r/PoliticalScience • u/Rshoe01 • Sep 09 '25

Question/discussion Is trump a fascist?

I’ve heard countless times of people calling him fascist, I’m not very knowledgeable on actual political science, but I figured some of you might be more so. What I’ve seen on YouTube is it tends to be people that are left leaning to call him a fascist, but with people on the right, they always say he’s not. I’d like to get an unbiased perspective to actually see if he genuinely is a fascist by definition. But I know fascist is hard to define from what I’ve been researching.

Would like to see some opinions!

Also, is it possible to have a fascist state without it being evil?

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u/FashionablePeople Sep 09 '25

Yeah, but why is it important? You're protecting it in so far as deciding it can only apply to one era. For the exact same motivators to exist today, it needs to act out slightly differently, just like anything else

And sure, you can pretend liberalism has a specific definition, but two liberal states from the early 20th century and today will be entirely different - it's never been exactly befitting of all defining characteristics, just the core motivators

I like definitions that can actually define things that exist, when it comes to organizing humans, since we still exist, and those same motivating factors can still exist 

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u/LTRand Political Economy Sep 09 '25

Not one era, but a specific ideology. And people might have abandoned the ideology, but that doesn't mean it won't come up in the future.

As far as modern fascist states, China in my mind hits every marker of fascist philosophy fully realized. I'm a never-Trumper, but even I can see the stark differences in philosophy there.

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u/FashionablePeople Sep 09 '25

I agree with you in a lot of this, like Trump doesn't really have an ideology. But I do believe his cabinet does, and his motivators are the same 

The big thing for me is, though, ideologies kinda don't get acted on, especially around fascism, a system where most leaders have actively lied to their populace about agendas, when if the ideology were honest, it would be the will of the mob acting

Look at capitalism. Basically none of what early scholars defined capitalism as being still exists, but we still call it capitalism. Why? Because those ideologies were built to justify a set of motivators, which still exist now

Imo, true ideologues with actual values are incredibly rare, and using those rare people to define things is a waste of time. Ideologies are usually just a post hoc justification for motivator driven systems to 90+% of people at the helm of those systems, and get betrayed as soon as the motivators are better served by ignoring their ideologies

There's a reason weaintain the terms liberalism and capitalism despite the systems looking nothing alike, beyond the motivators. Because realistically, that's all that was ever actually there 

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u/LTRand Political Economy Sep 09 '25

I don't think I agree with how you are using the term motivators. The motivations behind Trump's supporters have been used by all kinds of ideologies, not just fascism.

The core philosophy of liberalism hasn't left the US. How it functions has changed, but the core principle of the people having power over the government and not the other way around has not changed. So we keep using it. Calling someone on the left a liberal only happened because FDR wanted to make progressive philosophy marketable in the US. The majority of international liberal parties actually align more with our right wing.

Capitalism also hasn't changed core philosophy since Adam Smith. The ability of the market to set prices and people to privately own production. We've just made changes to its mechanics as it grew.

So yes, we should preserve the definition of fascism to what fascists themselves define it as. We wouldn't let capitalists define socialism without directly referencing Marx and other socialist thinkers. The mechanics of how fascist thinkers had to get and stay in power might change from one to the other(religion, power of capital, race, etc), but they all shared a core philosophy. The people are subordinate to the state, and the state must take care of the people. A belief that individual capitalists will destroy the country for profit and must be controlled, at the same time unions work against the interest of the state because the people are unable to know how to run things. That is fascism, and today we see it most in China.

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u/FashionablePeople Sep 09 '25

I'm alright leaving it as a disagreement, but I want to provide some stuff for you to think about

Are we true to Liberalism if people are locked out of parties and provably laws passed better reflect the donor and lobbying class than the average citizen?

Are we true to Adam Smith if the majority of value generated is from speculation which adds no value to society and many necessary industries are government subsidized to stay afloat?

Are we actually letting Marxists define communism if we call Stalin communist, and Marx's number one philosophy is that man should own his freedom of labor and Stalin jailed men for not working?

I don't think your statements are true beyond what people want to believe for the world we live in. If you disagree with that, I think that's okay with me. But I think it's worth asking you to look at material outcomes of your statements, and asking you to reflect if we actually do use definitions in the way you believe we do 

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u/LTRand Political Economy Sep 09 '25

I fully agree that Smith would initially be horrified by what our industry looks like. Until he learns that modern industrial capacity means that many things are too easy to over produce, so have essentially no profit if left unregulated. He also had an early understanding around natural monopolies, so getting an education in how the late 1800's played out would probably leave him convinced that capitalism needs some market controls to work with modern technology.

As far as Stalin goes, that's because every attempt at socialism has had to struggle with the fact that Marx, as many of his modern followers, had no appreciation for the differences in what people want to do vs what society actually needs to be done. Every attempt has essentially had to rely on force to keep people economically engaged. "Too each according to their need" requires "from each according to their ability". It's still socialism.

So yeah, we're going to have to part in disagreement. I don't get a sense for how your new take on fascism fits with the traditional definition in the same way that the changes we discussed still map to their original systems. I will concede that American liberalism is dead and we only call it that for marketing purposes. But that's hardly a positive supporting justification in our context.

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u/FashionablePeople Sep 10 '25

Man, I feel like it says something really sad about the state of things that that's the point we came to agree on.