Is the Republican Party Fascist ?

" ... the federal architecture intended to be a check and balance against tyrants, is not poised to act. Congressional representation is fundamentally anti-democratic. In the Senate, politicians representing 18 percent of the national population—epicenters of Trump’s base—can cast 51 percent of the chamber’s votes. A Republican majority from rural states, representing barely 40 percent of the population, controls the chamber. It repeatedly thwarts legislation reflecting multicultural America’s values—and creates a brick wall for impeachment." 20 Ways Trump Is Copying Hitler’s Early Rhetoric and Policies

In history there has always been a contest between democratic and authoritarian governance. It occurs in about every institution.

Republicans are NOT good for the economy. Trickledown never did. It was Niagara up.

Each Republican President favored policy that exacerbated wealth inequality, reduced tax progressivity, opposed unions, minimized social supports, privatized as much as possible, deregulated, and corrupting has moved the US toward Fascism.

Fascism occurs when wealth inequality becomes extreme, especially when accompanied by the decline of the empire. Wealthy oligarchs, disguised as the free market, take over government, install a dictatorial leader who can be bought, concentrates power to himself, demands loyalty, governs to benefit himself and cronies, not the people.

As the game of Monopoly was designed to illustrate, wealth concentration occurs almost inevitably in an unconstrained market. When extreme it produces a toxic ideology. An underclass has little upward mobility, a myth of meritocracy, class stratification, and propaganda that hides reality.

Defined broadly, when wealth overpowers and takes over government it becomes fascist.

The US government is now dominated by some of the world’s wealthiest people: Musk, Trump, tech bros. Other oligarchs are dependent on government for permits to do business, regulations, oversight, contracts, handling of law suits, tax burden, permission to consolidate with others. They want tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, removal of oversight, and pliable government agencies, all things that can make them even wealthier. Trump can be bought to accomplish these things. They control media.

“Arguments in defense of the centralization of power and rising authoritarianism are always different, but the results are always the same: corruption, stagnation, dictatorship, repression, violence.” Gary Kasparov

Controlled Mass Media

Fascists control media to carry their propaganda, which explains attacks on free media as "fake news" and "enemy of the people". Controlling media is right out of the authoritarian playbook. … Orwell wrote: Truth is not a value for fascists.

The first Amendment and corporate media are particularly vulnerable to government over reach. Trump has intimidated the Washington Post, L A Times, 60 Minutes, CNN, MSNBC, to water down their rhetoric to conform. A few companies control everything you see and hear.

To suppress dissent: Trump has attacked media: 60 minutes, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, and threatened them and sued them. He has signed executive orders to defund NPR, PBS, and the CPB.

Religion and Government are intertwined.

It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so." Robert Heinlein

Each Republican President has made religion more powerful in government. "...the alliance between fundamentalists or evangelical religion and right wing politics is a very troubling phenomenon and this is certainly one of the most potent reasons for it. What's really scary is that a lot of them seem to think that the second coming is around the corner -- the idea that we're going to have Armageddon anyway so it doesn't make much difference. I find that to be socially irresponsible on the highest order. It's scary." Daniel Dennett interview in Der Speigel https://gopiswrong.net/religion.htm

There is considerable hypocrisy in the right wing religion that supported Trump. It is not Christianity.

Religion tends to oppose social supports.

“The political scientists Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have a theory to explain this: Religion flourishes in times of “existential insecurity,” they say, and withers in times of peace and bounty. Other scholars say this may be particularly true in the United States compared with other wealthy countries with stronger social safety nets.”

Conspiracy theories are prevalent among some Republicans, especially regarding the 2020 election.

Trump has represented himself as divine.

Rampant Sexism

"When men began to look for ways to control society, language, firepower and sex followed fear as the best available methods." The Book of Books: Melvyn Bragg

Religion is the source of republican’s culture war, sexism, denigration of women, opposition to abortion, sex education, pornography, LGBTQ, just as it motivated the holocaust.

Republicans opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in the 1970s. The ERA aimed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex.

Disdain for Science, Intellectuals, and the Arts

Trump attacked universities, Harvard, Columbia, and others are banding together to resist and defend themselves in Court. (There goes free speech, free assembly, the 1st Amendment.) They are joining together to fight back.

Arts and Humanities: President Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the budget he released, taking aim once again at two agencies that he had tried and failed to get rid of during his first term. (NYT 5/3/2025)

He intends to eliminate the Department of Education, favors privatizing schools,

DEI and wokeness hide sins of the past, and perpetuate structural discrimination,

Fraudulent Elections

the way the Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open, unlimited secret buying of elections is the height of corruption. Top Ten Signs the US is the most Corrupt nation in the World Juan Cole 02/22/2018

For all practical purposes, Americans are allowed only 2 parties, one is democratic and the other authoritarian. They are like a wrecking ball. What one accomplishes, the other dismantles.

The Republican party, one of the farthest right of the developed world, at least from before WWII, has been home to fascists. Rachel Maddow's book ‘Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism,’ writes': "authoritarianism alive on the far right before and after our troops began fighting in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. (lifted from the books dust jacket.)

Violence is integral to right wing strategy. Congress people are afraid. Judges and their families are being attacked.

Republican authoritarians are enemies of democracy. Natural allies of religion, other authoritarians and axis countries.

Trump says people don’t need to vote in elections any more. Voter suppression is rampant in red States, aligning with fascism's tendency to suppress opposition.

Suppression of Opposition

Republicans identify ‘enemies’ as a unifying cause, intolerance of dissent, often through violence or censorship. Republicans scapegoat immigrants as threats. (The Guardian) minorities, immigrants, or political opponents). ICE enforcement will cause a sharp reduction in tourism, and foreign student applications.

Twisting the Constitution into a fascist dictatorship.

Government upholds the Constitution only when it doesn't get in their way.

Concentration of power is contrary to the intent of the Constitution, damages democracy and individual rights. The Supreme Court, itself an enemy of democracy, has set a course for a ‘unitary executive’, exactly what the Constitution was designed to resist.

Americans in the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, fought authoritarians and sided with democracy and its allies. Republicans are switching sides, favoring Putin, Orban, other dictators and actively spreading authoritarianism world wide.

Demagogue

Trump is a strong man leader of bad character, a convicted felon, with poor record, lies a lot, can be bought, and is enriching himself and his family while in office, the very definition of corruption. The Supreme Court, itself corrupt, put the President above the law. Republicans who do not follow Trump are ejected from the party. It is a cult.

Maybe not all Republicans are fascists, but Trump is. To remain in the party and for their own safety, the rest of the party must follow in cult like obedience. Those who disagree with Trump are ejected from the party and even threatened. Some Congress people have said they are afraid.

“A younger Trump, according to his first wife’s divorce filings, kept and studied a book translating and annotating Adolf Hitler’s pre-World War II speeches in a locked bedside cabinet. The English edition of My New Order, published in 1941, also had analyses of the speeches’ impact on his era’s press and politics. “Ugly and appalling as they are, those speeches are masterpieces of demagogic manipulation,” When at Times the Mob Is Swayed: A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Our Republic, Burt Neuborne

Trump’s closest associates called him Hitler including Steve Bannon, J.D.Vance, and others and they seemed to mean it as a complement. These are not people who respect the Constitution. They proved it on 1/6, when they attempted to overthrow the government, and of course the coup continues. The 14th Amendment clearly says they should be prohibited from holding public office.

They are attempting to spread fascism world wide. J.D.Vance spoke up in Germany in support of the AFD, a far right party. Steve Bannon was not only instrumental in Brexit, but has encouraged other farright parties in the EU. Putin is helping.

Rampant cronyism and Corruption

The emoluments clause is dead. Billionaires control the government, a signature of fascism, and are using it to get even richer. Government is corrupt.

Watchdogs fired ...

Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Disdain for the recognition of Human Rights

The Bill of Rights is in deep trouble.

People are being disappeared into concentration camps in El Salvador with no possibility of return. (Goodbye to the 4th Amendment.) Torture is ok with Republicans.

Trump attacked lawyers, judges, part of a larger attack on the law, fired prosecutors who worked on his trials, and the archivist responsible for the evidence. The DOJ has been weaponized by loyalists.

Corporate Power is Protected

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Mussolini

"We have reached the point in the United States where corporatism has nearly triumphed over democracy. If events continue on their current trajectory, the ability of our government to respond to the needs and desires of humans - things like fresh water, clean air, uncontaminated food, independent local media, secure retirement, and accessible medical care - may vanish forever, effectively ending the world's second experiment with democracy. We will have gone too far down Mussolini's road, and most likely will encounter similar consequences, elements of which we have already experienced: a militarized police state, a government unresponsive to its citizens and obsessed with secrecy, a ruling elite drawn from the senior ranks of the nation's largest corporations, and war." From Thom Hartman's book Threshold pg 202

Labor power is Suppressed

It is difficult to overstate the hostility of the Roberts court to organized labor and the rights of American workers. Jamelle Bouie in the NYT (6/6/2023)

Nordic countries have more successful government for their people. A strong union movement is One of the ways to keep down wealth inequality.

Supremacy of the Military

... the interests [of most states] are demonstrably at variance with those of their people. Defense spending is an obvious example. In most countries, from the democratic superpower to the tinpot military dictatorship, the confluence of interests which Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex exercises inordinate power over government, and money which should be spent, for example, on public health and education, is instead spent on unnecessary weapons... states tacitly conspire against their peoples. George Monbiot in Manifesto for a new World Order

The US is being consumed by the world's largest military. Hubris bred exceptionalism, but now an empire in decline. The Congress, contrary to the Constitution, has with the AUMF permitted the President to go to war at any time he feels a need to police the world.

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

"Many observers have puzzled over the tendency of Tea Party adherents to favor policies that are often directly counter to their economic interests: Why would a disproportionately older group that is accordingly more dependent on Social Security and Medicare opt for candidates who want to 'reform entitlements?'" Mike Lofgren

Republicans who are not wealthy, are not voting in their own self interest. By voting for a government of billionaires, they will find that the thread bare social programs will deteriorate further for the enrichment of the already wealthy.

Authoritarian followers, who have always been there but were usually uninterested and unorganized, are now mightily active and highly organized in American politics. They claim to be the “real Americans,” but the America they yearn to create seems quite antithetical to the nation envisioned by the founding fathers. Far from seeing the wisdom of separating church and state, for example, they want a particular religious point of view to control government, and be spread and enforced by the government. Furthermore, if research on abolishing the Bill of Rights and tolerance for government injustices is to be believed, authoritarian followers frankly don’t give a damn about democratic freedoms. The Authoritarians: Bob Altemeyer (Download the Free Book).

All the biggest challenges of our time are transnational: mass migration, growing inequality, the onset of ecological Armageddon. It's arguable that the politics of the nation state have become at best irrelevant, and at worst a hindrance, to tackling such global challenges. The outlook is grim. Democracy and Truth, A Short History: Sophia Rosenfeld

MAGA demonstrates extreme patriotism and often xenophobic or exclusionary views.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. .. In saying, ‘Our interests first, whatever happens to the others’, you erase the most precious thing a nation can have, that which makes it live, that which causes it to be great and that which is most important: its moral values.” Emmanuel Macron

The Outlook

There is no certain method to guarantee the survival of our species, but there are many ways to hasten its demise, and high on that list is selfish, self-righteous, and self-interested government promoted by the authoritarian conservatives who now control the Grand Old Party, and have given us broken government. John Dean's book Broken Government, How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches.

The radical right insurgency has swept all before it, crushing the administrative state, destroying public protections, capturing the courts, the electoral system and the infrastructure of government, shutting down the right to protest and the right to live. While we persuaded ourselves that there is no time for system change, they proved us wrong by changing everything. George Monbiot (7/19/2022) Days of Rage

There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, Businessweek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing. Noam Chomsky

The Future looks grim.

Bibliography

• Books on Republicans
• Books on Trump
• Books on Fascism
• See the reading list or Fascism with its bibliography.