The 14 Characteristics of Fascism (2003)
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My point isn't that all of those administrations were fascist, it's that each item in this list allows too much range for critical analysis.
For example, how often do we choose to use the force of the state and how often do we choose to do nothing?
In this formulation, the big difference with Trump would be that he isn't very good at it. He's ham-handed about it, too obvious.
I'm pointing out that people probably objected to inserting a debatable & unpopular held view as a subclause in another argument. That forces people to either go along with accepting your point or getting into a pointless & unsettleable argument that's not even being discussed.
It would be amazing if he could actually bring jobs back into the US. I really really doubt this is possible, without making the corporations hurt in the short/mid term, so I doubt it's really possible, as they have essentially captured government.
Well, maybe any one of them taken alone. Combined together it seems to give a pretty helpful lens through which to view a society.
A related book is _Friendly Fascism, the New Face of Power in America_, by Bertram Gross. It highlights how modern "corporation/government" fascism differs from the earlier "strongman" fascism. It was written back in 1980 but is (even more) applicable today: https://www.amazon.com/Friendly-Fascism-America-Forbidden-Bo...
Regarding "Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.", surely the author hasn't seen any other societies from the times of notable fascist regimes, they might realize that anti-abortion and anti-homosexual legislation were prettymuch everywhere. Until fewer than 50 years ago, both were completely illegal in Canada.
As for it aligning "well" with the president elect; I don't think that's accurate. "Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause" is off the table, since the unifying cause is "making america great again" and the stated avenues are "enforce immigration law", "reduce taxes for commoners, and simplify the tax code", and "maintain government infrastructure". As for "Corporate Power is Protected" he's got the fewest corporate sponsors of any candidate we've seen in quite a while, so it's hard to imagine who he owes. The rest of the points are largely questionable, and the descriptions largely sound like the ravings of a tween marxist.
Seems like it's just mostly bollocks, and some salty HNer just wanted to insinuate something.
But then... its early days.
It was later extended into a book length treatment (https://libcom.org/files/Robert%20O.%20Paxton-The%20Anatomy%...) which is very worthwhile, and readable, if you are interested in what he calls (paraphrasing) the most significant political development of the 20th century.
This sentence seems apt.
("Gresham's law to the white courtesy phone, please.")
"We have created the united state of Italy remember that since the Empire Italy had not been a united state. Here I wish to reaffirm solemnly our doctrine of the State. Here I wish to reaffirm with no weaker energy, the formula I expounded at the scala in Milan everything in the state, nothing against the State, nothing outside the state." [0]
"We are, in other words, a state which controls all forces acting in nature. We control political forces, we control moral forces, we control economic forces, therefore we are a full-blown Corporative state. We stand for a new principle in the world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, free-masonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789. "[1]
Does this kind of united state, with everyone marching in lockstep towards a common goal, sound even remotely close to America? A country hurtling towards facism would not allow people protesting and crying in public areas days after an election. Healthy protests that aren't broken up by jack-booted thugs are a sign of a healthy democracy. :)
[0] speech before the Chamber of Deputies, May 26, 1927
[1]Speech before the new National Directory of the Party, April 7, 1926, in Discorsi del 1926, Milano, Alpes, 1927
Well, I'm certainly not an historian, so this is just my two cents, but it seems to me that the very core of fascism is anger and defiance. And believing just a few people can make history (thus, the exaggeration of the leader role).
Honestly, I wish all the people comparing Trump to Hitler would spend some money and read a book on how the Nazis came to power and what went down in Germany when they had grabbed power.
I kind of made one of the low-vocabulary posts on the page here, I guess that is part of the problem with our politics, that people don't really have the tools to reason about it. I would certainly defend criticism of the US as being (for a long time) excessively authoritarian and oddly patriotic a lot more strongly than I would hang on to the 'fascist' label.
It's just that Hitler's story is the complete opposite of Trump. There are zero similarities there. What motivation would Trump have to go on a killing spree among the US population?
"Fascism" is a word that actually means something, it's not a signifier of generic BadGov. It was a specific historical movement driven by WWI veterans with socialist backgrounds, whose core idea was using militarism & nationalism as a way to suppress class conflict. It's related to but distinct from Nazism; Franco, Mussolini, Gömbös, etc. didn't have any elaborate racial theories.
It's really not always 1934. Pick a different historical analogy, it's as ridiculous as seeing everything in light of the Russo-Japanese war or continually worrying that we're seeing the rise of Orléanist governments.
[0] http://civilliberty.about.com/b/2007/09/10/one-nation-underr...
As a result, I don't fear Trump because of his politics (which I actually think in many ways are center-left), but his inability to execute effectively. Until Macau cratered, I think he was basically the only man to lose money in the casino business.
People remember the Russian Revolution toward the end of World War I, what they tend to forget is that Hungary had a revolution and became a Soviet republic in 1919. Many things happened happened in different European countries at that time.
Germany had an attempt communist revolution starting in October of 1918 which went on for months, you could even say years.
In the German elections, vote results were:
Nazis Socialists Communists
05/28 2.6 29.8 10.6
09/30 18.3 24.5 13.1
07/32 37.2 21.5 14.3
11/32 33.09 20.43 16.86
But it was prompted by 37% of voters being reds, and 16% of voters being communists. Red voters outnumbered brown voters.
In Italy, the 1922 march on Rome followed the Biennio Rosso. The working class tried to take over and failed, and the fascists took over.
Returning to red power in Germany at the turn of 1932/1933 - on February 20, 1933, Hitler met with representatives of German industry - Gustav Krupp, Fritz Springorum from Hoesch, an IG Farben board member, Fritz von Opel, a board member of Siemens etc. In the midst of stormtroopers taking over the streets he asked them to bankroll the Nazis in the upcoming elections so they could pass the enabling act. German industry bankrolled the Nazis, because they feared the 37% red workers (the majority of the working class) and the rising power of the KPD.
The situation is nothing like that in the US. If anything, the little existing of the worker's movement is disintegrating - Michigan and Wisconsin just became right to work states. Board members of the Fortune 100 are not going to bankroll a party like the Nazis. There's no left to fight. The wealthy and upper middle class are becoming increasingly liberal, as there's no socialist movement to worry about, in comparison to 20th century Europe.
Certainly the US situation is different (no potent workers' movement to fear).
But elements of the wealthy Right are fearful of national health care, environmental regulation, the costs that might come from climate change. They see great advantages in changing tax rates. These fears and forces could play a similar role to fear of a workers' movement.
With social media the propaganda can now directly be delivered to the base, so control of the main stream media is no longer needed, except maybe to limit the dissemination of unwanted information to the opposition.
For a couple of days I was hopeful that we would witness a more reasonable Trump, but it seems that he seems intent to continue following the fascist playbook. If he follows through on his promise to appoint a special prosecutor for Hillary Clinton, we will know for sure.
If you haven't done so already, I would implore everybody to subscribe to the NYT/WaPo or any other reputable newspaper. I did so today, and I'm not even from the US. Digital subscriptions are only a couple of bucks per month. They could use the support. The USA cannot afford to lose the independent media.
You have this backwards. Many people voted for Trump because they could see with their own eyes the media bias against him (and read the DNC emails working with the media to block out Sanders). NYT/WaPo are not reputable sources, they are extremely biased and so obviously so that they're working against their own mission out of arrogance.
What actual evidence is there of this? The clintons receive more than enough money through paid speeches and those would be the route you would use if you wanted to set up a quid pro quo. Using a charitable foundation to do this doesn't make sense generally nor in this case. Of course, lobbying and getting on paid boards after a government career is basically a quid pro quo( the presumption is that after you work for the industry you get a cushy career paid by the industry you helped) but that has been totally ignored this election cycle.
Not sure how soliciting charitable donations is pay to play. On the face of it laundering donations through a charitable foundation is pretty stupid and pointless and it seems unclear how donations would drive her to take the risk of doing a quid pro quo when the quid has little personal benefit to her.
Maybe those traditional outlets ought to be denied access -- they demonstrated almost historic bias this election.
The best kind of control is when the object being controlled does the controlling themselves voluntarily. In political media, that happened a long time ago when reporters started being more concerned about "access" than reporting facts and asking politicians hard questions. The fear of "losing access" to politicians means unsubstantiated claims are rarely challenged and scandals are ignored or re-framed to not sound as offensive.
This process was amplified when CNN (and others) started pretending every story had two sides that needed equal coverage or the story would be "biased". Now any claim can gain legitimacy and unchallenged air time, with the media acting as if their claim is equally probable.
So politicians (and anyone else that wants to push propaganda) can now make any claim they want, knowing that it will go unchallenged. Even if someone argues against their propaganda, the media will present the propaganda anyway.
(and for a look at where this will evolve into, see HyperNormalisation's description of Putin's (and to some degree, Trump's) strategy of "confuse everybody by generating as many conflicting stories as possible")