Partly,McCarthy and his associates were able to do this because there weretraitors, there were spies, there were some significantly placed Communistcells in America.

Indeed, McCarthyism was more conspiracy style than conspiracy theory,more technique than theory of any kind.

It was in this sense that McCarthy’s enemy, and that of many of hiscohorts, was Communism itself rather than any singular group of conspirators.

His traitors were pure: leaders who had sold outto a foreign power on an individual basis

Likewise, conspiracy theories, by their nature, are anti-intellectual andinvariably focus on some overeducated secret elite

Did not populism allege to protect the people and their government from conspiracies, from cells of conspirators, who, contrary to the people’s will andthrough the complacency or collusion of their rulers, were enabled to gaincontrol of society?

enator Taft, though privately contemptuous of McCarthy’s methods, stated publicly that “the pro-Communist policies of the State Department fully justified Joe McCarthy in his demand for an investigation.”9

How can we account for our present situation unlesswe believe that men high in this Government are concerting to deliver us todisaster

But, more than that, hewas in the position to matchmake the classic manage de convenancebetween the preservatist political elements and the less privileged mass basewhich any right-wing political movement in America require

The Communists, before 1934, argued that all non-Commu-nist parties, including the Socialists, were “Social Fascists” ; that is, theyobjectively were paving the way for fascism. The principal organ of thepostwar ultraright, The Freeman, contended that all welfare states andplanning measures were “objectively” steps toward the development of atotalitarian Communist state

It is not that McCarthy invented this device

It was Senator Joseph McCarthy who presumably put together a singlepackage to attract these disparate elements in the population by personifying their fears in the name of anti-Communism.

Where once we warred against Fascism, which is identified with the “right,” we now warred against Communism, which identifieswith the “left.” And just as the Communists were able to secure considerable influence during the period of liberal ascendancy, right-wing extremistswere able to make respectable headway during the conservative revival.

Where once we warred against Fascism, which is identified with the “right,” we now warred against Communism, which identifieswith the “left.” And just as the Communists were able to secure considerable influence during the period of liberal ascendancy, right-wing extremistswere able to make respectable headway during the conservative revival.

he Communists,by concealing their real objectives, by acting positively for liberal causes,by being the best organizers of the left, were able to penetrate deeply intovarious liberal organizations and into the labor movement

The depression emphasized the need forsocioeconomic reforms and helped to undermine the legitimacy of conservative and business institutions. It was followed immediately by a warwhich was defined as a struggle against Fascism

Historically,this ideological conflict developed just as the Catholic populations in mostof these countries were producing sizable upper and middle classes of theirown, which in economic terms were under pressure to abandon their traditional identification with the lower-class party.

The identification of Catholicism with the left in the English-speakingcountries, as compared with its linkages with the right in westernEurope, is related to the fact that the Catholic church is a minority churchin the English-speaking countries and has been the church of the minorityethnic immigrants who have been largely lower-class. As a lower-statusgroup, Catholics have been successfully appealed to by the out-party, bythe party of the lower class

The apparent decline of American power in the face of a pattern ofworld-wide Communist thrusts created a common anxiety in the nation

of the fundamentalist Protestant churches

The former isolationist group, especially its German base,was under a need to justify its past and to a certain extent to gain revenge.The opportunity now to identify internationalist forces in American societywith Communism would obviously have an appeal to this submergedcurrent in American society.

strongest common characteristic of the isolationist-voting counties is theresidence there of ethnic groups with a pro-German or anti-British bias

Most Americans saw themselves asinvolved helplessly in a series of expensive and extensive counterreactionsto these activities, which became a massive commitment in 1950 when wefound ourselves engaged in a formal, costly, and frustrating war withNorth Korea

Russia’s influence had been established swiftly across easternEurope, where necessary by military coups and fabricated revolutions.The Chinese Communists had seized power in 1949

“race question” which was to erupt a decade later. But the uneasy shadowof this change was already beginning to hang over the new status of theurban working class.

The novelty of their new style of life madethem more sensitive to the impingement of remote events

They are squeezed harder than large business, since their competitiveposition does not allow them to pay increases in wages as readily as canbig firms

with individuals, still wealthy, who have grown up in an old traditionalistbackground, with the values of tolerance associated with upper-class aristocratic conservatism

new wealth led to a rise of status insecurity

contingent, subjective natureof identity and membership

may not be objectively real,

Whereas earlier social divisions were grounded in differences ofreligious sect or White ethnicity (native nationals, along with people of Irish,Jewish, Levantine, Southern and Eastern European origin), decolonizationand civil rights laws opened the way for immigrants from Africa, Asia, andLatin America

rendered advantage relative to Blacks—a sort of consolation prize

valuable asset

Tea Party

Thepolitical reaction to such change is often an “all out crusade” to stop theforces of progress (Hofstadter, 1967).

In America, the transi-tion of the Roosevelt-Johnson Democratic Party to its modern coalition ofurban liberals, minority groups, and what remains of labor organizations hasbeen understood as a matter of rights and identity politics (Edsall, 1989), therise of Wall Street’s influence (Greider, 1992), and the rapid decline in unionpower (Hacker & Pierson, 2010). In Britain, since Tony Blair and NewLabour turned away from the party’s socialist roots, it has been decimated bythe loss of White working-class support and internal debates over immigra-tion, identity politics, and foreign interventionism.

Fascism aims todestroy this distinction or to fuse the distinction between public and private. Youare a fascist at home and at work; your identity exists in the State.

at fascism was a his-torical moment tied to a historical moment

but no feature of the pastwill produce the same legacy across a given national space

separates fascism from other mobilizing ideologies

This shift suggests that he might be moving in the direc-tion of a mechanism-based, narrative understanding of fascism

nativism and nationalism, rather than on the fascist movement of the 1930s, is abetter way to understand the different political legacies that pose challenges todemocracy today, not only in the U.S. and europe but globally.

In these qualities, he is essentially American.

Nationalism can be benign or toxic depending upon the historicalmoment (berezin 2021a). but fascism in its ideal form demands obliteration ofthe self—a demand that leads to failed aspirations, extremism, and a tendency toviolence.

The major fascist articulation of the relation between work and social integra-tion appeared in the 1927 Labor Charter, which described a way of workingbased upon principles of hierarchy and order. Instead of joining labor unions,workers were expected to join occupational corporations or groups that definedtheir place in a productive universe.

[If] one is truly Catholic, andhas a religious sense, one remembers always in the highest part of one’s mind, towork and think and pray and meditate” (berezin 1997, 51).

As Gentile (1928) described it, fascism aspired to community and coherence—to eliminating the boundary between the state and the individual. Liberalism,with its soulless individualism, was as much fascism’s enemy as Marxism was. Nomatter what form it takes, Trumpism, with its affinity for isolationism, oppositionto free trade (Mutz 2021), and antipathy to government regulation, makes nocommon cause with collectivism.

Although Mussolini (1932) coined the term fascism to denote a collectivistsystem of government in his Italian Encyclopedia article, he did not do the theo-retical thinking around the concept. In fact, most of the Encyclopedia entry waswritten by Giovanni Gentile, an Italian philosopher and Mussolini’s minister ofeducation. He had laid out the details for this new political philosophy in an aca-demic article in Foreign Affairs (Gentile 1928), one of many legal and philosophyjournals that thrived in Italy during the 1920s and 1930s wherein professors ofvarious disciplines aimed to convey the meaning of fascism to a general and aca-demic public. 2

scholars have not tended to focus upon critical exegesis of fas-cist texts and ideas. And since they never considered fascism seriously as a sys-tem of thought, why would they? It lacked coherence, and its contributions tosocial and political life were, as noted above, seen as metaphors for evil anddestruction.

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?