#456 — American Fascism

Sam Harris speaks with Jonathan Rauch about the emergence of fascism in American politics. They discuss Rauch's article, "Yes, It's Fascism," the 18 criteria of fascism, the glorification and unapologetic use of state violence, "might is right" foreign policy, the politicization of law enforcement, the complicity of the rich and powerful, blood and soil nationalism, the influence of Carl Schmitt, the resilience of American institutions, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe http://samharris.org/subscribe.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Sam Harris?

  Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

• 0:35Sam Harris?

  Hi, I'm here with Jonathan Rauch. Thanks for joining me again.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Happy to be here.

• 0:38Sam Harris?

  So let's jump right into it. You have recently written yet another important article for The Atlantic where you can often be found. The title of this one is "Yes, It's Fascism." So that got my attention. I'm sure it got other people's attention. Like you, I've resisted using this term because there were obvious historical associations that didn't quite and don't quite map onto our current circumstance under Trump 2.0. But the resistance has seemed more and more pedantic as the months have rolled by and the overreach and indecency of this administration has become more and more obvious and unignorable and odious.

• 1:23Sam Harris?

  Well, let's just start with your misgivings about it, which you expressed to some degree in the article, and yet you've overcome them. How did you decide to finally pull the trigger on this terminology? And what are your concerns about doing so?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Well, it was painful. I'll tell you that. This is the article I had hoped never to write. A year ago in The Atlantic, I wrote an article saying that Trump was not a fascist, he's a patrimonialist. And that's a style of government that you find not only in states, but in the mafia, criminal organizations, cults, political machines, where the state is in effect the personal property and family business of the leader.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  And in that situation, the head of state will go rampage through the bureaucracy, cutting through rules and replacing people with personal loyalists. And then things get very corrupt and they get very incompetent. And that's clearly what we were seeing. And that, I think uncontroversially, applied to Trump. But patrimonialism, it's not ideological. It's not especially aggressive. It's not interested in the use of force or taking over other countries. For example, and it could have just been about Trump and enrichment. And I thought initially, that's probably where things were headed. But over the course of the last year, and specifically over the course of the past

• 2:46Speaker 01

  few weeks and couple of months, we saw the emergence of so many properties that are associated with fascism, that to me, it became perverse to withhold the label. So I finally dropped my resistance, sat down, thought of all the things I could think of that are usually associated with fascism. There's no standard definition or bright line in-out kind of status. And I had no trouble coming up with 18 of them. And at that point, I threw in the towel and I said, we gotta name this thing.

• 3:15Sam Harris?

  So yeah, I want to walk through those 18 or many of them as you present them in the article, but let's just linger on patrimonialism because it's certainly bad enough, right? This has taken us to a place, you know, if he were merely a patrimonialist, he's taken us to a place that we don't want to be, or at least shouldn't want to be, despite the fact that half the country still seems to be cheering. So when you talk about patrimonialism as an approach to governance, in this case, where the state and it's, you know, where America, let's not speak so generically, America and her policies, her institutions, you know, everything is considered effectively Trump's

• 3:59Sam Harris?

  personal property to be sold off for personal advantage. And we've seen him do that with the tariff policy, you know, he slaps a 46% tariff on Vietnam, and how does Vietnam try to get that tariff removed? They green light a $1.5 billion resort deal for The Trump family, there are now scores of examples like this. And the Trump family has enriched itself to the tune of at least one, two, or three billion dollars, depending on which account you you favor. But there's probably more than that that's happened. I mean, this is all just absolutely despicable and destructive of our standing in the world. And yet, this was a stop on the train before we reached fascism.

• 4:44Sam Harris?

  I just wanted to emphasize that, you know, whether or not someone agrees that you're naming this correctly, we shouldn't lose sight of, you know, all the ground our country has lost and is losing under this president.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Yes, it was more than bad enough when it was patrimonialism. We've never seen the US government turned into the personal property of the leader, where, you know, he dials up a prosecution or he accepts gold bars and then bases his tariffs, you know, based on stuff that people give him. And that's the opposite. Under patrimonialism, the opposite of patrimonialism is not democracy, it's bureaucracy. Because what they want to do is weaken all the tendons in the bureaucracies that make government competent, because you don't want experts. Experts are loyal to ideals and professional standards. You want people who are loyal only to you. So you wind up with appointments like, I don't know,

• 5:42Speaker 01

  think of your incompetent Trump appointee, or think about how they fired all those people who watch over nuclear weapons, only to have to hire them back. So you destroy the government's competence with patrimonialism. What you don't do is reorient the direction of the government in a way that's ideological or aggressive or organized. And that, I think, was, as you say, the next stop on the line.

• 6:09Sam Harris?

  So there's a difference, and you acknowledge this difference in your piece, between having a leader and his enablers, who are fascists or aspiring fascists or, you know, fascistic to whatever degree.

• 6:25Sam Harris?

  And having the full capture of government and society by a regime that is in fact fascist. And you wouldn't say we have succumbed in that final sense, nor do I think you think we're likely to succumb. And so this is not going to look like Hitler's Germany, even in the worst case scenario. So to be clear, what you seem to think now is that calling Trump and his enablers, and many of whom are far more ideological than he shows any sign of being, calling them fascist is more or less unavoidable at this point.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  It seems more or less unavoidable. I'd actually like to get your take on whether it's advisable, because there is a school of thought that says, look, it does no good to use this word. It's just a generalized slur and it will get people's back up without accomplishing anything. I felt that that part of what Trump is so good at, I think you actually mentioned this often on your show, Sam, is throwing up so many distractions and outrages on any given day that our minds can't stay tuned on the big picture of what it is he's doing. And that people need these labels, they need these boxes to put things in in order to be able to keep their eye on the bigger picture.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  And that fascism is now the appropriate box, and in fact, maybe the only appropriate box. So that's why I thought this was important. Others may think it's premature. I don't know.

• 7:54Sam Harris?

  Well, so I pulled up a definition of fascism. As you point out, this is a term that is pretty loosely defined and you can, you know, it's, it has blurry borders, there's no question. But here's one definition. I went to ChatGPT for this. Fascism is an ultra nationalist, anti-liberal political project organized around a promise of a national rebirth, a cleansing restoration after a story of humiliation and decay. It rejects pluralism as a sham, treats opposition as an enemy rather than as a rival, and elevates coercion, often outright violence, as morally necessary to purge internal, quote, traitors and reassert collective greatness.

• 8:35Sam Harris?

  In its mature form, it becomes a leader-centered mass movement that fuses with the state, corrodes neutral institutions, and renders genuine political competition functionally impossible. So, all of that resonates with the current moment. I mean, the only piece that has not been achieved, but I don't think it will be for want of trying, is this final line of, you know, renders genuine political competition functionally impossible, right? So, it'll be very important what happens in November around the midterm elections. One could argue that not all of these variables have been fully achieved, but there's certainly been movement directionally across all of these domains. So, you put this in slightly different language in your piece, so let's just kind of run

• 9:20Sam Harris?

  through your 18. We might not get to all of them, and let me know if you want to skip ahead to any that you more favor, but let's just start with the first one, demolition of norms. What do you mean by that?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  The first thing I should say, if I can have a word of preface, is that there is no bright-line, settled definition of fascism. Even fascists don't agree on what fascism is, and in different countries, over many years, it's taken different forms. You know, Japan looked very different from Franco, who looked different from Mussolini, who looked different from Hitler. So, my method here was to assemble characteristics that most people would agree are, first of all, consonant with fascism, and, second of all, dissonant with incompatible with liberal pluralism. And I think everything on this list fits that bill, and everything on this list fits

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Trump and the direction he's trying to take the country.

• 10:16Sam Harris?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  It does not fit the country as a whole, we'll come back to that, but we don't live in a fascist state. We live in a mixed state, a hybrid state, with a liberal constitution and a fascist leader. That gets complicated. Okay. So, what are the things we're talking about? About half the items on this list, you know, more or less, are things that are new since his first term, or things that have gotten so much worse that we have to recontextualize them. Others are old, but now, looking back, we can say that they fit into fascism. And the demolition of norms is one of these, you know, he starts his campaign in 2016, 15, I guess, with trolling, with extreme insults, with making comments about a news anchors, apparently her period,

• 11:01Speaker 01

  with insulting John McCain and saying he's not a war hero. Insult after insult, and we think this is just because he's some kind of crazy person or he's mentally unbalanced. But this is what you do if you're a fascist and you want to dominate the dialogue. Because liberals, people like me, people like you, who are kind of trained to be civil and tolerant, we can't function in that space. We just become dumbfounded in that space. We don't compete there and fascists know that. And it's why something Hitler says in Mein Kampf is, "It doesn't matter if they laugh at us or ridicule us. All that matters is that they can't stop thinking about us." And that's, that's what they're doing in the context of fascism.

• 11:43Sam Harris?

  Yeah, it's interesting and recalling Hitler in this context is relevant. It has been the case historically that fascist figures present, certainly before they achieve their aims, they present as comical figures. I mean, they, they present as clowns, they present as easy targets of ridicule, right? So the, the, the cultural machinery of satire gets working against them. But in these cases where they succeed, the satire proves ineffectual, right? So if you look back in the, in the late twenties and early, even early thirties in Germany, Hitler was very often portrayed as a buffoon, as somebody who was not going to achieve his aims,

• 12:28Sam Harris?

  quite obviously, because he was so comical and tawdry and norm breaking. And that was clearly, as clearly has been our attitude toward Trump all the while. I mean, it's, on some level, it still is, because I do think he lacks some of the things that proper demagogues like Hitler had. But the fact that he's so entertaining and so seemingly harmless because he's

• 12:55Sam Harris?

  Just a colossal jackass on some basic level. Causes many people to, I think many people hearing this conversation will feel that we are at every point exaggerating the danger, exaggerating the harms already committed. Because when you take a look at this guy and what he and the things he says, there's something deeply unserious about him as a person. I mean, this is why we have, you know, his defenders effectively, I mean, the the main defense of him for now going on nearly a decade is or has been, you know, take him seriously, but not literally. I mean, this is the first time in my lifetime where we I've noticed people, serious people, seemingly serious people, telling everyone in sight not to care what the President of the United States

• 13:40Sam Harris?

  says he's going to do, as though that could make ever make sense. And yet that's been the attitude. It's just like, oh, he didn't, he doesn't mean it, you know, he's not going to take Greenland. Oh, he he just, he and his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, just accused the previous President, President Obama of treason, which is a killing offense in most cases. That's not serious. You don't have to listen to any of that. He's just playing around, right? And so there's something about the the lack of seriousness that that is the style of presentation here that is, it's a pattern. It's not just Trump.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Well, it's a historical pattern. You're correct. Hitler was seen as a buffoon in the 1920s. Mussolini was seen as this kind of strutting pop and jay. Actually, even Hitler wound up thinking Mussolini is something of a buffoon, but Mussolini was not a buffoon. In fact, he was a brilliant guy. He was a former journalist. He'd been a socialist before he became a fascist. No coincidence there. These are smart people, and they are intentionally and deliberately manipulating the public discourse and dialogue first to hijack people's minds so that you think about them all the time. Second, to move the grounded public discourse to an arena where liberal Democrats, you know, small d, cannot compete. And third, to show that they're in

• 14:56Speaker 01

  control of what can and cannot be said. All the stuff your mom taught you about what you can and can't say, throw it out the window. They're in the driver's seat now, and that's the message you get.

• 15:06Sam Harris?

  So the second point you raise, the glorification of violence. Now, this, I think, has not been pushed nearly as far as most people think it must be pushed to justify any kind of analogy to what they consider fascism. And this is one place where I even wonder whether Trump is the sort of person who's capable of this. I mean, you think of, you know, the night of long knives, you know, that's finally secured Hitler's power, right? So this is the night where Hitler, having become chancellor, decides, all right, the SA has too much power, is not totally aligned with the SS and the army, I need to keep the conservatives on board. And so what we're going to do in the next 24 hours is murder, you know, the top 200

• 15:50Sam Harris?

  people, the 100 to 200 people in this organization who have been, who have been my loyalists all the while. So what people think about here, when you, when you mentioned violence, is the propensity to actually start rounding up people and killing them, right? So now that's, I must admit, that, you know, as sinister as some of these guys seem to me, people like Stephen Miller and JD Vance, you know, who seem far more ideological and on that level dangerous than Trump himself, it is hard for me to imagine the murders, right? So tell me what you're referencing here and how far your imagination ranges.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Well, remember, this, this list is not about describing America as being right now in the end state of fascism. It's not, I don't think it will be. In fact, I'm slightly more optimistic on that score than I was a few months ago. I'm instead looking at the characteristics of the rhetoric and the leadership. So one of the hallmarks of liberal democracy, of course, every government has to use violence. But it's important whether they do that reluctantly and as a last resort, and whether they will try to de-conflict a situation, talk it down, minimize the use of violence, or whether their rhetoric and their actions are suggesting, no, this can be a first resort.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  You can be standing on a street corner and holding up your phone as a peaceful protester in Minneapolis. And then hurled to the ground, be swarmed by federal agents and then be shot multiple times. And the government's reaction of that will be that you were some kind of, what did they say about Mr. Pretty?

• 17:27Sam Harris?

  A terrorist, an insurrectionist, bent upon massacre. Yeah.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  And when you see that, and when you see people being dragged out of cars, and when you see the kind of rhetoric that Pete Hegseth has been using, there's an article about that, I think, in The Atlantic, I think just today. When you see memes that are displaying violence in hortatory terms, you know, people repelling from helicopters to assault apartment buildings in the United States, when you see sharing on government platforms of a children's comic book character with a machine gun, shooting up boats, killing all the people in them, and glorying in that, reveling in that, saying, isn't that great? That's incompatible with the kind of society that our founders were trying to build.

• 18:16Sam Harris?

  Yeah, yeah. I did a section of a podcast on this already, but I remain astonished that the Second Amendment devotees in our country, the many millions of them for whom, you know, the right to bear arms is the central plank of their civic religion, that they've been so acquiescent, and really just so blind to the implications of the Pretty killing, because what happened in the immediate aftermath of that killing, which we saw from at least three different sides, and you can see he never reached for his gun, and his murder was totally gratuitous,

• 18:59Sam Harris?

  it was a pure repudiation of the Second Amendment. And everyone from the president and the vice president on down to Cash Patel and Kristi Noem, and everyone who got in front of a microphone in the aftermath of that, spoke to the country as though the Second Amendment doesn't exist, right? I mean, they basically said in so many words, and more or less all of them said this, that if you're in possession of a firearm anywhere near federal law enforcement, That is very likely a death sentence. You know, don't do that. And that's not what something like, I would say, at least 10 million Americans have been saying is the most important thing in our country for as long as I've been alive. And we've, you know, for as long as I've been alive, we've had millions of Americans

• 19:44Sam Harris?

  over there on the right who have been buying guns, training with guns, cleaning their guns, talking about guns, coveting their neighbor's gun. It's all been about guns and it hasn't been about guns for home defense. It's been about guns because at some point in the future, we could have a tyrannical government that would, will begin to infringe upon our civil liberties, the most important of which is our ability to defend those civil liberties by recourse to the Second Amendment. And here we had a guy who was practicing his First Amendment rights to assemble and speak freely against the behavior of ICE. And he was, he was forced to the ground, disarmed and then killed. And then you had the, you know, the director of the FBI, among others, get on television

• 20:28Sam Harris?

  and speak as though the Second Amendment doesn't even exist. Where the hell are the conservative gun owners on this? If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. Once you do, you'll get access to all full-length episodes of the Making Sense Podcast. The Making Sense Podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on listener support. And you can subscribe now at samharris.org.