“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” President Joe Biden said at a fundraiser last week. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”
Biden’s comments, while accurate in the eyes of some experts, might provide fodder for the far right to grow even more confrontational.
The right has responded with shock to Biden’s new claim, with politicians and pundits demanding an apology from the president and describing it as a gesture of disdain and disrespect. But Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a key intellectual architect of the political project that Biden is warning against, is now trying to exploit the moment to push his followers even further toward extremism by implying that Biden wants to exterminate half the country. Carlson’s response underscores how Biden’s comments, while accurate in the eyes of some experts, might provide fodder for the far right to grow even more confrontational toward the left.
Carlson fed viewers of his Monday show a fresh helping of misinformation by distorting the president’s remarks. He said Biden believes “anyone who disagrees with Joe Biden is by definition a fascist” and suggested that the president considers all Republicans semi-fascists. Carlson then presented his haunting conclusion: Biden’s comments were “effectively a declaration of war against half the country.”
“What do we do to fascists?” he asked. “Well, we fought a war and killed them.”
Tucker Carlson’s sober take on President Biden describing “MAGA Republicans” who “embrace political violence” and “don’t believe in political violence” as “semi-fascism”: “That’s essentially a declaration of war against half of the country. What do we do to them? We kill them.” pic.twitter.com/vnNJCEzk7e
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) August 30, 2022
You may not be surprised to learn that Carlson’s fear-mongering message got a few things wrong.
Biden’s remarks did not describe all Republicans as “semi-fascist,” but rather used the term to describe the philosophy of the hardcore Trump crowd as such.
Granted Biden’s statement, like many of his proclamations, was a bit garbled. But he clearly was isolating “extreme MAGA philosophy,” which could reasonably be seen as those ideas circulating among the diehard Trump set. And in the context of his other remarks, it’s clear that he meant for his characterization to be limited in scope. Biden went out of his way later that day to distinguish between “conservative Republicans” and “MAGA Republicans,” the latter of whom he says he doesn’t “respect” because they “embrace political violence” and “don’t believe in democracy.”
Biden’s definition of fascism is obviously not anybody who disagrees with him. He’s demonstrated a willingness to work with lawmakers to his right (and left) throughout his presidency, and he has continued to promote the idea of working with the non-Trump-pilled GOP. It’s clear that he sees the far right’s commitment to overturning democracy in the bid to “make America great again,” and its willingness to deploy violence to achieve it, as features of “semi-fascism” — something a number of analysts and top scholars of fascism agree with. And lastly, Biden is not calling for war — in contrast to his designated opponents — but for defeating them politically at the ballot box in the midterm elections and in the 2024 election. Carlson would of course rather stoke fear among his base than engage honestly with Biden, because he is a key engineer the semi-fascism that Biden is condemning. Carlson doesn’t counsel conciliation, or reckon with how his promotion of ideas like the racist “great replacement” theory or Jan. 6 conspiracy theories dovetail with proto-fascist tendencies. Instead he escalates by predicting war. This exchange underscores the political risks of Biden employing the semi-fascism term. The benefit is that accurately naming the emerging extremism might, theoretically, assist in the formation of a coalition against it and prompt at least some introspection among people who are maybe only one foot in with the MAGA crowd. The cost is that it is very likely to alienate a ton of people. While Carlson was wrong that Biden designated half the country this way, the reality is that a lot of Republicans in the country do have sympathy for Trump and his ideas; roughly half seem interested in backing him for a third term at the moment. Moreover, while the hardcore Trump set in Congress is still relatively small, the proportion of Republicans who willingly worked with Trump during his time in office, defended him even after Jan. 6 and have decided to back his lies about the 2020 election is very large. Carlson painted Biden in cartoonish terms, but Carlson’s tirade dramatized a serious, tricky question: Is it a good idea for a president to use arguably the most alarming descriptor in modern politics to describe a huge number of people, even if it’s accurate? It’s one thing for professional analysts to use it, it’s another thing altogether for the leader of one party in a two party system to do so. I’d say it’s too early to say if it’s judicious, and time will tell if the administration wants to continue to use the term or let it fade. But Carlson’s eagerness to use it to rile up his base even more should remind us of what’s at stake.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. Previously, he worked at Vox, HuffPost and Politico, and he has also been published in, among other places, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The Intercept. You can sign up for his free politics newsletter by clicking the link at the top of this bio. 
