We treat Donald Trump as the primary obstacle to a smooth trade order but he is not the problem. What he is building is the problem because it replicates the rising mechanisms of democratically elected political fascism.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously declared “peace in our time” on his return from discussions with Adolf Hitler. He did so because he mistook Hitler as the threat rather than fascism.

Eighty-seven years later, we repeat the same error.

This time we treat Trump as the primary obstacle to a smooth trade order and ignore the rising mechanisms of fascism being entrenched in the US. It is this fascist-style restructure, enhanced by a plutocracy, that poses the primary threat.

I use the term fascist not as an insult, but as a political apparatus that defined Germany during the Nazi years. A plutocracy is a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income for their own benefit.

The broader threat to the US, its position as moral leader, global hegemon, and alternative to the darker forces of political structures comes not from its bombastic figurehead Trump, but from the fascist-style forces he has unleashed on the very institutional structures of the US political system.

Trump is not the problem. What he is building is the problem.

Whitewashed by history, it is easy to forget the widespread and fervent support for fascism prior to America’s entry into World War II. It was manifest in leadership by such luminaries as Charles Lindbergh who we now remember as a victim of kidnapping rather than the public face of support for German fascism. America’s entry into World War II, and the workaround of the lend-lease program, was driven as much by Congressional support for German fascism as it was by American isolationism.

In just five months, Trump has changed the political structure in a way that more closely resembles pre-war democratically elected European fascism with its plutocratic support from captains of industry than just a simple “Make America Great” narrative.

The evidence starts with propaganda flooding all forms of media with lies so the truth is smothered and difficult to confirm. Enabling this media reach is the reason Goebbels made cheap radios available to all German households. Today it’s Musk-controlled media.

Pitting state forces against each other is an essential characteristic. In Germany, the SS, SD, Gestapo and Abwehr all squabbled for authority. Today, ICE, border force, police and militias compete for face-time with Trump.

The deployment of authorised non-state actors as alternative agents of law enforcement permits disavowable thuggery. In Germany, it was the SA Brown shirts, but now it’s ICE agents with face masks.

Experienced departmental leadership is replaced with fawning idiots. Fox News hosts with no experience become secretary of defence. Most infamously, in both regimes, courts are ignored, judges abused and dismissed, and new pseudo courts established to supplant the legitimate remit of the legal court structure. This reflects a contempt for the constraints of the Constitution, even to the extent of outright rejection and rewriting.

Government is exercised through executive orders with Congress and the Reichstag as willing, but irrelevant, bystanders.

This is part of gutting organisations so they cannot work effectively and provide a considered balance in policy implementation.

As in fascist Germany, victimhood lies at the heart of an excuse for ignoring international law. Then the Versailles treaty provisions were unfair and now the rhetoric is that for years the world has been taking unfair advantage of America.

Enforcement of selected narratives, university exclusions and expulsion of foreign students are all a precursor to the modern equivalent of book burning.

Fascism, militarist by nature, fosters a threat narrative. Today it is immigrants, not Jews, but the political intent is the same.

All of these are the basis of the fascist playbook. To be sure, Trump, like Hitler, epitomises the issues, although Trump is more akin to Mussolini with his vain-glorious and bombastic boasting. Trump, like Hitler is a simpler target to identify and our leadership can be forgiven for its focus on the figurehead. Chamberlain made the same mistake.

However, this focus does not assist in developing a policy response to the deeper and more troubling fascist metastasis of the US political system. Albanese and other political leaders have to deal with Trump face-to-face. The rest of us do not.

Instead, we have to deal with the institutions that have become fascist agents. We have to deal with black-shirted border control police demanding our phones, the faceless bureaucrats forced into toiling to achieve fascist objectives by a “dob them in” culture and the anonymous masked “brown shirt” mercenary agents of ICE with powers of instant deportation.

We are a whisker away from surveillance capitalism becoming a servant of the state, powered by AI algorithms to make life-changing decisions.

We, and our superannuation funds, have to manage additional taxes on dividends and earnings imposed on citizens of “unfriendly” countries which try to tax Amazon, hold Facebook to account, or limit children’s exposure to Instagram.

Leaders hope that this aberration, in the shape of Trump, will pass, but it leaves in its wake an America that is fundamentally and structurally damaged. This is where the policy focus needs to be.

How to handle a fascist state is a problem of a far different order to that of managing an erratic, egotistical and ever-so-sensitive megalomaniac. Like our political leaders, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade does not appear to appreciate this distinction. Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler and ignored the structure and meaning of fascism. Albanese and other world leaders are making the same mistake.

I offer no solutions or suggestions for how to manage this emerging form of fascism. My purpose here is to identify the nature of the changed relationship so we can move beyond the simplistic, “I have talked to Trump and found a ’tariff peace in our time’ response.”

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.