The "Fascism Debate" and 2024 U.S. Politics
New Article from IES Director Mabel Berezin
"With the spring 2024 primary upon us, social scientists can draw lessons from Europe’s past. Our task is to figure out which lessons are meaningful in the current American moment," writes IES director Mabel Berezin in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
In 2020, historians and public intellectuals began to ask whether fascism had come to America, with many analysts arguing in the affirmative. Where European political culture is characterized by secular and religious solidarity rooted in national state institutions, American political culture lacks collectivism and solidarity and is susceptible to nativism, a distinctly American impulse that is unmoored from institutional arrangements. In the 2024 American election cycle, analysts should focus on factors that threaten democratic institutions and strategies that strengthen democracy. Comparisons that apply imperfectly to the American situation will not save democracy.