Trump’s former chief of staff has just confirmed the ex-president is a fascist. The former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff went on record saying the ex-president is a fascist. Historians of the highest stature say he’s a fascist – shouldn’t all this be enough to settle what has come to be known in the US as “The Fascism Debate” – a debate that has long been acrimonious and surprisingly personal?

There’s no disagreement among the participants in this debate that Trump must be stopped. Any yet disputes around the f-word have made leftists and liberals assemble in a circular firing squad. Those using the fascism analogy have found themselves attacked for ignoring that all was not well with US politics before 2016; those refusing historical parallels are faulted for complacency. Yet it is perfectly possible to find the label fascism inappropriate (and possibly counterproductive), without in any way minimizing the dangers Trump poses, or turning a blind eye to fascist strands in US history, such as the KKK.

Fascism is a form of authoritarianism, but not all authoritarians are fascists. Fascists have a transformative political project: to create a homogeneous people devoted to a messianic leader and to mobilize society for the sake of violent racial conflict. By contrast, monarchs or technocratic authoritarians – think of military dictatorships in Latin America – can be perfectly self-effacing: Europe’s longest-lasting dictatorship during the 20th........

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