By this point, numerous commentators have considered the question of whether Donald Trump is a fascist. For context, here are a few (of many possible) examples:
In Dissent Magazine as early as 2017, Michael Kazin (“Trump and the F-Word”Links to an external site.) dismissed the notion that Trump was a fascist.
By 2022 Adam Gopnik (in The New Yorker) felt it was still necessary to ponder “Calling Trump the F-Word.”Links to an external site.
And Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins’s new edited collection (of old and new essays), Did It Happen Here?: Perspectives on Fascism and AmericaLinks to an external site., contains a variety of answers to the question (of whether fascism arrived in the United States).
At the root of these questions is a slightly broader one:
Is the United States less democratic at this time (however you define that—it could be “in the age of Donald Trump” or “the age of widespread MAGA sympathies”) than before?
I’ll ask you to take a position on this question for this paper. For your purposes, it may be helpful to think only in terms of a two-point-in-time comparison: now vs. the years 1776-1789 that we studied in the first unit of the course. Were things more democratic in the nation’s earliest years than they are now? Does the turn of politics to Trump and Trump-like figures signal an embrace of authoritarianism?
Purpose
This assignment will allow us to compare the research we conduct about democracy at the present moment to what we have learned about how democracy was conceived as an ideal and how it was imagined to function at the time of the nation’s founding. We will do so by making arguments of fact, of definition, and of quality or evaluation.
Situation
Imagine that our class has been invited to present our two best papers at an undergraduate research symposium where the topic is “The State of Democracy Today.” You’ve chosen to address that topic by answering the question I articulated above: Is the US less democratic now than before?
Format
This paper is your effort to answer that question and to have your paper selected as one to be read at the research symposium. It is a full draft—a polished draft you’d be proud to submit and present—of the paper you would read at the symposium. Each presenter has 10 minutes to present their work (a good rule of thumb is that a single page written in 12-point type and double spaced takes two minutes to read), so your paper cannot be longer than 5 pages.
Audience
If selected, you will be presenting your paper to an audience of other undergraduate students and interested faculty—all of whom are generally well informed but who have research specialities in a variety of disciplines.
Requirements & Tips
To succeed on this assignment, you should consider the following:
Evaluation. As the title of the assignment indicates, you will ultimately make an evaluative argument—evaluating the quality of democratic government at various points in US history and determining at which of those points the practice of democracy was closer to (or farther from) the ideal.
Definition. As the preceding bullet point suggests, any effective evaluation depends on a solid definition. In the case of this essay, to evaluate the quality of democratic government, we will need to have an agreed-upon definition of democracy.
Facts/Sources. In order to argue about the quality of an object or event under consideration, it is necessary to provide facts to your reader. In doing so, it will likely be important—both for the benefit of your reader and for the sake of bolstering your own credibility—for you to document those facts. This documentation will likely take the form of citing sources you’ve used to discover facts. But keep in mind that this paper is meant, ultimately, to be read aloud to an audience of auditors (not readers). Reading a parenthetical citation would be peculiar. So what alternative do you have for giving your source credit (and yourself credibility)?
Quotations. You have a full argument to make in less than five pages, and you’ll need all the time you have to make that argument. So you shouldn’t waste your time by reading long quotations of others’ words. Be strategic about the quotations you use. Do the precise words matter? Or can you paraphrase the quotation more briefly in your own words?
