The spectre of right-wing authoritarianism is haunting the world. Right-wing authoritarianism has increasingly moved from right-wing populism into a twenty-first century fascism that some people identify as “postfascism”, others “neofascism”, and still others “constitutional fascism”. What is being identified is the distinction between the form of fascism we are experiencing in the twenty-first century compared with that which emerged in the aftermath of World War I.

Leftists in the US tend to overuse the term “fascist” to describe essentially any sort of repressive regime on the Right. Such an approach can often render the term useless since it ignores different forms of right-wing regimes, and the social bases contained. We propose to differentiate our understandings of the relation of “authoritarian neoliberalism” and fascism within the histories of US imperialism, right-wing populism, and the forces aiming to re-establish and transform white supremacy.

Right-wing populism has a long history in the US, having emerged around the time of the Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–1837). It is very much rooted in the “racial” slavery/settler-colonial origin of the US and the construction of “race” and racism.[1] It is also associated with so-called traditional gender roles and the suppression of women. Understanding the current situation in the US necessitates appreciating the contradictions that emerged after the Civil War, but also de-mythologizing the overall “democratic” history of the USA. Doing so helps one to recognize that what we are seeing with Trump’s election victories and the rise of MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) flows like poison through the veins of the US from the beginning.

While the term “fascism” is often associated with twentieth-century European regimes like those of Mussolini and Hitler, several scholars and activists have identified elements of fascist ideology and practice in certain aspects of US history and politics. These elements are deeply intertwined with the legacy of white supremacy, racial hierarchy, and authoritarianism that emerged from a dynamic between forces of “Reconstruction” and “Redemption”. The interplay between Reconstruction and Redemption in US history can be seen as laying some of the groundwork for a specific version of right-wing populism and fascism. Despite the distance in time from the Civil War, as long as the people of the US believe there is such a thing as a biological “white race” and the subordinate chain of “coloured races”, and they are in them, the Old Confederacy still has its hegemonic hooks in our brains.

We further argue that within the authoritarian neoliberalism of the last decades, fascist elements were re-articulated in a re-organization of the Right. MAGA turned from a right-wing populist movement to a new fascist social force. Under the conditions of US imperialism in crises and a divided ruling class, Trump and his allies try to build a new bloc galvanized by what we call “imperialist populism” as a process of moving towards a new, hybrid form of fascism, with the aim to build an authoritarian neo-apartheid regime.

Redemption, White Supremacy, and the Traces of “American” Fascism

Reconstruction (1865–1877) aimed to rebuild the South after the Civil War and integrate formerly enslaved African Americans, along with their poor white “Scalawag” allies, into the political, economic, and social fabric of the nation. The counter- movement of Redemption was explicitly rooted in white supremacy, seeking to restore the racial hierarchy that had been temporarily disrupted by Reconstruction. What was termed by its supporters as “Redemption”, W.E.B. Dubois termed the “counterrevolution of property”. This included the use of violence, terror, and legal mechanisms to disenfranchise and subjugate Black Americans. The overthrow of Reconstruction governments and the establishment of Jim Crow laws involved the seizure and consolidation of power by Southern white elites and the systematic exclusion of Black Americans from political participation. Even holding meetings was often met with violence.

Fascist regimes are characterized by authoritarian governance, the suppression of democratic institutions, and the concentration of power in the hands of a few. Redemption rule saw similar tendencies in the South, where democratic processes were subverted (with open terror) to maintain white supremacy.

Reconstruction, what many people thought of as a “Second American Revolution”, was overthrown using the vehicles, to paraphrase Malcolm X, of the ballot and the bullet. State constitutions were changed in such a way to appear to be race-neutral, but were implemented with a white supremacist orientation and created a significant repressive apparatus, particularly in the former Confederacy. This repressive apparatus was used not only against African Americans but also against poor white allies of African Americans, as well as against organized workers overall. 

The reconfiguration of the far right is part of the global rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, a development that encompasses both centre-right and -left political forces and fuels political crises.

Repression included vagrancy laws and poll taxes, the latter an effective means to repress poor voters generally and African American voters in particular, along with, of course, the continued use of extrajudicial violence to intimidate all opponents of the new Redeemer regime. The “bullet” was used continuously as a way of either bringing to power Jim Crow forces, e.g., the violent overthrow of the duly elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina (1898), or in a reactionary response to the emergence of people of colour (e.g., the Tulsa, Oklahoma pogrom of 1921) or in some cases, the labour movement (e.g. the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado). Instability within the US democratic capitalist state, bringing the country to the precipice of an authoritarian takeover, included the infamous effort in 1934 to recruit Marine Corp. General Smedley Butler to lead a fascist coup against President Franklin Roosevelt.

The fact of these and many more examples of extrajudicial violence and threats of violence challenges the dominant narrative regarding US history generally but specifically identifies the vulnerability of the US state to right-wing authoritarianism. In that sense, the 6 January 2021 coup attempt in Washington, DC did not come out of nowhere and, contrary to many liberal commentators, was not in any sense “un-American”. It was simply a twenty-first-century national version of the 1898 overthrow of the Wilmington, North Carolina city government.

Authoritarian Neoliberalism and Reconfiguration of the Far Right

Since the 1960s, the far right developed a multi-decade strategy aimed at winning power and “overthrowing” the twentieth century. It is this last objective that runs like a straight line from the late 1960s through the rise of MAGA today. Through what can be termed a neo-Confederate bloc largely organized by the far Right — bringing together right-wing Christians, the fossil fuel industry, real estate, and segments of discarded white workers and middle strata — a well-funded effort ensued to create the image and reality of a new social movement.

Built through mass movements, litigation, legislative/electoral efforts, and a major investment in the media, the neo-Confederate bloc became a key component of Ronald Reagan’s base. It was energized in a new way in 1994 when Republicans won control of Congress with Congressman Newt Gingrich’s so-called “Contract with America”. Republicans adopted a much more confrontational approach with an explicit effort to weaken, if not destroy, the Bill Clinton administration. In the early to mid-1990s, right-wing militias became a more visible presence, particularly after the Oklahoma City terrorist attack of 1995. From this point on, the Republican establishment saw in the far Right an instrument they believed they could control and would open the gates to power. As it turned out, the monster they created turned on them.

A second critical moment was in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack. Bush’s vision, originating with the Project for a New American Century, was as aggressive as it was complicated. The far right was of varying minds about the PNAC vision, particularly a semi-isolationist wing that was opposed to US involvement in global affairs (unless, as they frequently framed it, it was there to win at all costs).

The third and decisive moment was the election of Barack Obama as the forty-forth President of the United States. This election was essential in reshaping the far right and elevating the presence of Donald Trump. The election of Obama challenged a key component of the origin myth of the US as a racial settler state and, as a result, a white republic that no one of colour, and specifically no one of African origin, should ever run.

The rise of the Tea Party movement was as much about this sentiment as it was about the failure of Obama and his allies to seize upon the moment to move against the Right. Contrary to the claims of some left-wing and progressive commentators, the Tea Party was a right-wing populist movement with a real social base of the white middle strata rather than of the white worker or the white poor, although elements from those sectors certainly found their way into it as well.

The Tea Party movement and the subsequent Birther movement (challenging whether Obama was a US citizen) were right-wing populist and reactive (and certainly reactionary!) movements responding to Obama and to the 2008 economic collapse. They contained elements of what we would later see in MAGA, but were not fully coherent. Nevertheless, signs and slogans such as “Government: Take your hands off of our Medicare” were not as ridiculous as they first appeared to be. These were protests against Obama’s efforts to reform healthcare, and these signs were held by those who did not want to risk that which they believed they were entitled to — Medicare — by assisting marginalized and irrelevant populations. Moreover, these were signs of trouble ahead as the “relevant” and “irrelevant” populations came to be redefined or, in some cases, clarified.

The reconfiguration of the far right is part of the global rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, a development that encompasses both centre-right and -left political forces and fuels political crises.

Neoliberalism shifted the role of the state. The state has been increasingly reduced to its repressive and economic apparatuses, with a steady weakening of any redistributionist component or so-called social safety net. Accompanying the reshaping of the democratic capitalist state in the direction of what theorist Nicos Poulantzas described in the late 1970s as authoritarian statism and what we describe as the rise of neoliberal authoritarianism, has been the shrinking parameters for legitimate discourse in the capitalist world. Sometimes using warnings about crime, drugs, or terrorism, and sometimes even various forms of anti-communism or anti-socialism, mainstream media outlets have written off non-mainstream analyses as the creation of so-called “wingnuts”, i.e., extremes from both sides.

If there is one word to summarize MAGA, it would be revanchist. It is a movement that, at its core, is based on the politics of revenge and resentment.

The neoliberal authoritarian state brought with it conflicting responses from forces on the Right and the Left. The Right largely embraced the growth of the repressive apparatus, while the emerging right-wing populists objected — at least politically — to what they saw as the rise of globalism rather than the strengthening of the nation-state. This has been a source of conflict and split within the right over neoliberalism vs. nativist/racist welfare statism. In the case of the Trump regime, this split has not yet been resolved, although the new oligarchs are going all-out to shape the new regime as neoliberal and authoritarian, while attempting to energize a mass base in opposition to the victories of progressive forces over the course of the twentieth century. The links to other sections of the transnational capitalist class create additional challenges for the oligarchs, challenges that the nativist/racist/sexist welfare state-ists do not face, at least not immediately.

The embrace of neoliberal globalization by traditional right-wing parties, as well as much of the centre-left, created an amazing opening for right-wing populist movements. Responding to the growing polarization of wealth on a global scale, right-wing populists have responded to neoliberalism with scapegoating and attacks on migrants in particular. They have fought to redefine who are the “legitimate” vs. “illegitimate” populations across the world in both the Global North and Global South. As resources shrink for the masses due to both neoliberal wealth polarization as well as the impact of environmental catastrophe, the far right advances an agenda of national protection and exclusion.

Centrist parties on both the Left and Right have little in the way of an answer, although centre-right parties increasingly seek to align themselves with the far right to save themselves from oblivion. In this sense, the collapse of the Republican Party in the face of the Donald Trump juggernaut is part of a global phenomenon. Due to the undemocratic two-party system in the US, Trump and the MAGA forces have emerged within the Republican Party as opposed to creating a new political force (as can be seen in countries such as Germany and Italy).

The far right uses the disasters created by authoritarian neoliberalism. If the democratic capitalist state cannot address social concerns, what, as the question goes, can be done? The answer seems to be further privatization and a tendency towards warlordism.[2]

Fascism? Let’s Clarify Terms

MAGA emerged as a right-wing populist movement largely out of the fusion of the Tea Party movement, Birthers, and Trump’s candidacy in 2016. Identifying itself as “the People” countering an “elite”, MAGA situated itself at war with intruders in the US experience. This had a particular focus on immigrants, but also progressive social movements. It always had a tinge of antisemitism in its approach toward so-called Eastern elites and cosmopolitan forces, although it was very pro-Israel, in part due to the major role of Christian Zionists, (which are deeply masked anti-Semites).

Always racist, MAGA was also very misogynistic and increasingly played up the role of Trump as the ‘bad boy,’ and the role of women as sexual objects even when they were engaging conservative or right-wing women! It was also a movement that liked to think of itself as “isolationist”, but was, instead, much more akin to the so-called isolationists prior to World War II, e.g., Charles Lindbergh and “America First”, who were comfortable with US engagement in Asia but did not want the US engaged in fighting fascism in Europe. For MAGA, isolationism was increasingly a misnomer for what was an expansion of George W. Bush’s unilateralism.

If there is one word to summarize MAGA, it would be revanchist. It is a movement that, at its core, is based on the politics of revenge and resentment. MAGA believes that the “relevant population” had something(s) stolen from it, and its objective is to retrieve what was “stolen” by whatever means necessary. In order to accomplish this, the reforms of the twentieth century must be overthrown.

MAGA during the first Trump term was mainly a right-wing populist movement, albeit containing fascist elements. It was not a conservative movement in a traditional sense, but saw itself as bringing about dramatic changes in the system, putting a block on progressive social movements.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election appear to have been a pivotal moment in shifting the MAGA movement towards fascism. A key element, which had been growing during the Trump administration, was irrationalism and disinformation. Combined with the Trump loyalty oath increasingly built into the Republican Party and MAGA was the growth of irrationalism. Trump took the lead in both publicly downplaying the pandemic as well as coming up with absurd responses even when he and his family were utilizing tried-and-true methods to fight the virus. This irrationalism, along with conspiracy theories, spread throughout MAGA and became part of a new ideological framework for the movement. Adding to this were conspiracy theories completely unrelated to COVID-19, e.g., alleged paedophilia among the Democratic Party establishment and references to the so-called “Deep State”.

As the 2020 election approached, Trump laid the foundation for a coup against what he was increasingly describing as an effort by Democrats to subvert the will of the supposed majority. Here is where the evidence points us toward an abandoning of any pretence of constitutional democracy — unless he wins. The 6 January 2021 coup attempt was only the icing on the cake in this move towards fascism.

What about the Capitalist Class?

Here is where the matter gets tricky. The capitalist classes in most advanced capitalist countries, at this moment, have not displayed interest in the termination of constitutional democracy. What they do seem concerned about is more anticipatory, i.e., an expectation that the convergence of the economic contradictions (crisis of neoliberalism and growing wealth polarization), the crisis of the legitimacy of the democratic capitalist state, and the environmental catastrophe will lend themselves to increasing instability, e.g., the Arab Spring democratic uprisings after 2010. As such, they have tended to be supportive of the growth of the neoliberal authoritarian state analogous to a preventive reaction strike against the masses.

Fascism, however, does not usually start as an initiative from the leading capitalist class sectors. As Poulantzas pointed out in his remarkable work Fascism and Dictatorship, fascism begins as a social movement, largely based within the middle strata. It is a radical right-wing movement that seeks to destroy democratic capitalism and insert a very different form of state structure and ideology on top of what it hopes will be a renovated capitalism.[3]

MAGA has shifted towards fascism in its objectives. It seeks to radically revise the US capitalist state, but is prepared to do that through control of the democratic capitalist state, at least for now. This is why the oxymoronic term “constitutional fascism” has a ring of truth to it. In other words, rather than taking power largely through extrajudicial pressure, e.g., Stormtroopers or Blackshirts, they are prepared to utilize the instruments of the democratic capitalist state while aiming to weaken, if not destroy those same instruments, including with the ever-present threat of extrajudicial violence.

Trump and MAGA wish to rewrite the rules of the US.

The US capitalist class appears to be divided regarding MAGA. There are those sections that remain aligned with the Democratic Party and are in open opposition. There are segments that are engaging in various forms of “anticipatory compliance”, as the term has been coined, whereby they are submitting to what they expect the Trump regime will demand. Then there are those who are in open alignment, e.g., Musk.

What they and other capitalist classes increasingly want is stability and order, irrespective of whether there is democracy. What MAGA appears to offer, at least at the time of this writing, is chaos, corruption, and uncertainty — a formula that the capitalist class rarely relishes. While a fascist state can be imposed upon a divided and weakened capitalist class, especially one — as in our case — where tech oligarchs have emerged (regardless if one believes them to be techno-feudalists or just super-capitalists), without a significant base within the capitalist class it is unlikely that “fascism-in-power” (as opposed to a singular “fascist-in-power”) is unlikely to succeed and institutionalize itself. More likely, we may be facing some form of civil war or other turbulence.

MAGA Objectives

MAGA has very specific objectives, as outlined in “Project 2025”. As of March 2025, they were being implemented. Contrary to both Trump-the-campaigner as well as ultra-leftists who denied that Project 2025 was anything more than campaign rhetoric, it has proven itself to be the outline of an authoritarian state based on a form of imperialist populism.

Trump and MAGA wish to rewrite the rules of the US. Their approach is not dissimilar from the Redeemers of the nineteenth century in that they appear to seek to use the veneer of democracy in order to subvert democracy. In this sense, we would conclude that their goal is a twenty-first-century fascism wrapped in the banner of imperialist populism, i.e., the building of a new bloc that supports an aggressive breaking of international rules by the US along with the creation of a neo-apartheid system within the US aimed at stabilizing the living standard for the relevant population to the extent to which this population unites behind the imperialist populist programme.

Imperialist populism? Trump’s 2025 Inaugural address contained all of the elements. Making America Great Again was clarified as the US obliterating the rules of international law (including the resumption of territorial expansion), the expulsion of immigrants (as a step towards ethnic cleansing), the destruction of anything approaching racial justice (in the name of “merit”), the reassertion of male supremacy, and the destruction of gender-nonconforming populations. All of this is tied together with a bow, becoming the US version of twenty-first-century fascism.

Sitting in the wings are the paramilitary formations whose usage has yet to be defined but have already offered their allegiance and service to the Trump administration in its attacks on migrants. We should anticipate the usage of right-wing paramilitaries should the Trump regime discover the existing repressive apparatus to be less than reliable.

What makes this different from the Redeemers speaks to the demographic and political shifts that have taken place since the nineteenth century. The post-1965 immigrant influx, plus the rise of social movements of traditionally marginalized peoples of colour, have altered the terrain. Though there are those within the far right who seek the wholesale annihilation of people of color, what has arisen is a different set of racial politics. Some call it the “multi-racial Right”, while we refer to it as the “neo-apartheid Right”, although it is the same phenomenon.

The Neo-Apartheid Right and the Limitation of Progressive Demographic Politics

In order to make sense of this strategy, one must appreciate the impact of the post-1965 immigration patterns to the US as well as the shift in the mainstream US narrative about race as a result of the social movements of people of color. The discourse of Jim Crow simply has no place.

But it is more than that. While the late Lee Atwater, campaign manager for George H.W. Bush in 1988, bluntly noted that Republicans could continue to be racist as long as they utilized non-explosive terminology, what we are seeing today is more than terminology. Don’t get us wrong: terminology remains important, and the attacks on so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are not attacks on programmes but efforts to erase the history and contributions of most people of color. Yet there is something new.

Growing sections of the political Right, including, but not limited to the far Right, are aware that shifting demographics means that, short of genocide — which some on the Right continue to advance — the population of the US will be increasingly diverse. Trump’s efforts at smashing immigrants and praying for more immigration from northern Europe (or Afrikaners from South Africa!) notwithstanding, the US will not return to the demographic era of President William McKinley. Given that, what sort of reconstruction — forgive the term — of racist and national oppression can be developed in US capitalism?

The answer is contained in apartheid. Although South African apartheid was largely based on the US experience with Jim Crow, what the Afrikaners introduced was somewhat akin to the Spanish system of Las Castas in Latin America, albeit much less porous. For the Afrikaners, the Europeans were the whites who were on top of the racial pyramid. Beneath them, until reaching the bottom, were the Indians/South Asians, the so-called Coloureds, and finally the Natives/Blacks. The apartheid system created a specific set of conditions and expectations for each group and even created a category of “honorary whites”, which the Afrikaners used with the Japanese, who served as trading partners. Those who served the apartheid system had a place and could receive rewards.

At present, there is growing widespread resistance to MAGA in the absence of overall coordination — something that must be altered in order to be more successful.

Within the US Right, a similar neo-apartheid framework has emerged. Certainly using racial codes, they nevertheless create a space for non-whites including, in some cases, offering the possibility of becoming white, such as to elements of South Americans and some Asians. The price of admission, however, is that these populations cannot challenge white supremacy. Within this sphere, a special place has emerged for what has come to be known as the “Hindu Right”. Tulsi Gabbard, the new Director of Intelligence, is a case in point, although examining this particular tendency goes beyond the scope of this essay.

In effect, the political Right seeks to alter the framework of social control and oppression within the US without in any way eliminating racist and national oppression. It is reorganizing it, creating a place for certain populations where the fact of their brownness or non-Christianness becomes a secondary point with regard to their alignment with white supremacist capitalism.

The implications of this new alignment are profound. For years, segments of the Left and progressive movement have longed for a mid-twenty-first century when the anticipated demographic shift is to take place in the US, meaning that it is no longer majority white. The assumption by many is that after such a turning point, the politics of the US itself will shift in a more progressive direction, with the naive assumption that any progressive implications of such a shift cannot be reversed. The neo-apartheid framework offers a very different future. It is seeking to build an alignment based on a particular representation of race (and specifically a faux race blindness) while at the same time including a fierce defence of capitalism, male supremacy, and, more often than not, Islamophobia.

The Alternative

The immediate need for an antifascist front or a broad front opposing the far right should be obvious. With the exception of the ultra-left, there is partial recognition of this need, although often accompanied by feelings of unease when one gets into the details.

The effort must be undertaken to block the fascists through resistance and non-cooperation, defence of democratic rights, and a proactive fight for consistent democracy. At present, there is growing widespread resistance to MAGA in the absence of overall coordination — something that must be altered in order to be more successful.

It is the proactive fight that haunts much of the Left and the progressive movement. The French New Popular Front formed in 2024 offers an answer through the combination of opposition to the far right while simultaneously advancing a proactive, progressive programme identifying what, concretely, constitutes the makings of consistent democracy. For the two of us, it is summarized in the notion of the Third Reconstruction.

The first Reconstruction refers to the period of 1865–1877 discussed earlier in this essay. The “Second Reconstruction” is a term that generally refers to the period of 1954–early 1970s/1980, i.e., the period of heightened struggle and victories by progressive social movements, most particularly those of color, sparked by the African American freedom struggle and women’s movements. The period since 1980 has been a period of setbacks along with major defensive battles by progressive forces. In some respects, one can refer to it as an interregnum, or a period between two eras.

The Third Reconstruction builds on the history of “abolition democracy”, the framework of the nineteenth-century Abolitionist movement that helped to guide the original Reconstruction. But it goes well beyond that, addressing some of the limitations of the original Reconstruction.

Success in building the Third Reconstruction will be success in politically neutralizing the proponents of twenty-first-century fascism.

The opposition to MAGA and fascism necessitates a critique of actually existing capitalism as it is manifested in the US. It must be summarized in a basic and popular programme that can guide the Left in seeking to lead the antifascist front. It will not necessarily be the program of the united front since, in order to win and defeat MAGA, our front must be very, very broad. It must address the environmental catastrophe and the economic crises (of overproduction and overaccumulation), but must not shy away from clarity on opposition to various forms of oppression targeting specific populations and mechanisms of social control. The programme for the Third Reconstruction becomes a programme for consistent democracy, for the expansion of democracy including matters such as:

• Wealth redistribution
• Demilitarization
• Overturning fossil fuels
• Protection of the land and of endangered species
• Assistance to populations in the global South which were victims of colonialism, neocolonialism, and environmental disaster
• Planned land use and creation of affordable housing
• Healthcare for all
• Repairing the damages brought about by racism and national oppression
• Supporting the United Nations principles on peaceful coexistence
• Defence of women and their right to control their own bodies
• Defence of the right of individuals to be free of governmental decrees on their identity
• Free and fair elections for political office and the elimination of contributions by businesses toward elections
• The right of workers to organize and join unions without any interference or involvement by employers

The Third Reconstruction, then, becomes a step towards power for subaltern classes. Success in building the Third Reconstruction will be success in politically neutralizing the proponents of twenty-first-century fascism. It can also become a form of transition to a new socialism.

This article first appeared in LuXemburg.
 

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[1] See Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyon’s Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.

[2] Right-wing organizations — often armed — have shown up after disasters in various parts of the US, in some cases trying to chase away legitimate authorities who are there to offer relief.

[3] Fascist movements are not, however, fully consolidated around capitalism. In some cases, they advance a semi-feudalist anti-capitalism or, as in the case of the Strasser brothers in the Nazi Party, a strange amalgam of socialism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and racism. Fascism in power advances capitalist objectives.

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