While scholars in the United States have long regarded the prospect of “Fascism in America” as unlikely, they have begun to reconsider their views since the rise of Trumpism. In the past half-decade, an extended debate has raged in the USA about whether present-day right-wing political trends should be seen as fascist. To date, however, this debate remains unresolved. The introduction seeks to break this deadlock by surveying the debate’s origins, clarifying its stakes, and assessing its course. It then introduces the volume’s twelve chapters, all of which weigh in on the debate in different ways. They are grouped into four sections that seek to illuminate different aspects of American fascism. These areas of focus are: (1) “Strategic Thinking about Fascism”; 2) “Homegrown Nazis”; 3) “White Antidemocratic Violence and Black Antifascist Activism”; and 4) “Countering Fascism in Culture and Policy”.

Chapter 14 analyses the Trump campaign’s relationship with religion in more detail. Based on the material gathered in several dozen elite interviews with political and religious leaders it shows how in the context of an identitarian turn in American politics, the Trump campaign appealed to America’s tradition of white Christian nationalism and forged an alliance with a subset of Christian leaders. However, it also shows how, while doing so, the Trump campaign and administration increasingly departed from America’s civil religious tradition, clashed with Christian doctrine on identitarian issues, and embraced a more identitarian and transactional approach to Christian institutions, indicating less the resurgence of the Christian right in American politics than its erosion and gradual replacement by a more secular but no less radical populist and identitarian right.

Given the Trump administration’s ambiguous approach to religion discussed in the previous chapter, Chapter 15 explores how American Christians have reacted to it. It finds that although there initially appeared to be a certain level of religious immunity among practicing Christians against Trumpism, this religious ‘vaccination effect’ against national populism has since diminished and even reversed to the extent that, unlike in Europe, American Christians have become one of the populist right’s most loyal constituencies. American Christians’ ‘conversion’ to Trump appears, however, to be less the result of a shift in their attitudes than of supply-side factors. Specifically, a perceived lack of political alternatives as well as the inability and unwillingness of Christian leaders to publicly speak out against Trumpism seem to have contributed to this development.