By FEDERICO FINCHELSTEIN*

Excerpt from the recently published book.

After failed coup attempts, fascists sometimes resorted to other methods, such as the so-called “legal revolution.” As historian Alan E. Steinweis explains, “It was crucial that Nazi rule be seen as the result of a legal process and not as a form of coup d’état. But neither Nazi propaganda nor self-deception nor the dishonesty of Germans who were prepared to accept all this must be allowed to distract historians from seeing the fundamentally undemocratic and unconstitutional process that gave rise to the Third Reich in 1933.”

Whether the fascists admitted it or not, dictatorship was a natural result of fascism in power. Hans Frank, the Nazi Minister of Justice and later governor of occupied Poland, told his interrogators at Nuremberg: “Hitler swore an oath before the Reich Supreme Court in Leipzig that he would only come to power legally and, if he did, he would rule legally. While Hitler Leader, before his accession, was in a position to need lawyers and judges, he might still need me; but after he came to power, I felt more and more that he was abandoning these formalities and ruling in an authoritarian manner, like a dictator.” By this time, Hans Frank had joined other Nazis in trying to distance themselves from the Nazi dictatorship.

Hans Frank's attitude was typical and extended to his allies around the world. As Nazi leader Albert Speer recalled in 1945, once Hitler's Nazi project was in ruins, "the rats abandoned the sinking ship."

Contrary to expectations, none of this happened with Trumpism after its crushing electoral defeat in 2020. Just like the fanatical Goebbels, who remained clinging to the wreckage of Nazism until the end, Donald Trump's fervent admirers and followers showed no signs of abandoning their leader's destructive policies.

Nor have key domestic and international allies abandoned Donald Trump. Trumpism and the new politics of aspiring fascism that define it are here to stay. This becomes abundantly clear when we consider the state of global autocracies after Donald Trump. Moreover, for many dictators, the autocratic ship is simply not sinking at all, and many prominent center-right politicians in the United States and abroad have drawn the wrong lessons from the sinking.

It is hard to say whether the stumble of Trumpism, or its imminent return in the form of imitators or Donald Trump himself, will mobilize democratic forces around the world to resist. But after all the fanfare of that era—involving Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election and the Brexit in the UK – regarding a global populist insurgency of the far right, it is important to ask whether, despite the clear failures of the policies of the would-be fascists, we are still on the verge of a deeper shift towards this disastrous path.

Perhaps it is too early to say. Authoritarianism is neither mechanical nor unstoppable, nor immune to the processes of resistance and empowerment of democracy. That is why we must learn about these processes as part of the broader histories of fascism and populism.

This phenomenon is global. While it is understandable that so much media, punditry and academic attention has focused on Donald Trump and the fallout from the US election, it is disappointing that there has been little discussion in the English-speaking media about the pogroms and the growing repression in India, or Jair Bolsonaro’s criminal mishandling of Covid-19 and his failed coup attempt in 2023, and the success of mini-Trumpists like Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, the populist-neofascist alliance of Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini in Italy, or the prospects of other autocratic leaders including Juan Antonio Kast in Chile, Santiago Abascal in Spain, and Marine Le Pen in France. In short, there is little discussion of the potential, on a global scale, for the destruction of democracy from within that Trumpism has so well represented.

Although for many people in the United States—indeed, for most voters—Trumpism had to fade from the scene, the force of the former president’s words still commanded attention after his defeat in 2020. Autocrats around the world were already missing Trumpism in power, and in many countries his attacks on democracy and his politics of hate have persisted and even increased in recent years. While the pandemic has made clear the limits of authoritarian rule in democratic countries, in most autocratic contexts, the pandemic and the political and economic instability that followed have given leaders a justification to engineer more crises and more repression of the press and the opposition.

Focusing attention exclusively on the United States poses significant obstacles to understanding the world, and even to understanding the United States itself. We must assess the broader state of global autocracy in light of the challenges it has posed to democracy in the past in order to understand the challenges that lie ahead. What are the prospects for global autocrats, especially those who seek to abuse, degrade, and even destroy democracy from within?

There can be no doubt that autocrats were already thriving long before Donald Trump came to power. But countries where democracy does not exist or is severely limited will continue to develop, regardless of this recent global phenomenon of populist autocrats wanting to return to the paths of fascism. Indeed, countries such as Turkey, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Russia and Belarus cannot be explained within the framework of recent attempts to degrade or even destroy democracy.

When there is only one party, or no party at all, and when popular demands are not channeled through elections, protests, and media criticism, democracy simply does not exist. The result of this suppression is more traditional forms of autocracy, namely despotism, tyranny, and dictatorship. Where autocracy exists without any democracy, Donald Trump’s defeat has had fewer consequences. Countries like Russia and North Korea actively favored Donald Trump’s more sympathetic positions toward them, and in the case of the former, even tried their best to influence the results of the 2020 election (as, indeed, they may have done in 2016) – but these autocrats were the least affected by Donald Trump’s downfall.

Other countries, such as Iran, a dictatorial theocracy where elections are restricted by the power of religious authority, may have been happier to see Donald Trump go, but this has not in any way affected the stability of their authoritarian leaders. In fact, Donald Trump’s confrontational and often erratic positions have served to strengthen these types of autocrats, allowing them to use nationalism and anti-imperialism to hide their structural problems of repression, inequality and poverty. China, the world’s most powerful non-democratic country, could find itself in the same situation.

China, North Korea and Vietnam have been communist autocracies for decades, and their policies have not changed significantly since 2020. Among other autocrats around the world not much affected by the fall of Trumpism, or aspiring fascism as a whole, we should probably count those that Donald Trump fervently supported and even enabled, such as the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The same can be said of countries where democratic life is minimal. For hybrid regimes such as Turkey, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Venezuela, where certain freedoms exist in an extremely repressive environment, the fall of Trumpism has meant geopolitical changes but not major internal changes. Autocratic leaders such as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Nicolás Maduro, Daniel Ortega and Vladimir Putin have combined repression, nationalism and fear to maintain their power.

Donald Trump had an ambivalent relationship with Erdoğan, which was driven by the complicated geopolitics of the Middle East but never affected by Donald Trump’s repressive nature. On the other hand, Donald Trump often used Nicolás Maduro as a foil, promising aggressive actions against his dictatorship that never happened. This often brought to mind the Bay of Pigs Invasion fiasco and Latin American memories of US imperialism in the region, and had the dual effect of generating support for Maduro at home and abroad, as well as motivating US citizens of Venezuelan and Cuban origin to vote for Donald Trump, especially in the 2020 election.

The relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin has remained a mystery to many. Why did the American president fear his Russian counterpart, rarely criticizing him for his actions against the interests and lives of Americans? Future historians with access to more archival information may be able to answer these questions, but in any case, it is possible to argue that while Vladimir Putin certainly missed Donald Trump, his administration was not affected by Donald Trump’s departure.

Autocrats in Africa, such as João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço in Angola, Paul Kagame in Rwanda, and Emmerson Mnangagwa in Zimbabwe, have also been largely unaffected by Trumpism. This was also the case for autocratic leaders in Ethiopia, Congo, Cameroon, and Mali. Trumpism has had a similar lack of relevance in Asian autocracies such as Uzbekistan, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and, most recently, Myanmar.

In short, autocratic governments with little or no democracy were not much affected by the American leader’s misfortune. The widespread effects of Trumpism around the world and the politics of aspiring fascism that they legitimized on a global scale are especially linked to places where democracy still exists. The effects of Donald Trump’s passing were more present in the leaders of democracies, and perhaps democratic countries can consider that the absence of that leader from power is a positive situation.

This is an important historical lesson: when democracy still exists and its essential features (free elections, pluralism, equality, anti-racism, free press) are attacked from above, the legacy of fascism remains a threat. This was precisely the case with Donald Trump, but it was not an original or essentially American case.

In fact, Trumpism is part of a global attack on democracy from within. This is what links Trumpism to a new trend of global autocratic movements. This autocratic destruction of democracy from within echoes past historical ideologies, such as fascism. Donald Trump’s populism is the latest chapter in a long story.

The paradox of populism is that it often identifies real problems but seeks to replace them with something worse.

Aspiring fascism represents the latest attempt to create a third position between liberal democracy and more traditional forms of dictatorship.⁶

With his characteristic lack of humility, Donald Trump has tried to define the new state of the world as “the age of Trump.” But in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, it has become clear to anyone outside the United States that, while it is true that Trumpism has given a global boost to the legitimacy of autocrats around the world, autocrats of this kind existed before Donald Trump and will continue to exist after Trumpism has disappeared or morphed into something else.

The four pillars of fascism are built on social factors that provide support and legitimacy. Even without Donald Trump in power, we will still have Trumpism by other means. Trumpism is part of a global 21st-century trend toward autocracy that has reshaped the history of populism, transforming it into the aspiration of fascism.

Populism, especially after the defeat of fascism in 1945, went beyond the four key elements of fascism: totalitarian lies, dictatorship, xenophobia, glorification of violence, and militarization of politics. But aspiring fascists have taken up these four key elements and, to varying degrees, turned populism once again onto the path of fascism.

Without a doubt, the rise of Trumpism and its ignominious retreat four years later through a lost election and a failed coup were highly influential in shaping the fate of democracies globally. But autocrats and fascists existed before Donald Trump.

The political, social, and economic problems that fueled the rise of these authoritarian leaders still exist and need to be addressed. In the United States, in particular, there are signs of hope that anti-fascist and anti-racist politics can be more equitable, protect the environment, and create jobs. But even if this is premature optimism, it is important to think that a more inclusive America—or Europe, or Asia, or Africa, or Latin America—can set an example for other parts of the world, helping them confront their own anti-democratic actors. This is not an issue unique to the United States. But it is clear that less confrontational American diplomacy can play an important role in reversing this situation.

In the past, when anti-fascist forces put aside their differences and resisted together, democracy prevailed. Autocratic fascists operating within democracy have only succeeded when independent media were attacked rather than defended, when the separation of powers and the rule of law were minimized or destroyed, when the radical left did not care about liberal democracy, when conservatives reproduced the arguments of autocrats, and when the military and police sided with the authoritarian leader rather than the constitution.

When this happened, democracy was lost and terrorist dictatorships began. On the other hand, when fascism was fought and democracy defended, fascism did not emerge or could not be maintained. It is difficult to know what will happen, but much depends on the actions of governments and citizens who oppose these autocrats.

Fascism lost legitimacy when people actively engaged in politics, giving the state a major role in addressing issues of inequality, such as reversing unequal taxation and combating poverty. In the present, this could be a more democratic strategy for escaping populism and fascism. But it remains to be seen whether this strategy would be successful – whether it could convince voters to turn against authoritarian options.

By returning to the histories of fascism and populism, this book has presented a historical explanation of a new development in history and the fascist-inspired danger that Trumpism and global autocrats pose.

Donald Trump’s main contribution to the legitimacy of global autocracy has been to make toxic fascist politics viable again. But Donald Trump is one of many. The politics he represents are far from over. Perhaps his lasting influence will be the global normalization of would-be fascists.

Federico Finchelstein is a professor of history at the New School for Social Research. Author of, among other books, A Brief History of Fascist Lies (Trace). [https://amzn.to/4ig0gGw]

Reference

Federico Finchelstein. Wannabe Fascists: A Guide to Understanding the Greatest Threat to Democracy. Translation: Rodrigo Seabra. Belo Horizonte, Autêntica, 2024, 272 pages. [https://amzn.to/4gZby17]

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