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Donald Trump at Lancaster Airport on November 3, 2024, in Lititz, Pennsylvania.

This Is America

Donald Trump’s authoritarian second term has led critics to describe him as a fascist in the mold of Adolf Hitler.
Photograph of Benito Mussolini

Gold and Brown

Libertarianism, fascism, and democracy.
Painting from 1784 of Romans doing a straight-armed salute.

The Revisionist History of the Nazi Salute

Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.
Parade of cars with Donald Trump flags and American flags.

The “Fascist” With a Popular Majority

Donald Trump’s victory will inevitably reopen the “fascism debate.” But does a populist whose appeal cuts across diverse groups truly fit the fascist profile?
Two newspaper workers flip a first proof of a page off the printing press at the offices of the Daily Mail, 1944.
partner

Perhaps the Most Influential Single Propagandist for Fascism

On the lengths newspaper publishers took to reach new subscribers — and then drive them away — in the 1930s.
Followers salute Trump at his rally in Madison Square Garden.

Trump in the Garden

Eight years into the fascism debate, few skeptics seem to be willing to admit that they were wrong.
Brigadier General Smedley Butler.

Genesis of the Modern American Right

During the Great Depression, financial elites translated European fascism into an American form that joined high capital with lower middle-class populism.
Donald Trump.

Why We Can’t Stop Arguing About Whether Trump Is a Fascist

In a new book, “Did it Happen Here?,” scholars debate what the F-word conceals and what it reveals.
A sign left behind by Trump supporters at a rally outside the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, September 27, 2023.

American Fascism

On how Europe’s interwar period informs the present.
A crowd at an American Nazi Party rally raising their hands for the Nazi salute.

What Is the History of Fascism in the United States?

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.
Rachel Maddow speaking

Rachel Maddow Offers a Chilling History Lesson — and Hope for Today

In her new book, ‘Prequel,’ she looks at a past moment of crisis that might help us understand both the threats we face today and how we can endure them.
Illustration of the word Facism, divided by various speach bubbles.

Does American Fascism Exist?

For nearly a century, Americans have been throwing the term around—without agreeing what that means.
Linotype operators of the Chicago Defender

Reading Langston Hughes’s Wartime Reporting From the Spanish Civil War

Several years before the United States officially entered World War II, Black Americans were tracking the international spread of fascism.
Book cover: "The Ambassador: Joseph P. Kennedy" featuring Joseph Kennedy and his family

Joseph Kennedy, American Fascist

With Susan Ronald’s meticulous, relentless biography, Joseph P. Kennedy is now firmly established in the annals of twentieth-century fascism.
Benito Mussolini.

The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini

As we confront rightwing extremism in our own time, the history of American fascist sympathy reveals a legacy worth reckoning with.

Why Trump Isn't a Fascist

The storming of the Capitol on 6 January was not a coup. But American democracy is still in danger.

I Asked 5 Fascism Experts Whether Donald Trump Is a Fascist.

The verdict was unanimous.

The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism

Radical Black thinkers have long argued that racial slavery created its own unique form of American fascism.

Police and Racist Vigilantes: Even Worse Than You Think

Is Trump a fascist? You should ask the same question of your local police.
Police wielding batons face a crowd of people.

'Fascist Storm Troopers': Racist Police Violence in 1940s America

In 1949, truncheon-wielding police officers descended on the racially integrated concert of singer Paul Robeson.

The Return of American Fascism

How a legacy of violent nationalism haunts the republic in the age of Trump.
Harry Sternberg’s 1947 visualization of fascism as a three-headed monster.

What We Don’t Understand About Fascism

Using the word incorrectly oversimplifies history—and won't help us address our current political crisis.
Youth members of a German-American Bund camp raising a flag, 1934.

American Fascism: It Has Happened Here

Americans of the interwar period were perfectly clear about one fact we have lost sight of today: all fascism is indigenous, by definition.

Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist; He’s a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing

Donald Trump combines the instincts of a reality-TV star with the politics of a hundred-and-seventy-year-old nativist movement.

What If It Is Happening Here?

Lessons from the anti-fascist novel in Trump’s second term.
The Ku Klux Klan parading near the Capitol Building in 1925, holding American flags.

What Felt Impossible Became Possible

George Dale's crusade against the Ku Klux Klan.
Protesters in the middle of a road holding a sign that displays the three downward arrows symbol and reads "destroy fascism."

Is Trump Hitler, or just… Woodrow Wilson?

Comparing Trump to Hitler and Mussolini obscures the basis of his mass appeal.
Publicity still from Black Legion, 1937.
partner

Ohio’s Little-Known Fascist Member of Congress

How a local prosecutor protected white supremacists and went on to a career in Washington, DC.
A drawing of Kamala Harris in a police uniform.

Lipstick on the Pigs

Kamala Harris and the lineage of the female cop.
Netanyahu, Trump, Orban, Modi.

The Reactionary Bind

In assessing the rise of the global anti-democracy movement, the United States must look inward as well as outward.

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