For those who still wince or are confused as to why I call Trump and his Republican enablers fascist, here are a couple of definitions, one from a scholar who has studied fascism, and a couple of quotes from Benito Mussolini. Then, I provide a compellingly simple insight about fascism, and the way in which "friendly" fascism in the US is being replaced by increasingly authoritarian fascism. Your wealthiest friends will, I promise you, support fascism in its full form to keep their privilege, sooner or later.
1. Jason Stanley, political philosopher, Yale University, author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Penguin Random House 2018); How Propaganda Works (Princeton University Press 2015), describes how Fascism makes its appeal in societies which have had some experience in a democracy or a republic: “One of the hallmarks of Fascism is the ‘politics of hierarchy’—a belief in a biologically determined superiority—whereby Fascists strive to recreate a ‘mythic’ and ‘glorious’ past…(while) excluding those they believe to be inferior because of their ethnicity, religion, and/or race.” I would also add those who, today, scream "There's only two genders--period!" (start here for a biology lesson) or who still can't support same sex marriages.
2. Benito Mussolini, founder of the term Fascism, Italy’s dictator from 1922-1943, called Fascism, as a political philosophy, “The Corporate State” (a speech from 1933), where Mussolini stated how, once capitalism reaches a crisis, capitalists must throw themselves “into the very arms of the State” to form the “corporative economy,” which is what led Mussolini to establish, in the Fascist regime he led, the Council of Corporations, which directed the day-to-day functions of the Italian nation’s economy. On April 21, 1930, Mussolini stated, in the course of a speech to corporate leaders in Italy, “It is in the corporation that the Fascist State finds its ultimate expression…According to the Fascist conception, the corporation is the organ which makes collaboration systematic and harmonic…”
3. "No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges"— Spanish anti-fascist, Buenaventura Durruti, quote from an interview with Pierre van Paassen, July 24, 1936.
4. Bertram Gross, in his book, "Friendly Fascism," released in 1980, explained how even Cold War liberals were trending toward fascist economic beliefs, and how their political elitism was poisonous to the best democratic/republican values.
