Forgotten fascism
Today: Josephine Riesman, New York Times bestselling author of Ringmaster and True Believer.
Issue No. 512
No, We Definitely Knew How Bad It Would Be
Josephine Riesman
No, We Definitely Knew How Bad It Would Be
by Josephine Riesman
If there’s one phrase I wish I could ban from the American lexicon as of February 2026, it is this: “None of us could have known how bad it would be.”
I long ago lost track of how many times I’ve heard citizens of the United States who consider themselves informed and intelligent say they thought Trump 2.0 would be bad, but that—and this is where they rope you in against your will—no one could have known it would be this bad.
In fact, plenty of people thought it would be this bad. Perhaps those who didn’t see this awfulness coming should ask themselves why.
Personally? I blame the schools.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has generally done an abysmal job of educating its children, much less its adults, about what fascism was, is, and could yet become. It’s deeply troubling that there had to be any debate as to whether Donald Trump’s MAGA movement was fascist in character. It certainly seemed obvious to a lot of people, as it did to me.
But then again, I had a good teacher.
In the twelfth grade, when I was 16 and 17 years old, I had the honor of studying European History under Dr. Jessica Young, a ridiculously talented teacher at my massive public secondary school in suburban Chicago, Oak Park and River Forest High. Dr. Young was no fool, nor did she suffer fools. She imbued in me a proper balance of terrified awe and mocking condescension towards fascism. She taught our class that fascism could always come back. She gave me a copy of Robert O. Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism as a graduation present. I cherish what I learned from her.
But Dr. Young’s position vis-à-vis fascism was not popular in academia as of 2003-04. The study of fascism had fallen out of favor in the universities. Perhaps that was part of a conspiracy to make people forget what should not be forgotten; a look at all the Trumpniks and Harvard professors in the Epstein Files certainly raises some questions there. Perhaps it just seemed like fascism was a dead letter to most—a closed chapter of history, relevant only for action flicks and late-night cable documentaries. Or maybe folks just stopped listening to Marxists.
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