Maybe we should define our terms then? I favour this definition of "ur-fascism" by Umberto Eco: https://archive.is/VamLM
To steal a few examples from a convenient summary list someone[1] made:
1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
...
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Open to other definitions. But I look at that list, written in 1995, and it feels like you can check off a lot of these items in things that are rapidly being normalised.
"Anti-fascists" were saying things like "Keir Starmer is a Fascist" (sci-fi writer Charlie Stross) or that "My local police department is Fascist" or "White people are Fascist"
If you know your 'Pataphysics or Chaos Magick you know that's a magic spell to put fascists in charge.
The problem is that fascism historically encompassed a number of political and power qualities and what is being described as “fascist” today might have some of those qualities, but not necessarily all of them. Ironically the side yelling “fascist” today also has some of those qualities, but doesn’t want to admit either.
Probably just best to focus on those qualities you don’t like on the other side and leave the labeling to the future historians.
> We need words people understand now to describe what's happening now.
Ok, so use words appropriate to what is happening. When you work to redefine “scary” words in an attempt to try and piggyback on their negative history you minimize that history.
> Curious what you consider fascist about people who hold zero corporate or political power
The point was that I don’t consider what we see today as fascist and you shouldn’t either…because it’s not.
At what point will you consider it fascist, if anonymous masked police kidnapping people off the streets doesn’t, and building concentration camps doesn’t, and silencing of critical media doesn’t? Are you waiting for a specific number of mass casualties, or is this just sparkling despotism?
Those are “tactics”. You are confusing relatively common control and power tactics that are used by some governments with an ideology that encompasses many different characteristics. The Soviet Union used many of the same tactics, but you wouldn’t call them fascist. Many of the important (political and economic) fascist ideologies don’t apply to the current administration…in fact politically and economically the current US administration is directly opposite of what was found in historic fascism.
I get that you want to redefine what “fascism” is, because historically it’s associated with some really evil things, but I am not willing to dilute that definition.
Trump has given power back to the states for various things and seems to be consistently anti-war. Musk has been pushing the idea of starting a new political party to better represent the people and is for less regulation and smaller government.
>Musk has been pushing the idea of starting a new political party to better represent the people and is for less regulation and smaller government.
This is self-contradictory gibberish. Deregulation and small government for him means further weakening labour laws to the point where the interests of the majority of Americans, ie, wage workers, have no ability to advocate for their needs and no recourse when he encroaches on them.
>Trump [...] seems to be consistently anti-war.
This was already a surreal claim to make when he was sending troops and PMCs into Iraq and Syria, deploying SEALs on abortive raids in Yemen, where Saudi troops were using arms his administration provided them, oh and, I dunno, ordering the assassination of the highest military official of a sovereign nation. It becomes solipsistic in the month after he oversaw the US' direct intervention in Israel's war with Iran.
No, it's fascist in the sense of nativism and public-private collaboration that was normative in fascist states. Most Americans are ambivalent to communism.
