Noam Chomsky on Whether the Rise of Trump Resembles the Rise of Fascism in 1930s Germany

No mat­ter where you are in the world, you must by now be well-acquaint­ed with the polit­i­cal chaos in the Unit­ed States. No one can con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict what’s going to hap­pen next. A cer­tain priv­i­leged few still find the sit­u­a­tion amus­ing; a cer­tain few have found a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase prof­it and stand­ing, embrac­ing the mad­ness by embrac­ing Don­ald Trump, the celebri­ty real estate mogul some on the right have dubbed their “Great White Hope.”

A col­umn last week by the far-right nation­al­ist Pat Buchanan— whom Trump once denounced as a “Hitler-Lover”—ran with the idea, express­ing the para­noiac fan­tasies of thou­sands of white suprema­cists who have ral­lied behind the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee. Rhetoric like Buchanan’s and David Duke’s—anoth­er sup­port­er Trump once dis­avowed (then famous­ly didn’t, then even­tu­al­ly did again)—has demol­ished the “Over­ton win­dow,” we hear. America’s racist table talk is now a major par­ty plat­form: the prover­bial crank uncle who immis­er­ates Christ­mas din­ner with wild con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries now airs griev­ances 24 hours a day on cable news, unbound by “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness” or stan­dards of accu­ra­cy of any kind.

Grant­ed, a major­i­ty of the elec­torate is hard­ly thrilled by the like­ly alter­na­tive to Trump, but as even con­ser­v­a­tive author P.J. O’Rourke quipped in his back­hand­ed endorse­ment of Hillary Clin­ton, “She’s wrong about absolute­ly every­thing, but she’s wrong with­in nor­mal para­me­ters.” There’s noth­ing “nor­mal” about Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy. Its freak­ish­ness enthralls his ador­ing fans. But the mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who aren’t among them have legit­i­mate cause for alarm.

Com­par­isons to Hitler and Mus­soli­ni may have worn out their use­ful­ness in elec­tions past—frivolous as they often were—but the Trump campaign’s overt dem­a­goguery, vicious misog­y­ny, racism, vio­lent speech, actu­al vio­lence, com­plete dis­re­gard for truth, threats to free speech, and sim­plis­tic, macho cult of per­son­al­i­ty have prompt­ed plau­si­ble shouts of fas­cism from every cor­ner.

For­mer Repub­li­can Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor (and recent­ly reject­ed Lib­er­tar­i­an vice-pres­i­den­tial can­di­date) William Weld equat­ed Trump’s immi­gra­tion plan with Kristall­nacht, an anal­o­gy, writes Peter Bak­er in The New York Times that is “not a lone­ly one.” (“There is nobody less of a fas­cist than Don­ald Trump,” the can­di­date retort­ed.) Like­wise, con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Robert Kagan recent­ly penned a Times op-ed denounc­ing Trump as a fas­cist, a posi­tion, he writes, with­out a “coher­ent ide­ol­o­gy” except its nation­al­ist attacks on racial and reli­gious oth­ers and belief in “the strong­man, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrust­ed the fate of the nation.”

On the lib­er­al left, fig­ures like for­mer labor sec­re­tary Robert Reich and actor and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty orga­niz­er George Clooney have made the charge, as well as colum­nists in the New Repub­lic and else­where. In the video above from Democ­ra­cy Now, Mex­i­can pres­i­dent Enrique Pena Nieto com­pares Trump to Hitler, and Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty’s Robert Pax­ton—who has writ­ten arti­cles and a book on his the­o­ry of fascism—discusses the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Trump-as-fas­cist.

At the top of the post, Noam Chom­sky (MIT pro­fes­sor and author of the new book, Who Rules the World?) weighs in, with his analy­sis of the “gen­er­al­ized rage” of “main­ly work­ing class, mid­dle class, and poor white males” and their “tra­di­tion­al fam­i­lies” coa­lesc­ing around Trump. (Any­one who objects to Chomsky’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Trump as a cir­cus clown should take a moment to revis­it his real­i­ty show career and per­for­mance in the WWE ring, not to men­tion those debates.)

In Chomsky’s assess­ment, we need only look to U.S. his­to­ry to find the kind of “strong” racial­ized nativism Trump espous­es, from Ben­jamin Franklin’s aver­sion to Ger­man and Swedish immi­grants, who were “not pure Anglo-Sax­ons like us,” to lat­er par­ties like the 19^th cen­tu­ry Know Noth­ings. Per­haps, as John Cas­sidy wrote in The New York­er last year, that’s what Trump rep­re­sents.

The his­to­ry of nativism, Chom­sky goes on, “con­tin­ues into the 20^th cen­tu­ry. There’s a myth of Anglo-Sax­on­ism. We’re pure Anglo-Sax­ons. (If you look around, it’s a joke.)” Now, there’s “the pic­ture of us being over­whelmed by Mus­lims and Mex­i­cans and the Chi­nese. Some­how, they’ve tak­en our coun­try away.” This notion (which peo­ple like David Duke call “white geno­cide”) is

Based on some­thing objec­tive. The white pop­u­la­tion is pret­ty soon going to become a minor­i­ty (what­ev­er ‘white’ means)…. The response to this is gen­er­al­ized anger at every­thing. So every time Trump makes a nasty com­ment about who­ev­er, his pop­u­lar­i­ty goes up. Because it’s based on hate, you know. Hate and fear. And it’s unfor­tu­nate­ly kind of rem­i­nis­cent of some­thing unpleas­ant: Ger­many, not many years ago.

Chom­sky dis­cuss­es Germany’s plum­met from its cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal heights in the 20s—when Hitler received 3% of the vote—to the decay of the 30s, when the Nazis rose to pow­er. Though the sit­u­a­tions are “not iden­ti­cal,” they are sim­i­lar enough, he says, to war­rant con­cern. Like­wise, the eco­nom­ic destruc­tion of Greece, says Chom­sky may (and indeed has) lead to the rise of a fas­cist par­ty, a phe­nom­e­non we’ve wit­nessed all over Europe.

The fall of the Weimar Repub­lic has a com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry whose gen­er­al out­lines most of us know well enough. Ger­many’s defeat in WWI and the puni­tive, post-Treaty of Ver­sailles’ repa­ra­tions that con­tributed to hyper­in­fla­tion and total eco­nom­ic col­lapse do not par­al­lel the cur­rent state of affairs in the U.S.—anxious and agi­tat­ed as the coun­try may be. But Hitler’s rise to pow­er is instruc­tive. Ini­tial­ly dis­missed as a clown, he strug­gled for polit­i­cal pow­er for many years, and his par­ty bare­ly man­aged to hold a major­i­ty in the Reich­stag in the ear­ly 30s. The his­tor­i­cal ques­tion of why few—in Ger­many or in the U.S.—took Hitler seri­ous­ly as a threat has become a com­mon­place. (Part­ly answered by the amount of tac­it sup­port both there and here.)

Hitler’s strug­gle for dom­i­nance tru­ly cat­alyzed when he allied with the coun­try’s con­ser­v­a­tives (and Chris­tians), who made him Chan­cel­lor. Thus began his pro­gram of Gle­ich­schal­tung—“syn­chro­niza­tion” or “bring­ing into line”—during which all for­mer oppo­si­tion was made to ful­ly endorse his plans. In sim­i­lar fash­ion, Trump has fought for polit­i­cal rel­e­vance on the right for years, using xeno­pho­bic big­otry as his pri­ma­ry weapon. It worked. Now that he has tak­en over the Repub­li­can Party—and the reli­gious right—we’ve seen near­ly all of Trump’s oppo­nents on the right, from politi­cians to media fig­ures, com­plete­ly fold under and make fawn­ing shows of sup­port. Even some Bernie Sanders sup­port­ers have found ways to jus­ti­fy sup­port­ing Trump.

But Trump is “not Hitler,” as his wife Mela­nia claimed in his defense after his sup­port­ers swarmed jour­nal­ist Julia Ioffe with grotesque anti-Semit­ic attacks. Although he has an obvi­ous affin­i­ty for white nation­al­ists and neo-Nazis (see his activ­i­ty on social media and else­where) and per­haps a fond­ness for Hitler’s speech­es, the com­par­i­son has seri­ous draw­backs. Trump is some­thing else—something per­haps more far­ci­cal and bum­bling, but maybe just as dan­ger­ous giv­en the forces he has uni­fied and ele­vat­ed domes­ti­cal­ly, and the dan­gers of such an unsta­ble, pet­ty, vin­dic­tive per­son tak­ing over the world’s largest mil­i­tary, and nuclear arse­nal.

Per­haps he’s just a taste­less, cyn­i­cal con-man enter­tain­er using hate as anoth­er means of self-advance­ment. He has non-white and Jew­ish sup­port­ers!, his vot­ers claim. He holds “cor­rupt and lib­er­al New York val­ues”! say con­ser­v­a­tive detrac­tors. These objec­tions ring hol­low giv­en all Trump has said and done in recent years. His cam­paign, and the response it has drawn, looks enough like those of pre­vi­ous far-right racist lead­ers that call­ing Trump a fas­cist doesn’t seem far-fetched at all. That should seri­ous­ly alarm any hon­est per­son who isn’t a far-right xeno­pho­bic nation­al­ist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Noam Chom­sky Defines What It Means to Be a Tru­ly Edu­cat­ed Per­son

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

How to Spot Bull­shit: A Primer by Prince­ton Philoso­pher Har­ry Frank­furt

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulte­ri­or Motive for Spread­ing Anti-Semi­tism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness