Gazza M what's become more apparent - and I did say it at the time - is that the last election was ultimately a disagreement between which capitalists control the government.
You're not the only one who said it at the time.
In history fascism has been an inherently unstable organisation of power. The liberal-democratic nation-state is understood to broker the reproduction of liberal-democratic society in a manner that's neutral or "fair" with respect to capital. Historical fascism publicly and vertically integrated and favoured specific blocs of capital, and a specific public majority (which needed not be a numerical majority).
Because fascism is so publicly "unfair" it also appears violent (its activity transgresses our norms of fairness). So fascist subjectivation revolves around rationalising the absurdity of fascist violence.
For instance, a US citizen currently becoming fascist resolves the confusion of the evening news by reasoning that people being raided by ICE must somehow deserve it, or maybe the spectacle of ICE raids is caused by the degenerate liberal society of California.
The difference between Trump and the prior vacillating Republican–Democrat status quo (the one represented by the contemporary amicability of, say, the Clintons and George W Bush) is the urgency with which Trump needs to set up fresh alliances.
It's not just about an instant or eventual changeover in which contentious alliances of capital manage state capture, it's about Trump needing the composition of the capital management of state capture to change very quickly.
Within four or even two years, Trump's second administration pretty much needs to set up a new, coherent MIC and adjacent instruments of state power (war, borders, police), a new geopolitical posture (because the old one is too linked to the profitable partnerships of the pre-existing MIC he has to destitute), and a reliable chauvinist majority that feels itself to be getting fed politically, to survive and thrive.
The triple spectacle of Trump publicly bitch-slapping Musk, alienating Canada, and violating migrants' rights all speaks to this urgency. He will have to steadily demonstrate the consequences of not toeing his line to get what he needs.
What differs from, say, interwar Germany about the contemporary United States, and other "post-industrial" societies, is that the nation-state no longer administers the reproduction of decisive components of the organisation of economic production necessary for the reproduction of the nation-state. Globalisation happened and a huge proportion of the goods the US needs just to keep being the US are "made in China".
At this point in the Nazi trajectory, you had 40% unemployment against the backdrop of a powerful national labour movement and brownshirt / Freikorps paramilitaries. The Nazi paramilitaries waged pitched battles against the Communists in the streets, and you couldn't obtain municipal social payments unless a Nazi councillor sponsored you.
In today's United States, there are plenty of Bushmaster-equipped "three percenters" on the alt-fascist right, but because of the multi-national composition of production socially necessary in the US, the strength of any state-capital coalitions tends not to be decisive, and by historical standards there is no mass-political power at all. There's almost zero mass left wing politics it's necessary for all the open-carry alt-fascist wingnuts to be shooting at.
The way Trump's going, I would predict that despite all the sound and fury, the relative inertia of the major military / police / border agencies (DoD, CIA, FBI, ICE etc) will defeat him again. This is what happened after 2016 when he ended up in a public stand-off with James Comey, sacking Rex Tillerson and so on after a while. They are far better prepared this time, but the signs are it's headed along the same path. Take for example Pete Hegseth's struggle with the trio of senior Pentagon officials who've quit.
Despite their better preparation, Trump's people aren't established enough, nor savvy enough across the board to enforce his agenda quickly enough to get all the things he needs to get done, done in such a brief period as two years. Once the momentum stalls, and the political enjoyment of Trump's disempowered and resentful political constituency correspondingly flags, the whole train will derail once more.
I believe this derailment is more or less a given. Even if there are a lot of tortuous twists to come involving institutions such as SCOTUS, impeachment drives, agency forces refusing Trump orders, standoffs with specific States, and so on. It's not to say the shit that's going to happen won't be horrible to watch, but I can't see Trump's phalanx getting anywhere near ongoing rule of the US.
The way I see it, the next thing that likely happens after Trump's movement implodes is a vengeful restoration of the prior interests. This will probably me an outwardly more left-nationalist Democrat politics, but with added strongman vibes, along with a solemn return to a more "Clinton Global Initiative" geopolitical posture. One has to imagine it all presented as a "return to reason", no doubt with the likes of hare-brained columnist dweebs such as Timothy Snyder or Jason Stanley cheering it on idiotically. But this development will require the Democrats to actually find that charismatic leader they've been lacking.
