A few days after Donald Trump was elected to his second term, I was walking in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, where an intense protest was underway. The theme, similar to the many protests after his first election in 2016, was that the nation had taken a turn toward a grim future and that Donald Trump is a fascist. Those days, everywhere you looked there was a protest, an art project, a newspaper article, impassioned speeches by celebrities, that concluded (or simply began with the assumed premise) that Donald Trump is a fascist. Is it all just political mudslinging or is there some truth to this?

It depends on whom you ask. “Fascist” seems to have many, often imprecise, and sometimes downright contradictory uses. It’s also been rendered nearly meaningless, since being disfavored in historical hindsight and is now a common insult, casually flung at political opponents. In Trump’s case, even the usual range of meanings are hard to apply. You could make a pros-and-cons list and you’d probably fill both columns evenly. 

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For example, he seems to flirt rhetorically with ethnonationalism, calling for mass-deportations of vaguely defined groups who are supposedly “destroying the blood of our country.” But, contrary to the hopes of his more overtly ethnonationalist followers, the deportations have been evenhanded (so far) and his policy seems to favor legal, merit-based, racially neutral immigration. He’s a cult-of-personality authoritarian, expecting the legislature and courts to act with fealty toward him rather than on their own constitutional mandates. Yet, he seems to want the central government to have LESS power, leaving local and personal matters largely to states and individuals (or so he says; the inconsistencies in his views on individual freedom and decentralization of power warrant a full, separate discussion, so let’s leave that aside for now). In his first term, he often accused his critics of “treason” for crossing him and expressed admiration for thuggish, dictatorial foreign leaders. Yet, he had the sense to avoid declaring national martial law during the Covid-19 pandemic, although some people called on him to do so. In fact, after the first two-weeks of quarantine, he tried to open things up, while his political opponents were advocating draconian lockdowns, indefinitely. Due to the U.S.system of federalism, each state gets to make such decisions for itself. It would be an extraordinary power grab by the President if he took full charge. Despite his chest-thumping personality, Trump eschewed that, a move that’s hard to square with charges of “fascism.”

I don’t think Trump fits any coherent definition of fascist, though he sometimes skirts the edge. He is lately showing some disturbing tendencies that weren’t apparent in his first term. Perhaps the most unexpected change is his foreign policy posture. Until recently, a key assurance that he wasn’t a fascist was his lack of imperial ambitions. Indeed, a big part of his support base comes from the currently rising movement of paleo-conservative populists, for whom his somewhat isolationist foreign policy was a big part of the appeal. He wanted to get the U.S. out of multilateral security and/or peace agreements and other international commitments. He complained incessantly about how much NATO costs the U.S., while benefiting partner nations who allegedly aren’t pulling their own weight. Of course, everything about Trump being contradictory, his quasi-isolationism was tinged with his personal brand of bluster (“my button is bigger than yours” he said to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, threatening “fire and fury like the world has never seen”). Nevertheless,in the first Trump era, the idea was that America would be fierce in its OWN defense and would not abide threats to its security. But this wasn’t paired with any sense of hegemonic expansionism. If anything, he seemed to find global leadership an unprofitable burden for the U.S. After all,one of his biggest pet peeves was “globalism”. He opposed U.S. involvement in foreign regional conflicts, seeming to prefer a transactional, country-by-country approach to diplomacy, a kind of serial bilateralism. He even negotiated with the Taliban to pull out of Afghanistan (though the actual withdrawal happened under the Biden administration and certain changes). It was all part of the “America First” message that seemed to resonate with most of his supporters.

It’s a whole new Trump Administration. It seems his stance went from something like “we don’t want to get involved” to something like “we don’t want the responsibilities of leadership but we will seize your territories if we want.” [disclaimer: not real quotes!] Trump’s purported renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, his repeated references to “annexing” Canada, his declaration that Greenland will be purchased (or seized if Denmark refuses to sell), his announced intention of a militarized takeover of the Panama Canal, are all mindboggling expressions of raw power with no hint of diplomacy or moral justification… directed at U.S. allies and friends! I’ve heard credible explanations that these gestures are signals to the big adversaries, China and Russia, perhaps conflict-avoidance by suggesting “we will have the western hemisphere as our unquestioned sphere of influence, and in return, we will leave other areas to you” – possibly key parts of the Indo-Pacific and Africa to China and Eastern Europe and West Asia to Russia? Maybe—and I fully concede that I don’t know what the real strategy is—but if so, it gives me zero comfort. Why would it? Instead of remaining the global hegemon, which at least pretends to be (and, in part, actually is) motivated by keeping the world safe for liberal democracies and global trade, the United States will now be a hemispherical hegemon with NO pretense to any agenda except the naked assertion of its own power and interests?! And it will do so by antagonizing our allies and assuring communist dictatorships and reactionary plutocracies that they can basically have the other half of the earth to do with as they please? No, that’s not better.

Many (but not all) Trump supporters are reveling in this new twist on “Make America Great Again” without shame. They opposed the imperialism of the last few decades, which came with the afeigned moral gloss about spreading democracy and freedom. But it seems what they opposed was not the imperialism, but the moral gloss! They LIKE imperialism as long as it does NOT come with moral obligations.

This new “international bully” side of Trump is probably the closest he has come to earning those “Hitler” comparisons that his critics love to throw at him. But, to be fair, it’s not actually Hitlerian. It’s a misguided interpretation of historical American “greatness.” Trump seems to have a deep infatuation with but a shallow grasp of American history and what exactly makes it great and exceptional. The nation’s founders were classical liberals, who believed in private property, free enterprise, individual freedom (including religious and associational freedom), and a republican form of government with very limited powers. Its greatness emerged organically out of the voluntary social and economic transactions among free people. But, while Trump seems to superficially appreciate these values at a “feel good” level (enough so that he’s unlikely to construct any system of central control and repression domestically, one of his “non-fascist” traits), he is nonetheless eager to engage in economic statism and territorial expansionism toward a collectivist form of national “greatness” that is manifested through power. It’s a revival of the 19th century idea of “manifest-destiny” which asserted American dominance in the new world by opposing European colonialism there while concurrently expanding America’s own territories by conquest, purchase, etc.,as overseen by the eleventh President James K. Polk, under whose watch the U.S. experienced the largest territorial expansion in its history.

Tellingly, Trump recently made a trade with the Speaker of the House of Representatives, giving him a painting, from the White House collection, of third President Thomas Jefferson (author of the constitution’s Bill of Rights which guarantees all those celebrated individual liberties) in return for a portrait from the Capitol’s collection: one of James K. Polk, the “manifest destiny” president. Polk’s portrait now hangs in the Oval Office (the president’s formal office).

So, does that mean “make America great again” refers to the “greatness” of Polk’s America? Alas, that America can’t be recreated. Because that WORLD no longer exists. There aren’t vast unclaimed, undefended landmasses. Conquest is no longer recognized as legitimate by the civilized world. Today’s Americans—including many of Trump’s own supporters—will not uniformly support this kind of behavior. America isn’t a fledgling new country shoring itself up against potential threat of conquest itself.

No, he’s not a fascist. But his leadership style shows he enjoys playing with fascistic tropes. One such trope is this attempt to resurrect past national glory, with a sense of national entitlement and disregard for the rights of others, while handwaving away the true legacy of a country’s moral greatness that could be a better source of inspiration.

The author is a lawyer, writer and editor based in Manhattan, New York. Photo by the author.