The early 21st century
Western Europe
In the second and third decades of the 21st century, right-wing populist and neofascist parties and movements in western Europe enjoyed a surge of popularity, fueled in part by a large influx of Muslim immigrants following the Arab Spring revolts in 2010–11 and, in some countries, by continued resentment of the European Union (EU). Although Muslims in Europe nowhere became a majority of voters, they increased their numbers substantially. In France the FN—renamed the National Rally (Rassemblement National; RN) in 2018—then led by Le Pen’s daughter Marine Le Pen, advanced for the second and third time to the second round of that country’s presidential elections in 2017 and 2022, respectively (Marine Le Pen was defeated by the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron in both elections). Le Pen resigned as leader of the RN in 2022, and in 2025, after being found guilty of embezzlement, she was barred from running for public office for five years.
In Germany in 2017, the far-right party Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland; AfD), which had adopted an overtly anti-Islamic platform, won nearly 13 percent of the presidential vote in national elections, and by the following year it was the second most popular political party in Germany, after the Christian Democrats. By 2024 the AfD had begun to rival the Social Democratic Party and the conservative alliance between the Christian Democratic Union (Christlich-Demokratische Union; CDU) and the Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union; CSU) in opinion polls, but its political power remained limited due to other parties’ refusal to form coalitions with it. Even after the AfD finished second in the February 2025 snap general election, the mainstream parties maintained the post-World War II Brandmauer (“firewall”) that prohibited cooperation with parties deemed to be extremist.
The United States
In 2016, a wave of right-wing populism in the United States led to the unexpected electoral victory of Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump (see United States presidential election of 2016). In reaction to the themes of his presidential campaigns (in 2016, 2020, and 2024) and the events and policies of his two terms of office (2017–21; 2025– ), some scholars regarded him as an aspiring, if not an actual, neofascist, often referring to him as a protofascist, a borderline fascist, or simply a fascist. In 2021, for example, the American historian and social scientist Robert O. Paxton, a leading scholar of fascism, declared that the “fascist label” clearly applied to Trump, given his incitement of the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack, in which pro-Trump rioters attempted to violently prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election of 2020. Other scholars pointed to Trump’s racist attacks on immigrants (including family separation at the Mexican border and a Muslim travel ban), his push to eliminate traditional checks-and-balances in the federal government, and his criticism of independent government agencies as signs of Trump’s fascist tendencies.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump declared more than once that undocumented immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” He also accused the immigrant population of taking jobs from American workers while benefiting from federal assistance programs (most of which were unavailable to undocumented immigrants). From early in his second term, arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants increased significantly, as masked agents of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency conducted numerous raids throughout the country. Documented immigrants, as well as some U.S. citizens, were detained. And in keeping one of his campaign pledges, Trump signed an executive order designed to eliminate birthright citizenship in the United States, established in the Fourteenth Amendment (1868). His order was immediately challenged in federal courts.
Trump’s second term also marked a great expansion of his power as president, the result of his reinstatement of a federal employment category—Schedule F—that allowed him to fire career civil servants without cause and to replace them with political loyalists. He also drastically reduced or eliminated the budgets of many federal agencies, bureaus, and departments. Trump defended the cuts as a strike against the “deep state”—a baseless conspiracy theory popular with his followers that alleges a body of elitist, left-wing Democrats who surreptitiously control the policies and programs of the executive branch.
Trump exercised his enhanced power in a number of ways, including by removing officials who dissatisfied him, attempting to manipulate or suppress data that conflicted with his agenda, targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, and severely curtailing funding for universities.
Trump’s second administration also took efforts to silence criticism. After the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) criticized the comedian Jimmy Kimmel for claiming a relationship between the suspect in the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the “MAGA gang,” Kimmel’s show was indefinitely suspended by its network, ABC. (Kimmel was later reinstated, and the FCC chief denied he had intended to threaten ABC.) Trump, in response, criticized TV networks for what he called “bad” coverage, saying he believed it was “illegal” and also saying “maybe their license should be taken away.”
Other national leaders in the first three decades of the 21st century whose authoritarian approaches had some features in common with fascism include Alexander Lukashenko, who became president of Belarus in 1994; Viktor Orbán, who served as prime minister of Hungary from 1998 to 2002 and again from 2010; Jair Bolsonaro, who served as president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023; and Vladimir Putin, who first came to power in Russia in 1999.