[Skip to main content](#main-content)

[Search](/search)

Open Navigation Menu

[Dispatches](/magazine/dispatches)

# What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist?

Trump takes the tools of dictators and adapts them for the Internet. We should
expect him to try to cling to power until death, and create a cult of January
6th martyrs.

By [Timothy Snyder](/contributors/timothy-snyder)

November 8, 2024

Photograph by Mark Peterson / Redux

Save this story

Save this story

[_This article is part of a series of reflections responding to the 2024
election. Read more
»_](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/dispatches/2024-trump-beats-harris-writers-reflect)

It was wrong to treat Donald Trump as a series of absences. The standard
critique has always been that he lacks something that we imagine to be a
prerequisite for high office: breeding, or grammar, or diplomacy, or business
acumen, or love of country. And he does lack all those things, as well as pretty
much any conventional bourgeois virtue you can name.

Trump’s skills and talents go unrecognized when we see him as a conventional
candidate—a person who seeks to explain policies that might improve lives, or
who works to create the appearance of empathy. Yet this is our shortcoming more
than his. Trump has always been a presence, not an absence: the presence of
fascism. What does this mean?

When the Soviets called their enemies “fascists,” they turned the word into a
meaningless insult. [Putinist
Russia](https://www.amazon.com/Road-Unfreedom-Russia-Europe-America/dp/0525574468)
has preserved the habit: a “fascist” is anyone who opposes the wishes of a
Russian dictator. So Ukrainians defending their country from Russian invaders
are “fascists.” This is a trick that Trump has copied. He, like Vladimir Putin,
refers to his enemies as “fascists,” with no ideological significance at all. It
is simply a term of opprobrium.

Putin and Trump are both, in fact, fascists. And their use of the word, though
meant to confuse, reminds us of one of fascism’s essential characteristics. A
fascist is unconcerned with the connection between words and meanings. He does
not serve the language; the language serves him. When a fascist calls a liberal
a “fascist,” the term begins to work in a different way, as the servant of a
particular person, rather than as a bearer of meaning.

That is quite a fascist achievement. Faced with the complexity of history,
liberals struggle with the overwhelming volume of questions to be asked, answers
to be offered. Like communism, fascism is an answer to all questions, but a
different kind of answer. Communism assures us that we can, thanks to science,
find an underlying direction in all events, toward a better future. This is \(or
was\) seductive. Fascism reduces the imbroglio of sensation to what the Leader
says.

A liberal has to tell a hundred stories, or a thousand. A communist has one
story, which might not turn out to be true. A fascist just has to be a
storyteller. Because words do not attach to meanings, the stories don’t need to
be consistent. They don’t need to accord with external reality. A fascist
storyteller just has to find a pulse and hold it. This can proceed through
rehearsal, as with Hitler, or by way of trial and error, as with Trump.

That requires presence, which Trump has always had. His charisma need not
resonate with you: probably, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s would not have reached
you, either. But it is nevertheless a talent. To be a fascist and to call
someone else a fascist requires a cunning that is natural to Trump. And in that
naming of the enemy, absurd as it is, we see the second major element of
fascism.

A Leader \(“_Duce_” and “_Führer_” mean just that\) initiates politics by
choosing an enemy. As the Nazi legal thinker Carl Schmitt maintained, the choice
is arbitrary. It has little or no basis in reality. It takes its force from the
decisive will of the Leader. The people who watched Trump’s television ads
during sporting events had not been harmed by a transgender person, or by an
immigrant, or by a woman of color. The magic lies in the daring it takes to
declare a weaker group to be part of an overwhelming conspiracy.

The one thing that is not arbitrary about the choice of an enemy is that it must
exploit vulnerabilities. The Trump ads projected a fantasy of Kamala Harris
allowing millions of sex\-changed foreigners to take jobs from Americans. This
touches, all at once, on gender, economic, and sexual vulnerability. We are
unprotected and impoverished and will be replaced by something alien. And this
is all orchestrated by a shadowy enemy in the background—in this case, a woman
of color who knows how to laugh.

The “great replacement” theory is an example of an unoriginal fascist lie:
conspirators will make you impotent and bring others to take your place in the
world. The apparent complexity of the world resolves itself as a conspiracy,
just as the attendant anxiety is resolved by hatred. This works with almost any
combination of enemies. It can be a conspiracy of deep\-state politicians to
kidnap babies, or a conspiracy of Jews to corrupt women. Fascism wins when the
enmity summoned begins to tell the story itself.

A fascist marries conspiracy and necessity. Not everyone can tell a spontaneous
Big Lie, as Trump did, when he lost the 2020 election. And the Republicans
around him did not challenge him. The Big Lie came to life when his followers
stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Crucially, he paid no price for that.
That made the Big Lie true, in a fascist sense. His de\-facto impunity and then
de\-jure immunity also generated a sense of the untouchable, the heroic.

Trump’s presence has always been a co\-creation: his and ours. From the moment
when he first came down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, he was treated as a
source of spectacle. Because he was good for television, he was accepted as a
legitimate candidate. In the print media, he grew through the doctrine of
[both\-sides\-ism](https://snyder.substack.com/p/both-sides): no matter how
awful his deeds, his opponent had to be presented as equally bad. This empowered
him to be both wicked and normal. During every campaign’s final months, polling
had a [similar
effect](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/27/polling-has-turned-the-us-election-into-a-game-we-need-to-take-a-reality-check).
By displacing policy differences and reducing politics to two faces or two
colors, polls reinforce the notion that Trump belonged where he was, and that
politics was just a matter of us or them.

“Only real New Yorkers take the sewer system.”

Cartoon by Chris Gural

Copy link to cartoon

Link copied

Shop

What amplifies Trump’s presence more than any other medium is the Internet. He
is a natural with its quirky rhythms. And its algorithms make the rest of us
open to exactly his sort of talky fascism. On [social
media](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/11/11/the-artificial-state), we
are drawn away from people of complexity and toward blunt stereotypes. We
ourselves are categorized, and are then fed content that brings out, in Václav
Havel’s term, our “most probable states.” The Internet does not just spread
specific conspiracy theories; [it primes our
minds](https://www.salon.com/2024/11/08/americas-political-discordance-the-want-progressivism/)
for them. This was already true before Elon Musk [reshaped
Twitter](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/)
in Trump’s image.

Our engagement with the machine illuminates a difference between the fascists of
the twenty\-twenties and the fascists of the nineteen\-twenties. Back then, the
machine was seen as bold and beautiful, a brutal instrument that would return us
to our nature by wrenching us from the hold of soft civilization. The Italian
poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti had an epiphany after an automobile accident in
1908, which led him to Futurism and then to fascism. For Hitler, the
internal\-combustion engine hastened a “_Blitzsieg_,” a lightning victory. The
superior race with the superior technology exterminates other races, takes other
peoples’ land, and thrives.

We are still driving around using internal\-combustion engines, as we were a
century ago; what has changed more than our means of locomotion is our means of
staying put. When the Nazis dreamed of a radio in every home or a newsreel
before every film, they did not imagine Germans motionlessly staring at screens
for most of the day, as we all do now. Fascists a hundred years ago liked the
male body, physical fitness, and marching around outside. Fascism today involves
a masculinity softened by screen time. In both eras of fascism, women were
explicitly deemed inferior. If the old fascism depended on a fantasy of
accelerated male prowess, today’s rests on the anxiety of mechanical inability.

The fascist fantasy traditionally involved a return to nature. The Leader’s
voice guided us into a competition with other races for habitat. Hitler was
obsessed with coming ecological catastrophe, and he argued, in “Mein Kampf,”
that Germans had to seize land or starve. That was incorrect. But, a hundred
years later, those internal\-combustion engines and other archaic technologies
actually have changed the climate to the point of causing droughts and storms,
as we saw during this electoral season. When such disasters occur, today’s
fascists react as Trump and J. D. Vance did: they blame the victims and the
immigrants, and invent conspiracy theories. If the old fascism killed for the
sake of a dream of uniting with nature, the new fascism will kill by a politics
of catastrophe, a deliberate acceleration of global warming, and its
exploitation in the service of the politics of us and them.

A century ago, socialists wanted to believe that fascism was just another sign
of the decay of capitalism. And they were right, at least insofar as businessmen
then didn’t understand that fascism would reshape all of politics and society,
and not just suppress labor unions and undermine democracy. Today, though, the
point would be much sharper. Trump does not actually have a lot of money, but he
pretends to—getting away with that lie is part of his presence. And his close
fascist allies, Musk and Putin, are probably the two wealthiest people in the
world. The fascism of today is nestled between the digital oligarchy \(Musk\)
and the hydrocarbon oligarchy \(Putin\). Trump has pledged himself to America’s
own hydrocarbon oligarchs, thereby insuring climate disaster, suffering,
immigration, and even more occasions for division.

The oligarchs bring to our fascism its libertarian entry point: they preach that
government is the source of all evil. As we yield to that logic, the hydrocarbon
oligarchs drill away at the earth and the digital oligarchs at our minds. A
weakened government can control neither, nor can it promise sound infrastructure
or the welfare state. In these conditions, freedom is viewed not only as a
struggle against the government but also as a struggle against one’s own
neighbors. The people who claim to want individual freedom are the same people
who clamor for mass deportations. America’s hydrocarbon and digital oligarchs
support this kind of libertarianism; it is social media that guides men \(and it
is usually men\) away from the idea that they are solitary heroes to the
conviction that other groups must be punished.

Fascism is now in the algorithms, the neural pathways, the social interactions.
How did we fail to see all this? Part of it was our belief that history is over,
that the great rivals to liberalism were dead or exhausted. Part of it was
American exceptionalism: “[it can’t happen
here](https://www.nybooks.com/online/2020/06/22/american-fascism-it-has-happened-here)”
and so on. But most of it was simple self\-absorption: we wanted to see Trump in
terms of his absences, so that our way of seeing the world would go
unchallenged. So we failed to see his fascist presence. And, because we ignored
the fascism, we were unable to make the easy predictions of what he would do
next. Or, worse, we learned to thrill at our own mistakes, because he always did
something more outrageous than we expected.

It was predictable that Trump [would
deny](https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/not-normal-election) the results of the
2020 election. It was predictable that his Big Lie [would
change](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/magazine/trump-coup.html) American
politics. It is predictable, today, that he will give free rein to the oligarchs
who, he knows, will continue to generate the social and digital bases of a
politics of us and them. It is predictable that, in returning to power, he will
seek to change the system so that he can remain in power until death. It is
predictable that he will use deportations to divide us, to accustom us to
violence, and to make accomplices of us. It is predictable that he will create a
cult out of the martyrs of January 6th. It is predictable that he will coöperate
with similarly minded rulers abroad.

When the historian Robert Paxton [was
asked](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html)
about Trump and fascism a few weeks ago, he made an important point. Of course,
Trump is a fascist, Paxton concluded. It was fine to compare him to Mussolini
and Hitler, but there was a larger point. It took some luck for those two to
come to power. “The Trump phenomenon looks like it has a much more solid social
base,” Paxton said, “which neither Hitler nor Mussolini would have had.”

Fascism is a phenomenon, not a person. Just as Trump was always a presence, so
is the movement he has created. It is not just a matter of the actual fascists
in his movement, who are [scarcely
hiding](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/05/trump-staffer-fired-from-republican-party-for-being-a-white-supremacist),
nor of his own friendly references to Hitler or his use of [Hitlerian
language](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-authoritarian-rhetoric-hitler-mussolini/680296/)
\(“vermin,” “enemy within”\). He bears responsibility for what comes next, as do
his allies and supporters.

Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis.
Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have
amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the
consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side. ♦

Published in the print edition of the [November 18, 2024](/magazine/2024/11/18),
issue, with the headline “American Fascist.”

## New Yorker Favorites

- Can reading [make you
  happier](/culture/cultural-comment/can-reading-make-you-happier)?
- Why walking [helps us
  think](/tech/annals-of-technology/walking-helps-us-think).
- The _Vogue_ model who [became a war
  photographer](/magazine/2008/01/21/lee-miller-war-photographer-model).
- The perils of [Pearl and
  Olga](/magazine/1953/08/08/the-perils-of-pearl-and-olga).
- Sentenced to life for an [accident miles
  away](/magazine/2023/12/18/felony-murder-laws).
- The resurgent appeal of [Stevie
  Nicks](/magazine/2016/11/28/the-resurgent-appeal-of-stevie-nicks).
- Fiction by Lore Segal: “[Ladies’
  Lunch](/magazine/2017/02/27/ladies-lunch-lore-segal)”

[Sign up](https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/daily) for our daily newsletter
to receive the best stories from _The New Yorker_.

[Timothy Snyder](/contributors/timothy-snyder) is a professor of history at
Yale. His books include “[On
Freedom](https://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Timothy-Snyder/dp/0593728726/).”

More:[Election 2024](/tag/election-2024)

Read More

Open Questions

Do They Really Believe That Stuff?

According to a new book, America’s political derangement has psychological
roots.

By Joshua Rothman

Comment

Standing Up to Trump

Jeff Bezos endorsed a Trump\-era slogan—“Democracy Dies in Darkness”—for his
newspaper, the Washington _Post_. Why wouldn’t he let it endorse a candidate?

By David Remnick

The Political Scene

Trump’s Final Days on the Campaign Trail

Under assault from all sides, in the last weeks of his campaign, the former
President speaks often of enemies from within, including those trying to take
his life.

By Antonia Hitchens

Dispatches

A Fourth\-Rate Entertainer, a Third\-Rate Businessman, and a Two\-Time President

The 2024 election, like the one in 2016, had the same nutty and vapid Donald
Trump, the same retrograde gender politics, and the same result.

By Lorrie Moore

The Weekend Essay

Ukraine’s Waiting Game

In and around Kyiv, war has become part of daily life, even as the public grows
weary of its costs.

By Keith Gessen

Dispatch

Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach Victory Celebration

Surrounded by an ever\-expanding cast of MAGA characters, the perpetual
candidate becomes President\-elect again.

By Antonia Hitchens

The Lede

Donald Trump’s Revenge

The former President will return to the White House older, less inhibited, and
far more dangerous than ever before.

By Susan B. Glasser

Dispatches

How America Embraced Gender War

Both Trump’s and Harris’s campaigns framed the Presidential election as a
contest between men and women. Did the results prove them right?

By Jia Tolentino

Letter from Biden’s Washington

Garbage Time at the 2024 Finish Line

Nine years in, Trump is in reach of another term as the technocrats struggle to
contain him.

By Susan B. Glasser

The Lede

Kamala Harris Makes Her Closing Argument at the Ellipse

At a rally whose location evoked January 6th, Harris sounded the alarm about
Trump’s authoritarian tendencies but refused to linger in the national shame
spiral that has formed around him.

By Katy Waldman

Podcast Dept.

The Mystery of Three Hundred Bodies in the Woods

The podcast “Noble,” about severe malpractice at a Georgia crematorium, shows
that even the most shocking of horror stories can be sensitively told.

By Sarah Larson

Dispatches

Democrats Tried to Counter Donald Trump’s Viciousness Toward Women with
Condescension

The Harris campaign felt the need to remind women voters that they can vote for
whomever they want. Women understood this. The campaign failed to.

By Jill Lepore

© 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. _The New Yorker_ may earn a portion of
sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate
Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced,
distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior
written permission of Condé Nast. [Ad Choices](http://www.aboutads.info)
