This entire article is discredited by trying to paint Musk's "hand on heart" wave as a Nazi salute.
You do realize that many Democrats have used this gesture as well, right?
And the other things he said about Germany are objectively true. Allowing in TOO many immigrants will destroy a country, but you trying to paint it as some sort of German Nazi support is equally ridiculous.
It's hard to define fascism because we tend to think in terms of ideas, while fascism is an aesthetic, not an idea. And it's one that's easy to romanticize until you're living it. The problem is that we liberals continue to treat this as a war of ideas.
Misunderstanding Tolkien may get up there with misunderstanding Nietzsch.
As someone who has actually studied Tolkien, I feel safe in saying that it is one of THE most (if not the most) implicitly religious books in the English language.
It wasn’t the “hard men” of Gondor that protected the Hobbits, it was divine intervention in the form of the right persons being in the right place at the exact right moment.
As Gandalf said:
“There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”
Bilbo’s refusal to kill Gollum (out of pity) was key. One could argue that Bilbo’s act of pity/mercy saved Middle-Earth.
As Denthor, Steward of Gondor, noted:
“You may triumph on the field of battle for a day, but against the power that is risen in the East, there is no victory!”
He said this out of despair, misled (to a degree) by the visions of the Palantir, but there was truth in it (as we saw at the battle of the Black Gate).
What was important to Tolkien was not the hard men with swords, but the integrity and responsibility of the small people—of those willing to face adversity and who would do what was needed, what was right, even without hope of victory… because it was the right thing to do.
Of the willingness of Frodo to walk into darkness bearing the heaviest and most dangerous burden in Middle-Earth, not knowing exactly where he was going or how to get there. But doing it anyway.
Demagogues are exceptional in (mis-)using mythical stories to lend their narratives more power. It is fascinating to see, that our modern consciousness is so barren of "actual" myths/archetypes that with certain demographics it is more powerful to invoke fantasy stories. Baudrillard wept.
Our mythology has changed form/medium. It no longer takes the form of epic poetry or formal ritual practices, or individual re-tellings or religious texts.
We have created a plethora of mythologies through the mediums of games, TV shows, movies, books. Tolkien is an example of a mythology--and it was an intentionally created mythology. The story of World of Warcraft is a mythology... and so on.
Tolkien follows the rules laid out by Joseph Campbell, based upon his observations/study of human mythologies (and most of the tryuly effective stories follow these rules--either consciously or unconsciously). Though I would think that Tolkien wrote as he did because HE understood myth rather than being directly and immediately influenced by Campbell.
Because, what is the difference between a "myth" and the stories we tell, other than the details? The specific context where WE say this is myth and this is just a story?
Much of what MAGA centers itself around is essentially mythological. A call back to a mythological (in that it was not real) past and calling forth particular archetypes.
But I think I understand what you are trying to get at here.
Thanks for this exposition on Musk's rather tawdry ties to fascism which I see as essentially performative, provocative, superficial and fashionable among his peers in the oligarchy. I have to snicker over Peter Thiel's impression of John Galt and his dream of an island paradise ruled according to his whims and with all the luxurious features in which he is used to indulging.
Whenever fascism is discussed people immediately go after the Teutonic version of Hitler. This article inspired me to go back to the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, and his 1932 apologia "The Doctrine of Fascism."
Mussolini himself was no more antisemitic or racist than the average European of his day. His longest kept mistress and an inspiration for the early fascist movement was Jewish. Jews were members of the fascist party. The Jews that were targeted after his takeover of the Italian government in 1923 were political rivals (socialists) and others later involved with the resistance.
As Mussolini was driven to alliance with Hitler and Franco his official antisemitism increased and finally institutionalized in 1938 with the promulgation of the "Racial Laws." The mass deportation of Jews did not happen until after his overthrow in 1943 and the Germans assumed control of most of northern Italy.
My point in this is that 21st Century American Fascism is more like early Italian Fascism than German Nazism. When "fascistic tendencies" assert themselves they are manifested in unique ways depending on the social and economic environment in which they are being cultivated. Italy had not experienced the trauma of Weimar Germany coming out of World War I as it was on the winning side. Economic catastrophe is not a requirement for fascism--- although that can be an accelerant.
My conclusion is that fascism almost always collapses because it is an unnatural and ultimately hollow idea. The closer it comes to its totalitarian vision the less able it is to manage unintended consequences. In the end humans tire of marching in lockstep and turn on their master. In the end Americans are already experiencing Trump fatigue. Once Trump has gone then we will see if the most fascistic element (Christian Nationalism) of the MAGA movement will prevail.
Every ideology is a narrative/story. One can simplify its narrative structure into a classic three act structure (setup, confrontation, conclusion). The narrative will play itself out into it's extreme until it collapses. Like bubbles in water, popping at contact with the waters surface, narratives and ideologies bubble up from our human condition, expand until they reach their extreme form only to collapse again.
So you are right, Italian Fascism and German Nazism was from the beginning bound to destroy itself. They are nihilistic, negating, self-destructive narratives.
Where you are wrong in my view is that you, like Toby Buckle and so many liberals and leftists all are using the wrong script to describe the story that plays itself out right now. We're not living through Italian Fascism again. That is why the "fascist" label does not work. It doesn't fit the narrative.
In your first paragraph you were right on track, when you referenced Thiels manifestation of John Galt. Then you fumbled it by recurring again to the already played out story of Mussolini and Italian Fascism. Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged is the story we are in. Objectivism and it's crude, retarded little brother Libertarianism. In some lesser extent Neoliberalism of the Chicago School kind and Americanism. Musk, Thiel, Yarvin, Vance et.al. are not influenced by Mussolini, Hitler, but by Rand, Rothbard, Hoppe, Molyneux, etc.. At the heart lies the craving for power and dominance. These creatures want to crown themselves Kings of their own world, better yet emperor or for the extremest characters, Gods.
No, I actually was in a haste and simplified my thoughts tremendously. I hope to work them out and structure them at a later point. But that doesn't really matter.
What matters is, that the power grabbing of these vile criminals, crooks, charlatans, incompetents, buffoons and ideologues is halted and reversed. For that, in my opinion, we need a better elite, one that understands, that this is a war (psychologically, spiritually, emotionally and literally) and acts accordingly. If not, I'm not too optimistic about the short- and midterm. Our generation will see and experience abhorrent and horrific stuff, we thought was banished from our world. The old gods have been woken again and are channelled into our reality through blind and corrupt invokers for their self-idolatry. The cultish worship of the self lies at the heart of Objectivism and Libertarianism.
If opposing immigration, supporting capital punishment, and valorizing masculine soldiers as defenders of the country are "fascism", I would say the conservative movement has been "fascist" in the US for much of the 20th century.
Fear of eugenics seems overblown. Remember there was a eugenics movement in the US pre-Hitler which didn't commit mass murder. Connecting any attempt at eugenics to Hitler seems like connecting any attempt at government redistribution to Stalin. I don't think capital punishment becomes somehow worse if you do it for eugenic reasons.
This argument breaks down in the same way much mainstream political commentary does: it relies on unclear definitions. The commonly cited details like, national identity, masculinity, violence, and the restoration of a mythic past, etc, are not the defining features of fascism.
Fascism is derived from socialism. Whereas socialism involves full state ownership and control of industry, fascism allows private property to exist but places it under extensive state regulation and direction.
Fascism does not begin with dramatic acts of repression. Instead, it begins to emerge through incremental expansions of state authority. Government departments of education, healthcare, industry oversight, and financial regulation. Over time, these expansions give the state increasing influence over daily life. From there, the next stages historically tend to involve open coercion, intensifying authoritarianism, and external conflict to distract from the economic consequences of all this central control.
From this perspective, opposing fascism requires opposing extensive government involvement in sectors such as schools, healthcare, finance, and industry, and instead supporting a rights-protecting government (the actual legitimate function of government, based on a proper understanding of political theory) which then allows for a capitalist economic system.
I think merely opposing masked men disappearing immigrants is far too little, far too late.
Fascism is not derived from socialism in the slightest. That's terrible liberal analysis. State control is not fascism/socialism/(monarchies?). Saying everything that's not liberalism is the same thing makes no sense.
Liberalism = rights-protecting gov (in politics) and capitalism (in economics).
Everything else = rights-violating gov (in politics) and poverty (in economics).
So, fundamentally, everything that's not liberalism is indeed the same thing.
The differences between the variants of rights-violating government and poverty don't really matter. I think everyone spends their time talking about the non-essentials because we have an unprecedented crisis of expertise in the field of politics.
I would say that each government has laws, but whether those laws protect rights or not is what determines the difference between free/prosperous and authoritarian/poverty countries.
Are worker's rights included in that? Parent's rights? It goes forever, you have to be specific. You're sounding like an overseas American who says they didn’t know they had an accent. That's not you, is it?
Individual rights = freedom of action in a social context.
Things like "worker's rights" are in fact violations of individual rights, to the extent they shake down businesses. This is what snowballs into fascism.
That author has no clue what fascism is, or what the word means.
Fascism is an economic system in which Government controls all business decisions.
You might be able to accuse Musk of it if you stretch that definition enough: after all, he did take huge amounts of government money in subsidies for (IIRC) his solar panel business(es). But that’s stretching it mighty thin.
The only economic system that fascism supported differently from liberal capitalism is corporatism which was just a rubber stamp replacement of congress (it never functionally did anything). Fascist economics are entirely liberal capitalist ideologies and values.
I really like the definition of fascism as a behavior. Helps bypass some of the slipperiness of ideology.
Also enlighting as to Trumpism, which fits it well except for the part where the "compensatory cult" and "mass party" exist almost entirely through media and social media consumption.
The Trump era mainstreamed a move I call "implausible deniability". This is where you kind-of say something that sounds like you don't endorse bad things, while clearly leaving open the interpretation that you totally do. Back when the alleged "nazi salute" happened, for example, Musk never actually said he *didn't* mean it as a nazi salute, he just said: “they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired". The game is: don't distance yourself from anything, just pretend there's nothing to distance yourself from in the first place. Like when RFK Jr complained that normal presidential candidates get secret service protection in "14 days" but he's been waiting "88 days" (14-88 being code for a Nazi slogan, of course) ― I noticed another of Trump's appointees playing the 14-88 game in several different tweets btw, and I wonder if anyone is measuring how popular the game is. So anyway, then you see right-wingers pretend there is nothing suspicious about counting the exact number of days instead of saying "two weeks" and "almost three months" like any normal person.
What's going on here? Implausible deniability. It exists because on the Right there are lots of genuinely non-racist conservatives who thought (or still think) the racist era was behind us and the left-wingers are just making something out of nothing, and lots of other conservatives who are more or less prejudiced, but know full well that open racism will lose swing voters.
So in the coalition of non-racists and racists, both try to pretend racism is gone, but as the latter group gets more powerful the mask slowly starts coming off, to the point where conservatives are now openly feuding over Nick Fuentes.
But I disagree with your evidence that the mask IS off ― you're still seeing what you want to see. Like that tweet where Musk says "Murderers… should be hanged". No eugenicist speak there. Just coincidence that he is promoting another tweet saying 1-2% of the population should be executed to weed out "crime genes". That's implausible deniability. We used to have plausible deniability, but now it's just not considered important to make your deniability plausible. So he's drawing attention to the fact that he is not disagreeing about mass executions, but he always does that sort of thing implicitly, never explicitly.
The reason I wrote this, by the way, is that I think left-wingers and Democrats are constantly losing mindshare and swing votes by not understanding groups of people other than themselves, and by not understanding how politics works. For example, I think every time someone in 2024 called Trump a "fascist" they were distracting from ways of speaking, and topics, that might have *actually* defeated Trump. Why didn't the "fascist" label work? Because swing voters didn't believe the label, and the left didn't make a serious effort to prove their case outside their echo chamber. People make fun of old-guard Democrats for doing "focus groups", but there's something to be said for trying to understand how outsiders perceive things.
I think you're right. The "fascist" label does not work as a political strategy in the age of social media and the internet. Why liberals and leftist still fall into the same trap over and over is beyond me. You can not exorcise these evil spirits just by chanting "fascist". In certain circles it has the opposite effect.
Trump, Musk, Thiel, Vance, Miller, Bannon et.al. all use fascism as a strategy to gain and maintain power, wealth and status. Maybe a useful book that lays this out is Jason Stanleys "How Fascism Works". They explicitly avoid the capital F fascism, as in ideology, because they are not interested in this ideology. They are interested in power and the wielding of power. The Qlippoth for these creatures is Libertarianism. Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard and more recent Curtis Yarvin are the spiritual sources, not Mussolini or Hitler. They use far right ideologies because it's useful in some circles, as they use Christianity because it's useful, especially amongst evangelical Christians. They would use socialism too, if it was useful. It's more like Putinism, not Fascism or Hitlerism. Because of this ideological flexibility the smear label "fascist" doesn't stick. They have found ways to coat themselves in teflon against it. What you call "implausible deniability". They want a country run like a big corporation, more resembling a mafia organisation. Might makes right is the only foundational and commonly shared principle.
Don't be so quick to disparage masculinity. Authoritarianism comes in many genders, and masculinity comes in many flavors. You need to spend more time with the KKK -- Kerouac, Kesey, and Kafka.
Are you really intent on defending Nurse Ratched from McMurphy -- backed by a shrieking mob whose "courageous" battle-cry is, "Me, too"?
Liberals shouldn't need to choose between brutal bullies and self-righteous scolds. Where is Al Franken now that we need him?
What the effin' hell are you talking about? Posting a whining "Not All Men" screed when the article is about White Supremacists/Neo-Fascists attempting to weaponize Tolkien's fiction in order to spur on assaults and murders in the UK, AND seeking to then state that vocal female survivors of sexual violence are somehow "hurting good men" by their testimony...this only reveals your twisted poisonous heart, Wormtongue Mitchell in Oakland, CA. GTFOH, you disgusting filth. Nobody needs or wants you, and you're using the oxygen that better, nobler people could indeed breathe. Go Disappear.
This entire article is discredited by trying to paint Musk's "hand on heart" wave as a Nazi salute.
You do realize that many Democrats have used this gesture as well, right?
And the other things he said about Germany are objectively true. Allowing in TOO many immigrants will destroy a country, but you trying to paint it as some sort of German Nazi support is equally ridiculous.
Thank you. This article taught me a great deal. I have not kept up with Musk, though he always struck me as kooky. Thanks again.
It's hard to define fascism because we tend to think in terms of ideas, while fascism is an aesthetic, not an idea. And it's one that's easy to romanticize until you're living it. The problem is that we liberals continue to treat this as a war of ideas.
Misunderstanding Tolkien may get up there with misunderstanding Nietzsch.
As someone who has actually studied Tolkien, I feel safe in saying that it is one of THE most (if not the most) implicitly religious books in the English language.
It wasn’t the “hard men” of Gondor that protected the Hobbits, it was divine intervention in the form of the right persons being in the right place at the exact right moment.
As Gandalf said:
“There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”
Bilbo’s refusal to kill Gollum (out of pity) was key. One could argue that Bilbo’s act of pity/mercy saved Middle-Earth.
As Denthor, Steward of Gondor, noted:
“You may triumph on the field of battle for a day, but against the power that is risen in the East, there is no victory!”
He said this out of despair, misled (to a degree) by the visions of the Palantir, but there was truth in it (as we saw at the battle of the Black Gate).
What was important to Tolkien was not the hard men with swords, but the integrity and responsibility of the small people—of those willing to face adversity and who would do what was needed, what was right, even without hope of victory… because it was the right thing to do.
Of the willingness of Frodo to walk into darkness bearing the heaviest and most dangerous burden in Middle-Earth, not knowing exactly where he was going or how to get there. But doing it anyway.
Demagogues are exceptional in (mis-)using mythical stories to lend their narratives more power. It is fascinating to see, that our modern consciousness is so barren of "actual" myths/archetypes that with certain demographics it is more powerful to invoke fantasy stories. Baudrillard wept.
Our mythology has changed form/medium. It no longer takes the form of epic poetry or formal ritual practices, or individual re-tellings or religious texts.
We have created a plethora of mythologies through the mediums of games, TV shows, movies, books. Tolkien is an example of a mythology--and it was an intentionally created mythology. The story of World of Warcraft is a mythology... and so on.
Tolkien follows the rules laid out by Joseph Campbell, based upon his observations/study of human mythologies (and most of the tryuly effective stories follow these rules--either consciously or unconsciously). Though I would think that Tolkien wrote as he did because HE understood myth rather than being directly and immediately influenced by Campbell.
Because, what is the difference between a "myth" and the stories we tell, other than the details? The specific context where WE say this is myth and this is just a story?
Much of what MAGA centers itself around is essentially mythological. A call back to a mythological (in that it was not real) past and calling forth particular archetypes.
But I think I understand what you are trying to get at here.
Yepp, the guy is a fascist in his ideas and actions.
We must never forget. We must haunt this man until his last day on Earth, or Mars.
Lol
Thanks for this exposition on Musk's rather tawdry ties to fascism which I see as essentially performative, provocative, superficial and fashionable among his peers in the oligarchy. I have to snicker over Peter Thiel's impression of John Galt and his dream of an island paradise ruled according to his whims and with all the luxurious features in which he is used to indulging.
Whenever fascism is discussed people immediately go after the Teutonic version of Hitler. This article inspired me to go back to the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, and his 1932 apologia "The Doctrine of Fascism."
https://sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/The-Doctrine-of-Fascism.pdf
Mussolini himself was no more antisemitic or racist than the average European of his day. His longest kept mistress and an inspiration for the early fascist movement was Jewish. Jews were members of the fascist party. The Jews that were targeted after his takeover of the Italian government in 1923 were political rivals (socialists) and others later involved with the resistance.
As Mussolini was driven to alliance with Hitler and Franco his official antisemitism increased and finally institutionalized in 1938 with the promulgation of the "Racial Laws." The mass deportation of Jews did not happen until after his overthrow in 1943 and the Germans assumed control of most of northern Italy.
My point in this is that 21st Century American Fascism is more like early Italian Fascism than German Nazism. When "fascistic tendencies" assert themselves they are manifested in unique ways depending on the social and economic environment in which they are being cultivated. Italy had not experienced the trauma of Weimar Germany coming out of World War I as it was on the winning side. Economic catastrophe is not a requirement for fascism--- although that can be an accelerant.
My conclusion is that fascism almost always collapses because it is an unnatural and ultimately hollow idea. The closer it comes to its totalitarian vision the less able it is to manage unintended consequences. In the end humans tire of marching in lockstep and turn on their master. In the end Americans are already experiencing Trump fatigue. Once Trump has gone then we will see if the most fascistic element (Christian Nationalism) of the MAGA movement will prevail.
The curse of living in interesting times.
Every ideology is a narrative/story. One can simplify its narrative structure into a classic three act structure (setup, confrontation, conclusion). The narrative will play itself out into it's extreme until it collapses. Like bubbles in water, popping at contact with the waters surface, narratives and ideologies bubble up from our human condition, expand until they reach their extreme form only to collapse again.
So you are right, Italian Fascism and German Nazism was from the beginning bound to destroy itself. They are nihilistic, negating, self-destructive narratives.
Where you are wrong in my view is that you, like Toby Buckle and so many liberals and leftists all are using the wrong script to describe the story that plays itself out right now. We're not living through Italian Fascism again. That is why the "fascist" label does not work. It doesn't fit the narrative.
In your first paragraph you were right on track, when you referenced Thiels manifestation of John Galt. Then you fumbled it by recurring again to the already played out story of Mussolini and Italian Fascism. Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged is the story we are in. Objectivism and it's crude, retarded little brother Libertarianism. In some lesser extent Neoliberalism of the Chicago School kind and Americanism. Musk, Thiel, Yarvin, Vance et.al. are not influenced by Mussolini, Hitler, but by Rand, Rothbard, Hoppe, Molyneux, etc.. At the heart lies the craving for power and dominance. These creatures want to crown themselves Kings of their own world, better yet emperor or for the extremest characters, Gods.
Thanks. Many good points you make here.
No, I actually was in a haste and simplified my thoughts tremendously. I hope to work them out and structure them at a later point. But that doesn't really matter.
What matters is, that the power grabbing of these vile criminals, crooks, charlatans, incompetents, buffoons and ideologues is halted and reversed. For that, in my opinion, we need a better elite, one that understands, that this is a war (psychologically, spiritually, emotionally and literally) and acts accordingly. If not, I'm not too optimistic about the short- and midterm. Our generation will see and experience abhorrent and horrific stuff, we thought was banished from our world. The old gods have been woken again and are channelled into our reality through blind and corrupt invokers for their self-idolatry. The cultish worship of the self lies at the heart of Objectivism and Libertarianism.
"Musk -- voici l'ennemi." Copy the hell out of that.
(Actually, I already knew that, but it bore repeating. Thank you for taking the trouble.)
The idea that fascists are the only ones that care about economic growth and a high-tech future grows day by day.
Now it's the guy who's claim to fame is…electric vehicles cuz climate change.
If opposing immigration, supporting capital punishment, and valorizing masculine soldiers as defenders of the country are "fascism", I would say the conservative movement has been "fascist" in the US for much of the 20th century.
I looked over the Umberto Eco list the other day and concluded it is a poor fit for Trumpism. https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1o312vk/fascism_cant_mean_both_a_specific_ideology_and_a/niwemov/
Fear of eugenics seems overblown. Remember there was a eugenics movement in the US pre-Hitler which didn't commit mass murder. Connecting any attempt at eugenics to Hitler seems like connecting any attempt at government redistribution to Stalin. I don't think capital punishment becomes somehow worse if you do it for eugenic reasons.
This argument breaks down in the same way much mainstream political commentary does: it relies on unclear definitions. The commonly cited details like, national identity, masculinity, violence, and the restoration of a mythic past, etc, are not the defining features of fascism.
Fascism is derived from socialism. Whereas socialism involves full state ownership and control of industry, fascism allows private property to exist but places it under extensive state regulation and direction.
Fascism does not begin with dramatic acts of repression. Instead, it begins to emerge through incremental expansions of state authority. Government departments of education, healthcare, industry oversight, and financial regulation. Over time, these expansions give the state increasing influence over daily life. From there, the next stages historically tend to involve open coercion, intensifying authoritarianism, and external conflict to distract from the economic consequences of all this central control.
From this perspective, opposing fascism requires opposing extensive government involvement in sectors such as schools, healthcare, finance, and industry, and instead supporting a rights-protecting government (the actual legitimate function of government, based on a proper understanding of political theory) which then allows for a capitalist economic system.
I think merely opposing masked men disappearing immigrants is far too little, far too late.
Fascism is not derived from socialism in the slightest. That's terrible liberal analysis. State control is not fascism/socialism/(monarchies?). Saying everything that's not liberalism is the same thing makes no sense.
Liberalism = rights-protecting gov (in politics) and capitalism (in economics).
Everything else = rights-violating gov (in politics) and poverty (in economics).
So, fundamentally, everything that's not liberalism is indeed the same thing.
The differences between the variants of rights-violating government and poverty don't really matter. I think everyone spends their time talking about the non-essentials because we have an unprecedented crisis of expertise in the field of politics.
Every government grants rights. The US legal system is based off English commonwealth law (with a lot of laws still on the book).
I would say that each government has laws, but whether those laws protect rights or not is what determines the difference between free/prosperous and authoritarian/poverty countries.
Are worker's rights included in that? Parent's rights? It goes forever, you have to be specific. You're sounding like an overseas American who says they didn’t know they had an accent. That's not you, is it?
Individual rights = freedom of action in a social context.
Things like "worker's rights" are in fact violations of individual rights, to the extent they shake down businesses. This is what snowballs into fascism.
That author has no clue what fascism is, or what the word means.
Fascism is an economic system in which Government controls all business decisions.
You might be able to accuse Musk of it if you stretch that definition enough: after all, he did take huge amounts of government money in subsidies for (IIRC) his solar panel business(es). But that’s stretching it mighty thin.
The only economic system that fascism supported differently from liberal capitalism is corporatism which was just a rubber stamp replacement of congress (it never functionally did anything). Fascist economics are entirely liberal capitalist ideologies and values.
Robert Paxton (historian of Vichy, France and professor emeritus at Princeton) defined the phenomenon thusly:
"A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation
with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of
unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist
miltants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites,
abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without
ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
He added,
"Classical themes: fears of decadence and decline, assertion of national and cultural
identity, threat by unassimilable foreigners to national identity and good social order, need for greater authority to deal with these problems."
And he summarized:
"Hard measures by a frightened middle class-that, indeed, is one good general
definition of fascism."
That seems entirely correct in the context of your own analysis.
I really like the definition of fascism as a behavior. Helps bypass some of the slipperiness of ideology.
Also enlighting as to Trumpism, which fits it well except for the part where the "compensatory cult" and "mass party" exist almost entirely through media and social media consumption.
I'm very happy he's your best educated.
Hard disagree.
The Trump era mainstreamed a move I call "implausible deniability". This is where you kind-of say something that sounds like you don't endorse bad things, while clearly leaving open the interpretation that you totally do. Back when the alleged "nazi salute" happened, for example, Musk never actually said he *didn't* mean it as a nazi salute, he just said: “they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired". The game is: don't distance yourself from anything, just pretend there's nothing to distance yourself from in the first place. Like when RFK Jr complained that normal presidential candidates get secret service protection in "14 days" but he's been waiting "88 days" (14-88 being code for a Nazi slogan, of course) ― I noticed another of Trump's appointees playing the 14-88 game in several different tweets btw, and I wonder if anyone is measuring how popular the game is. So anyway, then you see right-wingers pretend there is nothing suspicious about counting the exact number of days instead of saying "two weeks" and "almost three months" like any normal person.
What's going on here? Implausible deniability. It exists because on the Right there are lots of genuinely non-racist conservatives who thought (or still think) the racist era was behind us and the left-wingers are just making something out of nothing, and lots of other conservatives who are more or less prejudiced, but know full well that open racism will lose swing voters.
So in the coalition of non-racists and racists, both try to pretend racism is gone, but as the latter group gets more powerful the mask slowly starts coming off, to the point where conservatives are now openly feuding over Nick Fuentes.
But I disagree with your evidence that the mask IS off ― you're still seeing what you want to see. Like that tweet where Musk says "Murderers… should be hanged". No eugenicist speak there. Just coincidence that he is promoting another tweet saying 1-2% of the population should be executed to weed out "crime genes". That's implausible deniability. We used to have plausible deniability, but now it's just not considered important to make your deniability plausible. So he's drawing attention to the fact that he is not disagreeing about mass executions, but he always does that sort of thing implicitly, never explicitly.
The reason I wrote this, by the way, is that I think left-wingers and Democrats are constantly losing mindshare and swing votes by not understanding groups of people other than themselves, and by not understanding how politics works. For example, I think every time someone in 2024 called Trump a "fascist" they were distracting from ways of speaking, and topics, that might have *actually* defeated Trump. Why didn't the "fascist" label work? Because swing voters didn't believe the label, and the left didn't make a serious effort to prove their case outside their echo chamber. People make fun of old-guard Democrats for doing "focus groups", but there's something to be said for trying to understand how outsiders perceive things.
I think you're right. The "fascist" label does not work as a political strategy in the age of social media and the internet. Why liberals and leftist still fall into the same trap over and over is beyond me. You can not exorcise these evil spirits just by chanting "fascist". In certain circles it has the opposite effect.
Trump, Musk, Thiel, Vance, Miller, Bannon et.al. all use fascism as a strategy to gain and maintain power, wealth and status. Maybe a useful book that lays this out is Jason Stanleys "How Fascism Works". They explicitly avoid the capital F fascism, as in ideology, because they are not interested in this ideology. They are interested in power and the wielding of power. The Qlippoth for these creatures is Libertarianism. Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard and more recent Curtis Yarvin are the spiritual sources, not Mussolini or Hitler. They use far right ideologies because it's useful in some circles, as they use Christianity because it's useful, especially amongst evangelical Christians. They would use socialism too, if it was useful. It's more like Putinism, not Fascism or Hitlerism. Because of this ideological flexibility the smear label "fascist" doesn't stick. They have found ways to coat themselves in teflon against it. What you call "implausible deniability". They want a country run like a big corporation, more resembling a mafia organisation. Might makes right is the only foundational and commonly shared principle.
Don't be so quick to disparage masculinity. Authoritarianism comes in many genders, and masculinity comes in many flavors. You need to spend more time with the KKK -- Kerouac, Kesey, and Kafka.
Are you really intent on defending Nurse Ratched from McMurphy -- backed by a shrieking mob whose "courageous" battle-cry is, "Me, too"?
Liberals shouldn't need to choose between brutal bullies and self-righteous scolds. Where is Al Franken now that we need him?
What the effin' hell are you talking about? Posting a whining "Not All Men" screed when the article is about White Supremacists/Neo-Fascists attempting to weaponize Tolkien's fiction in order to spur on assaults and murders in the UK, AND seeking to then state that vocal female survivors of sexual violence are somehow "hurting good men" by their testimony...this only reveals your twisted poisonous heart, Wormtongue Mitchell in Oakland, CA. GTFOH, you disgusting filth. Nobody needs or wants you, and you're using the oxygen that better, nobler people could indeed breathe. Go Disappear.