Fascist characteristics of the Trump regime by Jürg Müller-Muralt, 11/6/2025

Fascist characteristics of the Trump regime

Jürg Müller-Muralt

[This article posted on November 6, 2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.nachdenkseiten.de.]

Donald Trump and his MAGA movement fulfill all the criteria of fascist rule.

The debate is now almost ten years old: Is Donald Trump a fascist? Around a year after Trump’s election as US president on November 5, 2024, the question is more relevant than ever. British historian Richard Evans recently expressed his opinion on the matter. No, “Trump is not a fascist,” Evans said in an interview with the NZZ am Sonntag. It is wrong to “look for parallels with Italian fascism or even German National Socialism. (…) The core of fascism was militarism, the preparation for another world war. (…) That is not what Trump is doing.”

Richard Evans is not just anyone. The former Cambridge professor is one of the foremost experts on 20th-century history, and his books on National Socialism are considered the most comprehensive work on the rise and fall of Hitler’s regime. This makes his concise and rather simplistic definition of fascism all the more peculiar.

US Chief of Staff: “Fascist through and through”

Above all, however, other influential voices are expressing themselves more clearly. In an essay, historian Jakob Tanner, former professor of history at the University of Zurich, refers to a statement by former US Chief of Staff Mike Milley. According to Milley, Trump is a “fascist through and through.” And John F. Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security and later White House Chief of Staff during Trump’s first presidency, believes that “Trump fits the definition of a fascist exactly.”

“Frankenstein’s monster”

It is also noteworthy that even before the 2016 elections, Trump had already come under fire from neoconservative Robert Kagan, the leading thinker of the American “neocons.” As early as March 2016, he described Trump as “the Frankenstein monster of the Republicans” and publicly called for people to vote for the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton (Infosperber, June 4, 2016). Shortly afterwards, Kagan went one step further. In an essay in the Washington Post and Der Spiegel (22/2016), he wrote that with Trump, “fascism is coming to America: not in marching boots and with military salutes, but in the form of a TV celebrity, a dishonest billionaire, a textbook egomaniac who exploits common resentments and insecurities.”

Storming of the Capitol as a “red line”

One of the most influential voices among experts is probably that of Robert O. Paxton. The American historian and former professor of history at Columbia University in New York is considered the doyen of fascism research, particularly with his groundbreaking work “The Anatomy of Fascism” from 2004. Paxton has repeatedly spoken out against the inflationary use of the term fascism.

But a few days after the storming of the Capitol, Paxton changed his mind. In an article in Newsweek magazine on January 11, 2021, Paxton wrote: “I hesitated for a long time to call Trump a fascist. (…) It seemed better to me to avoid another superficial and polemical use of the term ‘fascist’ and instead use a more objective term such as oligarchy or plutocracy. Trump’s incitement to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, overrides my objections to the label ‘fascist’. His open encouragement of civil violence to overturn an election crosses a red line. The label now seems not only acceptable, but necessary.”

Almost five years later, in October 2024, the New York Times Magazine asked Paxton if he still stood by his 2021 assessment. “Cautiously but openly,” writes the author of the article, “he told me that he did not believe that using this word was in any way politically helpful, but he confirmed the diagnosis.”

Umberto Eco’s “eternal fascism”

But what exactly is the diagnosis? When is it permissible to use the term fascism without exposing oneself to the accusation of merely throwing around a highly emotive buzzword? This is not entirely straightforward because fascism is not based on any political-philosophical doctrine. Fascism cannot be understood on the basis of a programmatic-ideological foundation. However, there are structural characteristics that can be observed in all fascist movements at all times and that are suitable for better understanding the term fascism.

The 14 characteristics identified by Italian writer and philosopher Umberto Eco (1932 to 2016) in his short book “Der ewige Faschismus” (Hanser-Verlag), published in German in 2020, are groundbreaking. Eco emphasizes that not all elements need to be present for a movement or government to be labeled fascist. It is noteworthy that Donald Trump, his government actions, and his MAGA movement (“Make America Great Again”) fulfill all the criteria in an almost ideal-typical manner.

From the cult of tradition to the cult of the enemy

Here are the 14 characteristics in brief, each with their current manifestation in the US under Trump:

1. Cult of tradition: Recourse to an idealized, mythical past. American history is understood as a heroic epic. Typical is the idealization of a “golden” America of the 1950s – white, Christian, conservative.
2. Rejection of modernity: Modern ideas, enlightenment, and rationality are considered misguided. This is expressed, for example, in hostility toward gender equality, but also in the rejection of climate policy.
3. Cult of action for action’s sake: Action counts more than thought; reflection is considered a weakness. Trump constantly boasts about his “decisiveness” and his “tough crackdown,” for example, by deploying the National Guard domestically and against the will of the states concerned. Diplomacy and expertise are worthless.
4. Dissent is treason: Criticism or dissenting opinions are considered disloyal. Members of the Republican Party who dare to criticize Trump are punished, dismissed, demoted, and publicly vilified. Trump’s attacks on science and universities also belong in this chapter.
5. Fear of difference: Diversity is perceived as a threat; emphasis on national or cultural unity. Fear campaigns on migration, violation of integrity, and brutal, extrajudicial deportations of migrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, general rejection of minority rights and diversity.
6. Appeal to middle-class frustration: mobilization of social insecurity and fears of decline. Courting of white, rural, economically insecure sections of the population, while simultaneously cutting social programs but maintaining a system of privileges for the super-rich.
7. Fixation on conspiracies: The world is perceived as being controlled by enemies and dark forces. Typical examples include stories about the alleged “deep state,” Trump’s baseless claims about the “stolen election” of 2020, and the cultivation of enemy stereotypes, such as against billionaire and investor George Soros, because his foundations support civil rights movements and democracy projects, among other things.
8. Enemy image cult: Life is a constant battle against a clearly defined opponent. Anyone who is not consistently on board with the MAGA movement is marginalized as “left-wing.” The constant mobilization against ‘enemies’ affects not only “leftists,” but also “the media” and “illegal immigrants.” Migrants are portrayed as “invaders,” “criminals,” or “terrorists.” Hostile behavior toward democratic processes and institutions as well as toward the justice system.
9. Contempt for the weak: Strength is glorified, weakness despised. In Trump’s universe, poor people, disabled people, and refugees have no place; they are treated as a burden.
10. Cult of heroism and death: Death for the cause is idealized. Patriotic to ultra-nationalist rhetoric, worship of weapons, martyr cult surrounding the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
11. Machismo: Star cult around “tough masculinity,” emphasis on traditional gender roles, sexist rhetoric, condescension toward women, intolerance toward LGBTQ+ people.
12. Populism: The people are glorified as a homogeneous mass, directly embodied by a leader. Trump sees himself as the “voice of the people” in the fight against “the corrupt establishment.”
13. Newspeak: Impoverishment of language to prevent critical thinking. There is no longer any argumentation; the debate is littered with slogans: “fake news,” “witch hunt,” “America First.”
14. Syncretism: Contradictory ideas are mixed together as long as they serve to emotionalize and mobilize. Trump’s MAGA world is a wild mixture of Christianity, nationalism, anti-globalism, and economic populism.

The central role of the media for fascists

Umberto Eco somewhat underestimates one key point: the role of the media. German cultural scientist Andreas Gehrlach therefore adds a “fifteenth element of fascism” to the list. In an article of the same name on the platform Geschichte der Gegenwart (History of the Present), he emphasizes that the importance of the media today is “more significant and striking than ever. Fascism always tries to use the most modern and up-to-date media to spread its messages.“

Gehrlach recalls Hitler’s propaganda minister Goebbels, who deliberately used the still young medium of radio as his most important propaganda tool. ”We use all means. We have money, we own the radio,” Goebbels wrote in his diary. Even today, enthusiasm for media power can be felt among right-wing extremist movements – only now it is no longer the press, radio, and television, but “social media,” such as TikTok, X, Instagram, etc.

“Until they take over the media, a seemingly strong advocacy for freedom of expression is the most important means for fascists to force their way into the media. (…) As soon as right-wing billionaires or parties have bought or otherwise gained control of a medium, this apparent enthusiasm for the free market of opinions disappears,” writes Gehrlach.

Fascism researchers leave the US

The extent to which this free market of opinions is already under pressure is demonstrated by Trump’s control of the media and the general restriction of press freedom using a wide variety of methods. This also includes pressure on academia. As a result, several leading intellectuals who deal with issues of fascism have left the US. One example is philosopher Jason Stanley, formerly a professor at Yale University and author of two books on fascism. In April 2025, he told Deutsche Welle: “What the Trump administration is doing right now is fascism.” At the end of March 2025, Stanley announced his decision to leave the US for Canada to teach at the University of Toronto.

He is not the only one. American historian Mark Bray, an anti-fascism expert and professor at the University of New Jersey, also left the US with his family for Spain in October this year. He had been targeted by the right-wing organization “Turning Point USA,” Donald Trump’s de facto youth organization. In a podcast on Spanish radio station SER, Bray warned: “Trump is in the White House with an explicitly fascist agenda. And liberals have too much faith in the system to resist.” But this system is not so strong, he said.

The resilience of democracy is overestimated

Timothy Snyder and Merci Shore, both previously professors of Eastern European history at Yale University, have also moved to Canada. Timothy Snyder became known to a wider audience through his book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons for the Resistance” (C.H. Beck Verlag, 2017) (see Infosperber, July 1, 2017).

In it, he warns, among other things, against placing too much trust in the resilience of democratic institutions. In Western democracies, people often believe that nothing will go wrong. Sometimes this belief persists even when it is already too late. Timothy Snyder cites a historical example: shortly after Hitler came to power at the end of January 1933, a leading magazine for German Jews (“Der Israelit: Centralorgan für das orthodoxe Judentum”) published an editorial on February 2, 1933, which stated, among other things:

“We do not believe that Mr. Hitler and his friends, once they have attained the power they have long sought, will now (…) summarily strip German Jews of their constitutional rights, lock them up in a racial ghetto, or expose them to the robbery and murder instincts of the mob. Not only are they unable to do so because their power is limited by a whole series of other power factors, from the Reich President to the neighboring parties, but they certainly do not want to do so either; for the whole atmosphere at the height of a European world power, which wants to stand and remain in the midst of the concert of civilized nations, (…) is more conducive to ethical reflection on the better self than the previous position of opposition.”

Reading this today is unsettling. But we should know by now that even rulers who come to power within democratic institutions are not automatically guarantors of those very institutions. They respect democratic processes and institutions only as long as they are at the levers of power.

### Further information

– The major US media are failing on fascism, Infosperber, February 1, 2024