None of them. You keep on having an issue with only defining mechanisms that authoritarians use in general as fascism. Your definition cannot differentiate between generic authoritarianism and fascism. Tha means your definition is useless. Ideologies are best described by providing a general guideline of patterns the ideology posseses. Fascism has these patterns in my opinion: 1. Simple solutions that remove basic empathy to complex issues involving crime and migration. 2. A belief in strict traditional hierarchies. Men do men stuff. Women do women stuff. Any hierarchies based on ethnicity, religion and race are strongly enforced. 3. A non-introspective fable like retelling of national history Extreme ideologies like fascism and communism usually rise in popularity around the same time because these are ideologies people dig themselves in when society and class divide around them stagnated or worsens. Two compeiting narratives occur when wealth divides increase and society starts to worsen around people. One narrative rises from the poor working class believing there is some inherent failure of an economic system. The critique of why society is worsening comes from a economic lense of exploitation of workers. The opposing narrative comes from the wealthy and the upper middle class property and capital owner class. The wealthy don't want workers in solidarity b****ing about systems that directly benefit them. They need a in with the working class poor and there "in" is sharing traditional hierarchal values with the same "tribal" cultural group that is shared with the working class. They will make sure those people are upset at some form of cultural and national degradation due to not adhering to the values of the nation's origin and the hierarchies that traditionally followed. The breaking of tradition and hierarchy is the reason for societal collapse is the primary premise of a fascist.
I would say Americana Libertarianism is fascism. Self labeled libertarians in America are probably the most fascist like groups in America. It makes sense. Think of Voltaire's character Pangloss and his belief that all is for the best in this “best of all possible worlds.” It's a philosophy only those who are the top would want the rest of the world to believe. If you are at the top, your idea of "liberty" and "freedom" is the freedom to maintain your wealth and extract your wealth in the same means that might have harmed society. In America it's the libertarian that might see a graph that shows massive wealth divides based on racial lines which results in racial hierarchies and conclude "it's immoral for the government to step in and change this hierarchy"
I don't see it. Fascism involved extreme nationalism and the elevation of one individual above all others as an almost god like figure. It's a far-right populist movement built out of disillusionment with the status quo (sound familiar) and the taking over/corruption of institutions until a single figure is able to implement radical reforms. It's based on the idea of purity and that anyone who isn't pure or criticizes the movement is an enemy that must be destroyed. The doesn't sound like libertarianism to me, nor socialism for that matter. It is its own thing.
Timely question and Washington Post editorial... Opinion This is how fascism comes to America By Robert Kagan Editor at large May 18, 2016 at 7:31 p.m. EDT Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Post. The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well. But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone. And the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up. That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as anyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous. Republican politicians marvel at how he has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.” Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty. But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people. This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic. To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today. These movements play on all the fears, vanities, ambitions and insecurities that make up the human psyche. In democracies, at least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they want — vox populi vox Dei. A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been. He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party’s most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death. In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader’s incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won’t let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin’s show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway. A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don’t alienate the leader’s mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to be brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let’s shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins. What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will likely comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt? This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac "tapping into" popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...e32c58-1c47-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html
It sounds like American Libertarianism to me. American Christianity is far different than Christianity as in the Jesus version of it. So these words like "libertarianism" have an entirely different meaning in the US.
Exactly. The solution to seeing economic struggles around you is sigma male grindset and making sure trans people don't get puberty blockers rather than doing things like making labor unions stronger.
the alignment of corporate interests with the government. government working at the behest of corporate interests over its own citizens. the economy is tightly controlled by the government. nationalism, which trumpers are into is also a form of fascism. trump has literally said "im a nationalist". WWII was fought against people who thought like that. the concept of "america first" has always reeked of fascism to me. authoritarianism - subservience to a single person. the leader is the state. trump "i alone can fix it". cult of personality. single party rule, which we have in texas. we have republican politicians in florida actually calling to ban the democratic party. that reeks of fascism. not just acceptance of violence, but encouragement of violence...again, see trump and his supporters. using grievance and anger to arouse your supporters against your enemies (again, see trump and also fox news). there is often a racial component to fascism, which ties in with the nationalist tendencies.
What? None of those makes any sense. It starts with a single person controlling everything. The concept of a single leader controlling everything requires a strong, powerful leader with a cult-like following that is well-organized and able to execute control effectively. American examples: Trump is not that. He is not powerful or smart enough. The MAGA movement is also not that. They are mostly a group of individuals with weak organization, and some are even against centralized power, which is a key ingredient of fascism. However, the MAGA movement has the potential to become one. What it lacks today is a strong leader and strong lieutenants in government positions, especially in the military.
I don't think fascism starts with a single person. Again, to me fascism is an ideology. A strong man makes sense in a fascist ideology because it embodies the fascist mindset of machismo and male hierarchy but the cult of personality isn't the inherent part of what fascism is. Cult of personality of a strongman leader is just a mechanism of authoritarianism in general. Non fascist regimes that are authoritarian also have strong men. Castro was a strong man for example. Trump was a cult leader but his base is organic. Without the base, there is no cult of personality. That base only exists because they've been primed through decades of propaganda to be more in tune with a machismo type leader who tells you all the problems with the world are evil leftists trying to ruin traditional America.
I don't disagree with much of what you said. But I was talking more about an actualization of facism, not what lead to it. There is a fuzzy line that you cross over and if you aren't very clear on what that line looks like, people will be naturally confused and that risk people not noticing.
IIRC the root of the word fascia means to connect or bind together. In its early 20th century uses it meant the combining of the state and press together. Now it just means "a person who has a more conservative opinion than me which I disagree with'.
this is just sadly misconceived and confused. I've posted the link to this book before, it might be helpful for understanding "American libertarianism." https://academic.oup.com/book/4166/chapter-abstract/145945157?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false obviously there are different theoretical approaches to libertarianism, but what you've written in this thread so far don't come close to any of them as far as I can tell
What Is Fascism? What to Know About Its Brutal Origins | Time Americans Have Lost Sight of What 'Fascism' Means - The Atlantic Is it Fascism? Is it Socialism? (theatlantic.com) Fear of Fascism - The Atlantic
I don't care what Libertarians say about it. The most famous American neo-nazis waxed lyrical about personal liberties and freedom
I don't care what Libertarians say about it. The most famous American neo-nazis waxed lyrical about personal liberties and freedom No Combining the state and press is what we call a mechanism of any authorarianism regime. Authoritarian communists, neo-liberials, right wing fascists all have tried to merge press propaganda with the state. If you can't define fascism without just defining generic authorarianism than your definition is useless.
