Techno-Fascism Comes to America
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I've lost count how many articles make a point of listing CEOs present at Trump's inauguration omit Tim Cook who also contributed $1M to the inauguration fund.
If every opponent is called a fascist, you'll grow numb to actual fascists or extremist organizations exploiting low information voters.
The same holds if you call every Democrat a "Marxist" or "Socialist".
This mudslinging will only accelerate illiberal democracy and when a real monster joins a poltical platform, much of the base is immune or indifferent.
Look at how decimated the opposition in Turkiye and Hungary became due to this kind of oratory flourish.
End of the day, we live in a political world where Citizens United is the law. If we lump actual donors who formerly leaned D barely a decade ago with bad actors, there's no reason for them to support us.
Concepts like "fascism" are ill defined in American political discourse, and can enable actual fascists (as in ethno- and religio-nationalists) to run for office while our valid criticisms are ignored.
Calling crony capitalists like a Musk fascists means we cannot call out actual authoritarian religious or ethnonationalists like a JD Vance or Tom Barrett without eliciting a groan from voters who do not follow politics constantly.
I sincerely believe this is a messaging issue that can absolutely have a downstream impact.
These people are Christo-Fascists busy making govt so small it can be drowned in a puddle.
Or was it the Fascism itself that decimated the opposition?
If your closing argument is "Don't anger the oligarchs or else we'll end up in Fascism" then maybe you need to reassess where we are along this process.
There are some similarities but they are pretty lacking on the militarism, there's still an opposition and still elections in 2028.
The only government I'd really call fascist these days is Russia.