The epistemic plasticity of theterm presents a challenge, not an invitation, to theoretical complacency.

even a half-hearted attempt to control thevirus in March 2020 would have whittled away, if not erased, biden’s margin ofvictory. Trump’s own pollster told him that citizens’ primary interest was the virusand urged Trump to focus his campaign energies there (Dawsey 2021). butTrump did not listen and instead turned a vehicle of political unification into onethat intensified already existing polarization (Sides, Tausanovitch, and Vavreck2022).

As a concept, fascism tends to act as a “bridging metaphor”(Alexander 2003)—that is, as a code word for evil, violence, and authoritarianbehavior, whether it be political, cultural, or social. Definitions of fascism tendtoward reductionism even when sophisticated scholars offer them.

In its place, a growth industry in public com-mentary on fascism developed. Academics (for example, ben-Ghiat 2020;Churchwell 2020; Finchelstein 2020; Snyder 2017; Stanley 2018) and publicintellectuals became laser-focused on Trump’s resemblance to a host of past andpresent authoritarian political leaders with a weak attachment to democracy.Adding to this analytic commentary, politicians and pundits deployed “fascism”as a political expletive (de Grazia 2020; Kuklick 2022)

That’s Our Problem,” in which I argued that the com-parison between Trump and his supposed european counterparts was flawed(berezin 2016). european populists are career politicians who deploy a standardnationalist script to address any number of political issues.

“epistemic plasticity”

They never had much traction in the U.S., as they all assume solidarity anda collective approach to social and political life that is absent from Americanpolitical culture and practice

citizens relate to contemporaryevents and the paths of action that they might pursue

Trump’s presidency laid bare the fissures that are embeddedin American democracy and begged a reconsideration of whether American insti-tutions and democratic norms are up to the task of resisting authoritarian rule

The failureto value democracy, rather than the desire to embrace fascism, is the great dangerthat Trump poses.

Trump’s initial denial of the virus, rants against science and the “China”virus, and his pitting of states against states eventually ensured his electoraldefeat

The purpose of this article is to not to enter the definitional game but ratherto ask whether focusing on fascism is politically useful for thinking aboutAmerica’s political future. Thinking about fascism in our present momentrequires, in my view, a focus on four issues: first, a hard look at salient featuresand outcomes of the Trump presidency; second, a view of fascism that focuses onhistorical methodology and the question of comparison across time and space;third, a revisitation of empirical evidence that asks what was happening ineurope in the 1930s—particularly Italy, where fascism began; and last, the ques-tion of political strategy—what is to be done?

Whereeuropean political culture is characterized by secularand religious solidarity rooted in national state institu-tions, American political culture lacks collectivism andsolidarity and is susceptible to nativism, a distinctlyAmerican impulse that is unmoored from institutionalarrangements

Fascism as an analytic device in theAmerican context, therefore, obscures dangerous ten-dencies in American politics and culture.

Indeed, participants were faster to pair White athletes and Amer-ican symbols and Black athletes and foreign symbols (M
751ms) than when the concept–attribute pairs were combined in theopposite order (M
823 ms)

However, African and White Americanswere not strongly differentiated on explicit measures of ethnic–national association. Yet African Americans were implicitly as-sessed to be less associated with the concept “American” thanwere White Americans

In answering this ques-tion, they were specifically instructed to consider individuals fromeach ethnic group who were born in the United States, lived in theUnited States, and were U.S. citizens

Items capturing a nativist definition of the Americanidentity loaded on Factor 2—that is, was born in America, havespent most of one’s life in America, and have American citizen-ship. Factor 3 encompassed civic values such as equality, democ-racy, or striving for self-improvement. Factor 4 was composed oftwo items referring to religious orientation. One item did not loadclearly on any of the four factors—the ability to speak English.

In Westerncultures, White racial identity and male gender are treated ascultural expectations. Evidence for this “White male norm” hy-pothesis comes from experiments showing that membership innonnormative groups receives greater attention than membershipin normative groups because of its incongruence (Stroessner, 1996;Za ́rate & Smith, 1990).

The standing of variousgroups in present-day American society cannot be dissociatedfrom the facts surrounding their immigration, nor can it be untiedfrom the daily experience members of each group have of theirown and other groups.

It isinteresting to note that the conscious learning of group pride canovershadow the effects of covert acculturation when measuredthrough explicit self-evaluations but still emerge on measures thattap less controllable responses.

Yet, on implicit measures, members of disad-vantaged groups internalize the social standing of their group andreveal either negative attitudes and beliefs toward their own groupor, in weaker form, simply do not show the in-group-favoring biasthat advantaged group members do

It is ourcontention that conscious assumptions of egalitarianism in viewingsocial groups will influence explicit reports, whereas deviationsfrom this principle will emerge on assessments that cannot beconsciously controlled—these are instead dominated by the historyof intergroup relations within the United States, the actual hierar-chy of social groups, and an internalization of that hierarchy inunderstanding who prototypically represents the nation

uch tools are particularlyrelevant when assessments of implicit social cognition purport toreveal a different picture than responses based on more delibera-tive processes.

We posit that a modern American dilemmaexists, and it is the tension not only between abstract ideals andconcrete reality as noted in the 1930s but between one’s ownconsciously stated beliefs and less consciously elicited responses.

In the present research, we focused on a singlefundamental dimension of equality—the degree to which the qual-ity “American” is given to Americans of varying ethnic origin.

nstead of promoting unityand solidarity, expressions of patriotism or national identity couldgo hand in hand with a relative exclusion of ethnic minorities fromthe national identity (Li & Brewer, 2004)

Spe-cifically, Asian American participants displayed a significant im-plicit preference for their ethnic group (in-group favoritism)

AfricanAmericans, perhaps because of the presence of other minoritiesviewed as less American than they, do not internalize the beliefthat resides in the minds of White Americans in the same manneras Asian Americans do

in which mem-bers of minority or disadvantaged groups do not always claimpositive outcomes for their own groups, thereby contributing to thestatus quo that retains existing hierarchies

Not surprisingly,Asian American targets (M
4.03, SD
1.48) were described asless native than African American targets (M
5.91, SD
1.04)and White American targets (M
5.56, SD
1.21).

AfricanAmerican targets (M
3.93, SD
1.35) and Asian Americantargets (M
3.75, SD
1.64) were perceived as being moreegalitarian than White American targets (M
2.97, SD
1.36).

For example,members of disadvantaged (often minority) groups do not showin-group favoritism to the same extent as members of advantaged(often majority) groups do (Nosek et al., 2002a), and under somecircumstances, members of disadvantaged groups even show out-group favoritism (Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002;

Second, byusing well-known individuals in both categories, White foreigners(e.g., Hugh Grant) and Asian Americans (e.g., Connie Chung), wedid not simply ask that participants believe Asians and Whites tobe American citizens but gave them known Asian Americans andWhite foreigners

This study design was based on the assumption that in thedomain of sports such as track and field, Black (compared withWhite) athletes will be viewed as better exemplars of the category“American.

The only two items that did not show a reliable differencewere capturing pride elicited by these athletes, t(59)
0.13, ns,d
0.02, and their association with the American flag, t(59)
1.63, p  .11, d
0.21.

The order of presentation of the 12 items was randomized across partici-pants. This measure was tailored to capture the relative inclusion of Blackathletes and White athletes in the national identity

In Study 2, anofficial or political image of the United States was activated, andit could be argued that symbols such as the Capitol are linked tothe political arena, Mt. Rushmore to the contributions of presi-dents, and currency to economic resources, all more associatedwith White America, thereby producing the American
Whiteeffect obtained in the previous study

The important point is that Asian Americans were notmerely viewed as foreigners; they were also excluded from theconcept “American” when the occasion for inclusion was rela-tively easier.

Second, they held and highlyvalued a nonexclusionary definition of American identity. In con-trast to these egalitarian abstract principles, when consideringAmericans who hold U.S. citizenship and were born in this coun-try, the view is that some ethnic groups are simply less Americanthan others—not in rights and liberties but in the degree to whichthey embody the concept “American.”

About a tenth of the sample (11.6%) ex-pressed the view that priority should be given to African Ameri-cans.

tudy 2 compared the extent to which ethnicgroups are associated with the concept “American” using bothimplicit (Implicit Association Test [IAT]; Greenwald et al., 1998)and explicit (self-report) measures. Studies 3 and 4 were designedto ease the association of Black and Asian Americans with thecategory “American” by using Black athletes (Study 3) and fa-mous Asian Americans (Study 4).

Given that White Americans, as a group,have been immersed in American society for an extensive periodof time and constitute the numerical majority, they are more likelyto be thought of as prototypical or representative of the category“American” than members of other ethnic groups

What are the qualities deemedessential to being American? Who is (most) American in publiclyexpressed values?