, and harrowing photo, the Last Jew in Vinnitsa.

You’ll notice one big difference between the photos– the piles of bodies underneath the jewish man.

This does not minimize the horror of Alex Pretti being assassinated, but it highlights the importance of not exaggerating where they are in their society. In the Last Jew in Vinnitsa, they were in the middle of the Nazi regime– 1941– and the extermination of 6 million jews was well underway. Alex Pretti was executed during the early days of a new fascist regime, a fascist regime that hasn’t completely taken root.

The MAGA brand of fascism can still be overcome through mass social mobilization and resistance. World War II had begun 2 years before at the time of the Last Jew in Vinnitsa, and there were already at least 2 million jews murdered by that point in the war. Pretti is a sign of what the future looks like. The Last Jew in Vinnitsa was what had already occurred, and would continue to occur.

Police state

One of the clearest indications that this is the early stage of a fascist movement in the United States is the ongoing militarization of the police. In order for a fascist regime to take root, it must have total domination through its police force.

On February 22, 1933, Hermann Göring, acting as Prussian Minister of the Interior, issued a decree deputizing 50,000 members of the SA (Sturmabteilung), SS (Schutzstaffel), and Stahlhelm as Hilfspolizei (auxiliary police). They were authorized to patrol streets, arrest political opponents, and use lethal force.

The Hilfspolizei were instrumental in establishing the first “wild concentration camps” (wilde Lager). These were ad-hoc detention centers in cellars, warehouses, and abandoned buildings where political opponents were tortured and beaten without any judicial oversight. This extra-legal violence was “boiling water”—terrifyingly visible yet officially denied or minimized by the state. Crucially, their actions were shielded from prosecution. (Holocaust Museum, Enemies of the People, Improving Police)

This should sound familiar to you. JD Vance claimed that ICE has “absolute immunity” from prosecution, the Minnesota police are unable to investigate their own jurisdiction, immigrants, brown people, and enemies of the state are being rounded up in makeshift ICE detention, including children. Despite this being illegal under the US constitution, the judiciary is highly politicized, and has failed to stop the creation of makeshift concentration camps in the USA, and has failed to stop the administration from sending people to concentration camps in El Salvador. Importantly, ICE is now being used to target political opposition as well as racialized people.

A key difference is that in Nazi Germany, the SS starting to persecute political enemies did not trigger mass protests– there are two reasons. First, by the time Hitler began persecuting his enemies, he had already enshrined his ability to do so in German law. Second, German culture differs greatly from that of American culture– the country is incredibly disciplined and respects authority.

Culture is always a part of historical shifts in governance. America is a country that people can easily call “ungovernable.” It is far too disparate and varied to enforce a new political system without a major uprising. We already see the reaction in Minnesota to ICE killing two people, and we will see more if they continue their actions as they have been doing. Germany is a country that will fall in line. America is a country where they will rebel, and it may turn violent.

Here’s the TL;DR: the progression of US fascism is less likely to produce a neo-nazi regime than it is to produce a modern civil war.

Pre-civil war conditions

The first “fascist” (not authoritarian) movement in the United States is that of the Confederacy and the Civil War. The following information was sourced from Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (a great book, that I highly recommend.)

The Civil War came out of a tense United States that had been boiling over for more than a decade. Tensions between the North and the South had become so unbearable that upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, many states left the Union. The country was divided in two, the south believing that they needed to return to an earlier state of glory, the country intended by the founding fathers– they had to enforce their right to slavery, as was always intended by the constitution. The North wanted to incrementally be rid of slavery. Civil war broke out as the first shots were fired by Confederates at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

In an amazing piece by Lydia Polgreen for the New York Times, she describes what seemed like a civil war in Minneapolis. Polgreen has covered civil wars around the globe. She knows what she’s saying.

In fact the number of journalists seeing the writing on the wall is remarkable. David Smith, Joe Wilkins, Claire Finkelstein– the list goes on. What does that mean for the USA? It’s extremely difficult to imagine. Warfare is not remotely similar to what it was in the 1860s, and Americans are not the same people they were. Being the citizens of history’s richest and most powerful empire has changed them. Or maybe it hasn’t, we might soon find out.

While many ingredients for a significant domestic conflict are present—including jurisdictional battles, military standby, and civilian deaths—the current state remains a constitutional and civil crisis and there is not the organizational capacity for a civil war to break out overnight. The next weeks to months will be critical to determine what happens.

A civil war is usually between two organized militaries inside of a nation. There is no organized military on the part of the civil population, and the idea that the American military would begin attacking Americans on behalf of Donald Trump seems far-fetched to me.

Certain ingredients are there, but a more likely outcome would be a mass protest movement, and potential collapse of the American government. Violence could lead to assassination attempts against political officials (such as the successful assassination of Melissa Hortman, and attempted assassination of John Hoffman two Minnesotan democrats). The likelihood of more attempts against Trump’s life, or against Vance’s life grows by the day as the political temperature in the states continues heating up. What will be the outcome? We don’t know yet, and it’s hard to say definitively what might happen.

Eurasia Group called what is happening in the USA a “political revolution” but from the top down instead of the bottom up. They are convinced that Trump’s ambitions will, in the end, fail. I agree with that assessment. However, this does not make the interim any more comfortable. Whether Trump fails or succeeds in his takeover of American institutions, the country will be permanently changed, and it will lead to the next president having vastly expanded executive power, with fewer checks and balances. Regardless of Trump’s individual success, the country has been destabilized in the short term. It will always be four years away from a new tyrant hoping to lord their unbelievable power over their subjects.

Americans could resist this movement if they organized, and activated. They have the capacity, but do most Americans have the will? It doesn’t seem likely to me.

Canada

I don’t write anything unless I’m thinking about Canada.

As the American political system continues in its trend towards permanent destabilization, Canada has to react. We saw Carney’s speech in Davos last week– an amazing speech that announced the end of American dominance over Canada, and admitted openly that we never believed in the international order, we just played along because we benefitted from it.

It has immediately resulted in a polling boost for Carney, as we can see in Liaison Strategy’s poll this week, as well as several others last week. Carney is proposing a global move away from reliance on the States, and is positioning Canada as a strong democracy as autocracies rise around the world– the USA might backslide, but we’re still open for business. I made an historical & political analysis of the speech last week, if you haven’t seen it.

Canada is unlikely to have a democratic collapse, although authoritarian tendencies are within the current iteration of the Liberal government– one only needs to look at Bill C-5 and Bill C-2 to see authoritarian impulses invading Canadian governance. Then, within the budget implementation bill they hid a clause to allow cabinet ministers to excuse corporations from Canadian Law for 6 years at a time (other than the criminal code.)

The opposition Conservatives, Bloc and NDP have successfully been pushing back against some of it– with the Conservatives removing some of the worst aspects of Bill C-5, and the Bloc found the clause in the implementation bill.

Ironically, the Conservatives have expressed an interest in implementing laws with major overreach themselves. During the election Pierre Poilievre implied that he would use the Notwithstanding Law to ignore the Supreme Court ruling against mandatory minimums in sentences. Despite them calling out the Carney Liberals for implementing authoritarian measures, they don’t seem to have the self reflective capacity to notice that their leader wants the same things.

Luckily, at least for the next few weeks, we have a minority Parliament. Unless there are more defections.

Still, even if the Liberals do commit some authoritarian measures to the books, aspects of authoritarianism exist in every democratic country. So far, no one has figured out how to remove that entirely, although with a proportional system we could significantly improve our country’s governance, and decrease the likelihood of authoritarianism in Canada.

Canada is a country built on the premise of an “anti-American” union, a continent sized nation founded for the sole purpose of not being annexed by American expansionism. There are multiple things that a country like Canada could do to improve our chances of accomplishing this goal.

The most important thing we need to do is make it possible for Canadians to live. Our founding myth, “Peace, order, and good government”, is only fulfilled if housing prices and food are affordable. A population under financial stress trends towards extremism. Canada is not about to have a communist revolution, so what can Canada do within its cultural context to establish its democracy, and maintain our sovereignty?

On the morning of January 26th, Carney announced a minor policy change to help Canadians afford groceries. The money will help Canadians. He needs to go much further.

There are obvious, simple solutions that could rapidly help with minimal downsides. I have pointed this out many times, but here I go again.

Price caps on major grocery items– eggs, bread, flour, milk, etc– these are tools that already exist in many countries. France uses them to great effect, they have more than 5000 items with price caps already, and the government is not afraid to use these caps to benefit their citizens. These price caps are being implemented by Emmanuel Macron’s centrist government, by the way, not by some leftist populist movement. The only people who would lose out are the CEOs of major grocery chains, who are extraordinarily rich already.

Other immediate measures that could be taken– instead of spending years at a time and billions of dollars simply building new homes (which we should also be doing), purchase properties and immediately convert them into affordable socialized housing, with the government as the landlord. It is a permanent fixed revenue where the government functions as a landlord, and the money will eventually be made back while assuring that poorer families can survive.

If the government doesn’t want to do it themselves, which they often don’t, work with well established social housing companies, and provide them the capital. Make them an arm of the state to rapidly improve people’s lives.

Our governments aren’t opposed to social programs, they just minimize their importance. The most important one, our healthcare, is suffering. In Alberta, it’s near collapse. Time for the feds to step in. Update the Canada Health act, ban private healthcare in the country. Ban private public partnerships in our healthcare. Then invest massive sums of money in our system, and fix the damn thing. It’s not socialist, Lester B. Pearson, a Liberal prime minister, was the one who built the system. The backlash from the medical community was immense. They did it anyway.

Finally, this might get me in trouble, get the Canadian armed forces ready to secure the American-Canadian border. Not from asylum seekers, like Carney seems wont to do, but from American aggression.

Genuinely. I’m not saying we need to line up tanks on our border. I’m saying that we should be preparing for American collapse, even if it doesn’t happen.

Carney increased the defense budget. Russia isn’t about to invade us. Trump seems interested in Canada, and the more desperate he gets, the more we should consider this as a possibility. We have the longest unsecured border in the world.

The time might come that we might want to secure it.

This is now an eight page report. It’s way too long. I have more to say, but we’ll stop here. I hope you enjoyed this little bit of historical journalism, it won’t be the last.