This media expert explains Trump's fascist appeal

I’m going to make a confession in this introduction to my interview with Jennifer Mercieca, a professor of communication and journalism at Texas A&M. Here it is: I have lost so much trust in democracy that I don’t know how to rebuild trust in democracy. She says that “anyone who supports democracy should work to build trust between people, and between people and the government,” and I just don’t know.

I mean, I used to have faith. Since the conclusion of Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial for the crimes of mutiny and insurrection, I had felt pretty confident that in 2024 most people most of the time could tell the difference between a sandwich and a shit sandwich, and I was pretty confident they could do that, because they already had.

Now, after only months of his second presidency, polls are showing majorities of people, including those who voted for him, don’t like what he’s doing, even though he’s doing what he said he was going to do. At the same time, my liberal brethren are pointing to these same polls as a proof of the tide turning against Trump, seemingly overlooking the implication that hope for democracy rests in the hands of people for whom the future will never come and yesterday never happened.

That said, my interview with Professor Mercieca does rekindle some faith, especially by pointing out that we live in a time of information overload. Everything everywhere seems to happen all at once. In that context, Trump tells a story that “scary outsiders are doing scary things and you should be scared!” Liberals, she said, need to tell a counter-narrative, one that works against the grain of that story.

That I can trust. The good work. The good people. May it be so.

JS: Trump says things to suggest he’s the Big Man in charge. Then, sometimes in the same breath, he says he’s not responsible. The Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, for instance. How does the fascist square that?

JM: This is an apparent contradiction, but is easily resolved when you understand that fascist leaders are unaccountable or “cognitively irresponsible” leaders. That means they want to rule over others without being questioned about the success or failure of their policies. They don’t want citizens or media to question their authority or their decisions. They want “because I said so” to end any conversation. So Trump represents himself as all-powerful, but also has many strategies to deflect responsibility so his decisions cannot be questioned.

JS: The electorate voted for the Big Man, but now at least one poll suggests a majority sees him as a “dangerous dictator.” All of this was obvious. Were the founders right to be skeptical of democracy?

JM: I wouldn’t conclude that Trump’s re-election tells us much about the appropriateness of democracy as a form of government or whether the founders were right. They lived in a very slow media environment and they were generally skeptical that the public could get enough information to make good decisions.

Our problem is the opposite, of course. Living in a world with too much information allows propagandists like Trump to manipulate reality. Also, it was very easy to believe that Trump wouldn’t do the things he promised he would do. When he said that he’d be a “dictator on day one,” folks either didn’t believe him, or thought someone or some institution would stop him, or wanted him to be a dictator to solve what they saw as urgent problems. Probably that last group (rightwing authoritarian voters) still support Trump and are happy with his presidency so far.

JS: I have said we’re in a transition, as we were in the 1970s. Back then, it was between the liberal consensus (New Deal, Great Society) and the conservative consensus (Ronald Reagan, neoliberalism). You have also said as much. How do you see it?

JM: Governments around the world are backsliding from stable democracies to authoritarianism. According to V-Dem data, the world is down to levels of democracy not seen since the 1980s, nearly three quarters of the world’s population now live in autocracies. So we live in an era of democratic collapse.

We also live in an era of climate catastrophe. And an era of massive societal changes in migration, the economy and communication. These things are related because when things are unstable people look for stability and believe the promises of “strong leaders” who claim they will restore order. Autocrats take advantage of vulnerabilities, and right now we’re vulnerable — in the US and around the world.

JS: I think it is useful to think about Trump in terms of Big Man theory (the Leviathan, as you said recently). The crisis facing democracy seems to be that that’s what Americans want. What do liberals do in your view to fight against that?

JM: Rightwing authoritarians (RWAs) are a significant portion of the electorate (some scholars estimate 35-40 percent of people), but they’re not always “activated” — meaning they don’t always use the RWA framework to think about politics.

When RWA are activated, they look to a “strong leader” who promises to restore stability and protect them. These authoritarian “strong leaders” use fear-appeals, outrage-bait and other strategies to cultivate the appearance of instability. These leaders thrive on distrust, cynicism and frustration in a political community and use strategies to try to make all of those democracy-threatening conditions worse. Anyone who supports democracy should work to build trust between people and between people and the government. That doesn’t mean denying that problems exist. It means solving problems and demonstrating trustworthiness.

One more thing. Authoritarianism works because it’s a compelling story: scary outsiders are doing scary things and you should be scared! Unfortunately, fear-appeals work. They hijack our ability to think critically and scare us into submission. Liberals and friends of democracy need to tell a different story, but one that is also compelling. That story needs to unite the nation in a common goal and affirm human dignity. I don’t think “fight fascism” or “fight Trump” are the kinds of messages that can reach tuned-out Americans. They might respond to a positive story about America’s future that moves us past identity and cultural issues and talks about how to solve the big structural problems that affect us.