No, MAGA Republicans do not support ‘semi-fascism’

Supporters of then-President Donald Trump gather at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., for a rally on Jan. 5, 2021. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

President Biden’s claim that the MAGA philosophy is “semi-fascism” has understandably outraged Republicans. Biden is no stranger to fevered bloviation. The human gaffe machine frequently engages in rhetorical hyper-exaggeration. His calumny is nonetheless inaccurate and inflammatory.

Classic 20th-century fascism was a political philosophy that comprehensively denounced modern liberal democracy. Fascists believed that multiparty democracy weakened the nation, and that competitive capitalism was wasteful and exploitative. Their alternative was a one-party state that guided the economy through regulation and sector-based accords between labor and business.

Fascism’s exact form differed among its practitioners — taking a more religious tone in Spain and Portugal, and a warlike, secular tone in Nazi Germany and Italy. But the system’s pillars — one-party rule, secret police and a state-driven economy — were shared by all.

Compare this to the MAGA philosophy. MAGA politicians usually argue that America’s liberal tradition is under attack and needs to be saved, not that it is the root of all evil. They tend to attack most expansion of government regulation and spending as “socialism.” That’s the polar opposite of fascism, not its kissing cousin.

Democrats might point to MAGA world’s opposition to illegal immigration and its invocation of American nationalism as having fascist roots. Really? Nationalism was Woodrow Wilson’s core principle at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. He argued that each nation deserved its own state, an argument that is at the heart of the Russian-Ukrainian war. If nationalism per se is fascist, then the modern order based on nation-states is also fascist. That is patently ridiculous.

Nor is an insistence on immigration controls inherently fascist. If immigration control is fascist, then the center-left leaders of many successful democracies are also fascist. That’s absurd. Denmark’s Social Democrats won the last election in that country after they embraced a strong immigration policy that some on the left have criticized as prejudicial toward Muslims. Canada has strict controls on immigration, prioritizing the educated and the wealthy over others. Australia turns away asylum seekers who arrive by boat, sending them offshore to have their claims processed rather than let them roam free, as Biden has done here.

Even the attempt to keep Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6 — a refusal “to accept the will of the people” is the principal objection Biden appears to be leveling at MAGA Republicans — does not justify Biden’s use of the inflammatory label “semi-fascism.” Yes, attacks on elections are heinous and autocratic but they aren’t necessarily fascist.

There is a modern state that is distinctly fascist in ideology and organization: China. It’s ruled by a Communist Party, but that party has shifted its ideology to one that Italian fascist strongman Benito Mussolini — himself a onetime socialist — would admire.

Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, China emphasizes its own national identity over an international fellowship of proletarians. Like European fascists, it justifies its aggression as merely attempts to recover lost territory: Taiwan and Hong Kong are the Chinese equivalents of the Sudetenland. The economy is nominally private but actually subject to strong state control and intervention. And China’s political system presents a clear ideological challenge to Western democracy, extolling a one-party “harmonious nation” over freedom’s cacophony. If there is to be Fourth Reich, its capital will be Beijing, not Mar-a-Lago.

This isn’t the first time Biden has resorted to fabulation and excess. He told a Black audience in 2012 that Republicans would “put y’all back in chains.” His characterization of Georgia’s 2021 voting law as “Jim Crow in the 21st century” was a blatant fantasy and a slight on the real horrors Jim Crow created. He apparently feels the need to incite and enrage when he feels threatened. So much for the man who says he wants to heal the nation.

Exaggerated rhetoric is no stranger to politics. Even statesmen such as Winston Churchill fell prey to temptation. He likened the center-left Labour Party’s 1945 election program to that of the Nazis he had just defeated, claiming that Labour’s victory would inevitably give rise to “some form of Gestapo.” Labour was outraged and fought back, beating Churchill’s Conservatives decisively.

That’s what Republicans should do today: Fight Biden’s fire and fury with calm determination.

Fans of the Star Wars film saga know that anger, fear and hate lead to the Dark Side, not national renewal. If the president keeps this up, perhaps a new nickname will replace “Uncle Joe”: Darth Biden.