I wandered into r/MeidasTouch not to pick a fight but to test a temperature. I commented gently—“I hope you’ve read all of Umberto Eco. There’s more to it than a meme.” Downvoted instantly. Not for being rude, but for implying the sacred checklist might require context.
Then I added:
“Trump isn’t more fascist than any other U.S. President except maybe Carter. You don’t become a global hegemon by being a global sweetiepie.”
Worse. The room got colder. The thread moved on. I wasn’t debated—I was deleted.
And to be fair, I understand. In emotionally charged digital spaces, nuance sounds like derailment. Skepticism reads like betrayal. But we’re not going to outsmart authoritarianism with mood boards. And we won’t spot fascism by reciting Eco’s 14 points like a protection spell.
The Meme-ification of Memory
Fascism used to be described in paragraphs. Now it’s reduced to bullet points and Canva slides. Eco warned us that Ur-Fascism comes dressed in new clothes—subtle, ambient, ordinary. But online, fascism has become a mood: anything strong, anything loud, anything male, anything we already dislike.
Anti-fascism itself has become aestheticized. Keffiyehs drop-shipped from AliExpress, curated quote threads, resistance as a curated identity—not a lived one. We’ve replaced solidarity with stylization.
Arendt warned us that evil wasn’t always dramatic. Often, it came banal, clerical, procedural. That’s why the fascism we most fear rarely looks like a dictator in uniform. It looks like bureaucracy on autopilot.
Trump Is a Grotesque Mirror
Trump didn’t invent this system. He’s just the only one tacky enough not to hide it.
What offends most liberals about Trump isn’t his policies—it’s his presentation. His vulgarity. His refusal to use poetry as camouflage. The same surveillance, the same drone strikes, the same erosions of liberty happen under well-dressed technocrats. But they do it with theater, with branding, with a preamble.
Trump didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous.
Fascism, American-Style
Let’s tell the truth: if fascism means racial hierarchy, authoritarian policing, corporate-government fusion, and permanent war powers, then America wasn’t threatened by fascism—it helped invent it.
Our innovations in genocide, eugenics, and propaganda predated Germany. Hitler admired our reservation system. Nazi jurists studied Jim Crow. IBM ran census logistics. Our banality was their blueprint.
Germany’s sin was failing at fascism internationally. They invaded neighbors. We absorbed them through economics, debt, and bases.
We didn’t lose a war. We built a network. We’re still running it.
Jimmy Carter vs. the Machine
I once shook Carter’s hand on a Delta flight. No entourage. No private jet. Just a man walking the aisle, thanking passengers. That wasn’t theater. That was exemplarism—leadership by humility, not domination.
That gesture matters more now because our political class speaks in brands and governs in vibes. Carter represented a pause between empires. A soft-spoken anomaly before the algorithm took over.
Trump’s Et Tu Moment
In 2016, Trump was surprised. Not by power—but by resistance. The institutions he expected to co-opt—media, NGOs, bureaucracies—recoiled. The antibodies activated.
Now? He’s not flinching. He’s sprinting. Dagwood-sandwiching every appointment, executive order, social proof, and narrative he can. Stacking it all high before the community organizers wake up, before Canva drops another resistance pack, before Radical Chic revs up the donor base.
He knows now: it’s not what you do. It’s how it looks when you do it.
Appendix A: A More Charitable Liberal View
Trump glorifies a mythic past, uses scapegoats, undermines institutions, threatens journalists, incites violence. He doesn’t govern—he antagonizes. He doesn’t flirt with fascism—he openly dog-whistles it.
Unlike Bush or Obama, Trump doesn’t drape empire in euphemism. He embraces it, makes it personal, turns it into grievance-fueled spectacle.
In this view, Trump is worse not because of what he does—but because of how many are ready to follow him into the next chapter.
That’s fair. But also incomplete.
Appendix B: Eco’s 14 Signs (Condensed)
Cult of tradition
Rejection of modernism
Action for action’s sake
Disagreement is treason
Fear of difference
Appeal to frustrated middle class
Obsession with plots
Enemies as strong and weak
Pacifism is collusion
Contempt for the weak
Anti-intellectualism
Machismo
Selective populism
Debasement of language
The more you check, the closer you are. Eco didn’t say fascism returns with a uniform. Sometimes it comes in khakis and a lanyard.
Appendix C: Fact & BS Check
Claim: America is fascist.
Fact Check: ❌ False—but functionally flirtatious. Empire maintained through normalized violence and myth.
Claim: Trump is the most fascist president.
Fact Check: ❓ Unclear. He’s the most visible fascistic aesthetic. But others had more power and fewer headlines.
Claim: Naomi Wolf warned us.
Fact Check: ✅ True. Her End of America is required reading, even if she’s since been disowned by the algorithm.
Claim: Carter was exemplarist.
Fact Check: ✅ Absolutely. The last president who governed more like a citizen than a brand.
FAQ
Q: Are you defending Trump?
A: No. I’m indicting the conditions that made him legible.
Q: So America is doomed?
A: Not if we start naming the machine, not just the mascot.
Q: What should we do?
A: Stop recycling fascism slides and start dismantling the structures that make them relevant.
Chris Abraham is a digital strategist and cultural critic who listens to Morrissey, worships Lush, and once slow-danced alone to The Breeders in a dorm room. He has been downvoted across three continents and still believes Jimmy Carter was right.
Published on Substack. Uninvited, as always.
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