Description
Since the events of January 6th, there has been a noticeable radicalization in Donald Trump’s political rhetoric. Populist narratives once targeting a misguided ‘globalist’ Washington consensus on trade, immigration, and foreign policy now attack the liberal democratic system itself, framed as systematically corrupt and ideologically biased against Trump, the Republican Party and their voters. Political opponents were threatened with the weaponization of law enforcement and public vows of retribution. Since resuming the presidency, there has also been a growing domestic militarization in the United States, with President Trump deploying National Guard troops to Democratically controlled cities like LA and Portland in support of federal anti-immigration measures, and threatening the invasion of Chicago.
This begs the question if populism and Jacksonian nationalism are still accurate analytical avenues to assess contemporary political dynamics in the United States, or if the second Trump administration is not more accurately described as manifestation of a new form of American fascism, or at least proto-fascism. At the core of the research interest here is the level of politically motivated violence against domestic opponents as ‘enemies of the state’ and the concentration of political power and discursive authority in the figure of the supreme leader. Drawing from research in political theory, critical security studies and political communication, this paper puts the issue of American fascism in historical context, while establishing a narrative framework of analysis of political mobilization and policy legitimation, and applying this to the political rhetoric and policy agenda of America First 2.0.
