Fascism’s rise in Europe mirrored the rise of pragmatist philosophy into mainstream American discourse in the early 20th century. In 1904, in a speech to the Universal Peace Congress, James expressed his uneasiness at the prevailing idea that war, and the possibility for war, were being gradually eliminated. According to him life would lose all “zest” and “interest”, and a “deadly listlessness” would come over humanity, in the event that people merely believed that war could be done away with, simply because “the plain truth is that people want war”. Of course it was no coincidence that James’ pragmatism provided the ideological underpinnings for a rising American imperialist bourgeoisie that would in a few short years unleash all the horrors of war on the battlefields of Europe.

Speaking in terms that a few decades later would be the stock and trade of fascists, in that same speech James expressed his belief that a country which turned its arms only against an “uncivilized” country was wrongly criticized as being “degenerate”, but a country that wages war on a “civilized” country commits a crime against civilization. In this sense, pragmatism’s role as a philosophy for cheerleading imperialist wars is laid bare. In our era, Trump’s call for widespread military intervention and occupation in the “uncivilized” parts of the world, with the Middle East being the prime target, provides a perfectly Jamesian justification for imperial action and expansion.

Similarly, Trump’s characterization of immigrants, which in Trumpite rhetoric are part of the “uncivilized hordes”, as rapists, murders, and thieves creates the firm dichotomy of the “civilized” empire pit against the “uncivilized” Other. In Trump’s world there would be no shortage of a Jamesian “zest” and “interest”. Trump’s followers can partake in this “zest”, as they already have begun to do, whether by punching peaceful protesters or forming armed militias to violently suppress opposition and to protect their leader.

The connections between pragmatism and fascism are not merely of a philosophical nature, they are also personal. Giovanni Papini, an Italian pragmatist theorist that worked closely with James, would become an Italian futurist, a committed fascist, and dedicate his History of Italian Literature to Mussolini. Mussolini himself remarked how James’ pragmatism laid the ground work for fascism. “The pragmatism of William James was of great use to me in my political career. James taught me that an action should be judged by its results rather than by its doctrinary basis. I learnt of James that faith in action, that ardent will to live and fight, to which Fascism owes a great part of its success.”4 By the 1930s John Dewey, then America’s leading pragmatist and political philosopher of a revived liberalism, expressed his desire for a corporatist framework similar to the Italian fascist model based on “a coordinating and directive council in which captains of industry and finance would meet with representatives of labor and public officials to plan the regulation of industrial activity…”5

In our era of Trump, an era in which pragmatist philosophy is still the normative basis of political reasoning, fascism rears its head again. Despite the historical specifics that Paxton claims are absent, namely a powerful political Left and a deep economic crisis, fascism on American shores is assuming a unique character that is poorly recognized and understood. With the swirling rhetoric of violence, racism, xenophobia, and ultra-nationalism that has been sold by Trump to a social base of angry, de-industrialized, and largely forgotten, segments of the white working-class for the purpose of reactionary violent political mobilization, this is a dangerous misstep. In their quest to find a quintessentially fascist political program, scholars of fascism have overlooked the fact that American fascism will lack a clear program, not only because fascism abhors doctrines other than “action” and “faith”, but because pragmatism, with its principle of “action as truth”, has long ago conquered American thought and politics.