Biden’s Democrats seek a one-party state. Trump’s followers want freedom from government power. By Lance Morrow in the Wall Street Journal.

The Democrats have the “fascist” business wrong.

Donald Trump isn’t a fascist, or even a semi-fascist, in President Biden’s term. Mr. Trump is an opportunist. … As for Mr. Trump’s followers, they belong to the Church of American Nostalgia. They are Norman Rockwellians, or Eisenhowerites. They regard themselves, not without reason, as the last sane Americans. You might think of them as American masculinity in exile …

If there are fascists in America these days, they are apt to be found among the tribes of the left. They are Mr. Biden and his people (including the lion’s share of the media), whose opinions have, since Jan. 6, 2021, hardened into absolute faith that any party or political belief system except their own is illegitimate — impermissible, inhuman, monstrous and (a nice touch) a threat to democracy.

Patron saint of the modern left, Benito Mussolini.

The evolution of their overprivileged emotions — their sentimentality gone fanatic — has led them, in 2022, to embrace Mussolini’s formula: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Or against the party. (People forget, if they ever knew it, that both Hitler and Mussolini began as socialists).

The state and the Democratic Party must speak and act as one, suppressing all dissent. …

In the last three decades, the bureaucrats took over the main left party in each western country. The state and the left party see themselves as one, because they are.

Mr. Trump and his followers, believe it or not, are essentially antifascists: They want the state to stand aside, to impose the least possible interference and allow market forces and entrepreneurial energies to work.

Freedom isn’t fascism. Mr. Biden and his vast tribe are essentially enemies of freedom, although most of them haven’t thought the matter through. Freedom, the essential American value, isn’t on their minds. They desire maximum — that is, total — state or party control of all aspects of American life, including what people say and think.

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