Nov 309 min read

Humanist reactions to the US Election: is Donald Trump really a fascist?

By David Warden

In this article, David highlights humanist reactions to the re-election of Donald Trump, including the American Humanist Association's concerns about “Project 2025”, a 900-page blueprint for the US government published by a conservative think tank. David is editor of Humanistically Speaking and a member of the UK's Social Democratic Party.

Humanists UK reaction to the US election

On 6th November, Humanists UK posted this thread about the US election result on X (bold font in the original):

Across the globe this morning, people are waking up to news from the United States that may shock, sadden, and scare us. Donald Trump's victory represents more than just a change in American leadership – it signals a real shift backwards for human rights and secular values that will reverberate far beyond US borders.

Democracy and humanist values are under constant threat everywhere. But we at home can protect, promote, and preserve these values. The influence of the American religious right extends far beyond their shores. Their organisations are well-funded, politically connected, and expert at exporting their agenda globally.

They provide financial support, legal expertise, and political cover to anti-human rights movements worldwide, including the UK. With the full backing of the US government, their ability to undermine human rights and secular values internationally will be dramatically amplified.

During Trump's previous term, we witnessed the devastating real-world impacts: gutting reproductive healthcare access, undermining of legal equality for LGBT people, appointing religious ideologues to crucial judicial positions, and the elevation of religious privilege over individual rights. Now we face the prospect of this happening again, but potentially with even greater intensity.

Across the globe, we're seeing a coordinated pushback against Enlightenment values, scientific reasoning, and human rights. The forces of unreason are indeed on the march, armed with misinformation and emboldened by each victory.

In these discouraging times, we need a strong, unified voice advocating for rational, evidence-based policy and universal human rights. Please consider joining Humanists UK today.

American Humanist Association reaction

In an email to subscribers on 6th November, the American Humanist Association (AHA) explained:

Fighting the Trump administration won’t be easy, but we’ve done it before and we will do it again. Our movement—the humanist movement—has always stood for justice, equality, and a future shaped by empathy and reason. This is our legacy, and the American Humanist Association refuses to let them take it away. We’re gearing up to respond to this, to fight in every way we can, and we’re calling on you to be part of that effort with us.

At the AHA, we’re not interested in standing by while extremists try to tear down everything we value and if you are ready to fight back, you're in the right place.

We are already making the investments, and planning to make more, in mobilizing our community to resist fascism through rapid response, direct action, and in the courts. In the coming weeks, we’ll share exactly how we can stand up together—through organized action, support for our allies, and unwavering solidarity. This fight is personal, and I know it’s one we’re willing to take on. Let’s stay connected. Let’s stay strong.

In a press release on the same day, the AHA said:

While it will not happen overnight, our fears for what another Trump term means for this country are grounded in what’s been prescribed in the over 900 pages of Project 2025. And while we’re certain there will be resistance to this radical, Christian Nationalist blueprint that plays out in our courts, our halls of government, and along our borders, over the next four years, the outlook remains sobering.

The Christian Nationalists have made their radical plans clear: they’ll soon start working to ban abortion nationwide, subject women, BIPOC communities, and LGBTQ+ people to second-class citizenship, and destroy our fundamental Constitutional principles by tearing down Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state.

The AHA commits to resisting the attempts to impose religious law in our country to the fullest extent and will be communicating with members shortly about the path forward for defending our freedoms, in partnership with our allies in the secular movement.

“The Christian Nationalists behind Project 2025 cannot take away our democracy unless we allow them to,” said Fish Stark, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. “As we’ve done for over 80 years, we will continue to lead the resistance to the overreach of the religious right, remaining a bulwark for humanist values and the separation of church and state.”

New Humanist magazine

In the Winter 2024 issue of New Humanist, editor Niki Seth-Smith wrote “Donald Trump's return to the White House is a huge threat to secular values, not only in the United States but across the globe. New Humanist will continue to follow his alliances with the Christian right...”.

There’s a lot to unpack here but it seems that the following claims are being made:

Trump's victory signals a shift backwards for human rights and secular values that will reverberate far beyond US borders (Humanists UK, New Humanist)
With the full backing of the US government, the ability of the American religious right to undermine human rights and secular values internationally will be dramatically amplified (Humanists UK)
The human rights in question include reproductive healthcare access, legal equality for LGBT people, and the elevation of religious privilege over individual rights (Humanists UK)
The forces of unreason against Enlightenment values are on the march, armed with misinformation (Humanists UK)
Humanists need to fight the Trump administration and resist fascism (American Humanist Association)
The next Trump term will be grounded in Project 2025 (an initiative led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think tank, and described by the American Humanist Association as a radical, Christian Nationalist blueprint) which threatens democracy, to ban abortion nationwide, subject women, BIPOC communities, and LGBTQ+ people to second-class citizenship, and destroy fundamental Constitutional principles (the wall of separation between church and state)

In short, these humanist organisations and media view the re-election of Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, secularism, abortion, LGBT rights, and the rights of Black People, Indigenous People, and Other People of Colour. The AHA framed their fight against all this as resistance to fascism. Are these fears overblown and hyperbolic, or are they justified? No doubt we'll revisit many of these concerns over the next four years. But for now, let’s take a closer look at the claim of fascism, and Project 2025.

Is Trump a fascist?

John F. Kelly, an American former political advisor and retired U.S. Marine Corps general, who was White House chief of staff for President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019, recently claimed that Donald Trump meets the definition of a fascist. Democrat Presidential candidate Kamala Harris agreed with him. Kelly defined fascism as “a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterised by a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy”. Timothy Snyder, a professor of history and global affairs at Yale University, has also warned that Trump could put the US on a path to fascism (Vanity Fair). However, Sir Richard Evans, Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge, disagrees that Trump is a fascist and claims that most experts do not believe he is a fascist (New Statesman). He suggests that we should be fighting the demons of the present, such as the blurring of fact and falsehood, rather than the demons of the past.

Seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson (Image: Public domain, Wikipedia)

The American military historian Victor Davis Hanson has said in recent YouTube interviews with John Anderson and Robinson Erhardt, and in his 2019 book The Case for Trump, that a more illuminating historical comparison for Donald Trump is the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson (term of office 1829–1837). Jackson portrayed himself as a representative of the “common man”, positioning himself against what he saw as a privileged elite. His appeal was rooted in populist sentiments and he wielded the presidential veto more frequently than his predecessors, using it as a political tool to shape policy and assert authority over Congress. Jackson has been heavily criticised however for his role in policies that led to the suffering of Native Americans and for reinforcing systems of racial inequality.

Does Trump support Project 2025?

According to Factcheck.org, Vice President Kamala Harris refers to Project 2025 as “Trump’s Project

2025 agenda”, and cites it as evidence of what Trump will do as president. According to Al Jazeera, Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025: “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal” (Trump post on his social media platform, Truth Social). We'll have to see what happens when he is in office. Project 2025 contains 922 pages of policy proposals for an incoming conservative administration. It emphasises the importance of detailed transition plans to enable a conservative president to implement policies promptly upon taking office. This includes developing strategies to dismantle what is perceived as the “administrative state” and to reduce federal bureaucracy. Project 2025 does not appear to have been framed specifically as a “Christian nationalist” programme but it overlaps with Christian nationalist concerns in such areas as the family, abortion, sexuality, gender and the protection of Judeo-Christian values.

Should the humanist movement be all in with liberal-left “progressivism” and against conservative “populism”?

I have more to say on this question in my article on conservative values in this issue of Humanistically Speaking so I will limit myself to a few remarks here. Nearly 75 million people in the US have just voted for Donald Trump, handing him a decisive democratic mandate. This includes sizeable percentages of African Americans, Latinos, and women. Trump has built a broad coalition of support. Progressives (a widely-used synonym for those on the liberal left) seem to have woken up to the fact that they have lost touch with a broad mass of ordinary working people and that this result cannot simply be blamed on the usual suspects of racism, sexism, and misinformation. Everyone who cares about the integrity of democracy will have been disgusted by the invasion of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. But not everyone agrees that it is accurate to describe it as an “insurrection”. Trump’s rhetoric is often alarming, but in many respects his record in office was impressive. Of course there are concerns about the Paris Agreement on climate change but Trump cheerleader Elon Musk has probably done more than anyone else on the planet to promote electric vehicles. There are concerns too about Ukraine, but Trump appears to be in favour of a peace deal to end the killing and the destruction. He is criticised for cosying up to dictators but projecting US strength and unpredictability may help to bring more stability to the world rather than less, including standing up to Iran and its terror proxies in the Middle East. An alarming trend is the relentless increase in the US national debt. Historian Niall Ferguson has proposed “Ferguson’s Law” which states that a decline in relative geopolitical power is virtually inevitable when a state's spending on debt servicing surpasses its spending on defence. Even more alarming is the prospect of US debt becoming unsustainable, triggering global financial collapse.

The American Humanist Association has vowed to fight Christian nationalism, which it fears will be emboldened by a second Trump term. Of course, humanists do not want religion to make a big comeback or for progress on abortion rights, gay rights and so on to be put into reverse. But humanists should avoid liberal overreach. Liberalism is good, but unconstrained liberalism can fly off to extremes – as can conservatism. For centuries, humanism has championed liberty from religious constraint but liberty from all social constraints can lead to destructive outcomes such as rootlessness, family breakdown, drug addiction, inequality, loss of social trust and cohesion, loneliness and mental health breakdown. It can also lead to a decline in fertility, and fears of a population implosion.

Humanism often sees itself as “fighting” against religion. But religion, at best, can encourage communitarian and prosocial attitudes. We sometimes need religion to check the power of an overmighty state. When humanism sees itself as simply championing secularism and liberalism, rather than an alternative to religion embodied in humanist institutions, it sells itself short. Humanism could be promoting pluralism, which means valuing religion as a partner when it contributes to the common good and human flourishing, while not being afraid to criticise religion when it contributes to human harm and oppression.

Democracy did not die in the first Trump presidency and I'm confident it will not die in the second. I'm hopeful that there will be less bloodshed in the world because deterrence is more effective than weakness. Humanists should cultivate a sense of proportion and realism about the world. We will never have a perfect world, and liberty and prosperity are never guaranteed. We should engage in the democratic process and refrain from the sectarian impulse to amplify threats beyond what is justified by the evidence.