Which contemporary U.S. social movements or organizations have been analyzed in peer‑reviewed literature as fascist or fascism‑adjacent, and on what evidence?
Executive summary
Contemporary peer‑reviewed scholarship and specialist journals have analyzed both historical U.S. movements (notably the Ku Klux Klan and interwar “proto‑fascist” groups) and contemporary formations—most prominently the MAGA/Trump movement and online neo‑fascist currents—as either fascism‑adjacent or worthy of fascist comparison, but scholars disagree sharply over labels and thresholds of evidence [1] [2] [3] [4]. The debate centers less on single smoking‑gun proofs than on patterns—organized paramilitarism, violent rhetoric, exclusionary nationalism, and discursive tactics—that some peer‑reviewed work treats as fascist indicators while other scholars warn against overextension of the term [5] [3] [6].
1. Historical precedents: Klan and interwar proto‑fascisms have a scholarly pedigree
Historians and comparative fascism scholars trace U.S. roots in early 20th‑century nativist currents and explicitly analyze the Ku Klux Klan and Depression‑era movements as “proto‑fascist” or fascism‑related, emphasizing racialized exclusion, mass mobilization, and economic rhetoric similar to European fascisms—claims found in long‑form scholarly treatments and monographs on U.S. fascist origins [1] [7] [8] [2].
2. MAGA/Trump as the central contemporary contested case
Multiple peer‑reviewed and expert fora present a contested verdict on the Trump‑aligned MAGA movement: several scholars and commentators argue it displays fascist tactics—organized militias, violent rhetoric, and an “us vs. them” mobilizing discourse—citing militia support, endorsements of violence at rallies, and organized efforts to delegitimize democratic institutions as evidence [3] [5] [6]. At the same time, prominent fascism scholars sampled in peer contexts stopped short of declaring a fully‑fledged fascist regime in the U.S., arguing that while Trump “uses fascist tactics” or comes close, key structural conditions for classical fascism have not been uniformly met [3].
3. Online neo‑fascist subcultures and accelerationist networks
Peer‑reviewed journals and conference literature increasingly treat online neo‑fascist milieus as fascism‑adjacent, noting how militant accelerationist culture and digital networks normalize violence and propagate classic fascist themes; computational and interdisciplinary work calls the online ecosystem a research priority and links its rhetoric to real‑world radicalization pathways [9] [4] [10]. These studies present empirical evidence in the form of discourse analysis, network mapping, and documented calls for violence rather than claims of state capture [4] [9].
4. Theory matters: disagreement over definitions and methods
A persistent strand of peer‑reviewed literature warns that applying “fascism” without careful, theory‑driven criteria risks conflating long‑standing racism and authoritarianism with fascism proper; social movement theory and comparative fascism scholarship argue for refined analytical categories (movement vs. regime, tactical vs. systemic fascism) and caution against simple one‑to‑one analogies with 1930s Europe [11] [12] [6]. This methodological debate explains why many scholars label contemporary U.S. phenomena “fascism‑adjacent,” “fascist tactics,” or “proto‑fascist” rather than outright fascist states [3] [11].
5. What counts as evidence in peer‑reviewed work
Empirical markers that peer‑reviewed studies cite when making fascism‑adjacent claims include organized militias that answer to political leaders, repeated public endorsement of violence, rhetorical construction of internal enemies and conspiracies, mass mobilization around exclusionary national myths, and the normalization of political violence via online communities; these are detailed across journals and specialized monographs rather than in a single decisive study [5] [3] [4] [1]. The literature also makes clear that absence of state institutional capture or full programmatic alignment with interwar fascism tempers many scholars’ willingness to apply the label fully [3] [11].
Conclusion: consensus? No; a cautious plurality
Peer‑reviewed literature converges on the proposition that certain U.S. movements and networks display fascist affinities—historical groups like the KKK, interwar proto‑fascists, online accelerationists, and parts of the MAGA ecosystem—but diverges on whether those affinities amount to fascism proper, with rigorous scholars emphasizing definitional clarity, social‑movement frameworks, and multi‑modal evidence rather than rhetorical equivalence [1] [3] [4] [11]. Where evidence is strongest—paramilitary organization, calls to violence, and coordinated online radicalization—scholars are most likely to use “fascism‑adjacent” as the working term in peer‑reviewed analyses [5] [4] [9].