We are being sold an image of the future that comes from people who have no experience of the kind of tyranny they assure us Trump intends to inflict on us, unless it is as enthusiastic cheerleaders of the United States inflicting it on other countries. The narrative is that we will wake up the morning after the election to find jackbooted thugs roaming the streets, executing dissidents, throwing minorities into concentration camps, calling off elections, punishing political enemies with jail or death, and ignoring or overturning the law willy-nilly. We will go from zero to Hitler in the space of a single day.The problem with this narrative isn’t that Trump isn’t a genuine authoritarian threat; he is. The problem isn’t that fascism isn’t on the rise both at home and abroad; it is. The problem isn’t even that a lot of Americans would be perfectly happy to vote a strongman into power; they are (though the Democrats have a lot less interest in actual democracy than they lay claim to). The problem is that this isn’t how fascism happens. It didn’t happen this way anywhere genuine fascism arose; it didn’t happen in Spain, it didn’t happen in Japan, it didn’t happen in Italy, and it didn’t happen in Germany, which is the one historical fascism liberals ever talk about. And it won’t happen that way here, either, no matter who wins the next election.
Those of us on the left with an actual material analysis know that the wishes of the voting public are largely irrelevant in America. While Trump is willing to push the country towards fascism, is he able? It’s a serious question, and it deserves serious thought and analysis instead of a worst-case scenario meant to do nothing but preserve an already-rotten status quo. Much more of it than most people are willing to contemplate will come down to what the people with real power — the moneymen — decide to do. They don’t really like Trump, for a number of reasons. For one thing, they can spot a phony a mile off, especially when it’s one of their own. For another, they were willing to put up with him for years as long as he was good for business and he let them operate in peace. But while light authoritarianism is generally good for business, full-blown fascism is not.
With his base shrinking and becoming more extremist — and, crucially, less likely to ally with wealthy elites — the split between the wealthy corporate interests and the less class-loyal true believers in the Republican Party becomes more pronounced. The bosses and the CEO class will have to do what they have always done in times of growing right-wing reaction: They have to make a bet on fascism being worth it. That is, they have to decide if the hassles they think Trump will spare them (taxation, labor troubles, government regulation, bad attention from the press, foreign entanglements) will outweigh the hassles Trump will cause them (widespread social unease, trade issues, mass violence that isn’t easily ignored, a lack of legal redress if things go sideways, and the constant worry that the bribed won’t stay bribed). This is particularly true if Trump — who they are canny enough to know is a world-class grudge-holder — really does intend to upend the legal system that they have so painstakingly learned to bend to their own advantage.
They have good reason to believe that Trump will become nakedly corrupt rather than merely generally well-disposed to big capital; they are listening to what he says just as much as liberals are. (Many of them are liberals themselves, of course.) They don’t relish the idea of being cut out of the sweetheart deals they rely on in favor of Trump’s chosen cronies. This isn’t a new phenomenon; capital always places these wagers when authoritarianism is on the rise, but they don’t always make the right bet. It’s hard to guess which way they’ll go, particularly now that some of the big-money operators are tech people who have become true believers to the hindrance of the bottom line.
So it’s not just a question of how, say, Clarence Thomas will roll if Trump manages to make the Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of his presidential chances. It’s likely he’ll dance with the ones that brung him; he’s constitutionally inclined towards authoritarianism. He also won’t live much longer, certainly not long enough to face any consequences if Trump’s reign falls short of the thousand-year mark the way fascist regimes usually do. But he does have a keen sense of self-preservation, and he has to have wondered how much pull he’d really have if Trump — or a Trump-adjacent brute who takes racism a lot more seriously than he does — just decides to be done with him once and for all. We might even wonder what the people paying his bills think he should do, and if their answer differs from his own.
It’s also a question of how many disparate elements of the American machine will react if an open authoritarian wins. We are often led to assume that when such a leader comes to power, a switch labeled FASCISM gets flipped and we wake up the next morning in 1939 Berlin. But a lot of people with a lot of power — none of whom, it should go without saying, include us or, likely, anyone we know or care about — are going to have to make some tough decisions if Trump wins the presidency and his cronies try to functionally end the nominal democratic system we have in America.
He obviously can’t govern by force; we have seen the kind of people who are willing to do violence on his behalf, and they are few in number and low in competence. It is by no means certain that the military would support him wholesale; the rank and file soldiers will have lots of conflicted feelings if they are given the charge of domestic repression, particularly if — as is likely — it will be directed at Spanish-speaking populations, while the brass has seen how quickly he’s willing to sell them out if they don’t toe the line. Cops tend to like him institutionally, but our police aren’t federalized and it would take a lot of doing to make them so, which means we have a lot of unconnected, disjointed communities with no effective coordination and plenty of reasons not to take on heavier duties than just locking up more minorities than usual.
We’ve already talked about the moneymen. The church isn’t the power it used to be, and there’s a lot of uncertainty about him in those ranks as well, given the varying cultural and ethical issues in a country that has no single dominant religious sect. Trump’s constant bitching about the Deep State suggests he doesn’t have the national security apparatus entirely sewn up, and every elected official, judge, bureaucrat, and government employee will be making their own bets that he’ll both return their loyalty and never lose in a way that will make them face any consequences. The fact that judges in two states — neither of which are particularly liberal — have issued rulings finding him ineligible to run again suggests that maybe the whole country isn’t willing to sacrifice the system for the sake of one pissy old blowhard.
The only cohort he has set in stone is the exurban white bourgeois, and while they are the north star of post-war America, they may not be enough to support and maintain a mass reshaping of the way the country functions. Even a lot of elements of the Republican right want a government that basically doesn’t work, not one that’s been given the maximum of unaccountable power. None of this is to say that a worst-case-scenario Trump win wouldn’t be awful, or that it wouldn’t result in unspeakable misery, or won’t lead to something even worse; what would harm the country more — an authoritarian Trump presidency, or a military coup meant to prevent an authoritarian Trump presidency? It is only to say that the assumption that Trump’s victory is both inevitable and sure to result in an immediate fascist turn that will irrevocably disrupt American society, the American state, and the way America works is a faulty assumption that relies on the belief that it’s a lot easier to wreak massive change in this country than it is.