I believe that Donald Trump is an example of a right-wing populist authoritarian, akin to Orban, Modi, and even Putin. I see looser affinities with 1930’s fascists–not Hitler, but Vichy France or Hungary after 1931. I believe that Trump and leaders like him threaten democratic and (classical) liberal values.

This post is not about those claims but about how we should justify and assess any judgments of this type. My view of Trump is certainly contestable. Some of his defenders emphasize his democratic legitimacy. Some of his critics observe prominent continuities with previous US presidencies, which have also extended executive power and mistreated migrants and people overseas. On the other hand, some people are even more alarmed than I am and equate the current administration with an actual fascist regime.

I found a great letter from Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers in which she suggested that McCarthyism, which was then in full swing, resembled fascism. Her letter is on the website of The Brooklyn Rail, which comments on the “astonishing similarities between the McCarthy era and the present.” I agree–if the present is 2025. But The Brooklyn Rail posted this letter in March 2006. I would not have described the final quarter of the George W. Bush administration as a time when legality was breaking down “disastrously.” I am not even sure that Arendt was right in May 1953, because the McCarthy era would peak the next year, and the Civil Rights Movement and Free Speech Movement were on the horizon.

The question is how we should make and assess any such judgments. I perceive that I am doing the following things when I make a judgment of Donald Trump:

1. I am describing and interpreting the particular phenomenon. This is not deductive reasoning (applying a known definition to a case) nor inductive reasoning (generalizing across many cases). Both are relevant to a degree, but the key question is how to characterize the particular case, which is unique in many respects. The reasoning is “particularist.”
2. I am thinking about the whole case and how Trump’s various actions, appointments, and statements fit together. When ICE abducted our beloved student at Tufts, that action was cruel and wrong but not, per se, right-wing authoritarianism. What made it politically alarming was the intention behind it and how it fit with other assaults on political dissent. Because I am connecting concrete things into one larger structure, my reasoning is “holistic.”
3. I am considering Trump in the context of previous US presidents and similar leaders around the world. He is both similar and different from other cases, and the analogies and differences are relevant. They display family-resemblances rather than belonging to sharply defined sets. Thus my reasoning is “contextual.”
4. I consider other people’s impressions of Trump. I am not mainly interested in a statistically representative sample of opinions (although I do follow polls), but rather in selected views that I judge to be insightful. They tilt strongly against Trump but encompass some diversity. If I alone thought that Trump posed an existential threat to democracy, I would have a reason to doubt my eccentric view. I find reinforcement in sober, well-informed commentary by others, but also occasional challenges. My reasoning is “social.”
5. I am drawing on experience. For instance, since institutions like universities and medical systems have treated me well, I am prone to trust them and to oppose attacks on them. I am one of many for whom the abduction of Rümeysa Öztürk triggers deeply ingrained images of secret police and concentration camps, which are not personal memories for me but transmitted lore. I realize that I would react differently if my experiences had been different–for instance, if I had always been excluded from universities or if the US government had already mistreated my community before Trump. I try to treat my accumulated experiences as valid yet incomplete. Judgment is inevitably and helpfully “experiential.”
6. I am concerned with this case because I want to know what I should do as a US citizen and what I should think about others’ behavior. The question is what is right for me and us to do. Judgment involves moral concerns and motivates action. Even my concepts have normative bases. For instance, it is from a liberal value framework that I present Trump as illiberal. If I were less committed to liberalism, I would describe him differently. In these ways, my reasoning is “ethical.”

So I would propose that political judgments should be Particularistic, Holistic, Contextual, Social, Experiential, and Ethical. (PHEESC, if you like pronounceable acronyms.)

My judgment is not subjective in the sense that I just happen to have certain opinions. I am accountable to others for my judgments–for whether they are wise and whether my actions match them. In a debate about my judgments, I would have many things to say, although I am also obliged to listen.

This is not science, in the sense of deductive and inductive reasoning or the testing of falsifiable empirical hypotheses. Empirical evidence is relevant but is only one aspect of judgment. Indeed, I think that a narrow understanding of rationality as science is one impediment to developing wise judgments. In a later letter to Jaspers (Dec. 29, 1963), Arendt wrote, “Even good and, at bottom, worthy people have, in our time, the most extraordinary fear about making judgments.” This is partly because they equate judgment with mere opinion.

The wisdom of judgments becomes clearer after history unfolds. For example, I think that events after 2006 challenged The Brooklyn Rail’s suggestion that the US was then sliding into fascism. Of course, they couldn’t know what would happen next.

Unfortunately, we must make judgments in the stream of history. In turn, history will judge us for what we thought and, more importantly, for what we did or failed to do.

See also: don’t confuse bias and judgment; explaining a past election versus deciding what to do next; notes on Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution; Reading Arendt in Palo Alto; why ambitious ethical theories don’t serve applied ethics etc.