Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here?: Perspectives on Fascism and America" (W. W. Norton, 2024)
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Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Caleb Zakarin, editor of the New Books Network. Today I'm speaking with Daniel Stymons Jenkins about the new edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism in America. Danny is assistant professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University and the steward of an interview series for The Nation magazine. Did It Happen Here? presents a snapshot of the fascism debate being waged on American campuses, in magazines, and on social media.

The most recent iteration of the fascism debate began, as with many debates about the state of American politics, with the first election of Donald Trump. Since his first term in 2016, speculation about the true nature of Trumpism has generated countless think pieces and books. Did It Happen Here? is the definitive summary of the major scholarly views on whether fascism has come to America. As Danny puts it, the fascism debate is a Rorschach test for understanding what is truly ailing American society.

the latest election results. I'm sure we will have lots to discuss. Danny, thanks for joining me today on the New Books Network. I appreciate you having me. Of course. I think we've been having a lot of conversations about this topic, but just in general about intellectual history, about politics, about ideas, about basketball for quite some time. So it's fun to actually get a call, get a conversation on the record

So really, really glad to have you on. But before talking about the book and your work, I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. Yeah, I mean, as it relates to the book, my training's in modern European intellectual and political history. And so typically, in terms of training, that spans the period from the French Revolution to...

the end of the Cold War, and I particularly focus on the interwar period in Europe, so the 1920s and 30s, up until even further or beyond the Cold War, up until even recent history as demonstrated in this book. So, you know, part of my interest as a scholar is using history to understand the present, but also examining some of the perils in doing that.

Um, which is what this debate, um, and in major ways, um, kind of hinges on that historical comparisons. So for this particular topic, you've taken a pretty interesting approach with this book, uh, going and looking at the different, different think pieces and essays and articles that have been written on this topic. So how did the idea for the book come to you and how did you ultimately end up putting it together?

So I had not written anything on this topic prior to the publication of this book. He was basically observing it happen on Twitter primarily, where the debates were quite at times bracing and exhilarating intellectually to see people go back and forth who were leading

on their fields and to be having these dialogues online. And I've curated a lot of forums and I've edited two other books and I'm an editor at Modern Intellectual History where I've also done a number of special issues. And I was surprised that no one had gathered together all the pieces of this debate and put them together in a single volume. Um,

And one of the reasons why I think that is, is because online publications these days make something like that project almost obsolete in the eyes of many. But given the timeliness of the theme and the topic, it seems as though a publisher was willing to take the risk of investing in something like this.

And, um, I, I, you know, pitch the idea to an editor at Norton books and they, they absolutely loved it. And so in other words, it was, it was really, um, the way that I conceived it was as a resource for the classroom for teaching. As I mentioned, I am interested in thinking about, uh, historical comparisons using history to understand the present, um,

And I teach a class on that. I taught a class at Yale. I taught a class on that at Dartmouth. And now I've taught it a couple of times at Wesleyan University, which is my home university. And so it was in that spirit that I,

Less motivated even by, I'd say, peer academics and more by trying to provide students with resources for understanding the world in which they live. I think part of it was also, in light of that, driven by the kind of crisis of the profession of history right now in terms of the profession of history departments, lower enrollments, fewer people are getting hired.

Um, and trying to maybe offer classes and subjects that are more of interest to students. Um, and so that was what motivated it. It wasn't motivated by my own personal agenda or it wasn't motivated by any kind of crusade that I was trying to carry out. I believe it's a fair balance book. Each side is, um, evenly represented. Um,

So it was primarily pedagogical for pedagogical purposes. It came to something later afterwards. We can talk about that after this series of debates emerged about the book. But initially, that was the reason why I decided to do it. I'm curious in your teaching of these classes that take on these sorts of questions about the relevance of history and

You know, your sense of what students seem to think or what the kind of natural biases that a person might bring to this question of fascism in today's politics or fascism in American history. What are some of the biases that people tend to bring you see?

Well, I think what's interesting about just the idea of fascism is that it's not inherently, it's not self-evident what this term means. And even though I think my students have certain prejudices or presuppositions, I think initially they themselves are struggling to grapple with what it entails. I think the immediate response

perception is that they that they have in their minds at least is is nazi germany all right right um and so um you know i teach print i teach prima you know predominantly students who have a liberal progressive orientation not everyone is in agreement on whether this idea of fascism is

is applicable to the current moment. And I think for those who are involved in the debate, there are certain kinds of class presuppositions often or cultural presuppositions

But because the term is a little bit hard to define, I wouldn't even say a little bit. I think it is hard to define. Um, I think that mitigates some of the biases because the students are just struggling to grasp what the term term actually is. Um,

it's a very emotive word, fascism. It's one of these words that's used to delegitimate entirely one's political opponent. So in that sense, it's possible that students approach the word in that way, not knowing its history, not knowing the various aspects of what typically is associated with its definition. Yeah.

But once there is more of an attempt to kind of actually parse the term, I think that's when some of those biases could be maybe mitigated a little bit just because it ends up becoming something much more complex than I think the student originally figured, which again I think is influenced by

Uh, there, you know, just the common images you'd see in the history channel of the Nazis marching through the streets. Um, and then with that in mind, denouncing, um, you know, anything that you believe has something to do with those images or that, that, that sensibility. I find the students are pretty open-minded about, um,

these things more than, more than the people that are kind of leading the debate. Right. Yeah. Obviously it's, it's such a loaded term. So I, I think it's, uh, it's best in many ways to, to start, uh,

with where you start really in the book, which is by looking at some of these classic texts on fascism. So part one, you include writings by Hannah Arendt, Raymond Aron, and others. Could you introduce some of these texts, how you decided on them, and what are some of the ideas about fascism that they put forward? Yeah, I mean, it was the editor's suggestion to include some classical text, if you will,

by leading thinkers of fascism or leading intellectuals at the time who offered their commentary about fascism. And so I tried to have a balanced perspective. There's a text by Trotsky, so one that represented the Marxist perspective. There's a text by Angela Davis, one that represented kind of a black radical perspective, a text by Raymond Aron, one that represented kind of a theorist of totalitarianism.

as well as Hannah Arendt, and of course Reinhold Niebuhr, kind of Cold War liberal perspective. And so essentially, you know, what these texts are trying to do is to give readers a different understanding of fascism based on the philosophy, if you will, or the political commitments of the people writing those chapters.

So they stress different things. So with the Trotsky text, he's suspicious of the idea of there being a veritable fascist movement in the United States because certain economic processes or states have not been reached. There really isn't a mass workers' movement in the United States at the level of which he seats all in Europe to be able to frame things in that particular way.

With Arendt, the interesting thing is, you know, she's being relied on right now by a lot of people to kind of explain Trumpism, right? Some of her works on the deal with totalitarianism and so forth.

its leaders as gangsters and liars and deceivers and a warping of truth, really. But what in this text I tried to focus on instead of, you know, my view is that

she's being misread. Um, one of the things I try to do is rely on a short text of hers that really sees fascism as a form of imperialism and as a form of internationalism, which is rather different than what we kind of are seeing today with a lot of things we associate with fascism, which is more, um,

uh, critical of internationalism, critical of the EU, critical of NATO, um, um, more drawing within instead of expanding without, um, from, you know, outside. Um, so yeah, it was just, you know, these, these texts are just meant to give readers a flavor for, um, um,

house and key thinkers understood fascism you know angela davis and the piece that's in the book associated fascism with um the high percentage of incarceration of african-americans right um which she likened to homeless concentration camps so you know um but i mean i think what

In other words, what they reveal at the same time is that this is a floating signifier, this term, in many ways. It can be defined, but there's not a one-line definition available. We can associate fascism with having certain features. It's anti-Marxist, anti-Bolshevik, it's anti-liberal. Fascism often is...

That has a high value for violence, often places its trust in authoritarian charismatic leaders. It seems as though the fascist movements in Europe were inseparable from the fallout of World War I.

That seems to be a crucial historical context. These are mass movements. And also, as I mentioned, they all seem to be held in on expansion. Italy expanding in Africa, Germany expanding into Eastern Europe, and Hitler even had machinations to create a new world order and conquer the world. So...

And that kind of in some ways raises a lot of questions about or gets us into the fascism debate insofar as some of these things I just described map onto what we see today and then some of them don't or not as well. One of the topics that is discussed in the book is the historical nature of fascism in the United States and whether or not the United States

has ever been fascist, or just the ways in which certain

organizations like the Ku Klux Klan or other thinkers in the United States, you know, having some influence on fascism that would emerge in Europe. Can you talk a little bit about this historical, the historical roots of fascism in the United States, what you make of some of these arguments, what some of the writers put forth in the book? Yeah, so, I mean, this term fascism is something that we associate with fascism

Mussolini in Europe. This was a term that, I mean, it has deep, long origins, but this is the term that he used to describe his political movement. And so it didn't really exist in the way that Mussolini used it in the United States. And so when political scientists or historians try to look at the nature of fascism, what they'll do is come up with analytical definitions and they'll kind of

say there are key, there, there, there are some key distinctive with fascism, right? And I just mentioned some of those things, anti-Bolshevik, anti-Bolshevik, um, you know, um, anti-liberal, um,

strong embrace of hierarchy, charismatic dictatorship. And so once they kind of come up with a definition, they're then able to, mass movement is another one, they're then able to say, well, are there other movements around this time where we see similar features? And for that reason, some have suggested that there have been in the United States fascist movements. Robert Paxson in his book,

I believe it's the anatomy of fascism, comes up with just that very thing. He comes up with kind of a multi-tiered understanding of what fascism entails and then says that the second KKK demonstrated many of these features, right? Especially terrorism, terrorizing.

African-Americans. And so that's one way that some get at a kind of, if you will, indigenous fascist tradition in the United States. Again, the term itself isn't indigenous. So the question is, why are we using it when there are other words that we can use that are more organic?

But then what ends up happening is in the 30s, there are Nazi movements or the Nazis inspire movements in the United States. Um,

When Trump went to Madison Square Garden recently, a lot of people were worried because in the late 1930s, there was a major Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. And these were essentially American Nazis, right? The German-American Bund. And so what a scholar like Sarah Churchwell will do, or Jason Stanley, or many others who...

are promoting the idea that America has long had a fascist tradition. Now it's just what we're seeing is just the fringe become mainstreamed. There's a look at these, these, these, these,

these fascist movements. You know, we can associate it with things like the Aryan Nation. We can associate it with some people who are now thinking that, you know, Christian Reconstruction is fascist. This was a group that gave birth, I think, to Timothy McVeigh. There are a lot of white extremist supremacist groups that emerged out of

The Vietnam War, Kathleen Ballou's book Bring the War Home talks about this, where essentially you get these guys who no longer identify with their country. When they return, they're rejected. They see also advances of minorities and they grow resentful and start white supremacist communities, all the things that we associate this with.

going to gun ranges, you know, being part of kind of clandestine groups. And so that's essentially the argument, that these have been there for 100 years, and Trump, through dog whistling and through his, you know, alternative ways, has appealed to them. And then Trump himself,

according to this view also demonstrates is a fascist, right? There are reasons to be critical. First of all, before the criticism of this, no one in the fascism debate as far as I am aware is denying that there are fascists in the United States. Clearly there are. And we did see with January 6th and with

Like with Baloo's book, we do see kind of militia, paramilitary groups that at some small local levels are popping up. And then, of course, on January 6th, this was the major manifest, right? Not everyone there was associated with those groups, but some were.

And so that, you know, no one is denying that these groups exist. The question is, is how significant they are. As I mentioned, fascism was mass movement in Europe, although Hitler never had it when he was elected to the chancellorship in 1933 and when the Germans received a lot of support.

seats in the Reichstag in 1930, they never had the majority support of the German people, at least early on. But they did have a, you know, we're talking 30%, a little bit more than that. They did have like millions backing them, taking to the streets, right? Do we see something like that today? Mass movement?

of people who are militarized. That's the essential thing, militarized citizens, um, taken to the streets. Um, and that's where some say, well, we're not there, right? That's not, that's not exactly what we're seeing. Uh, we did see January 6th, um,

Uh, that, that would need to be what you saw on January 6th would need to be much more on a mass scale in order for it to resemble something like the fascist movements of the interwar period.

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I'm curious, you laid out some of the criticisms of that view. Are there any particular essays or writers in this book that take the firm, no, Trump is not fascist, here's why? What is the nature of those arguments at that level? Is it a matter of what you're suggesting that

it just doesn't fit the mass movement argument? Or is it a matter of it's bad politics to call your opponents fascists because it is such a powerful term? Yeah, that's a good question. There are plenty of people who think Trump himself is a fascist.

I would say that most of the people that we associate with resistance liberalism think of him that way. He's an authoritarian. He'll only work with people who are subservient to him. He wants to throw his enemies into prison. He is going to, you know, we saw him try to ban the so-called Muslim ban he tried to implement.

during his first term. Now there's plans to deport millions of immigrants who are here. There was the border separation. These things, you know, and he has some of the things that we associate with the interwar fascists in particular. He's charismatic authoritarian. He

The issue there with Trump, though, it's a little bit of a different debate, which occurred early on, which is, you know, the argument can be made that all fascists are populists, but not all populists are fascists. And a lot of people early on in the debate who were critical of saying Trump was a fascist instead suggested that he was a populist. He was someone who

was in some ways at Bernie Sanders saying that the system was rigged saying that, you know, uh, Washington is sold out to wall street and that only, I mean, and this is Bernie Sanders did not say this, um, but that you needed someone from the outside who wasn't sold out to drain the swamp. Um, for a lot of people that just sounded like, that just sounded like typical populist rhetoric, right? Um,

That there are another group of people, people like Jason Stanley, who said that's too general. He's a white supremacist and he's relying much more on this longstanding indigenous tradition. People will look at some of the things that happened with the Central Park Live, they'll look at his family background, they'll say there's enough there.

Others will say there's not. So the question with Trump is, is he a, you know, that's a debate over whether he's a populist or whether, whether he is a fascist and the two are in some sense related, but they're all, they're also different.

I can't remember. There was another part of your question. I can't remember what it was. I suppose whether just people that might say, oh, I think Trump might be a fascist, but we shouldn't call him that because it's bad politics, or we shouldn't call, or the vast majority of his supporters would never, like one aspect, of course, is that the vast majority of people that support Trump do not self-identify as fascist. There might be a fringe that does, but the vast majority don't.

Yeah, so that's another difference, I think, between Trump and some of the figures we typically associate with fascism is that a lot of their followers did positively identify as being fascist, right? And not only did the followers identify, the leaders identified. And in this instance, most of Trump's followers do not identify as being fascist, and Trump's denied being fascist.

On numerous occasions, right? Now, I think the question that you have is kind of like the question that, let's say, a German industrialist was presented with, which is they didn't like the Social Democratic Party and they didn't like the German Communist Party because they were...

They were a threat to business and capital. Therefore, they threw in their lot with Hitler, who they didn't agree with ideologically. In fact, knew he was a fascist, but didn't think of him as that much of a threat. And he represented their interests, and they could ultimately control him.

Do people think that about Trump now? That, yeah, you know, there are some statements released by Robert F. Kennedy or some news outlet released some statements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. not too long ago, essentially saying that Trump was a fascist and that his followers were bootlickers. But yet now he's working with Trump, right? And he's involved with his cabinet, presumably. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, one can look at Vance is another instance who did refer to Trump as a fascist and now as his vice president. What happens? Vance just says he changed his mind. Is he just an opportunist? Does he still believe this? It's hard to know. You know, there will be some that would say deep inside his heart, Vance knows that he is. Others would say, no, he kind of got to know him and realized he wasn't. We'll say this. I mean, fascists were...

um they were they were like religious in terms of their allegiance to their their ideology

Um, they were militant. Trump was a, a draft Dodger essentially didn't go to Vietnam. Um, um, you know, these were militarized men, right. Um, whose followers were willing to take to the streets and to, to, you know, beat up the opposition. And we're talking about like inner circle types, um, not these groups, these fringe groups, right. They're,

I don't find much to like with Trump. So is Trump that? It seems like he's more of a art of the deal kind of guy. He can be persuaded to on one day threaten North Korea with a nuclear attack and the next day, you know, be friends with the government. The right circumstances arise. That doesn't, I mean, you know,

That doesn't seem like the kind of thing that, you know, there was, of course, some pragmatism. I mean, Hitler, there was the Hitler-Stalin pact, right? I mean, but, you know,

There are some similarities. We can see that. It's just a matter of the dissimilarities prove more interesting or more compelling. And I think in that particular instance, you know, there's talk right now of the normalization of Trump.

I saw on Morning Joe, for instance, that recently they went down to Mar-a-Lago and it seems had some kind of reconciliation with Trump after repeatedly calling him a fascist over the last few years and leading the never-Trump resistance movement. And one can say, did these people switch overnight? Or were the ratings going down? And did they realize that their careers are in danger and therefore they had to, you know, you know,

kiss the ring of the Godfather, so to speak. These are very legitimate questions. That still doesn't necessarily get us to whether Trump is a fascist, but it does raise the possibility, which is the question that's in the question ask, of what role opportunism now is playing and how people understand Trump. Because it seems as though

There is a bold face. Some are now, after the election, not only not calling him a fascist anymore, they seem to have completely reconciled themselves to him or are in the process of doing so. And that will be a major difference between this cycle and the first, where I think you'll see a lot of the resistance. Not all of it, but I think maybe most of it, maybe half of it, I'm not quite sure.

You're going to see an exhaustion and you're going to see a normalization. And I think you'll even see Democrats say we need some kind of like liberal version of Trump. And there's already talk of Fetterman. Is that his name? Yeah.

being that guy, you know, someone who, you know, straight talk, big guy, you know, no nonsense, wears hoodies, outsider. That's what the Dems know, you know? So it could just be that what we'll see is a general move into this kind of populist direction. I think one aspect that people have been

certainly talking about is Trump's gains this cycle with Muslims, with people of color, specifically Latinos and black men. Obviously, it's not to the extent that people were acting like Trump somehow won black men hand over fist. I think he made slight gains, but not certainly enough. People thought that he did do very well in certain pockets with

Latino voters. I'm curious, you know, how that fits into the idea of Trump being a fascist, calling him a fascist when he did a lot and tried to outreach, whether or not it was necessarily in the ways in which everyone, you know,

featured in the book might have liked, but did try and make outreach to non-white voters? Yeah, it's a great question. And part of the reason why is because before the election, so not that long ago, when people started raising these questions and they weren't doing it arbitrarily, the New York Times was running reports every week about the inroads that Trump was making with Latino voters based on polling.

And also, Lax, there was even at one time a report that says 25% of Jews were going to vote for him. I don't think it was that high. You mentioned...

Muslims who had been turned off by the Republican Party because of the Iraq War, but of course the situation in Gaza has turned them off from the Democratic Party, especially in places like Michigan. And so essentially he saw gains, at least in terms of the number of those groups who voted for him, who voted for Biden in 2020. And it's almost as if

In my opinion, this could be one of the biggest, this might be the most compelling argument for why this isn't fascism. The reason I say that, it's just hard for me to think of, again, it's not like he won the majority of African Americans. My understanding is black women voted Democrat at the same percentage that they normally do. There was a jump, I think,

uh, in with black men, uh, you know, maybe, um, you know, he's, you know, relatively more, um, than women. And then of course, with Latino votes, there was a significant jump. Um, this speaks not to what's called realignment where now the party, the, the constituents have just switched parties, but what's called dealignment where there's, you know,

There are conditions being set for possible realignment, but the constituents for the most part still remain the same. But because there's some movement and significant movement, it can allow for someone like Trump to be the beneficiary during elections. And the reason why I say it's

maybe the strongest argument against the fascist framing is because those who are making a case for Trump being a fascist were doing so on racial grounds. I just mentioned earlier that people like Sarah Churchwell and Jason Stanley

go back to the KKK and they go back to, you know, these German boons and they, they go back to these white supremacist groups. Right. But what we're seeing here is the emergence of a, of a, of a multiracial movement, um, in which he, which he, you know, I know people are, I don't know if they've officially counted all the votes, but he, he, his win was dominant. Um, even if the, the popular vote,

might not reflect that, but in terms of the gains that he made within those groups, it's a real shock to Democrats, right? So I'm trying to just think of an example in history where someone who was known to be a fascist did something like that. And I was talking to someone the other day and they were trying to give me an example and maybe it had something to do with Franco, who was supporting, I don't know, certain...

Bosks groups, I can't remember the argument, but it didn't seem compelling. I can't speak of it with any authority. But this just seems to be much more diversity. And I can't, you know, maybe someone like Putin who has, you know, Russia's an incredibly diverse place in terms of ethnicity, right? You have a lot of different groups supporting him. Is he a fascist?

There's a debate over that, but the reason why it's, just to reiterate without being too

without rambling. The reason why I think it's a knock against the fascist debate for those who take the pro-fascist view is they set it up as a racial, as a, as, as, as, um, essentially a white racist movement. It's not that, I mean, it's becoming much more diverse, at least at the level of the people who are voting for him doesn't seem to have a very diverse cabinet. Yeah, that's certainly true. Um, and you know, of course, um, you know, it's hard to

you know, his presidency hasn't started yet. So certainly, uh, a lot can happen, um, between, you know, now and, uh,

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This holiday, don't overthink it. The best fragrance gifts are only at Sephora. But I think something that you do in the book that you offer, which I think is really important, is contextualizing Trump, not just in historical terms, but also in global terms, contemporary global terms. Because Trump isn't the only, you might call, strong man.

out there, strong man leader. There's Modi in India. There's Putin in Russia, like you said. There's Orban in Hungary. You know, there's some strong women too, Georgia Maloney of Italy. So I guess, you know,

How do you or how do the writers in the in the book situate Trump or compare him to some of the other, you know, right wing populists? Maybe according to some of the authors would say that they race from a fascism. Yeah, I mean, it varies depending on the author. Yeah.

You know, one of the fears that some have in the United States is Trump will take retribution on those who went after him legally or writers and publishers who attacked him and will somehow defame them or even going so far as to suggest that they'll be thrown into prison. You know, that right now just seems to be based on statements that Trump has made that are taken literally.

But we actually see things like that happening in India under Modi, right? And so in the book, Pankaj Mishra, the well-known essayist, says, you know, when we compare the situation in the United States with that of India, it's clear that India is much more, you know, much more fascist than the United States is, right? Yeah.

If we look at places, I lived in Turkey for a while, you know, Bozici University, lots of professors lost their jobs there for criticizing the government. You know, newspapers were taken over by the government. You know, in Hungary, you mentioned Orban, you know, they got rid of junior studies programs. Yeah.

These kinds of things, and of course, in Putin's Russia, there's all kinds of intolerances shown towards the few liberals that remain there.

So is this the kind of thing that's coming to the United States? That's the concern and that's the fear. Now, how Trump compares to these and whether they're all fascists is something that is up for debate. Timothy Snyder says Putin is a fascist. He doesn't contribute to this book. But a woman named Marlene Laurel,

who teaches at George Washington and is a Russianist. I believe she comes at her studies through political science and writes a lot on Russian politics, denies that Putin is a fascist. You can be an authoritarian without being a fascist. There's debates, for instance, of whether Franco was a fascist. So...

That is part of the debate. What one can say, though, is that we are seeing what, since the 2010s, what some describe as a crisis of democracy, democratic backsliding on the global scale.

with victories of these populist, right-wing, authoritarian, anti-liberal groups throughout the world. And what is to be made of this? What's causing it? Immigration seems to be a factor. That seems to be almost across the board in Europe and in the United States. Issues involving territory and resources. Of course, this coincided with a global financial crisis in 2008.

Um, so we have to ask questions as to why is all this happening? Um, in terms of this shift to the right, it's just how we frame it, right? Is the question. Um, and the stakes are pretty big because for those who see it in a fascist light, they're going to

believe it is external from the liberal democratic system and that this is coming from the outside and attacking it or even undermining from within in a sinister way liberal regimes. For those who don't see it that way, who see it more as internal to the system itself,

They're going to stress the dysfunction of liberalism, the dysfunction of the so-called liberal international order, and the deepening of mass discontent of that order. And what they're going to ultimately say is that this is the result of neoliberalism, this is the result of the American intent to hold on to primacy, forever wars, and

movements of populations brought on by wars, which is what we saw in Iraq, and this had implications for the rise of the far right in Germany in particular, and throughout Europe. So,

There are stakes in terms of how we frame these things. Do we need to work on ourselves if we're liberals and take a look in the mirror and say, what is it that we've done wrong? What can we do to correct that and how can we move forward? Or is it more going to be more of a militant response, which is we've done nothing wrong and the forces of darkness are upon the city and we have to...

we have to resist and we have to inform and we have to enlighten those who are denying the darkness or don't see the darkness or don't have the education to know what's going on. And thank God for MSNBC. It seems that with this book and what you're trying to do with this project,

is inspire some self-reflection among historians, inspire some self-reflection among scholars to think about

the work that a historian or scholar does and how it then might filter out into the, you know, broader, broader discourse, broader debates about these topics. You know, for, for you, I guess my, my final question is just with this project, with this essay, you know, in some, some time, you know, it came out, it came out earlier this year. So some time has passed and election has passed. You know, it was, it came out in the kind of the heat of a, of political battle, you

so to speak. So people were obviously debating fiercely these issues, but is there a particular essay that you feel really holds up well that you were like, if you're going to read one essay that I present in this, this is the one that I think really provides a lot of food for thought and maybe

speaks to the current situation. Obviously, it's hard to pick among some, but you can mention a few if you'd like. Yeah. Well, I think it is hard for me to pick one. I don't think I can do it. I've always been in the deflationary camp who's thought that the fascist framing isn't the best one.

And, but, but there's been a debate for a reason, meaning that, you know, especially after January 6th in, you know, even a leading historian like Robert Paxton coming out and saying, oh, I changed my mind. This is fascist.

So there was this sense that maybe the other side was right or would be proven right, right? I think my feeling is after this election, given some of the things that we've discussed, how diverse the movement has become,

Even it seems as though it's now being normalized. People who are calling him a fascist are now running down to his mansion or wherever he lives in Florida and reconciling with him. And I think that would be more common. And even Democrats doing the kind of soul searching that I kind of described and saying that somehow we went wrong in the ratings that in this in this NBC supposedly dropped post-election polls.

Um, I would just say that all of the articles in this book are worth reading, but for the, if you want to get more of a sense of how people are feeling now on the left, who are reluctant to talk this way, or, or, or maybe, maybe weren't, their minds weren't made up, or maybe they were even in the fascist camp and now they've kind of, they, they, they've changed their mind.

I think the essays that are critical of the fascist interpretation are worth reading in the book. They're all worth reading, but I think they were written before the election, and I think they hold up as things stand right now. I mean, who knows what will happen?

And, you know, I might be, is it eating crow the phrase? I might be, you know, on the wrong side of this. And this is the way, this is how history works, you know. I mean, this is the tricky thing about doing something like history of the present. You can't, we know the past. We don't know what's going to unfold. And you have to do your best in good faith to try to be true, you know, to yourself and to the evidence. Yeah.

But I think right now, given the post-selection mood, I would say the essays that are critical to fascist framing support that mood. So those would be pieces by Victoria de Grazia in the book that frame it as a rhetorical device to discount one's enemies that's been around forever and really isn't much more than that.

The piece by Daniel Bessner, co-written piece with Ben Burgess. Piece by Samuel Moyn on the limitations of historical comparison. Of course, a lot of those pieces were written in dialogue with the pro-fascism framing. So I'll just simply say this in closing. I tried to write a fair introduction where I was

attempting to interpret what was happening. And I was told by my editor after writing a first draft to take a stand. My stand was given the myriad perspectives, you know, talking about critical theory, perspectives of this debate, black radical tradition, feminist studies, you know, historians who were focused on the US, Europe, global perspectives. It just seemed to me that everyone had something to say based on their expertise and that

you know, it might be revealing more about their expertise and their ultimate concerns, this is a phrase from the theologian Paul Tillich, than actually anything else. And I do think that that holds up. That, of course, is not to pathologize this debate, but it is to say that

We live in uncertain times. The post-Cold War consensus of the 90s was completely over, and we're seeing the slow emergence of the new order. We don't know how to describe it. Adam Tooze speaks of a polycrisis. That doesn't tell us what's going to emerge from this polycrisis. Some speak of the post-neoliberal order. It's difficult to actually grasp what is happening.

And because of our anxieties and because of how odd things are and because it's so different than what we're accustomed to and because of the authoritarian aspects of it, you know, it could lead us to see it in the worst possible way. And the worst possible way to see it, there can be no worse possible way than fascism. That is the absolute worst form of political governance imaginable.

I would like to think that as problematic as it is, we're also seeing the possibilities, if you're on the left, for real change as well. And there are some openings that could emerge from this that allow for real democratic, social, economic projects and visions that the post-Cold War consensus had essentially foreseen.

That isn't to say you have to have fascism to have leftism. I'm not saying that. It's just simply to say that we're at the beginning of something being birthed. And right now there's a kind of authoritarian expression of that. And we're going to have to see what the opposite side is because if this election proves anything,

is that whatever the Democrats have been doing, it seems as though they want to keep this consensus. They even are willing to join teams where people like Dick Cheney and neoconservatives who were wildly unpopular by the time the Bush administration was ending. It seems like that's not what people want. So I'm as troubled, I won't say I'm frightened, as troubled as I am by Trump,

I'm also, I haven't, and there's a feeling of anticipation that, that there's a new, something new that can be born on the left side as well, because there is something being born on the right side that completely delegitimated the way that the Republican party had been operating since the end of the Cold War. And I think now that the Democrats have to, have to figure what that out, what that's going to be for them.

And it doesn't have to be cosplaying a liberal version of Trumpism. It can be something much more visionary than that. I look forward to seeing your future writings on whatever happens in the future. Obviously, did history end? It feels like we've reentered history and we did a few years ago at least, if it ever did.

Well, history is ending for the people who pronounce that history is ending. And I think there is a generational aspect to some of this. So it will be up to your generation to move things forward. But I think we're seeing a new historical epoch upon us. And yeah. Yeah.

Well, that will be hopefully good for the history profession. More books to be written. Well, Danny, thanks so much for being a guest in the New Books Network. It's great to talk to you about your book, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism in America. Thank you so much.