Prior to the 2024 election, there was a debate about whether Donald Trump was a fascist. I thought that was the wrong moniker because fascism has specific associations with genocide and totalitarian power, and we weren’t close be being there yet. Fascism is driven by an ideology, and I don’t think Trump has ever been guided by anything that could be called an idea. I think he can be clearly labeled an authoritarian, as he and his allies like Elon Musk are deliberately dismantling existing checks on executive power in the U.S. constitutional system. He has not once sought to go through the Republican-controlled Congress to enact policies, deliberately preferring to do everything via executive orders like a king.
Max Weber used the term “patrimonial” to describe virtually every pre-modern regime once mankind graduated from decentralized tribalism. That is, the government was considered to be an extension of the ruler’s family and household. Such systems evolved out of conquest, in which the chief of a victorious band of raiders distributed land, resources, and women to his fellow warriors, who were then free to hand down those properties to their descendants.
In such a system, there was no distinction between public and private. Everything in theory belonged to the ruler, who could give away a province with all of its inhabitants to a son or daughter as a wedding present. The separation of the ruler’s property from that of the state was first laid out in the 17^(th) and 18^(th) centuries by theorists like Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin, who place sovereignty in a broader commonwealth and not in the person of the ruler. This made possible for the first time a phenomenon like corruption, in which an official appropriated public resources for private benefit.
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Prior to the 2024 election, there was a debate about whether Donald Trump was a fascist. I thought that was the wrong moniker because fascism has specific associations with genocide and totalitarian power, and we weren’t close be being there yet. Fascism is driven by an ideology, and I don’t think Trump has ever been guided by anything that could be called an idea. I think he can be clearly labeled an authoritarian, as he and his allies like Elon Musk are deliberately dismantling existing checks on executive power in the U.S. constitutional system. He has not once sought to go through the Republican-controlled Congress to enact policies, deliberately preferring to do everything via executive orders like a king.
Yet the simple term “authoritarian” doesn’t quite capture the worldwide phenomenon of which Trump is a part. Steve Hanson and Jeff Kopstein are publishing [a companion piece](https://www.persuasion.community/p/sins-of-the-father) in *Persuasion* today, expanding on their characterization of Trumpism as “patrimonial.” Jonathan Rauch recently published an [article in ](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/)[*The Atlantic*](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/) building on their use of that term. I think it is a better adjective, and puts our current situation in the correct historical framework.
Max Weber used the term “patrimonial” to describe virtually every pre-modern regime once mankind graduated from decentralized tribalism. That is, the government was considered to be an extension of the ruler’s family and household. Such systems evolved out of conquest, in which the chief of a victorious band of raiders distributed land, resources, and women to his fellow warriors, who were then free to hand down those properties to their descendants.
In such a system, there was no distinction between public and private. Everything in theory belonged to the ruler, who could give away a province with all of its inhabitants to a son or daughter as a wedding present. The separation of the ruler’s property from that of the state was first laid out in the 17^(th) and 18^(th) centuries by theorists like Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin, who place sovereignty in a broader commonwealth and not in the person of the ruler. This made possible for the first time a phenomenon like corruption, in which an official appropriated public resources for private benefit.
We are finally on Bluesky!
[Francis Fukuyama](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:bh72k5pqi63p32uc2mxlxwzw) and [American Purpose](https://bsky.app/profile/americanpurpose.bsky.social) can be found on this platform as part of our divorce from Twitter.
America is a mafia state now