By Laura Fitzgerald, Socialist Party Ireland. 22 May 2025
This article was first published in ‘Socialist Alternative’ № 19, magazine of the Socialist Party Ireland
Real life in 2025 reads like the plot of a dystopian miniseries. We’ve seen the richest man in the world perform Nazi salutes at the US President’s inauguration; that President’s first weeks have seen a torrent of ‘executive orders’ chock full of outlandish conspiracy fuelled reaction, targeting migrants, trans folk, people of colour, disabled people; the unelected billionaire Elon Musk heads DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), making swingeing cuts to thousands of public jobs and whole departments; the words ‘anti-racism’, ‘Native American’, ‘disability’, ‘biased’, ‘Black’, ‘climate crisis’, and ‘women’, are among hundreds of others that have disappeared from official US government websites (1); a Palestinian green card holder who led protests in his university against the genocide of his people was arrested and given a deportation order by ICE (2), while misogynist extremist and proponent of rape Andrew Tate is flown in(3).
At once terrifying and absurd – and there’s plenty more that could be mentioned – this nightmare is unfortunately all too real for everyone that Trump’s politics threatens inside and outside the US. Trump’s second term is both coinciding with, and giving huge impetus to, a broader authoritarian, far-right shift politically across the world. The AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Germany received 20.8% in federal elections in February 2025, as part of a wave of electoral successes for far-right forces across Europe, which has resulted in far-right parties being represented in government, and even far-right heads of state, from Meloni in Italy, to Viktor Orban in Hungary. Modi, in power for more than a decade in India, has a band of fascists on the ground in the BJP supporting him.
A capitalist system ensconced in a profound and multi-faceted crisis provides the backdrop to the system’s unfolding reactionary turn. But how far in a rightward direction can things be pushed? Is fascism once again on the horizon, heralded by Trump? And what can we do to stem the rising fascist tide?
Reactionary ideology
Far-right politics are always extremely nationalistic and chauvinistic. They lean into and seek to mobilise every existing supremacy within capitalist society, and deepen every corresponding oppression. This means that the far right are deeply and actively racist, misogynist, queerphobic, ableist etc. And of course it means that far-right politics stand for the class supremacy of the capitalist class, and the consequent deepening of the exploitation of the working class, the poor, and the environment. Far-right politics are reactionary – ultra-conservative – and they have been growing everywhere, including within and without the traditional political parties of capitalism. All of this poses a threat to the rights of exploited and oppressed groupings, and furthermore creates fertile ground for the growth of specifically fascist organising – the most extreme and dangerous of all far-right politics.
In order to approximate answers to the questions posed about the fascist menace today, it’s worth looking back at when fascism rose in Europe in the inter-war period and took power in Italy and Germany, to determine its particular qualities, to help us understand developments today and of course to act accordingly. In his study of fascism, Marxist historian David Renton has written how:
“Fascism is a reactionary ideology. Reactionary here is not used to mean that fascism sought to turn back the whole course of history, although there was a sense in which fascism sought a return to the past. Fascism was reactionary in that it aimed to crush the organised working class and to eradicate the reforms won by decades of peaceful struggle. Fascism did not exist to restore a mythical rural idyll, but to solve the problem of working-class hostility to capitalism.” (4)
Fascism: the radical far right
Fascists are always deeply hostile to socialists, to all organisations and movements of the left, including the trade union and worker movements. Fascism’s anti-communism / anti-socialism was one of its central tenets in the inter-war period. A defining feature of fascist politics is its enactment of physical violence against marginalised groupings. This violence is also concentrated heavily against the conscious expression of working-class politics, and the solidarity and unity of all the exploited inherent in it. The fascist takeovers in Italy and Germany represented a violent destruction of powerful socialist and working-class movements in both countries – movements that had mounted mass revolutionary uprisings in preceding years, threatening a liberatory alternative to capitalism and war.
Fascist takeovers were not slow or creeping – they came at times of profound crisis for the system and represented the most brutal smashing of the threat posed to capitalist interests – by working-class struggle and organised socialist forces. Fascist violence in Italy amid Mussolini’s seizure of power was most virulent in industrial areas as opposed to rural ones, and within this, in districts that had had the strongest organised socialist presence in the workers’ movement.(5) There was a definite dual feature of the context of fascist victories in Italy and Germany: profound economic and political crises for the capitalist system was combined with the connected threat to that system of an organised and arisen socialist movement. This duality was the context in which the capitalist class rowed in behind the fascists’ counter-revolutionary takeover.
Once in power, both the Mussolini and Hitler regimes ‘radicalised’, with their heinous politics and policies becoming more extreme. Both regimes affected each other and encouraged this process – as seen, for example, in how the anti-semitism in Italy, which descended into a genocidal massacre of Jewish people there, only became a central feature of the regime after Hitler came to power in Germany.
A social movement
Of course notable is that these fascist takeovers then meant that a dictatorship had taken grip. There were no more elections in Italy under fascism after 1924 or in Germany after 1933. So fascism always means dictatorship, and an extinguishing of any remaining semblance of democracy. Moreover, such a regime cannot tolerate and will crush any vestige of dissent. Daniel Guérin, a young French socialist travelled to Germany in 1932 and 1933 surreptitiously, taking in the situation both in the run-up to and aftermath of Hitler taking power. Guérin’s insightful account of his experiences detailed how right up to the seizure of power, the possibility of open anti-fascist resistance remained – a possibility that was extinguished in 1933.(6)
There have been many brutal dictatorial regimes in the history of capitalism that were not fascist ones, per se. A quality of fascism and of the rise of the fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, making them distinct from other forms of dictatorships or other forms of far-right politics, is the fact that fascism strides forward off the back of a reactionary social movement that unites and mobilises people from different classes behind it – disaffected, alienated, economically ruined sectors of the middle class, the rural poor, the unorganised working class.
In his primary source study, Guérin noted that the Nazi movement in Germany was personned overwhelmingly by men, many of whom were young men, often from smaller towns and rural areas, sometimes former soldiers (brutalised during the war), who had seen ruination and unemployment from the crash and hyperinflation.(7) So a core element of fascism is the organising en masse of a reactionary, ruthlessly violent political force that encompasses people from different classes, including those who objectively have no significant economic stake in the system. This is an example of the ultimate contradiction at the heart of fascism, an ideology and movement fraught with them – namely that it’s a movement “mobilising the people to… defeat the people”.(8)
Innately contradictory
“It’s too ridiculous to take seriously and too serious to be ridiculous” – Naomi Klein made use of this apt Philip Roth quote in her 2023 book on the insidious nature of the growing far right.(9) So much of far-right politics ‘steals the clothes’ of the left, proclaiming to stand for the working class and poor, a la JD Vance – aping the left’s long-standing critique of the mainstream media, wealth inequality, corporate greed, but twisting it to turn it back against the left and working-class interests.
Many more contradictions can be seen when observing the far-right movement historically and today: its abuse of incidents of violence against women and children to drum up racism, and also machismo, which is itself at the root of gender-based violence; its demagogic railing against capitalist greed, only to descend into anti-semitic drivel while its shores up that system of greed; its anti-Semitism and its pro-Zionism;(10) its attempt to tap into the frustration and disappointment of those impoverished by economic crises, with demagogic professions of standing for those worst affected, hiding that their economic policy has absolutely no ability to change this and in fact will worsen it.
Absent socialist working-class movement
Today, capitalism’s reactionary turn, rife with increased authoritarianism and curbs on democratic rights, is escalating at a frightening pace. Trump’s second term is very different from the first, and more threatening precisely in this context. Analysing the fascist regimes in Germany and Italy in the inter-war period indicates of course that fascism has not ‘arrived’ in the US, given that despite huge increases in state repression and very significant threats, the potential for open solidarity and resistance to the regime has not been wiped out – protests against the attacks on trans people, on immigrants, on the Palestinian solidarity movement, and against DOGE cuts and threats to Medicaid have been happening since Trump’s inauguration, and are likely to majorly escalate given the gravity and harshness of their implications.
There are also many far-right parties in power around the world, many in place for a long time. Viktor Orban, for example, has been premier in Hungary for 15 years and has been slowly but very definitely curtailing and eroding democratic rights throughout the course of his presidency, to the point that elections are effectively structurally rigged.(11)
One specific condition that was material to the rise to power of fascist regimes in the inter-war period is not applicable today; namely a massively organised, politically conscious and socialist working-class movement. Such a movement, radicalised and arisen and posing a threat to the capitalist system – including the profitability of capitalist firms – had to be smashed, and the fascist movement promised this, including by utilising enormous physical violence. The absence of such a socialist working-class movement is one reason why some sections of the capitalist class remain hesitant about supporting authoritarian, far-right politics, and building such a movement would inevitably shift more sections of the capitalist class behind it. But as we see today, this shift can happen anyway – and it absolutely remains the case that a socialist working-class movement is the only means of taking on the far-right and fascist threat, and eradicating it once and for all.
Magafication of ‘tech bros’
However, clearly many features of the rise of the far-right today echo chillingly the fascist movements of the past. The material basis for the rise of reaction is rooted deeply in the nature of today’s crisis-ridden, decaying capitalism, and therefore, is likely to continue. Just like Trump’s first term gave the potential for his retinue to grow and organise a nascent fascist movement – as evidenced in the January 6 attempted insurrection, where MAGA-heads tried to keep Trump in power despite his election loss (an attempt that Trump chose to support and lean into in an example of his own further radicalisation to the right) – this can deepen with Trump’s increasingly fascistic policies, further building momentum for fascist organising both inside the US and also giving impetus to far-right and fascist growth globally.
The danger posed, and the reactionary shift in the system, is perhaps most evidenced in the rapid ‘MAGAfication’ of Silicon Valley and the ‘tech bros’ who dominate it. The billionaire CEOs of Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta and X all had prime spots at Trump’s inauguration ceremony. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta wants more ‘masculine energy’ in the workplace.(12) Specifically Facebook, a company that just six years ago set a target to have half of its workforce from marginalised and under-represented backgrounds by 2024, now has received dictates straight from Zuckerberg himself to abandon DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) goals and programmes.(13) Jeff Bezos utilised his ownership of The Washington Post, the world-famous bastion for liberal journalism, to dictate that only opinion pieces that promote “free markets” and so-called “personal liberties” would now be included in the paper.(14)
In many ways these ‘tech bro’ billionaires in fact represent classic pillars of capitalist interests – the extraction and burning of fossil fuels as needed by the data centres to enable the capitalist AI competition, the car industry as represented by Musk’s Tesla, and encompassing (social) media moguls and this billion dollar industry and means to influence. The shift to Trump and open embrace of far-right politics by such prominent billionaires is indicative not only of the fascist threat within the system, but also the degree to which the reactionary turn in capitalism today is deep-rooted.
Multi-faceted crisis – the roots of reaction
Since capitalism’s 2008 economic crash, the system has experienced nearly two decades of multifaceted crisis. The 2010s was a decade of turmoil and mass revolt. From the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East, the Occupy movement in the US, the mass revolts against austerity in Europe in the early part of the decade, to the emergence of a mass feminist, queer and anti-racist wave of struggle later – which saw some of the largest street protest movements in the history of the world, including the Women’s Marches at the start of Trump’s first term, Ni Una Menos throughout Latin America, the biggest international school student strikes for climate justice, and the Black Lives Matter global uprising, which had its peak of on-street protests in 2020.
The 2008 crash that caused the Great Recession was rooted in the contradictions of neoliberalism, which had for decades exacerbated horrendous class inequality, and was typified by an attack on working-class and poor people’s living standards. The austerity imposed as the ‘solution’, meant a further polarisation of wealth inequality and consequent harm and misery and deep disaffection amongst the masses. This disaffection relates to the ideological crisis for capitalism and the capitalist class. Resistance of the 2010s radicalised en masse, encouraging a questioning the morality of the existence of billionaires, and the fallacy of capitalist ideological staples such as “hard work will be rewarded by the system”. These movements have questioned the gender-system of capitalism. They have torn down statues that were physical manifestations of the innate colonial and racist nature of capitalism.
The genocide in Palestine has further exposed the system for many. A blatant genocide has been carried out for all to see by the Israeli regime and this was made possible by Western imperialism. Also complicit was not only the media, but also so many of the world’s largest corporations. As a new wave of solidarity around the world sought to adhere to the BDS movement, the intricate enmeshment of global capitalism and Zionism is being exposed to millions. Zionism itself has never been so widely questioned.
Fears of growing anti-capitalist sentiments
Trump is not just a figurehead for the rise of capitalism’s fascist threat, which he is, nor is he just a concrete boon for all would-be fascist forces organising everywhere, which he is, he’s also emblematic of a more fundamental shift inside the capitalist class – one stemming from the crises for their system. This includes a fear about the degree to which the ideological foundations of that system are so widely discredited, and the politicised movements and radicalisation that may lead to.
This was explicitly articulated recently by one of the billionaire converts to MAGA whose name is Marc Andreessen. Andreessen has a reported net worth of $1.9 billion and is an influential player in Silicon Valley. Having previously supported and donated considerably to Clinton against Trump, his shift is significant. He now boasts about spending copious time at Mar-a-Lago, advising Trump on policy issues.(15) In an interview with The New York Times, Andreessen spoke about his political repositioning. He claims to have been positive about the Arab Spring initially, but then was troubled by a what he deemed to be a discernible development in the 2010s that he explains as follows:
“The most privileged people in society, the most successful, send their kids to the most politically radical institutions, which teach them how to be America-hating communists. They fan out into the professions, and our companies [in Silicon Valley] hire a lot of kids out of the top universities, of course. And then, by the way, a lot of them go into government, and so we’re not only talking about a wave of new arrivals into the tech companies..[and] into the congressional offices. And of course, they all know each other, and so all of a sudden you have this influx, this new cohort… In other words, the young children of the privileged going to the top universities between 2008 to 2012, they basically radicalized hard at the universities, I think, primarily as a consequence of the global financial crisis and probably Iraq… the kids turned on capitalism in a very fundamental way. They came out as some version of radical Marxist, and the fundamental valence went from ‘Capitalism is good and an enabler of the good society’ to ‘Capitalism is evil and should be torn down. (16)’
This billionaire is blatantly articulating his lack of tolerance for the growth of an ideological questioning of the foundations of the system, in this instance, amongst middle- and upper-class young people upon whom the system relies to be the future gatekeepers of the same. Andreessen’s shift to Trump happened before the killing of the healthcare CEO in New York City – an act that received widespread sympathy amongst working-class people in the US who rightly see healthcare corporations as evil. One can only imagine the increased trepidation, post this phenomenon, amongst the billionaires.
Backlash against progress
The gender dynamics of the rise of the far-right and the growth of reaction are striking. In Bodies Under Siege, Sian Norris explains how authoritarian leaders from Mussolini and Franco, to Putin, Bolsonaro and Trump have all exercised their power by pedaling a fantasy of returning to a mythical past of patriarchal supremacy, in which women, immigrants, people of colour and workers all acceded humbly to their subservient position.(17) As well as being quite a classical feature of the far right and fascists historically, and an ideological pillar to laud men as naturally aggressive and white men as supreme, and to see (white) women as reproducers, the very gendered element of the far right’s rise at this historical juncture relates also quite directly to the feminist and queer wave that emerged in the 2010s and the freedoms they promised.
These youthful, creative, life-affirming movements achieved abortion rights and marriage equality in a number of countries. They made gender violence a huge political issue from Argentina to Kenya to India to Australia. They questioned the gender binary that patriarchy is inextricable from. This feminist and queer wave in fact flowed into arguably the most feminist revolutionary uprising in world history – the ‘Woman Life Freedom’ movement that exploded in Iran in 2022, posing the biggest ever threat to the theocratic regime there, a regime that utilises gender apartheid as a central means of exerting its control. All the liberation movements of the 2010s and 2020s as mentioned – including the enormous Black Lives Matter explosion – have questioned the gender, sexuality and racial constructs that are so innate to capitalism’s and imperialism’s workings. Trans liberation promises a possibility of freedom for everyone from gender constructs.
Such liberatory ideas in a time of multi-faceted crisis for the capitalist system must feel very threatening. All of this is a further impetus to the anti-feminist, anti-trans vindictiveness of the far-right. Conversely, the ‘Manosphere’ hooks in its very young male audience, many still boys, via alluring male supremacist dross towards promoting all forms of chauvinistic, pro-capitalist ideas. This is a clear recruiting ground for the far right, and indeed fascist forces. The polarised gender divide in political radicalisation, a process evident for many years, is exacerbating in this context. In the German elections in February, 35% of female 18-24 year olds voted for Die Linke, the left party, and conversely, 27% of young men in that age category voted for the far-right AFD. In Argentina, a country where the feminist and queer movement has been massive and powerful in the past decade, it’s noteworthy that the feminist and queer movement has been one of the most vocal and active on the streets in resisting the far-right Milei government.(18)
The goal of the forces of reaction to quash the awakened liberatory struggles and the hope that they bring will not be a straightforward one, and these movements will continue to be vital in the anti-fascist, working-class and left resistance.
Urgent need for resistance
As noted, the far-right and the fascist threat is emanating straight out of the capitalist system today. Every element of extreme-right politics is present and in fact rooted in capitalism. On xenophobia – deportations were higher under both Obama and Biden than under Trump’s first term. On racism and the Holocaust – the Zionist genocide in Gaza has been enabled by Western imperialism. On misogyny – gender violence is deemed a global pandemic by the UN. On state repression and on state-wide enforced Orwellian gaslighting and DARVO – the German state has been ruthlessly repressing protests opposing the genocide in Palestine, citing its deference to lessons learned from the Holocaust to justify the same.
In spite of the absence of an element that was a precursor to the rise of classical fascist regimes – specifically a revolutionary threat to capitalism from an arisen and politically conscious and organised socialist movement – it’s clear that the trend towards increased authoritarianism, attacks on democratic rights, and the continued rise of the far right are inextricable from today’s capitalism and can worsen considerably. Bolsonaro’s failed attempted coup in January 2023 was an intricate plot for a far-right takeover to establish a military dictatorship. January 6 in Washington was not planned by Trump, just inspired by his demagogic rhetoric and lies about his election loss, but he chose to lean into the happenings, and his pardoning of the rioters was a very clear message for his second term in which the fascistic social movement behind him will no doubt be emboldened. In both cases, the broader capitalist class did not support the far-right coup attempt, but the subsequent ‘MAGAfication’ of so many powerful billionaires gives a glimpse that this will not always be the case.
One of the most important take-aways from any study of the growth of reaction, and a growing fascist threat, has to be the urgent need to actively resist at every turn and in every way any manifestation of attacks on democratic rights, on the targeting of oppressed groupings, and to expose the true nature of the far right at every opportunity. This necessitates coalescing with all the exploited and oppressed who can be drawn into action to do this, and any and all organisations and movements standing on the side of the working class and oppressed. In order to empower any such movement to have the wherewithal to truly defeat the fascist threat, these struggles need to be weaved in and through the building of a major socialist and anti-capitalist opposition and organisation – one based upon the power of working-class and oppressed masses in struggle, that poses a revolutionary alternative the the capitalist status quo of the rule of billionaire oligarchy, genocide, racism, misogyny, exploitation and oppression.
Socialism means taking the key levers of the economy out of private hands. It means the democratic, public ownership of wealth and resources. It means an end to the profit motive as the driving force in the economy and society. It would allow the needs of people and the natural world to be brought centre stage. The billionaires need to be brought down once and for all. The exploited and oppressed of this world have to be the driving force behind the type of change we need. Let capitalism’s grave threat to our existing rights be the wake-up call.
1. K. Yourish, A. Daniel, S. Datar, I. White and L. Gamio, 7 Mar 2025, ‘These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration’, New York Times, www.nytimes.com
2. Nik Popli, 12 Mar 2025, ‘What To Know About Mahmoud Khalil, and Why His Green Card Was Revoked’, Time, www.time.com
3. J. Henley, E. Sinmaz and R. Luscombe, ‘Andrew Tate and brother land in US from Romania after travel ban lifted’, The Guardian, www.theguardian.com
4. David Renton, 2020, Fascism: History and Theory, Pluto Press, p147
5. Ibid, p20
6. Daniel Guérin, 1994, The Brown Plague: Travels in Late Weimar and Early Nazi Germany, Duke University Press Books
7. Ibid
8. David Renton, 9 Sept 2020, ‘Right populism or neofascism?’, Tempest Magazine, www.tempestmag.org
9. Naoimi Klein, 2023, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
10. Ali Walker, 23 Jan 2025, ‘Netanyahu: Musk is being ‘falsely smeared’ over controversial salute’, www.politico.eu
11. David Renton, 31 Jan 2024, ‘What it means to say Trump will govern like a fascist’, Tempest magazine
12. Alyssa Goldberg, 17 Jan 2025, ‘Mark Zuckerberg says companies need more ‘masculine energy.’ What does that even mean?’, USA Today, www.eu.usatoday.com
13. J. Bhuiyan and D. Kerr, 11 Feb 2025, ‘Zuckerberg’s Swerve’, www.theguardian.com
14. David Folkenflik, 26 Feb 2025, ‘Jeff Bezos’ revamp of ‘Washington Post’ opinions leads editor to quit’, NPR, www.npr.org l
15. Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, 11 Dec 2024, ‘Marc Andreessen says he’s spent ‘half’ his time at Mar-a-Lago since the election, weighing in on tech and economic policy’, Business Insider, www.businessinsider.com
16. Marc Andreessen, 17 Jan 2025, ‘How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms’, New York Times, www.nytimes.com
17. Sian Norris, 2023, Bodies Under Siege: how the far-right attacks on reproductive rights went global, Verso
18. ‘Argentines protest President Milei’s diatribe against ‘wokeism’ at Davos’, Associated Press, www.apnews.com