My 2018 Politico piece on whether we are descending into fascism

In 2018 I published an article in Politico, arguing that fascism would not come to America.  In part that is because of our very long democratic traditions (much longer than Weimar!), and in part because American bureaucracy has become unmanageable, thus limiting the power of the executive.  DOGE in particular has been a quite vivid representation of the latter point, as I made it in 2018 — “The net result is they simply can’t control enough of the modern state to steer it in a fascist direction.”

A few people have asked me to revisit that prediction, and frankly I think it is looking great.  (I do not doubt, however, that the Trump administration represents a major increase in blatant corruption, and a deterioration of norms of governance, most of all in the areas of public health and science but not only.  I think of America as evolving back to some of its 19th century norms, and often bad ones, not fascism.)

Noah Smith wrote recently:

Trump is cosplaying as a dictator. But so far he’s backed down on: * tariffs * ICE sweeps * Abrego Garcia * Greenland/Canada/Panama * Ukraine aid * DOGE He does care about public opinion, a lot.

Here is Noah’s longer essay.

Here is a recent NYT headline: “Trump Loses Another Battle in His War Against Elite Law Firms.”  The judiciary has stood up to Trump firmly, and he has backed down.  The Army parade, by the way, was mostly pathetic and hardly served as a call to fascist arms.  The Kennedy Center is not the new Haus der Kunst.

It was some while back that Trump pulled the nomination of Stefanik to be UN ambassador, on the grounds that the Republican margin in the House was extremely thin.  All I can say is that Hitler would have done it differently.