The heuristic value of the fascism hypothesis for MAGAism

It establishes parameters for expectation and standards for assessing

The slow motion car crash of US democracy, foreseeable since about February 2021 when it was clear the Democrats had no idea what to do about J6, has now occurred. The question which is now open is just how bad a second Trump Presidency, predicated on his complete legal impunity, backed by the Supreme Court, will be.

Already, people are expressing disbelief at Mr Trump’s appointees. This is because they haven’t been able to believe what he and the MAGA princes have been saying, in some cases since 2015. Whereas a philosophy like Stoicism says that cognitive empathy and understanding what those you disagree with want, then prepare for the worst, so you are ready, it can seem that liberal naivety says: hope for the best, assume ‘history is on your side’, and don’t believe others could ever disagree with your basic commitments — until it is too late. This is unwise.

We get that, given that the term ‘fascism’ is so often abused, and is even used by MAGA leaders to attack their critics, the word is very problematic. But like the word ‘communism’ it does name historical regimes with a group of well-known, observable features. It has a double life, within political theory and philosophy, and as mud that is slung around politically as an ‘enemy term’, in such a way that real far right operatives benefit from creating a false equivalence.