By: Michael Vavrus

Michael Vavrus is professor emeritus at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. His books include Teaching Anti-Fascism: A Critical Multicultural Pedagogy for Civic Engagement, Diversity and Education: A Critical Multicultural Approach, and Transforming the Multicultural Education of Teachers: Theory, Research, and Practice.

Just in time for America’s 2024 Independence Day celebration, the U.S. Supreme Court performed their own fiery spectacle in Trump v. United States. The majority of the justices turned the historical clock back nearly 250 years by granting presidential immunity to engage in criminal acts with near absence of any accountability. Trump v. United States clearly exemplifies how the flexible rule of law has been blatantly bent toward the fascistic whims of an ultra-conservative court.

In her dissent, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor chillingly captures how the majority swung open the door to a privilege coveted by 20th century fascist dictators:

“Imagine a President states in an official speech that he intends to stop a political rival from passing legislation that he opposes, no matter what it takes to do so (official act). He then hires a private hitman to murder that political rival (unofficial act). Under the majority’s rule, the murder indictment could include no allegation of the President’s public admission of premeditated intent to support the mens rea [criminal intent] of murder.”

In effect, Trump v. United States now protects mafia and fascist tactics within the executive branch. We are already seeing our independent judiciary wither away. Our already unstable democratic system of checks and balances is degrading to the point of becoming a mere civics lesson fable. The decline of democracy is presaged everywhere, as seen on the anti-fascist bumper sticker “U.S. Gov’t Is Soft on Fascism.”

Similarly, 20th century German and Italian fascism dictated the removal of an impartial judiciary, the silencing of independent journalism, and the gutting any civil service expertise that contradicted the proclamations of its authoritarian heads of state, Hitler and Mussolini. Former president and 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump has also vociferously attacked juries, judges, journalists, and any governmental employee unwilling to kiss his ring. Trump once declared what was formerly unmentionable: “I want to be a dictator for one day” (emphasis mine). One day leads to many days. Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains that an authoritarian will “claim that he and his agents are above the law, above judgment, and not beholden to the truth.” Educators must take seriously not only these words from Trump, but also those from the Supreme Court majority in Trump v. United States.

“Our already unstable system of checks and balances is degrading to the point of becoming a mere civics lesson fable.”

For many of us in the U.S., the thought of a 21st century fascist governing regime with presidential immunity was nearly unimaginable. Like the journalist in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 dystopian novel of the same name, we wanted to believe “it can’t happen here.” Lewis’s character, a liberal journalist, self-censors for fear of fascistic reprisals. The character remains in disbelief about the president-elect: “The one thing that most perplexed him was that there could be a dictator seemingly so different from the fervent Hitlers and gesticulating Fascists; a dictator with something of the earthy American sense of humor.” In Trump’s P.T. Barnum-like appeal, combined with his messianic status among far-right evangelical Christians, the U.S. has a potent homegrown fascist of its own in 2024.

Fascism spreads during times of uncertainty and disillusionment. We find ourselves living in one such interregnum, which Alberto Toscano, referencing Gramsci, explains as “a time crowded with morbid symptoms and defined by the fact, and the feeling, that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” The faith so many Americans formerly held in our liberal democratic institutions, those already-weakened entities cast into further chaos by Trump v. United States, has now been broken, thrusting the once-faithful into a political vacuum. One symptom of our interregnum is described in a recent New York Times article: “Political Unrest Worldwide Is Fueled by High Prices and Huge Debts.” During moments of economic uncertainty and disillusionment, fascists opportunistically make advances by sowing seeds of chaos and doubt. In this time of confusion, nostalgia for WWII anti-fascism will not prevent the fragile dam of democracy from bursting and sending a fascistic flood seeping into the body politic. Instead, a forceful, contemporary anti-fascist movement, locally and nationally, is needed to plug the dam which is now bursting at its political seams.

In the lead up to November’s presidential election, anti-democratic fervor has surged among Republicans. When Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts, a coordinated far-right Republican cry arose: How dare a jury chosen by Trump’s own defense team and the prosecutor find their leader guilty! In the wake of the verdict, Stephen Miller—a nativist and eugenicist who has been Trump’s senior policy advisor and speechwriter since 2015—turned to a favorite tactic, hyperbole, casting Trump’s supposed enemies as the real problem: “Every facet of Republican Party politics and power has to be used right now to go toe-to-toe with Marxism and beat these Communists.”

“Educational systems are not immune to creeping fascism.”

There is precedent for Miller’s remarks. Within the first month of Trump’s presidency, he sought to elevate Trump to the status of an unquestioned, supreme fascist leader. In response to a judge’s objections to Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” in 2017, Miller proceeded with a verbal rant: “Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned” (emphasis mine). Seven years later, Trump v. United States cements Miller’s desire for adherence to an American Führer’s will. Meanwhile, just as Nazi billionaires lined up for Hitler, unprecedented sums continue to pour into Trump’s coffers.

Educational systems are not immune to creeping fascism. Three years ago, Trump’s former advisor Steve Bannon articulated the far-right political strategy with respect to schools: “The path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.” Soon, the attacks on public school board directors, administrators, and teachers were accelerating in earnest. Recent instances of teachers and professors being reprimanded or dismissed for crossing the MAGA ideological line may appear random, but when viewed in combination with other fascist inroads, the trend is increasingly alarming.

Under 20th century European fascism, this took the form of extreme anti-intellectualism as school curriculum. Anti-intellectualism has long been part of the American far-right playbook in schools as well. This was on display recently when a Virginia school board member called for the incineration of LGBTQ+ themed books: “I think we should throw those books in a fire. I guess we live in a world now that our public schools would rather have kids read about gay pornography than Christ.” A related Facebook post announced, “At the school board meeting we will have a fire pit in the parking lot. And we’ll burn every last one of them.” From July to December 2023, over 4,300 instances of book bans took place in 23 states and 52 public school districts. Since 2021, 42 states have removed books from school libraries, affecting millions of schoolchildren. Hitler’s ghost must be smiling: Shortly after the Nazi Party assumed parliamentary legitimacy, paramilitary thugs raided Berlin’s liberal Institute for Sexual Science and publicly burned nearly 12,000 books with the aid of indoctrinated schoolchildren. Given Trump v. United States and other recent rulings, a free speech Supreme Court majority ruling against book banning seems unlikely.

Steve Bannon: “The path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.”

Far-right extremist groups like Moms for Liberty have also emerged to stoke the flames of opposition to multicultural books and practices in schools. With over 100,000 members, Moms for Liberty is well funded, lauded by Trump and other Republican politicians, opposed to public schools despite running members for local school board elections, and known to make neo-fascist gestures and violent threats against librarians and school board members, necessitating in some instances legal intervention.

Terrorist echoes of mainstream anti-intellectualism are not new to the U.S. In 1974, for example, anti-multicultural protesters in the state capital of West Virginia turned to violence over textbooks deemed “Godless,” “dirty,” and “Communist.” Protesters, including the Ku Klux Klan, firebombed homes of textbook supporters, shot at school buses and schools, dynamited the school district’s office building, and violently attacked and injured the county school superintendent, assistant superintendent, and two school board members.* Yes, it did happen here and it is happening again.

Another popular fascist strategy, “anti-communist without communism,” serves up distracting attacks against any democratic or socially useful conditions and possibilities. Educators are not exempt from far-right red-baiting attacks and expectations. For example, in 2023 when Trump articulated his plan to “Save American Education,” he declared that schools are infiltrated with “pink-haired communists.” He further claimed, without any evidence, “Marxism [is] being preached in our schools [that] is totally hostile to Judeo-Christian teachings.”

Florida is a prime example of such red-baiting tactics. Tera W. Hunter, a Princeton University history professor, recalls “Americanism vs. Communism,” which from 1962–1991 was a mandated course for all Florida high school students: “Each lesson had the same takeaway: ‘Americanism’ was all good and ‘Communism’ all bad…[and] ‘ungodly.’” She contextualizes the anti-communism of that era: “The Red Scare was never just a concern about a Russian bogeyman poised for world domination. This rhetoric rationalized domestic repression of dissident voices that critiqued the prevailing vision of Americanism that rejected racial and economic equality.”

Earlier this year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis once again repeated the anti-communism trope by signing a bill requiring public schools to teach “the dangers and evils of communism” in all grades, in order to prepare “students to withstand indoctrination on communism at colleges and universities.”

“Teachers must act collectively.”

The rise of fascism is in the zeitgeist, and this provides educators narrowing choices: either fall silent and self-censor or refuse to offer pollyannish instruction that ignores racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual discrimination. Anti-fascist classroom teachers face real personal and professional risks, which means they must continue to act collectively—with other teachers through their unions, and with like-minded community groups. Many examples of such groups and strategies exist—just a few are listed here.

With Trump v. United States, Moms for Liberty, the Republican Party’s proto-fascism, and other fascist indicators, vigilance and solidarity are increasingly required, especially as teachers prepare for a new academic year and beyond. Only collective social justice action will stop democracy’s dam from bursting and flooding fascism into our schools.

Teaching Anti-Fascism

A Critical Multicultural Pedagogy for Civic Engagement

Michael Vavrus

* National Education Association. (1991). The Kanawha County textbook controversy. In R. L. Lewis & J.C. Hennen, Jr. (Eds.), West Virginia: Documents in the history of a rural-industrial state (pp. 308-319). Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing. (Original work published 1975)

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