Yes. I suppose what I'm saying is that our seeming need to attach the word to any political movement we loathe is making the word pretty meaningless. I think Trumpism is in fact a new phenomenon, which is different from classical fascisn
Trumpism engages in palingenetic ultranationalism, which is Roger Griffin's core heuristic for fascism.
The Trump regime is, though Doge, building a prerogative state alongside the normative state, in the manner described in Ernst Fraenkel's work on the Duel State model of fascism.
The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton contains one of the most solid academic definitions of fascism in his book Anatomy of Fascism, and as of J6 he has changed his position to consider Trump a fascist. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/magazine/robert-paxton-facism.html
I come out of a tradition that has spent a lot of ink breaking down what is and is not fascism. For an example of discussions that take place in antifascism about why dangerous far-right movements require alternative responses other than an antifascist responce see... https://soundcloud.com/12rulesforwhat/the-new-authoritarians-w-dave-renton
His work is widely influential in Fascism Studies, in large part because of the central observation of the essay, which is the importance of the concept of syncretism in understanding fascisms.
The understanding of the fascism through that lens allows you to understand how a fascism in Italy was able to start as a republican movement, then survived for twenty years proclaiming its loyalty to the royal family, only to re-emerge as a “social” republic.
How it was able to mash the aesthetic of revolution with mass privatization. How it could accommodate, at least for a while the ideas of far right futurists with those of traditionalists!
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There are multiple technical definitions of fascism that, "Trumpism" conforms to.
It is clearly engaged in what Jason Stanley called "fascistic politics" in his book, How Fascism Works.
The Trump regime is, though Doge, building a prerogative state alongside the normative state, in the manner described in Ernst Fraenkel's work on the Duel State model of fascism.