The Strongman and the Slippery Slope: How Close to Fascism is the United States?

I’ve already written about how the US is now a rogue state: “America first” has become “rules last”. That argument was about the Trump Regime's external behaviour: conquest language, coercion, bullying of allies, and contempt for international referees.

This one is about internal dynamics. Rogue states abroad often become strongman states at home, because contempt for rules is rarely compartmentalised. Against any serious set of historical and political benchmarks, the United States is not yet a fascist state - but it is definitely on a fascist trajectory, and the speed of the slide is accelerating.

There’s no single definition of fascism, but historical and political science literature converges on a recognisable pattern: ultranationalism fused with authoritarian rule; contempt for liberal rights and democratic constraints; loyalty to a leader over loyalty to law; scapegoats and “enemies within”; and growing use of state violence as a normal political instrument. Fascist politics is driven by a story of national decline and promised rebirth: the nation will be “saved” by purging internal opponents and restoring strength through coercion.

Put simply: the line is crossed when governments stop treating opponents as rivals and start treating them as traitors, and when the machinery of the state is turned inwards to enforce that worldview. Sound familiar?

Not yet fascist - but the slope is visible

The US isn’t a one-party state. Elections still occur. Courts still exist. Civil society still mobilises. Those are not small facts, and they are the clearest reasons America is not yet across the line.

But fascism never arrives overnight with a signed certificate. It advances step-by-step through normalisation: one “exception” after another, one “emergency” after another, one group singled out as less deserving of rights after another. That is where the US now looks alarmingly familiar.

Consider the escalating use of force in immigration enforcement. Minnesota and Illinois are seeking to block unlawful federal operations. This isn’t an abstract debate: it follows the fatal shooting of US citizen by a federal agent in Minneapolis. Recent images from Minneapolis show protests met with tear gas and “less-lethal” munitions - the now-familiar conversion of politics into security theatre.

Then there's the intimidation of independent institutions, another classic step in authoritarian consolidation. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says the Justice Department has served subpoenas and threatened him with criminal indictment. You don’t need to master the technical details to see what is happening. When a government uses legal menace against a central bank chair amid political disputes about interest rates, it sends a signal that independence is conditional on obedience.

The same logic is now being applied to dissenters with high public standing. Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and former NASA astronaut is being threatened with punishment for participating in a video urging service members to refuse illegal orders. The Pentagon reportedly even threatened to recall him to active duty in order to prosecute him. This isn’t normal democratic disagreement. It’s about making dissent personally costly - and teaching everyone else to keep their head down.

Meanwhile, pressure on journalism has moved into dangerous territory. The FBI searched a Washington Post reporter’s home and seized electronics, an action the newspaper describes as a major escalation with obvious chilling effects. A democracy can survive harsh language from politicians. It struggles when investigative reporting becomes professionally hazardous.

Finally, the internal and external strands converge in the rhetoric and practice of expansion. Trump’s Greenland fixation is no longer just bravado. Across Europe, governments are hardening their Arctic posture in response to the threat, while Denmark and Greenland are deeply offended and have made clear that they reject any attempt to take the territory by force. A government that speaks fluently in the language of acquisition abroad is usually comfortable with coercion at home.

The 1930s Germany parallel: what’s similar, what’s different

History doesn't photocopy itself. The parallel isn’t “America equals Nazi Germany”. It’s structural: a democracy hollowed out from within by a leader-centred movement that treats pluralism as weakness, opposition as treachery, and state force as virtue.

In 1930s Germany, the slide accelerated when legal tools, policing, propaganda, and emergency logic fused into a system that still held elections, still used courts, and still claimed legitimacy - right up until the point it no longer needed to. The US is not yet at that endpoint. But it is moving along a recognisable track, and that recognition is precisely why complacency is so dangerous.

Red line indicators to watch next

If you want a practical warning system, watch for these next steps - and note how several are already being tested.

1. Political prosecutions become routine: ramped-up criminalisation of opponents and critics as a governing method, not just a talking point. We’re already seeing early versions of this in the Trump Regime's legal threats and investigations aimed at high-profile critics and independent figures.

2. Defiance of courts: refusal to comply with court orders, and punishment of those who win against the government. This risk is no longer theoretical: courts have already rebuked the Trump Regime in high-profile disputes touching executive power, deportations, and press access.

3. Force becomes the default: regularised domestic deployment of federal tactical power against protest and dissent. This is already visible in Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act against Minnesota, paired with large-scale federal deployments and crowd-control tactics that frame political dissent as a security problem.

4. Media suppression becomes systematic: raids, subpoenas, and access bans make investigative reporting too risky to do. Elements of this are already on the table, from federal action targeting journalists to court fights over newsroom access, retaliation and defamation.

5. Elections lose their removing power: rule changes that make it implausible for voters to change the government, even if ballots still happen. We may already be entering this zone as MAGA actors push election rule changes and hardball redistricting strategies that are now being actively litigated.

So the US isn’t yet a fascist state. But it is fast becoming one: in style, in practice, and in institutional habit. And the lesson from Germany in the 1930s is brutally simple. Once a state and its leadership start moving from rights to loyalty, from law to force, from rivals to enemies, the slope is slippery - and it rarely self-corrects without concentrated resistance.

Image from New America.