Trump’s Miserly Return to the Past

One of the first moves that provoked comparisons to fascism came in late 2020 when Trump issued the Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture. The order criticized modernist architecture and called for new federal buildings to use classical and traditional designs (picture the US Capitol Building and its Corinthian columns). On January 20, 2025, Trump doubled down and released a memorandum directing the General Services Administration to come up with a plan “to advance the policy that Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage.”

Beyond architecture, Trump 2.0 has continued down the traditionalist path and staged a hostile takeover of federal art institutions. First came the purges at the Kennedy Center, where Trump named himself chairman. Under its new direction, the center will no longer honor “radical left lunatics.” Then, in March 2025, Trump issued an executive order charging J. D. Vance with the task of removing “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution. If Trump’s vision for federal architecture recalled the monumental neoclassicism of Albert Speer, then the overhaul of the Smithsonian was the nail in the coffin that prompted further comparisons with the Nazis and their purging of “degenerate art.”

However, Trump’s cultural policy is not only marked by historical revisionism, traditionalism, and a backward-looking élan. It is also exceptionally austere, even for a nation with a stingy welfare state. Not only has the administration drastically shrunk the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), but in May 2025, the NEA began canceling grants for arts organizations across the country. The termination letters state that “the NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.” The agency specifically plans on elevating projects that “foster AI competency,” “foster skilled trade jobs,” and “make America healthy again,” among other stated aims.

Given these new priorities, it is doubtful that we will see robust public funding for the arts anytime soon, even for art that conforms to Trumpism’s hackneyed patriotism. As of now, the only major projects on the table are the National Garden of American Heroes sculpture park and the Celebrate America! grant program, the NEH soliciting applications in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

Art Under Italian Fascism

While it is possible that the National Garden of American Heroes may end up resembling the ring of marble athletic sculptures that encloses the Foro Mussolini’s Stadio dei Marmi, it probably won’t. With regard to culture, Trumpism is both more traditionalist and repressive, and less generous and visionary than Italian Fascism.

Since Nazism looms large in the public consciousness and tends to be the focus of liberal scholars of fascism like Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder, the bulk of recent commentary often collapses key distinctions between German and Italian fascism. One major difference has to do with how the regimes approached art.

Whereas the Nazis promoted a naturalist, sentimental realism, with Adolf Hitler demanding the “absolute correctness in the presentation of the female and male body,” no such mandate emerged in fascist Italy. Benito Mussolini called for the creation of “a new art of our times” and when artists and intellectuals debated how to fulfill the Duce’s wishes in the pages of Critica fascista, they came to the consensus that the regime should not intervene in the artistic process and established that fascist art needed to be socially engaged but not overtly didactic or propagandistic.

The cultural empresario and Critica fascista founder Giuseppe Bottai held tight to these principles. His often-repeated credo was, “Fascism does not promulgate aesthetics.” When he took charge of the Ministry of National Education in 1936, Bottai expanded the state patronage system and supported modernism from Novecento and futurism to post-impressionism and post-Cubism. Through competitions, state acquisitions, and encouragement prizes, avant-garde artists were rewarded for producing artworks that instilled national values and reflected the progress of the fascist epoch.

In addition to providing direct financial assistance to artists, Bottai and his deputies also spearheaded new initiatives that sought to increase traffic between center and periphery and ensure that Italy’s underdeveloped south was not deprived of culture. These measures aligned with the regime’s broader efforts to democratize culture through subsidizing train tickets for art exhibitions and programs like the Sabato teatrale, which provided discounted tickets to theater performances.

Of course, like Trumpism, Italian Fascism was embroiled in internal conflict and factional disputes, and not all fascists agreed with Bottai’s modernist approach to state patronage. The bellicose squadristi leader and former secretary of the National Fascist Party Roberto Farinacci and his philonazi faction were fierce critics. In the province where he ruled, Farinacci established the Premio Cremona, a painting competition that had prescribed themes and promoted an Italian version of national socialist realism.

The fascist culture wars went deeper than matters of taste and reflected long-standing tensions. In the early 1920s, after the March on Rome, Bottai and Farinacci were locked in a struggle over the future of fascism. According to the historian Edward Tannenbaum, “the squadristi idea of the fascist revolution was the conversion of Italy to a demagogic, gangsterlike form of militarism.” Bottai did not wholly oppose violence, but for him it represented “the negative phase of fascism,” and once the movement achieved power, it would have to move from destruction to construction.

The fascist future that he envisioned would be realized through “translating ideas into institutions.” To fulfill the revolution, it was thus incumbent on the movement to consolidate the state and expand its activities and functions. Bottai’s approach to cultural policy reflected his conviction that fascism ultimately needed to build something new and articulate a positive vision.

End-Times Fascism and Hegemony in the Long Downturn

Some scholars have grown wary of using classical fascism as a yardstick against which to measure the far right. And while there may be drawbacks to identifying new forms of fascism using the example of interwar Europe as our sole criteria, considering figures like Bottai and Farinacci can help us decipher the vision of Trumpism.

Klein and Taylor argue that the techno-capitalist and populist wings of Trumpism have converged on an apocalyptic politics of destruction that, unlike classical fascism, offers no “vision for a future golden age after the bloodbath that, for its in-group, would be peaceful, pastoral and purified.” While it is certainly not a perfect double, Trumpism’s “supremacist survivalism” dovetails with Farinacci’s rural gangsterism.

Given the libertarian leanings of the techno-capitalists, this is perhaps not surprising. In Late Fascism, Alberto Toscano notes the similarities between Italian Fascism’s “state-led anti-statism,” of which Farinacci was an exponent, and the minimal state advocated by market fundamentalists like Ludwig von Mises. The techno-capitalists that surround Trump are just the latest in a long line of progeny.

Focusing on trade policy, Adam Tooze has responded that Trumpism does indeed have a future vision that delivers by rejecting the status quo, reviving blue-collar manufacturing, and instilling unity through sacrifice so men can return to heavy industry. John Ganz also emphasizes the gendered dimensions of this industrial promise land. And Jamelle Bouie lists off Trump’s many destructive attacks but ends up siding with Tooze and Ganz to affirm that Trumpism has a future orientation that fits the definition of reactionary modernism.

But if Farinacci in some ways prefigures Trumpism’s narrow horizon, how does Bottai square with Trumpism’s techno-industrial futurism? However imperfect, the art initiatives that Bottai established offer a glimpse of the kinds of programs that fascists developed to break down regional divides, mobilize different segments of the population, transform their consciousness, and sometimes even put money in their pockets. When we consider the scope of these programs, the future vision that Tooze, Ganz, and Bouie attribute to Trumpism looks skimpy and circumscribed.

Trumpism’s future orientation at best constitutes a thin form of hegemony. It is often forgotten that Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is not a purely ideological phenomenon. The ruling classes need to make their narrow economic interests appear as the universal interest of society, yes, but the exercise of hegemony also requires that they develop their organizational capacity and make real material concessions to subordinate groups.

The Right has made strides in this direction by building a robust network of think tanks and media outlets. Art, however, plays less of a role in the exercise of hegemony than it did in the past. This is not only because Trumpism’s populist wing denounces cosmopolitan elites, but also because the techno-capitalists appear uninterested.

Michael McCarthy notes “that despite being flush with cash, the crypto world has failed to fund any truly public goods like public education, health, or even more mundane things like public infrastructure, parks for sports, or public centers for art making. Instead, this world funds the renaming of stadiums, like the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and SBF’s FTX Arena in Miami, or Superbowl ads.”

And while pronatalist baby bonuses are a step toward redistribution, it is hard to say if anti-woke TikTok videos, space fantasies, Ultimate Fighting Championship fights, and psychological wages will secure the active consent of the masses in the long run or endow Trumpism with a unifying moral-cultural vision. There is also a good chance that Trumpism will slide into domination without hegemony due to structural and economic constraints. Even if Steve Bannon, Josh Hawley, and the populist wing begin to command greater influence, how will Trumpism deliver the goods if the state is nothing but a hollow shell?

Upward redistribution remains the rule of the day, and it is unlikely that the kind of zero-sum redistribution that Bannon hopes would uplift white Christian households will come to pass as productivity growth slows and profitability declines. When we combine historical comparison with considerations of how neoliberal conditions reduce state functions and constrain the exercise of hegemony, Klein and Taylor’s diagnosis of end-times fascism looks more and more convincing.

We obviously cannot accept any form of fascism, whether it resembles the bleak Farinaccian version or the more inventive one that Bottai helped construct. Specifying the contours of neofascism is critical for locating our adversary’s vulnerabilities and determining how we resist. As alarming as end-times fascism sounds, it is unclear whether it is sustainable and can produce a resilient form of rule.

If Trumpism transforms society into a bunker world, then civil society is likely to degenerate, perhaps becoming “primordial and gelatinous,” as Gramsci once referred to civil society in tsarist Russia. Without “a sturdy structure of civil society” to offer support, end-times fascism may prove unstable. Time will tell. But as Klein and Taylor argue, any future success will hinge on our ability to unify a mass movement that articulates “a story not of end times, but of better times.”