Up to a few years ago, many commentators dismissed the idea that Trump, and the associated MAGA movement, could adequately be described as ‘fascist’. It was said that the movement was too decentralised and undisciplined; that it lacked the militarism, territorial expansionism, and general cult of violence and power typical of the fascist currents dominant in the 1930s; and that, crucially, it still adhered to democratic politics - albeit of a populist kind - in contrast to the openly and virulently anti-parliamentary predecessor ideologies.
Despite obvious movement in the above-mentioned criteria in recent weeks, some observers still consign the description of the MAGA movement as ‘fascist’ to the realm of left-wing over-reaction; and, at first sight, they have a point.
To be sure, Trump still doesn’t fit historian Stanley G. Payne’s backward-looking definition of the term. He definitely negates liberalism and socialism, and the more genuine, non-radical form of conservatism espoused by the now-marginalised Republican old guard, and one can certainly detect a personality cult among Trump’s followers - from the sycophants surrounding him to the rank-and-file MAGA Republicans. But America is not a dictatorship (yet), and its small-state, pro-capital policies contradict the idea of a large, intrusive state aimed at regulating economic and social relations. Meanwhile, the romantic symbolism and autocratic mass mobilisation - think of SS runes and black- and brownshirts - seen in previous iterations also appear absent, bar a few Nazi salutes by the likes of Musk and Bannon.
But the central question here is not whether whatever ideology underlies Trumpism fits a definition devised to capture the essence of a movement based mostly in the period between the two World Wars; on the contrary, the question should be whether that definition fits the requirements and specificities of our age. After all, while the current iteration of fascism might not tick all the 1930s boxes, it would be naive to believe that a movement inhabiting the same space on the political spectrum would manifest itself in the same way today as it did nearly a century ago, one ocean away.
Some publications have recently applied the term ‘technofascism’ to describe the increasingly sinister amalgamation of over-powerful, billionaire tech oligopolists with a hollowed-out government. The designation deserves greater attention and certainly credibility beyond this particular usage, for it adequately captures the dynamics of a fundamental changed social space hosting a substantially similar ideology, in modified, updated form.
Ideologies are shaped by society as much as they shape societies; and Western societies have changed beyond recognition since the 1930s. At the time, they were still dominated by large, pyramidically structured organisations - genuine mass parties, trade unions, and the like; meanwhile, the birth of modern mass media – film, radio - had lent a rigid top-down structure to their information space. The world’s first experience at total war had also thoroughly militarised Europe’s political culture, while - later combined with the great depression - it drew power away from the super-rich of the gilded age towards a growing state. These developments combined to enable rigid, centralised control by totalitarian dictators, more or less centralised economic planning, and equally centralised indoctrination by their propagandists, exemplified by the likes of Joseph Goebbels.
The Trumpist version of fascism - techno-fascism - is the result of the more diffuse forms of social organisation during ‘late neoliberalism’. Today, we live in a world where, to paraphrase the great American political scientist Robert Putnam, people ‘bowl alone’: our societies have become atomised into their constituent individuals to an unprecedented degree. Our information space has, moreover, become superficially ‘democratised’, with anyone with an opinion seemingly able to send it into the ether at minimal cost. Trumpism is also the result of a more diffuse form of military exhaustion: imperial overstretch, in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Its romantic symbolism also remains distinctly modern: based on idealised elements drawn from the history of a relatively young republic rather than myths from an imagined ancient Germanic or Roman past, adding yet another layer of obfuscation.
This neoliberalism adds another point of difference. In contrast to the 1920s and 1930s, military adventures and economic crises have not resulted in the reduction of inequality: quite on the contrary, our political economies are now dominated by a global, largely unaccountable multi-billionaire class, with unseen concentrations of capital among a select number of rentiers who have, in effect, monopolised vast swathes of the virtual economy.
To expect these very different forms of socio-economic organisation, and a completely different cultural and historical context to produce the same kind of extreme right-wing politics is, in fact, dangerous: it causes us to misperceive the instances where movements inhabiting the same, extreme-right position on the political spectrum take power, and apply programmes that, while neoliberal in form, are still distinctly fascist in content.
Social atomisation has combined with this form of extreme inequality to produce technofascism: a system where small government allies itself with a technological oligarchy to discipline and control. What Trump and his minions have understood better than any of us is that he who controls the algorithms and AI learning models will be able to manipulate us all in ways unimagined even by George Orwell.
Mass mobilisation – and incitement - occur from behind the computer screen, through timelines carefully – or, in a more cynical vein, carelessly – curated by algorithms and an absence of basic fact-checking; lies no longer become true merely because they are repeated ad infinitum in newspapers and on tv, but because they are pronounced, reposted, and boosted by these algorithms; and giving the right kind of billionaire his space at an increasingly corrupt trough works wonders when it comes to maintaining a self-interested discipline among the super-wealthy. Add to this the almost religious faith in – billionaire-controlled - AI as a cure-all, and the dangers of denying the true nature of this regime become clear.
Trump and his kin do not need regimented party blackshirts, a federal propaganda ministry, or centrally devised four-year economic plans. Instead, going with the times, they outsource their ‘muscle’ to a motley crew of adequately incited rioters, their disinformation to tech bros, and their economic activity to an informally networked billionaire oligarchy. The message remains the same: scapegoating of minorities (Muslims and immigrants, not Jews); imperial megalomania (Canada and Greenland, not Poland or the Mediterranean); the worship of pure power-politics (and those world leaders who practice it); virulent anti-intellectualism (no book burnings but mass deletions of data); and a personality cult which demands absolute submission to a leader (as seen during Republicans’ reprehensible behaviour in Congress). The end point of all of this is not a celebration of some populist form of democracy, but a hollowing out of any form of participation, camouflaged by the de-centralised nature of fascism in its new, technological guise.
This makes calling things by their proper name especially important, not least in the United Kingdom. For Keir Starmer to continue pretending that we still live in 2001, that the United States has not fundamentally changed, that we can still allow for dependencies to be created with elements of this illiberal ecosystem, is at best naïve, at worst negligent. Beyond the niceties of realpolitik, Trump’s technofascist regime should be called out, and approached with the healthy distrust it deserves: as a threat to the fundamental values that underly the very fabric of the open, democratic society liberals and progressives claim to aspire to.
