Is Trumpism Fascism?

“The […] United States working class is [in] very many important respects […] the most progressive working class of the world.”

Leon Trotsky wrote these words in 1944 not as flattery, but as a warning against fatalism. His essays on fascism were born from a conviction that catastrophe was not inevitable, that history turned on misdiagnosis as much as material force. The question he forced upon his readers was never simply whether fascism was possible, but whether political actors could recognise the moment before it consolidated.

Is Trotsky’s analysis relevant for what we are witnessing in 2026?

Leon Trotsky wrote Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It because he believed millions of people had been led to war due to catastrophic political misdiagnosis. His essays on fascism were compiled into this 1944 pamphlet, and to his mind, it was written in the aftermath of one of the greatest failures in the history of the international left, namely the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 without serious resistance.

For Trotsky, this outcome was not inevitable. It was the product of analytical error, strategic paralysis, and sectarian blindness. Fascism triumphed, he argued, not because it was invincible, but because its opponents misunderstood what it was, when it became dangerous, and how it could still be stopped. This pamphlet is therefore ostensibly less a theory than an autopsy, an attempt to salvage lessons from defeat before they were buried under myth, hindsight, and moral consolation.

Understanding why Trotsky wrote about fascism is essential if we are to apply his framework today, particularly to the question that now dominates political debate in the United States and internationally, namely does Trumpism represent a form of fascism, or something else? Trotsky’s answer would not have been comforting, but it would have been precise.

The historical function of fascism according to Trotsky

Trotsky insisted that fascism must be defined by its function, not its rhetoric or style. Fascism, in his account, is not simply extreme nationalism, authoritarian leadership, or contempt for liberal norms and institutions. It is a specific response to a crisis, deployed when capitalism can no longer rule through democratic mediation or compromise through institutions of civil society.

For Trotsky, the defining features of fascism are structural. Fascism is a mass movement, not merely a coup from above. It mobilises primarily the petty bourgeoisie and declassed layers