Kenneth Glad
The current political climate in the United States is being viewed through the lens of history. The warning centers on rhetoric, institutions and recurring patterns that scholars have associated with fascist movements and democratic breakdown.
In a recent YouTube video, Dutch historian Rutger Bregman argues that America’s political crisis has reached a point where the word “fascism” can no longer be avoided.
Bregman says the term remains difficult to use because it is inseparable, for many people, from the Holocaust, Nazi Germany and the murder of six million Jews.
That caution, he says, is understandable. But in his view, the fear of overstating the danger can become its own risk if it prevents people from recognizing a political pattern as it develops.
The comparison is still highly contested, especially among those who believe the word should be reserved for the regimes of 20th-century Europe. Bregman frames his case as a historical warning.
Warning signs
A central reference point is Robert Paxton, the American historian known for his work on fascism. Paxton had long been wary of applying the label to Trumpism, but reconsidered after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Paxton said in an interview that the Capitol attack “removes my objection to the fascist label.” His shift carried weight because he had spent decades urging care with the term.
Fascism, in Bregman’s reading, is not a single rigid formula. It is a pattern that can take different national forms while keeping recognizable habits of power.
Those habits include telling supporters that the country has been robbed of its greatness, that internal enemies are to blame, and that ordinary democratic procedures are too weak to repair the damage. Bregman places Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan within that tradition.
Democracy under strain
The Dutch historian also points to revenge politics, disdain for perceived weakness, hostility toward immigrants and political opponents, and the portrayal of one leader as uniquely able to save the nation.
He cites Trump’s statements “I am your retribution” and “I alone can fix it” as examples of that political style.
His warning is not limited to campaign language. He also focuses on what happens when a movement with those instincts gets close to state power or holds it.
In his account, pressure on civil servants, attacks on universities and journalists, loyalty demands and the weakening of independent institutions are part of the same danger. They show how a democracy can be hollowed out while many of its formal structures remain in place.
To explain that process, Bregman refers to Paxton’s essay “The Five Stages of Fascism.”
Paxton’s framework treats fascism not only as an ideology, but as a sequence in which grievance politics can become a movement, enter government and then reshape the state.
Narrow window
Bregman argues that the United States is now in a dangerous phase of that sequence.
His warning is not simply that Trump has used extreme language, but that the rhetoric, institutions, elite alliances and political violence are beginning to reinforce one another.
He says that recognizing the pattern should push opponents of authoritarian politics toward broad coalitions, election work and fewer internal purity tests.
The argument will remain disputed. But Bregman’s message is that outrage is not a strategy. The pattern, he argues, has to be recognized early enough for democratic opponents to organize against it.
Sources: Rutger Bregman video on YouTube, Robert Paxton – The Five Stages of Fascism.
