Fascism, in theory and practice (Trump/Putin)

[MsAmerica]

The New Yorker did a batch of articles after Trump's election, and this is one of them. I love Timothy Snyder.

What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist?
Trump takes the tools of dictators and adapts them for the Internet. We should expect him to try to cling to power until death, and create a cult of January 6th martyrs.
By Timothy Snyder

When the Soviets called their enemies “fascists,” they turned the word into a meaningless insult. Putinist Russia has preserved the habit: a “fascist” is anyone who opposes the wishes of a Russian dictator. So Ukrainians defending their country from Russian invaders are “fascists.” This is a trick that Trump has copied. He, like Vladimir Putin, refers to his enemies as “fascists,” with no ideological significance at all. It is simply a term of opprobrium.

What Does It Mean That Donald Trump Is a Fascist? | The New Yorker

It's a good article. It's interesting how far right terminology is entering daily conversation and how they're accusing the left of what they're doing.

I've heard people accuse the left of being fascists. It's also common for people to deny the far right has any meaning anymore because they don't feel comfortable with it.

Facists call facists, facists. It's merry-go-round now. The word has lost all meaning so makes anyone that uses it sound ridiculous.

I think the point here is that fascists call non-fascists "fascists."

Quite.

My faithful Guardian-reading friend spat the word 'Fascist' at me more than 12 years ago because I wished there would be a few bye-laws about the garish signs in the local town.
She was never beaten up by Mussolini's law-keepers in 1937.

I mean, the left calls people fascists all the time, for things like wanting men out of women's sports.

I'd agree it's a word without much real meaning in everyday discourse, it basically means, I hate you, but I won't address the substance of what you say.

But not a particularly right wing phenomena, and anyone who thinks so must be in some kind of bubble.

The quote I remember is that defining fascism is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

But in essence genuine fascism needs to combine four key elements:

1. A nationalist approach to Government- so all about putting your own country first. To be fair most countries do this otherwise the politicians won't get elected.
2. A militaristic Government- so lots of uniforms and parades - interestingly this also occurred in communist countries.
3. State control of key industries (as opposed to state ownership under socialism and communism).
4. Suppression of dissenting opinions from either shouting them down or using the legal systems or simply shooting dissenters.

To be honest there really isn't much difference to communism and so fascism can equally be seen to exist on the left wing as well, let's not forget that the Nazis were National Socialists.

Number 4 is interesting. Apart from the shooting part, there seems to be a lot of facists about shouting down people that disagree with them on topics such as trans, Gaza, oil etc.

Your tidy list leads me to mention a book that might be of interest:

How Democracies Die
By Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/306746/how-democracies-die-by-ziblatt-steven-levitsky-and-daniel/9780241381359

By the way, I'm not a historian, but as I understand it, the "socialism" that Nazis termed themselves was nothing like socialism as we understand it today.

much appricated for this thread

Yet, I've never been called far right or a fascist. Is it because they are coming out with far right rhetoric which has become more mainstream?

IMO people are saying that far right no longer has any meaning because they don't want to admit that they have far right views.

Id say the US government is ticking all the far right facism check boxes. The question is how far it will go before Americans reject it?

It's a strange one to watch to be honest because it reminds me of a film I watched called Idiocracy...I used to find the film funny but now it terrifies me.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

It's meaningless. As for what Trump is doing. Brazil did it recently it's made the president a very popular person.

Yes, I keep meaning to see Idiocracy.

And, yes, it's terrifying. only about 25% of America is pro-Trump. The problem is that he's taken control of all the levers.