Fascism Is a Weak Person’s Idea of Strength

Donald Trump has managed to upend the foreign policy consensus that has existed for the last 80 years in the United States. Decades-old alliances are on the verge of collapse. Trump is making erratic claims that he will create a resort in Gaza after ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. The country’s trade relationships have been overturned, effectively bringing an end to decades of consensus around free trade.

The Trump administration’s latest topsy-turvy foreign policy move has been Trump’s decision to grant white South Africans “refugee” status. The idea that they are refugees is a farce: White South Africans are overwhelmingly well-off, safe, and welcome to remain in their home country. Trump’s move is an attempt to pander to white racists who have been perpetuating a far-right conspiracy theory that a “white farmer is being killed every five days” has been unfolding for years in South Africa. The first flight out of the country consisted of 60 people, out of a total population of 4.5 million South Africans. But coming at a time when the United States is expelling tens of thousands of people while shutting the doors to actual refugees is ghoulish and a complete reversal of decades of U.S. policy.

For voters and pundits alike, Trump is a blank slate onto whom they can project whatever policies they want, including  foreign policy. Some have argued that Trump is an isolationist, in part because he trumpets the motto “America First”—coined by President Woodrow Wilson, but used by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s—or even a closet anti-militarist. Trump likes to position himself as “unpredictable” in order to keep others on their toes. Others have written off Trump’s interest in to foreign policy, believing that he assumes the adults in the room will take care of things, like the so-called “axis of adults” from his first administration.

Of course, his Cabinet comprises a peanut gallery of Fox’s B- and C-list personalities, so  there are no adults in the room. And Trump has shown us that he is very invested in foreign policy—it offers a way for him to feel important and powerful. It’s also a way for him to make money and receive gifts like Qatar’s $400 million plane.

In truth, Trump’s foreign policy isn’t so complicated. It is shaped by his own idea of fascism—latent and ill-conceived, even by the standards of a fascist. He imagines fascism makes him appear strong, especially amid his deep-seated belief that our country is very weak. And that weakness, he believes, comes from racial, cultural, and gender sexual diversity, from which he feels threatened, and yearns for a mythical golden era of the nation, to which he is eager to return, to “make America great again.” Trump believes that any kind of international alliance or cooperation is really a sign of weakness: Power is when other countries supplicate themselves, not when they work together. In his mind, the United States was unfettered then, it could do what it wanted when it wanted to, whether that was invading a Latin American country or protecting its industries. (This consensus never existed in the 19th century, but historical literacy is not Trump’s forte).

Trump is nostalgic not for a heyday of global fascism, but for that golden age, which he imagines was during the 19th century. Yet his pursuit, aspirational though it is, easily fits this fascist mold. What, to his mind, made it great? Tariffs and territorial expansion. The presidents he talks about most are the least popular: William McKinley and James K. Polk. Why? They added territory to the United States. Trump even went so far as to add Polk’s portrait to the Oval Office, a seemingly strange move given that Polk is one of the more obscure U.S. presidents.

But Trump is obsessed with their outcomes, not their actual statesmanship. He wants to imitate their leadership, but has no idea how to do so. President Polk was interested in adding the West Coast to the United States because he saw it as a way for the country to dominate Pacific trade, especially with China. Whatever the morality of those decisions—Polk provoked a war of conquest with Mexico that was in part to expand the power of slaveholding states—his goals were grounded in rational self-interest. Trump, by contrast, looks at Canada and Greenland and sees two very big countries—to the mind of a real estate developer, that’s the ticket. Everything he wants there, whether it’s bases or mining access can be gotten diplomatically—he just doesn’t want to do that, because true strength means just taking them. 

Trump blusters much the way that Polk did. The latter threatened war with Britain by demanding “54’40” or Fight!,” referring to the boundary that was then Russian-controlled Alaska. But Polk’s bluster was a calculated bluff, relying on the fact that Britain did not go to war over a sparsely populated area it barely controlled, nor did he want to fight a war with Britain at the same time as Mexico. So both parties had an incentive, and actual goals, to negotiate. Trump apes that same belligerence, but his only goal is to appear  tough. Take for example the initial tariffs he levied against Canada and Mexico, all predicated on those countries allowing an “invasion” of migrants and fentanyl. There is no point in negotiating because his only objective is to start, and win, a fight,  and any concession would be a sign of weakness.  

Another factor that motivates Trump’s actions is his innumerable grievances, which explains his fixation on the Panama Canal—a U.S. territory until 1977. U.S. control over the canal had become an issue in Panama that led to resentment and riots, so Jimmy Carter negotiated a treaty that handed over control of the canal to Panama by the year 2000.  He’s not alone in this: in 2004, the Texas GOP’s policy platform included demands for the U.S. to “take back” the Panama Canal. In their minds, a strong United States built the canal, and a weak American president—Jimmy Carter—gave it away. They repeatedly bring it up as a reminder to right a past wrong.

So the U.S.’s admission of these Afrikaners has to be seen in a context of creating a siege mentality with the rest of the world: Us vs. Them. South Africa was home to a deeply entrenched form of systematic white supremacy known as “apartheid” that lasted until 1994—the white minority known as Afrikaners held political power as well as most of the country’s wealth. Opposition to apartheid became one of the major human rights movements of the 20th century. By building up the myth that these white Africans, who for so long were the oppressors in South Africa, are now the oppressed, suggests that all multiracial democracy is inherently threatening. At the heart of Trump’s belief that whites are being persecuted is a law in South Africa that allows land to be expropriated by the government. No land has been taken yet, but white Afrikaners still control 70 percent of the country’s land and to white racists the message is clear: you will have what is yours taken from you. It casts the U.S. as a bastion of whiteness in opposition to almost everywhere else. 

Trump’s disdain for international alliances, free trade, and human rights is all rooted in this fear of being perceived as weak, because he believes cooperation and responsibility is tantamount to dependency. This is a common autocratic attitude, the belief that relying on other powers for trade, whether it’s for food, minerals, energy or anything else is a point of vulnerability. It’s better to be self-sufficient even if it’s much less efficient, because it allows the autocrat to centralize their control or influence over the economy. It also tends to provoke conflict, because in order to become fully self-sufficient you need access to just about everything. Hitler needed all of that territory in Eastern Europe so that Germany could grow all the food it needed, and Imperial Japan needed access to metals and oil. That need for self-sufficiency became a justification for war, which ultimately led to their downfall. Similarly, alliances such as NATO or organizations such as the UN simply exist to hamper the U.S., and so Trump will do everything he can to shake them off.

But Trump’s preoccupation with projecting strength makes him relatively easy to beat in any diplomatic context. He’s rapidly losing interest in Ukraine because he recognizes that he can’t actually compel either side to give everything up and stop fighting. Based on recent reports, he wants to wash his hands of the whole thing and walk away. Why? His failure to negotiate a ceasefire exposes his lack of power and influence with Putin. And so Trump has pushed through a minerals deal that is much weaker than his bluster suggested. Things could still change, but Zelenskyy appears to have come out ahead just months after Trump tried to bully him in the White House. Trump wants quick and easy victories, and when he fails to nail them down, he declares he’s won anyway, no matter how bad the deal is.

This isn’t to say that he will always shy away from a real conflict. For one thing, if he bluffs enough and manages to pull off one of his antics, eventually he’ll assume that he always will get away with it. Just as Hitler did: After getting away with remilitarizing the Rhineland and annexing Czechoslovakia, he simply refused to believe that Britain and France would go to war over Poland in 1939. And while Trump will try to avoid any kind of serious military conflict, one can easily imagine him picking a fight with a weaker opponent only to get stuck in a quagmire. Once there, leaving would become too embarrassing to contemplate. 

For foreign leaders, the message is clear: Yield as little as possible to his initial threats, and wait for him to look for an off-ramp. He’ll get bored or begin to fear some of the consequences of his actions and look to quietly back down. For the rest of us, it’s trickier. Ordinary Americans have little control over foreign policy. Control over it has been thoroughly centralized within the executive branch. Even if Congress hadn’t abrogated control over foreign policy, a Republican House and Senate are not going to pick a fight with Trump.

The best thing that we Americans can do is to build an aggressive peace movement. We can’t afford to be reactive and wait for a crisis before organizing, such as the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. I’ve written elsewhere about lessons we can draw in building a national peace movement, extending it into more rural areas where the military has a very pronounced presence—and we need to start now. Where Congress or state-level Democrats can be most effective is in raising up issues that the rest of us can rally around, and call attention. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s proposed boycott of El Salvador is one example. Openly discussing and working with our estranged allies is another approach.

Fascism is ultimately a mentality of perceived weakness. By finding ways to convince Trump that his actions will make him and the country weaker, he can be constrained and ultimately driven out of office.