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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

  The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable" ― George Orwell, Essays

So this is a "something not desirable done by the current US administration" tracker.

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George Orwell wrote this because of how words are co-opted by the media to obfuscate and dilute their meaning. A discussion can still define it and that definition can be used for the purpose of discussion.

In this case, the site has a bunch of sliders, whereby each slider indicates how far along we are on that axis of what they're calling fascism. Each of those axes can easily be one or more individual topics. At any rate, this website is at least more specific than "something not desirable" when it comes to how it defines fascism.

If you'd care for a semiotician's perspective about the attributes of fascism, and one that lived through a fascist regime to boot, there's the seminal essay by Umberto Eco about what "Ur-Fascism" is: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/

They seem to be slightly different than the ones OP uses for the classification, but they are reasonably close.

Well, except there are 14 characteristics being reviewed, so is this still true?

I would define fascism as:

"The pursuit of unity in its most extreme form, rejecting and eliminating alternative thoughts and ideas by any means necessary."

Thought-provoking but also pretty vague. It makes no distinction between hard auth-left and hard auth-right.

I do like that this outlines some vetted tenets of fascism versus the hand-wavy name-cally ways it gets thrown around so much.

Here's the meaning.

> fascism /făsh′ĭz″əm/

> A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

Looks to me that a lot of the current happenings in the US are heading in this direction.

> subject to stringent governmental controls

Isn't the current admin trying to do the opposite?

We aren't there yet. These people are not anti-regulation, they are anti-regulation that prevents them from making the most money so for the time being they will gut the environment and other safety regulations. We haven't gotten to the mass regulatory capture part that shuts out competitors yet.

The goal isn’t to reduce government power, but to rip out the current structures that maintain the status quo (and obey the constitution, comply with the law, annoying priorities like that) and replace them with structures that will swear fealty to the king.

Then, why is Doge flagging things like funding gender-change surgery abroad instead?

Steve Bannon explains this very well. It's called "flooding the zone." Because people can only focus on 1 thing at a time, fascists do 5 things at a time. The media focuses on one thing while they make progress on the other 4. The culture war nonsense has proven to be delicious bait for the media and now so has DEI.

Using culture wars to attack foreign aid is a decades-old strategy of the GOP.

Entirely eliminating foreign aid would not meaningfully reduce the scope & power of the federal government in the U.S. (although obviously it harms our soft power abroad and there are millions of people who will be directly and indirectly impacted).

I agree deregulation is a focus of the current admin but there is also control. See pam bondi threatening to prosecute private companies with DEI programs. If you consider healthcare to be industry it would be one of our largest and he has implemented anti trans control there as well.

I expect overall deregulation regarding safety and environment etc will continue but alongside it there will be strict directives that comport with the right wing social and ideological agendas.

>See pam bondi threatening to prosecute private companies with DEI programs

And previously private companies were being threatened with lawsuits due to disparate impact in hiring, which lead to the creation of said DEI programs

If you consider the current situation control and a precursor towards fascism, you have to consider the past situation in the same light

But who threatened? If you fail to see the difference between legal actions from private entities and threats by a government that shows it doesn't feel bounded by laws (see illegal actions from the memecoin department) then you should probably refrain from giving your opinion…

No, i would consider the prior to be in the vein of civil rights if I believed it happened in an even remotely similar way.

People us "AI" all the time without quotes, but this is where we pretend to care about literal definitions? Yeah, right.

> Donald Trump's policies resemble an administrative coup d'état, says journalist Annika Brockschmidt. He and Elon Musk are undermining the separation of powers in the USA and disregarding civil rights. The political opponent is becoming overtired.

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/in-den-usa-findet-ein-adminis...

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