It's Happening Here: Rosan Smits on Fascism in America & Europe

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody, it is Friday, the 18th of September, 2026 We're having a bit of a fascist week in a way. Yesterday, we did a show with the very distinguished American journalist, Jacob Weisberg. He has a new book out, Profiles In Cowardice, A Study Of Collaboration In The Trump Era. I think he thinks very much that the second Trump era is quote unquote fascist and that there are a series of collaborators who have enabled Trump's fascism. And then at the beginning of the week, we did another show with the moral philosopher, Susan Nyman.

She has a new book out, Call It Evil, Understanding The Trump Era. And we talked fascism with Susan too. And we're back to fascism with my guest today. She's not based in America. She writes for The Correspondent, the Amsterdam publication. She was editor-in-chief up until a few days ago. Now she's just a regular writer. And she's also the author of an international bestseller. This Is Fascism, A Wake-Up Call to Resist. She's joining us from Amsterdam. Rosan Smits, congratulations on the new book. This Is Fascism. So is it fascism, Rosan? Obviously, from your mind, it is. Is Trump a fascist? And when you look at him from Amsterdam, do you see the 1930s all over again?

Rosan Smits (2:03)

No, it's not the 1930s. It's 2026 And we get our own variances of fascism. What I do see is that there are certainly fascist patterns in the US., but also wider in Europe as well. We see far-right populists reconnecting to fascist tactics all over the world.

So, yes.

Andrew Keen (2:28)

This Is Fascism, of course, it's a very controversial subject.

My friend, Jonathan Rausch, who comes on the show quite often, wrote a piece in The Atlantic a few months ago. Yes, it's fascism. It was, as I said, quite controversial. Rosan, does it matter if we use the F word? Do we use it or have you used it in this new book to scare people, to wake people up, or is it just a word that we should be using? As I said, I mean, as you said, the word, of course, was invented by Mussolini in the 1930s or 20s after the First World War. We live in the 2020s, a very different world. Is it useful to have this word?

Rosan Smits (3:19)

Yes, I think it's very useful to understand how fascism works.

Because, I mean, when we think of fascism, you start to look out for swastikas and jackboots in the streets. But that's not how fascism works. It starts way before the threshold. And by understanding the playbook of fascism, where I focus my book on, I think we can catch it early and we also can find entry points for resistance. So that's why I think it's very important to understand how fascism works. Now, of course, the question then is, what is fascism? And there's a huge debate about it, of course. So maybe if you want to go into that, we can talk a bit about that, because fascism can be means a lot different things to a lot of different people.

Andrew Keen (4:12)

Yeah, so I do want to get into that. But you said we catch it early. A lot of the way in which the traditional liberal press seem to present what's happening in the world. Today was a piece in Foreign Policy asking, what's the matter with Eastern Germany and trying to explain the rise of the AFD there?

Is fascism in your mind, in the way you present it, and many other writers like yourself, is it a kind of disease?

Rosan Smits (4:42)

A disease? I'm not sure what I would call it a disease. It's a coping strategy for elites that are losing their privileges because the system that underpins their privileges are not delivering for the masses. So instead of them addressing the root causes and maybe transform those systems, elites start to point at scapegoats.

They start to say like, it's not AI taking your jobs. No, no, no, it's the migrants, it's not private investments that turn the housing market upside down. No, it's the migrants. So I would say it's a coping strategy rather than a disease.

Andrew Keen (5:26)

A coping strategy for elites. We talked about this yesterday with Jacob Weisberg, who I think would be very much in your camp, suggesting that elites collaborate out of self-interest. So is your argument in terms of whether or not this is a disease? You said it's a coping mechanism. The elites are challenged.