What’s so bad about fascism?

And why this is not a rhetorical question.

Now that I have your attention and/or outrage, here’s what I mean.

1.

Ever since Trump came down that escalator in 2015, progressives and other Democrats have tried, in vain, to describe the crisis he represents. We’ve called him a racist, a demagogue, a liar, a convicted felon, even a rapist. In recent weeks, his regime has been called a constitutional crisis, a threat to democracy, a coup, and, yes, the dawn of fascism.

And yet, however true or false these claims may be, it should go without saying that none of them has “worked” — by which I mean, they have not persuaded a sufficient number of Americans to oppose him.

And they’re not going to start working now.

To be sure, such claims have terrified millions of progressives; I have seen the results firsthand and up close. But they have not moved the needle of public opinion. Trump’s true believers still believe, and his reluctant supporters still reluctantly support. If anything, the claims — again, whether they’re true or false — have tended to sound preposterous, hyperbolic, and hysterical.

Why is that? And how can opposition to Trump be better articulated, both to persuade the “movable middle” of America and to focus opposition in ways that are sustainable and impactful?

2.

To get this out of the way, one reason these labels fail is that a large majority of Americans either don’t follow the news much or follow it on slanted, right-leaning outlets. The truth simply doesn’t break through. We also are seeing a profound failure in our collective civic education. Critical thinking has never been a defining feature of the American polity, but amplified by the internet, our civic society is crippled by misinformation, ignorance, and delusion.

But in part, it’s because the claims about Trump are hyperbolic.

For most people, the word “fascism” conjures up the Nazis. Yet there are no stormtroopers on the streets, no death camps, no fiery war rhetoric from a Fuhrer. Of course, scholars understand that fascism comes in many forms, and it’s clear that the current administration is acting far beyond the rule of law: the blatant violations of the separation of powers, the mass firings of civil servants whose contracts do not allow them to be fired without cause, the scapegoating of political opponents and despised minorities, the deliberate transgression of norms and taboos. But it’s still stretching the common meaning of these words to use them in this context. When Democrats shout them, they sound either duplicitous or unhinged.

And remember, almost every Republican president since Nixon has been called a fascist. Even if we really mean it this time, we’ve cried wolf a little too often.

Likewise, the word “coup” means a leader or group seizing power by force and deposing the elected government. Whatever Trump, Musk, and their minions are doings is not that, except in a figurative sense. And people can see that. There are no tanks in the street. The January 6 insurrection was an attempted coup. This moment is not.

Even the phrase “threat to democracy” is, at this point, overused. There have been many threats to democracy, from Watergate to Iran/Contra to North Carolina’s recent gerrymander, which swung the House of Representatives. But, for now, the machinery of democracy remains in place, even if it is being operated by sycophants and theocrats.

To be sure, we are experiencing a constitutional crisis, though even there, the real crisis will come if the Trump administration defies judicial rulings, as J.D. Vance’s recent posts seem to threaten. (As a fellow Yale Law alum, I know that Vance knows he is lying. Judicial review is practically the first principle of constitutional law.)

I’m not saying alarm is not warranted. Alarm is warranted. I’m saying that the terms Democrats and pundits are using to describe this crisis strike ordinary people as hype.

3.

The main reason terms like ‘fascism’ and ‘coup’ and ‘democracy’ fail is that, to many people, they’re just words. They’re abstract concepts, detached from reality. And, in case you’ve forgotten (which I know you have not), to a lot of Americans, threats to democracy really are less important than the price of eggs.

This is, of course, very bad. It’s a preposterous shortsightedness, especially when it causes one to vote for Republicans who shower benefits and tax breaks on the ultra-rich and undermine the prospects of working people. (This has been the Republican con since Reagan, and arguably Nixon: bamboozle working-class and middle-class whites with social issues, racial rhetoric, and patriotism while making them worse off economically.) It would be better if more people understood that ‘democracy’ is not abstract, and that the way of life we enjoy today can change radically for the worse.

But it is reality. Tragically, talking about coups, impeachments, insurrections, moral failings, and felony convictions does not connect with what most American voters care about. Recently, I was on a CNN panel with Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former aide to vice president Mike Pence, who said that “It's a privilege to be able to go to the voting booth and vote about democracy. When you can't afford your groceries, when you can't afford to buy a home, that's just not top of mind.”

I hate to admit it, but Alyssa is exactly right. I wish she weren’t, but she is.

Morning and/or Twilight in America (Midjourney)

4.

The Democratic base, of course, desperately wants to hear people to call out the coup, fascism, and the rest. They are outraged that the “mainstream media” is normalizing Trump, that Democrats are approving any of his cabinet picks, and that people are not rising up in the streets to shut down the government.

But the Democratic base is not America. And to a lot of people, rants about fascism sound the way Trump’s unhinged rants sound to us.

Remember, half the country basically approves of the broad contours of what Trump is doing — which is exactly what he promised to do. Deportations, Elon Musk’s ‘efficiency’ purges, the reduction in foreign aid, the crackdown on wokeness and DEI — as a progressive, I loathe all of these things, but Trump is basically doing what he said he would do, after all. Obviously, ordinary Americans are not following every detail, and, as has always been the case with Trump, they don’t like his brutish style. But they’re basically on board the Trump train, even if they don’t love the engineer. Calling it ‘fascist’ is not going to work.

In short, we need a better way to talk about what’s happening to the country right now — which brings me to the absurd clickbait question with which I titled this article.

Instead of talking about fascism and democracy, which are abstract terms that sound like exaggerations, people who care about democracy need to talk about real things happening to real people. We need to talk about what’s bad about fascism, rather than just say “this is fascist.” Here are some examples:

• There are a bunch of post-pubescent dark web hackers who, until a judge stopped them this past weekend, had access to your private financial data. I guarantee, no one wants that. Remember, a few years ago, when Apple announced it was going to scan all photos on every iPhone to protect kids from pornography? Sure, libertarians cried foul over privacy rights, but what really upset most Americans was that someone or some robot was going to be looking at their dick pics. This is similar. Democrats and pundits need to connect the dots between the Musketeers and what people actually care about, because even for ordinary Americans, Musk has gone too far.

• There are honest scientists trying to cure rare diseases and Trump is recklessly cutting their programs because of an ideological crusade. This is hurting kids with cancer and other diseases. Let’s hear from them and see their stories. Yes, it’s anti-democratic to cut agencies that Congress has specifically funded. But no one cares about that. What do they care about? Kids dying of horrible diseases.

• Only 6% the federal employees being furloughed or fired are based in DC. 94% are based in communities around the country: doctors, nurses, engineers, scientists. Come on, fellow journalists, let’s report on them and their stories — not talk about Schedule F. This is happening to our friends and neighbors.

• Trump is making America look ridiculous, Like “The Dictator” in the Sacha Baron Cohen movie, he’s threatening Greenland and Panama. Worse, he’s threatening to send our troops to die in Gaza (in addition to, of course, the horrifying, genocidal consequences of his “plan”). This is the exact opposite of America First — it’s America Looking Really Dumb.

• Republicans defined transgender people in terms of “biological males” playing girls’ sports. It’s depressing how successful they were, but the good news is, they were lying, because trans people are real. How about we see more photos of real trans women and trans men who are now supposed to go into opposite-gender bathrooms? Is this keeping anyone safe? How about a sixteen-year-old trans kid who’s contemplating self-harm because they can’t get the drugs they need from the hospital? Or soldiers being dismissed while they’re trying to defend our country? People need to see the real, human costs of these horrifying policies.

• People may support “mass deportations” in theory, but we need more visual stories of what it looks like in practice: families torn apart, innocent people afraid to go to church because they’re afraid of being caught in the dragnet. Remember, one photo of Elian Gonzales changed history.

• There are a lot of good things that USAID has been doing, and a lot of good people who work(ed) there who ought to be all over TikTok right now. I know Americans are against foreign aid because they don’t understand how it furthers American interests, but suddenly closing hospitals, shelters, and schools because of a fit of pique is not the American way.

This is what’s bad about fascism: real human beings caught in its web. We need stories, stories, stories. Ronald Reagan didn’t talk about budgets and economic incentives; he talked about (racially-coded) Welfare Queens. Same-sex marriage advocates didn’t talk about the Fourteenth Amendment; they talked about couples wanting to be with the people they loved. The Civil Rights movement created a hero in Rosa Parks.

This is how politics happens, because human beings are creatures of narrative. Star Trek was right: stories are how we understand the world and form our values. We have been creatures of myth since we first gathered around fires to tell them. And we need to tell stories today.

And finally, it is still the economy, stupid. Has Trump delivered on any of his economic promises? Groceries are still expensive, people are still hurting. Has he even focused on any of this? People elected this guy to fix the economy, but instead he’s ranting about Greenland and Gaza. Let’s remember the lesson of the 2024 election. Winning is not about what matters to us — it’s about what matters to the movable middle of America.

Which is why I am, in fact, guardedly optimistic. As I wrote about last week, there are numerous legal and other challenges to Trump’s policies. But it’s even more encouraging that politically, socially, even spiritually, these guys are massively overreaching. Yes, there is popular support for a lot of Trump’s policies, but not the way they’re going about it, not to the exclusion of the economy, and not to this extreme.

This is an opportunity. If progressives and Democrats can stop talking in Liberal-Bubble-Ese and start speaking in the language of America, I think they have a chance of turning the tide of opinion — and as a bonus, all these Republican members of congress falling in line are going to pay the price 20 months from now. Because Trump, Musk, and the rest are massively overplaying their hand. They are too far over their skis, they have drunk the kool-aid, they’ve eaten their own dog food — there are so many metaphors for this because hubris is the tragic flaw that has doomed far greater heroes than Donald Trump.

Obviously, there’s quite a lot that is bad about fascism, or whatever it is that’s unfolding right now. That’s what we need to be talking about.

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Hope you’re holding up alright out there. Thanks for the outpouring of support, and new subscriptions, that I’ve received lately. Those subscriptions enable me to do this work — thank you!

I was back on CNN this past week — here’s one clip of us talking about Trump’s plans for the “Gaza Riviera”:

And on the other side of my work, here’s a free event I’m doing next week — click the image for more information:

And also don’t forget this: