For a very long time, I resisted comparing Trump to Hitler, or outright branding the MAGA cult takeover of American politics as outright fascism. While guilty of making such comparisons early on, it dawned on me that Hitler and the Nazis had killed millions of people in death camps that they built with cold bureaucratic efficiency. They had also taken over most of Europe, and had set out to eliminate Germany - and indeed Europe - of all of those undesirables. It is a unique and tragic chapter in history, and not one which we should make modern day comparisons to. Suggesting that Trump was Hitler or that MAGA was the new Nazis seemed to be an unfortunate overreach. People were exaggerating and using those tragedies as a political football.
So while I did not like Trump or MAGA, I hesitated to make those comparisons, specifically. I could not stand Trump or MAGA, frankly, but whatever they were, they were different from Hitler and the Nazis. They needed to be understood on their own terms. Quickly trying to label them as Nazis or even fascists without much consideration for historical accuracy and leaving it at that felt intellectually lazy, like something which might undermine the cause against whatever they actually were.
But times have changed.
Now, it feels that the description fits a little bit more than before.
How can I possibly say that, you may ask?
Well, for one, Trump tried to stage what I still feel was nothing less than an attempted coup on January 6th. He lost an election by seven million in the popular vote, lost every single battleground state, and refused to accept the results. Declared himself the winner on election night, which is not something that either candidate should ever be allowed to do. He challenged the results, which is within his right, but he and his team kept insinuating that they had "irrefutable proof" that there was massive voter fraud in the 2020 election, and that Trump had been cheated. Before the cameras, they kept insisting this, and their MAGA cult following swallowed up every word. However, they bent over backwards NOT to argue "massive voter fraud" in the over sixty court cases they had, opting instead to focus on certain voting irregularities, none of which would have overturned the election results in a single battleground state.
Then, of course, came January 6th. A violent insurrection, where Trump directed his apparently armed and hostile crowd to be strong and take over the Capitol building in order to take the country back.
He got away with it. More than that, he now seems to be rebranding that as a day of love, and those foul criminal actors, as heroes. Perhaps soon, we will have a national holiday honoring those brave and selfless Americans who stood up for Dear Leader when all others had turned their back on him.
Instead of serving time, he remained a prominent figure in American politics. In fact, I never saw a figure overshadow an entire presidency like Trump did while Biden was president. There he was, seemingly dominating headlines almost as much as during his first term. And let's remember that in 2022, he outright suggested in a Truth Social post that parts of the Constitution might need to be suspended. During the 2024 election, he hardly balked when some suggested that he would be a dictator. In fact, he seemed to back those fears up as legitimate by declaring that he would be a dictator on "day one." A very Trumpian way of doing and saying things. It assuaged Republicans, allowing them to feel that he did not actually mean he would be a dictator. For the rest of us, there was an understanding that no dictator ever gives up power after only a day. We hoped he would lose, but here we are.
Trump won another term. Despite everything, Americans gave him another for years to be the elected face and voice of the country.
That's when things got weird. Suddenly, Trump seemed almost instantly to back away from campaign promises to lower the price of gas and groceries. But he started talking about taking over Greenland and Panama and possibly invading Mexico. And he relentlessly referred to Canada as the "51st state." This was behavior which seemed even more unhinged than anything that Trump had shown before. And it was more than a little alarming.
And now, he had been in office for over a year. We now have a secret police force with masked men, literally. People - innocent people - are being killed on the streets. Other people are being disappeared, as if this was some Latin American dictatorship from decades ago. Trump is trying to crack down on protests, secret police outright killing protesters, and his outright suggestion that unflattering press coverage of him is or should be illegal. He declared as a candidate that he would weaponize the justice system to go after political opponents and has pursued exactly that. His administration has restricted press access to the White House and Pentagon. And once again, Trump is threatening to push back or outright cancel elections (in which it appears he will be compromised), much as he did before the 2020 election. Trump has already made our military policing American cities a thing, and he also continually flirts with the idea of imposing martial law and/or the Insurrection Act.
In recent weeks, Trump took over Venezuela. He makes no bones about it, saying that he has full power there and intends to take the oil. He even put himself as "President of Venezuela." Then, he ramped up the rhetoric on Greenland, insisting to the world that we would all find out just how much he wants the world's largest island, even though it never belonged to us, and even though Greenlanders themselves resoundingly want no part of Trump's America.
So in short, we have a president who has outright suggested that the Constitution might be suspended, that he might cancel elections, who has gone after and sought revenge on political opponents, who orchestrated his own secret police force, and who threatens to take over other countries, even if it is a hostile military takeover.
Yup, that sounds like fascism to me.
Seriously, we need to call a spade a spade. No more reluctance.
Others finally seem to be coming around, as well. Jonathan Rauch of The Atlantic recently wrote a piece in which he also had long hesitated to view Trumpism and the MAGA cult takeover as fascism, but can no longer deny the obvious. Here's a snippet from that article (see link below):
Until recently, I resisted using the F-word to describe President Trump. For one thing, there were too many elements of classical fascism that didn’t seem to fit. For another, the term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness, especially by left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action. For yet another, the term is hazily defined, even by its adherents. From the beginning, fascism has been an incoherent doctrine, and even today scholars can’t agree on its definition. Italy’s original version differed from Germany’s, which differed from Spain’s, which differed from Japan’s.
Okay, I can understand and agree with that. It was indeed overused. Perhaps a lot of people - particularly on the left - did slap that label on others a little too freely.
Then again, you could say that those were early warnings. After all, prominent conservatives like, say, Newt Gingrich and Lindsey Graham, who it might have seemed a bit extreme to call fascists a couple of decades ago, have proven to be quite unconditionally supportive of this Trump brand of fascism once it finally showed it's face. Given that reality, was it really much of an overreaction when people identified those trends early on? After all, in far too many cases - remember, almost the entire Republican party was taken over by Trump and the MAGA cult - the people who were and/or would have been accused of being fascists indeed turn out to be unconditionally supportive of fascism once it actually takes power.
But why split hairs? Let's move on...
While Rauch (and others, again including myself) might recognize that there were some similarities between Trumpism and fascism, it seemed, at best, to be partial. Here is another snippet:
I accepted President Biden’s characterization of the MAGA movement as “semi-fascist” because some parallels were glaringly apparent. Trump was definitely an authoritarian, and unquestionably a patrimonialist. Beyond that, though, the best description seemed to be a psychological one propounded by John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser: “He listens to Putin, he listens to Xi, he listens to how they talk about governing unburdened by uncooperative legislatures, unconcerned with what the judiciary may do, and he thinks to himself, Why can’t I do that? This doesn’t amount to being a fascist, in my view, [or] having a theory of how you want to govern. It’s just Why can’t I have the same fun they have?”
Writing a year ago, I argued that Trump’s governing regime is a version of patrimonialism, in which the state is treated as the personal property and family business of the leader. That is still true. But, as I also noted then, patrimonialism is a style of governing, not a formal ideology or system. It can be layered atop all kinds of organizational structures, including not just national governments but also urban political machines such as Tammany Hall, criminal gangs such as the Mafia, and even religious cults. Because its only firm principle is personal loyalty to the boss, it has no specific agenda. Fascism, in contrast, is ideological, aggressive, and, at least in its early stages, revolutionary. It seeks to dominate politics, to crush resistance, and to rewrite the social contract.
There you have it.
Splitting hairs between the differences, when some of the most glaring and obvious points lead, inevitably, to one conclusion. Rauch says right there that Trump and MAGA are trying to crush opposition. MAGA views the personal loyalty to Trump over all other considerations, apparently including the Constitution.
I could not read the rest of Rauch's fascinating article, because it was cut off at that point. I will try to obtain a copy and read the rest.
Still, to me, it's time to stop splitting hairs. We need to call this out for what it is. Be honest and face it.
What we have in the United States right now is a fascist regime trying their best to turn this into a fascist country. They have not succeeded fully. At least not yet.
But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that they will not continue to try, and to push the envelope as far as they can.
The only thing that can stop them?
We the people.
Yes, It’s Fascism by Jonathan Rauch, January 25, 2026:
Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo
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