Wounds of Democracy Adorno’s Aspects of the New Right-Wing Extremism and the German antisemitism debate Jonathon Catlin Scholars of European history and critical theory ob- serving American politics in recent years have often found themselves experiencing déjà vu. History, the truism goes, does not repeat itself, but last summer, with calls for ‘law and order’ and armed right-wing mi- litias clashing with anti-racist protestors across Amer- ica, many asked, what more are you waiting for? 1 Then came the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021. The historian of fascism Robert Paxton declared that while he had until then hesitated to call Trump a fascist, the failed insurrec- tion pushed him to do so. 2 Other historians demurred, emphasising major differences between contemporary America and interwar Europe (war, economic ruin, un- tested democracies): ‘You can’t win the political battles of the present if you’re always stuck in the past’, declared Richard Evans. 3 While Trump ‘performed’ fascism or ‘aspired’ to it, he did so out of weakness, not strength. 4 The riot nevertheless bore out Sinclair Lewis’s quip that when fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the American fag and carrying a cross – or wrapped in a Confederate fag with the cross being used as a bat- tering ram. Paxton, in fact, suggested years ago that the Ku Klux Klan could be considered the frst fascist move- ment. 5 More recent analysis by Sarah Churchwell and Alberto Toscano confrms what many Black Marxist in- tellectuals have said for decades: ‘American fascism: It has happened here’. 6 The fascism analogy is not without its critics. Peter E. Gordon stressed the logical and moral necessity of ana- logies in all historical thinking, but cautioned that ana- logies can stymie analysis as much as inform it. 7 Samuel Moyn and Daniel Bessner have consistently argued that the fascist label conveniently ‘Trump-washes’ recent his- tory of deeper currents of racism and inequality of which Trump is more a symptom than a cause, and thus en- abled the quietist narrative of a ‘return to normal’ once the aberrant Trump was removed from offce, playing into the hands of America’s neoliberal and imperialist ‘never Trump’ centre. 8 In a particularly egregious ana- logy, Timothy Snyder compared the ‘rapid deployment teams’ Trump sent to cities like Portland to the Einsatz- gruppen or ‘taskforces’ that perpetrated the Holocaust by bullets. 9 More circumspect historians like Christopher Brown- ing argued that if there is an analogy to be made with the rise of Nazism, it is not one of a dramatic seizure of power but of conservative elites like senate major- ity leader Mitch McConnell selling out democracy to a would-be strongman. 10 David Bell likewise argued that Trump is not a fascist but a run-of-the-mill ‘racist dem- agogue’ and ‘charismatic authoritarian’. 11 This hardly offers reassurance. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have shown, there are countless ways besides fascism for a democracy to die. 12 But defeated at the polls and in the courts, Trump did ultimately leave offce on 20 January. Beleaguered as it undoubtedly is, America passed Joseph Schumpeter’s elegant, if reductive test of a democracy, a political system in which the people choose their own leaders. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez memorably told her Instagram followers, ‘there’s no going back to brunch’. Conspiracy theories, racism, transphobia, and voter sup- pression continue to drive mainstream Republican polit- ics and inspire many a gun-toting American. RADICAL PHILOSOPHY 2.10 / Summer 2021 11