Trumpianism Isn’t Fascism - It’s Something Far Worse

Trumpianism defies tradition, weaponises chaos, and turns truth into spectacle. Can democracy withstand it?

In the lead-up to the U.S. election, the word fascism was used regularly and often to describe the now President-Elect Donald Trump - I did that myself quite a few times.

Is there a good reason for it? Absolutely.

Was it untrue? Nope.

Was it 100% correct? There’s where I think we’ve all gone wrong.

While Trump has been playing from the fascism playbook like he was reading from a recipe on how to bring about a dystopian nightmare, Trumpianism is not quite fascism. Not entirely, at least. It’s something modern, amorphous, opportunistic, and dangerously adaptable - a new kind of authoritarianism that’s developed in the social media age.

Trump’s approach deserves its own label.

And so, welcome to my political lexicon: Trumpianism.

🔴 The Structureless Spectacle of Trumpianism

Traditional fascism is, at its core, rigid. It’s built on hierarchy, discipline, and a strict devotion to the state or nation as an ideal. Trumpianism, by contrast, is more like a cult of personality spiced with populism, drenched in spectacle, and underpinned by nothing except loyalty to Donald Trump himself. It’s not about loyalty to America, to institutions, or even to an ideological movement; it’s about loyalty to Trump, personally.

Whereas fascist leaders typically try to build a lasting national or ideological legacy, Trumpianism is wildly unbothered by any vision for the future. It lives in the present moment, defined by its most immediate whims, grievances, and impulsive swings. This isn’t a new social order - if anything, it’s anti-order. The only rule of Trumpianism is to follow the man, and any deviation of any sort from that loyalty, even from his own allies, is met with attacks, derision, or dismissal.

🔴 The Weaponisation of Chaos

Most authoritarian regimes seek to impose a sense of strict control; fascism is typically orderly, even when it’s brutal. Trumpianism, by contrast, revels in chaos. It doesn’t demand unity or conformity in a traditional sense; it just demands confusion. Trump’s relentless assault on truth - calling anything inconvenient “fake news” and embracing conspiracies without a second thought - undermines not just media, not just the government, but reality itself.

His strategy isn’t to impose a single, cohesive narrative.

Instead, it’s to overwhelm the public with so many competing narratives that they abandon the concept of truth entirely. This isn’t Orwell’s 1984 with its unflinching obedience to “Big Brother.” This is Trumpianism, which peddles the idea that reality is whatever Trump says it is today. And for his followers, the whiplash is not a bug; it’s a feature. It keeps everyone spinning, keeps the truth fractured, and, most importantly, keeps them coming back for more.

🔴 Populism Without Principle

The populist appeal of Trumpianism isn’t entirely unlike that of classic fascism - there’s an “us versus them” rhetoric, a glorification of a “true people” and a deep disdain for the so-called elite. But where fascists might at least wrap this in a veneer of collective purpose, Trumpianism is just grievance for grievance’s sake. It doesn’t uplift; it divides, blames, and derides. Trump speaks not of shared progress, but of shared resentment. His populism is fuelled by division rather than unity, as he champions his followers’ victimhood, railing against supposed “enemies” that range from immigrants to journalists to, well, anyone not sufficiently “Trumpian.”

There’s no deeper ideological underpinning, no aspiration toward social justice or realignment of power dynamics. This isn’t populism as a call for a fairer society; it’s populism as a battering ram against those who aren’t sufficiently loyal to Trump. His fans don’t rally for any larger cause; they rally for Trump, the only figure who can lead them against a world they’re told is conspiring against them.

🔴 Anti-Institutionalism for the Sake of It

Where fascists want to seize and repurpose institutions, Trumpianism’s only goal is to hollow them out. The courts, Congress, intelligence agencies, even the Constitution itself are dismissed, undermined, or weaponised according to Trump’s needs of the day. It’s not enough to wield power over these institutions - Trump wants his followers to distrust them entirely. Judges, intelligence agencies, media outlets, any source of accountability that doesn’t flatter him is, by definition, the enemy.

This disdain for institutions goes deeper than traditional anti-establishment rhetoric. It’s an outright rejection of the idea that anyone or anything could be trusted more than Trump himself. And the followers, much like the movement, become untethered from these structures of governance and truth, left with no compass except the man at the top. Trumpianism isn’t interested in building a coherent system; it’s content with tearing one down and declaring that chaos itself is “truth.”

🔴 Crony Capitalism Over National Good

Trumpianism isn’t interested in fascism’s economic regimentation or even an American vision of capitalism. It’s closer to crony capitalism, a system where the most important criteria are personal loyalty to Trump and whether something is profitable for his inner circle. In Trump’s America, there’s no interest in long-term economic strategy; the focus is on now, on profit, and on enriching the few who play by his rules.

The bottom line in Trumpianism’s economic playbook is personal gain. Deregulation, tax cuts, and cronyism define the policy - if it can be called that. The result is an America with even starker inequality, where public goods and long-term investments are sacrificed for short-term profits. Any true sense of economic nationalism is lost; it’s all about Trumpianism’s brand of self-enrichment and profit for the privileged few.

🔴 A Cult of Victimhood and Self-Pity

Perhaps the strangest element of Trumpianism is its obsession with victimhood, even as it pushes authoritarian ideals. Trump doesn’t present himself as an all-powerful figure; he presents himself as constantly besieged, a leader who, despite all odds, just keeps fighting. In his world, Trump and his followers are victims - of the deep state, the media, the left, anyone who would dare question him.

And this is where Trumpianism becomes a unique form of authoritarianism: it’s built on grievance rather than strength, on being persecuted rather than victorious. This is a movement where self-pity isn’t weakness; it’s a badge of loyalty. By presenting himself as the embattled hero, Trump turns weakness into the defining trait of his authoritarianism. His followers don’t feel empowered; they feel aggrieved, as though they’re under siege, and it’s this collective resentment that binds them to him.

🔴 A Modern Threat Wrapped in a Familiar Form

The (very) long and short of it boils down to the fact that while Trumpianism wears the trappings of fascism, it’s a new strain of authoritarianism, tailored for the 21st-century media landscape. It’s a cocktail of personality cult, grievance, anti-truth, and loyalty without principle.

It weaponises populism without any social vision, turns chaos into a tool of governance, and runs on spectacle over substance. Trumpianism doesn’t seek to replace democracy with a coherent new order; it seeks to dismantle democracy, to keep its followers in a state of perpetual anger and fear, all while replacing truth with spectacle and fact with feeling.

In our efforts to counter Trumpianism in the lead up to the election, many of us turned to anti-fascist narratives, assuming that the same tactics used to challenge rigid authoritarian regimes would work against this chaos-driven brand of authoritarianism. But the problem was that Trumpianism isn’t strictly fascist; it doesn’t operate within the same rigid ideological framework. Traditional anti-fascist approaches, which expose oppressive control, misread Trumpianism’s chaotic, grievance-based nature. They missed that Trump’s power thrives not on forcing unity, but on stoking division, on positioning himself as the supposed victim of elites, and on eroding any clear sense of shared reality.

Fighting Trumpianism requires recognising it for what it is: a fluid, opportunistic movement without vision or principle, one that co-opts victimhood and spectacle to maintain loyalty rather than to build a structured system. Exposing Trumpianism’s hollow opportunism and chaotic self-interest will be essential to countering it effectively. We need a new lens - one that recognises Trumpianism’s dangerous adaptability and lack of ideological coherence.

The world hasn’t seen anything quite like this before, and we’re absolutely right to feel wary, even fearful, of what this new brand of authoritarianism means. I don't have a meaningful answer or rally cry for everyone who is feeling worried about the next four years, but there is a glimmer of hope, albeit a faint one:

Movements defined by one man and one man alone rarely survive. They burn brightly, they rally, they divide, but ultimately they are unsustainable. Trumpianism will thrive for a time - possibly a long one - but it will face the one thing it fears most: irrelevance. The strength of Trumpianism is that it’s malleable, impulsive, a creature of the moment. But the weakness is precisely that - it needs constant attention, constant devotion to survive.

So as we watch and wait, there’s a reminder here to cling to what’s enduring, to the institutions, ideals, and communities that Trumpianism seeks to erode. Because in the end, all the noise, chaos, and spectacle in the world cannot outlast the quiet persistence of truth, resilience, and a determination to rebuild. This is a dark day, but the world has weathered worse.

Trumpianism, for all its chaos, is a moment in time.

Democracy, if we fight for it, is still something built to last.

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For more on how political ideologies evolve and reshape in the modern world, Bear Necessities of Politics and Power is now available (and the reviews are not bad). To note, this is not an academic book - it’s a guide to understanding the forces that shape our world, from the predictable to the dangerously unpredictable.