New reality
Understanding this moment as a period of emerging fascism enables us to look at historical, systemic trends, rather than focusing on the personality characteristics of individuals. Trump’s outsized capacity for cruelty and his perpetual lying can seduce us into thinking that he is the problem, rather than a symptom of much deeper structural shifts.
Fascism requires lying. It requires uncertainty, fear, scapegoats, delusions of self-importance, and linking isolated individuals to the nation state.
Trump’s speech this week before congress reflects all of these characteristics. In a recent interview on Democracy Now, Ralph Nader captured its essence. Nader observed:
It was also a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favor of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises — a rerun of his first term — boasts about progress that don’t exist. In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once. And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.
Later Nader describes Trump as “a deranged, unstable pathological liar, who’s getting away with it.”
Lying is central to Trump, not just for his own ego, but to controlling and directing his base, to destabilizing and demoralizing his opposition, and to enabling him to create a new social reality that he can control for his own ends.
This is historically what fascism requires. People will not submit to dehumanization and the destruction of things they love without enormous psychological, emotional, and physical violence aimed to control them. Thus Trump, like all fascists, is creating a world where he, and he alone defines reality.
The creation of a new social reality is made possible by the new forms of media that carry his messages. Historically, fascists have been the first to understand how new media can become a powerful weapon of thought control.
The Trump world operatives have made no secret of their goals to reshape and control how people understand the world. Steven Cheung an X post communications director said simply that trump forces are after “Full Spectrum Dominance.”
Key to this strategy is the use of rapid responses on social media. A very thoughtful article in the Washington Post documented:
The White House’s rapid-response account posted 207 times to X on Tuesday, the day of Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, or nearly nine posts an hour, including Trump sound bites, supporter interviews and Democrat-slamming memes and attack lines.
The use of social media platforms to both humanize Trump and dehumanize his enemies is attracting as many as 100 million viewers and many of these are people new to Trump.
Trump is consciously lying to make sure that his social media is viewed as the only source of truth. Professor Renee Hobbs of University of Rhode Island explained Trump’s media strategies are designed to function “as the new purveyors of reality.”
At such a moment, our only defense is reality itself. Our capacity to bring to life the effects of the choices Trump is making are critical to helping people hold to a different world.
We also know that the distorted reality Trump is creating in words will be undercut by the experiences of daily live. Our resistance to fascism rests in our ability to construct life affirming ways of living that enrich people, protect each other and our planet, and expand our human capacities to love and imagine. We can create new realities.