The Shadow King Enthroned (Part One)

Recognizing Fascist Politics

There will always remain one of the best jokes about democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed. —Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister

Without the active study of it I don’t think many Americans know very much about fascism. That was certainly true for me and I’m happy to have begun the process of what feels like core education now for anyone interested in active citizenship. Is it really true that in Trump we have an authoritarian who checks all the boxes for implementing the fascist playbook?

To really answer the question we need to understand what the fascist playbook is, and that’s what this article (in two parts) is about.

The primary source I use is Jason Stanley’s potent book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Rich with historical and contemporary scholarship, it’s also highly readable, and offers us the basics of what we need to know now about this urgent topic. First published in 2018, it includes references to the first Trump administration. What follows is my attempt at distilling key points from the book, with the addition of some more recent developments and some of my own observations, all of which helps bring us to the present and Trump 2.0. All quotations, unless otherwise cited, are from Jason Stanley and the book.

Quick Summary of Fascist Politics

At the heart of fascism is a politics rooted in extreme ultra-nationalism and an “us versus them” worldview. Groups of enemies are needed in order to sell the only remedy offered—protection by a strong authoritarian leader.

Relentless propaganda sows the needed division, hatred, and fear. The “other” is demonized as dangerous and unworthy, and dehumanized to the point where extreme cruelty and violence can be used in the name of protecting “us” and the nation. In just this much, we see the incompatibility of fascist politics with liberal democracy rooted in the values of equality and fairness.

Once the authoritarian has taken control, then it’s all about staying in power. The information space continues to be poisoned by propaganda to such an extent that rational conversation is no longer possible. What’s left is tribalism, division, hatred, and fear.

The Ten Pillars

Stanley’s chapters are organized into ten distinct fascist political strategies, which he names as: The Mythic Past, Propaganda, Anti-Intellectual, Unreality, Hierarchy, Victimhood, Law and Order, Sexual Anxiety, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Arbeit Macht Frei. These are historical, consistently employed, and track back to at least the Third Reich.

Woven throughout is ultra-nationalism of some variety (ethnic, religious, racial, and/or cultural) with a patriarchal leader who speaks for the nation as a whole. Ideological enemies (such as universities, intellectuals, student protestors, NGOs, journalists, feminists) are targeted. Crises (real or contrived) are exploited as opportunities to punish enemies.

I’ve chosen to call these strategies, pillars, and I explore each of them in turn.

Pillar #1 - The Mythic Past

A contrived vision of a glorious, virtuous past is held up as the present ideal. In the western context, Hitler and Nazism provide the prime example of lifting up a patriarchal past of white racial purity, where women knew their place, and everyone worked hard and needed nothing from the state. For his part, Mussolini summed up a lot in a 1922 speech:

We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality….Our myth is the nation…the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything.

Our present day version is, of course, “Make America Great Again.” Hungary’s far-right prime minister Victor Orban uses “Make Europe Great Again.”

Let’s remember that this isn’t our first rodeo with an anti-democratic and isolationist “America First” movement. The chilling Ken Burns documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust, features the isolationist, pro-fascist America First movement (1). First launched in 1940, and with 800,000 members at its peak, when Charles Lindbergh became a prominent spokesperson the group became overtly anti-Semitic and fascist (2). Lindbergh spoke openly about the corrupting of the “pure blood” of the white nation with “inferior blood.” Trump has used similar rhetoric (3), and on January 25th, 2025, Elon Musk was live-streamed into a rally of Germany’s ascendant far-right party, the AfD. He reportedly told the crowd to “take pride in Germany and being German,” and not to lose their national pride in “some kind of multiculturalism that dilutes everything” (4).

When nationalism turns toxic, inconvenient realities are erased, for example, attempting to overshadow the horrors of slavery through Civil War statutes evoking a heroic past; banning African American studies and Critical Race Theory; attacking same sex marriage, abortion, and everything relating to the trans community.

Pillar #2 - Propaganda

We’re already very familiar with repeated lies masquerading as truth, but it’s vital to realize that these lies (statements verifiable as untruths) are essential to creating not so much an alternative reality, as unreality (discussed in more depth below). Obscuring the truth is the point and relentless lies are the strategy. Division, anger, and victimhood get loyalists to the polls. Liberal attempts to dismiss Trump and MAGA rhetoric simply as lies greatly underestimates the larger threat.

Protests such as Black Lives Matter and Gaza solidarity are misrepresented as riots and threats to civil order, as anti-semitic. On Jan. 15th 2025, I heard Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas claim that Code Pink was a Chinese front group. It’s so important to remember that for these folks, no pretense of truth is necessary. It’s not stupidity nearly as much as it is strategy. Truth is not in the fascist playbook.

The history of anti-democratic propaganda in the U.S. is as old as the nation. All kinds of targeted lies were used to try to justify slavery. And afterwards, efforts to turn back black progress (including the holding of elected public offices), focused on alleged corruption. According to W.E.B. Du Bois: “the center of the corruption charge…was in fact that poor men were ruling and taxing rich men.”

Nixon’s “war on crime” and “law and order” concealed a racist political agenda (5). Fascists have been “draining swamps” for generations, decrying “corruption” in the states they want to take over. The Nazi’s linked democracy to corruption, when what they were really concerned about was corruption of the mythic traditional order.

Pillar #3 - Anti-Intellectual

Since truth is an intended victim, it’s no coincidence that fascist ideology conflicts with expertise in general. When the very ground of intelligent debate—science, education, journalism, history, critical thinking, language—is poisoned, what’s left is propaganda, tribal identity, and raw power.

How could a mythic past be uplifted without attacking history? How to continually offer up lies without attacking journalism as “fake news”?

Stanley reminds us that Rush Limbaugh denounced the “four corners of deceit: government, academia, science, and the media.” He attacked science consistently, proclaiming that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists.”

Hitler’s own words in Mein Kampf, are, of course, illuminating:

All propaganda should be popular and should adopt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those to whom it is desired to address….The receptive ability of the masses is very limited, and their understanding small; on the other hand, they have great power of forgetting. This being so, all effective propaganda must be confined to very few points which must be brought out in the form of slogans.

According to Stanley, throughout Mein Kampf, Hitler is clear that the aim of propaganda is to replace reasoned argument in the public sphere with irrational fears and passions.

It’s standard in propaganda to use rhetoric that supports the very ideals it seeks to undermine. Fascist politics denounces progressives as leftists and communists and enemies of free speech. It attacks universities—the bastion of protected free speech—as being opposed to free speech. In democracies, fascists use democratic rhetoric with undemocratic intent. How else to indoctrinate a public that would otherwise not support an undemocratic agenda?

Trump waged a frontal assault on science on day one—to name just a few examples, pulling the U.S. out of the WHO, an organization founded by the U.S. in 1948; canceling scientific meetings, scientific reports and health bulletins, even external communication by agency personnel; and attempting to freeze federal funding to NGOs (6).

I’ll never forget getting into my dad’s car with him one day with Rush Limbaugh on the radio. When I asked him to turn it off he looked right at me and said, “Why, are you afraid of the truth”?

Pillar #4 - Unreality

The interplay of the different strategies presented by Stanley is clear. Everything covered so far is intended to create what he calls unreality.

It’s long been recognized that education and information, and some semblance of a shared reality, were minimum requirements for democracy.

Fascist unreality is a conscious strategy that seeks to instill a sense of loss and victimhood. Reasoned debate and dialogue is replaced with fear, mistrust, and anger against those deemed responsible for the loss.

Conspiracy theories are a key part of the strategy. For Hitler it was all about the Jews. Here at home the examples just continue to mount: QAnon and birtherism, climate scientists with a secret pro-homosexual agenda (7). And whenever in doubt, blame China. Ultimately, the purpose is to denigrate, stigmatize, and delegitimize out-groups; to attack the credibility and decency of entire groups of people. Conspiracy theories offer justification for irrational fears and extreme counter-measures.

Conspiracy theories are critical in the attempt to delegitimize universities and the media. When the media refuses to give credence and airtime to wacky conspiracy theories they are attacked as biased.

What’s left after reality is undermined is tribal (in-group) identity and personal grievance. The demagogue is seen as “speaking his mind,” speaking truth to power and, ironically, becomes the braver, more authentic candidate. Thus, they stand for division and conflict without apology.

Pillar #5 - Hierarchy

Equality, according to the fascist, is the Trojan horse of liberalism. —Jason Stanley

Fascism is directly opposed to core tenets of liberal democracy, such as social and political equality and freedom. Fascists regularly use references to “natural law” to justify hierarchy and dominance. As the thinking goes, nature requires one group to lead and dominate.

Equality and freedom are thus illusions that fly in the face of natural law. They threaten the vision of the mythic past and the whole fascist agenda. Stanley writes that in the 2016 campaign, “Trump exploited the lengthy history of ranking Americans into a hierarchy of worth…the ‘deserving,’ versus the ‘undeserving.’"

Pillar #6 - Victimization

A sense of victimization and grievance is critical fuel for fascist ultra-nationalism, creating a group identity that unifies across class differences.

Oppression is a universally powerful motivating force. Consequently, there are equality-driven national movements focused on addressing actual oppression. True victims rallying under the banner of nationalism can also go so far as to become themselves oppressors. Serbia under Slobodan Milošević is a case in point that went as far as genocide and crimes against humanity. It didn’t matter that many of the victims were not responsible for past harms. Israel is another tragic example of real victimization and trauma being used for extreme, genocidal ends.

Stanley offers the forecast that around 2050 whites will no longer be the majority in the U.S. He cites research demonstrating that many white Americans experience this impending shift as a “threat to their dominant (social, economic, political, and cultural) status.” It also significantly increases their support for conservative policies such as increased restrictions on immigration and decreased support for affirmative action.

The 2050 forecast and white perceptions suggest that the demonization of people of color will only get more pronounced so as to fuel white grievance and victimhood. The fear is real if we frame it as fear of losing certain privileges associated with racism and inequality, as well as fear of clouding the vision of a mythic past.

Christian nationalism is a huge factor in the fascist playbook here in the U.S. (8). Stanley tells us that in 2016, 45% of Trump supporters believed that whites are the most discriminated-against racial group in America; 54% believed that Christians were the most persecuted religious group in America.

Trump is a great fan of Hungary’s Victor Orbán, who uses immigration and the myth of Christian persecution to great effect, with all the elements of fascist victimhood. According to him, the persecution of Christianity places “the future of the European way of life, and our identity” in peril. He asks his followers to repudiate “human rights” and stand behind him to “Make Europe Great Again” (9).

Being patriarchal, much resentment is also focused on women generally.

Stanley lists some of the many groups of angry, aggrieved white men including, Men Achieving Liberty and Equality (MALE). Victims of their own narrative of a glorious patriarchal past, their victimhood is directed at women, whom they blame for their unfulfilled patriarchal expectations.

**** Continued in Part Two ****

Endnotes

1. The U.S. and the Holocaust, Ken Burns documentary, PBS.

2. The America First movement, Wikipedia.

3. Trump repeats 'poisoning the blood' anti-immigrant remark, Reuters, 12/16/13.

4. Elon Musk speaks at Germany’s AfD campaign launch as thousands protest the far-right part, CNN, 1/25/15.

5. Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People, Equal Justice Initiative, 3/25/16.

6. Pres. Trump Brings His Anti-Science, Destructive Agenda to White House on Day One, Union of Concerned Scientists, 1/21/25.

7. Tony Perkins, anti-LGBTQ, Southern Poverty Law Center.

8. What is Christian nationalism and why it raises concerns about threats to democracy, PBS, 2/1/24.

9. 'Make Europe Great Again’: Hungary sets scene for its EU presidency, The Guardian, 6/30/24.