US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5687

On April 24 2026 05:54 LightSpectra wrote:
Why don't we use Umberto Eco's 14 signs of fascism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism#Overview

It's what the United States Holocaust Museum uses.

Unlike other ideological terms, Fascism is a bit more malleable in what it looks like, as it’s defined by nationalism and myth, and those vary a lot from place to place. Italian Fascism of the pre and WW2 era, shared a lot in common with the German variety, but was also quite different. One obvious one is that Rome existed, and Mussolini invoked the lineage a lot. Hitler’s Germany, not so much. So Italian Fascism was much more about Italian heritage. Hitler’s, more racial, rather than having a historical example to ‘return to’, they had to construct one. Which went even beyond ethnic or cultural German speakers but right into this Aryan race idea and categorisation.

America, for all its myriad flaws is both multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. You can’t build an American Fascism popular enough to conceivably rule on Hitler-style racial theories.

Fascism in a way is a mirror to a nation’s self-image, to some degree. It may be myth, it may be bullshit but it has to tap into the myth.

The outsider fucking shit up is a shared characteristic of Fascism, another part is an exaggeration of facets of a nation’s culture that those within take pride in already.

America takes pride in, despite it in actuality being imperfect, in being a meritocratic melting pot of peoples and ideas. In the ‘American Dream’

You can’t have a successful American Fascism without the American Dream at its centre. Which necessitates a much less racially informed version of it.

Hence ‘it can’t be Fascist, black people are A-OK’ can somewhat miss the mark on what Fascism actually is and how it changes depending on context.

A modern British Fascism I don’t think would be racially exclusionary either. It would be tapping into the Empire, and the modern descendants of those ruled by the Empire would be welcome in trying to rebuild it, or some form of it.

At the core of those who defend the Empire is the idea it was a good thing because we civilised the world. So you gotta tap into that.

On April 24 2026 06:05 WombaT wrote:
@dhhb (what’s that stand for anyway?

Couldn’t track down my real wall of text on this, but did find one to repost, hopefully it maybe clarifies what I was angling at

On April 24 2026 02:48 dyhb wrote:
Most of this looks like bog-standard Republican stuff. As in, Reagan was a fascist because he incorporated overtly religious themes, liked capitalism, hated socialism, and believed in American exceptionalism. This might be exactly what you’re saying btw.

But there’s this trend of opinion on Trump that he represents an actual departure from the traditional Republican Party into fascism. This is pretty incompatible with the big-tent-fascism broad assignations.

As I see it, he went very authoritarian and reactionary (prior cultural dominance of the left, Obama-era upper class opinion). He’s also very overly corrupt. The furthest extent of his fascism is state ownership of industry and statements on that line. What I’m thinking is true here about the views of others on fascism is that it’s fundamentally identical to authoritarianism with the right-wing flavor. The definitions that are broader than mine and to the left of mine frequently and simply combine banal right-coded concepts (religious, American exceptionalism, narrow-American-interest foreign policy, capitalist) and authoritarian viewpoints (expansive view of executive power, using state power to fund and further right-of-center cultural interests).

On April 24 2026 06:23 dyhb wrote:
I’m more interested in how people here use it in the American context and why. Your five seemed rather tame, but I’m accepting it as not descriptive of fascists. It’s more of a correlational association.

Academics for decades have tried to list traits that are broad enough to pull in both Mussolini and Franco, Peron and Pinochet, but preserving derogatory connotations. The sheer number of lists should speak to something on that score.

On April 24 2026 06:56 Falling wrote:
Personally, I prefer authoritarian over fascist as it is the simpler argument and therefore easier to demonstrate. Fascism is specific and yet highly idiosyncratic from the few times it has appeared in history. And then unless you have the literal Gestapo knocking down the door and Auschwitz, the conversation gets bogged down. Whereas, I think it's easier talk about gradations of authoritarianism and steps leading to authoritarianism when you don't have a Hitler! Hitler! Hitler! siren blaring in the back of people's minds (even though Franco and Mussolini's fascism also exist.)

On April 24 2026 07:00 Liquid`Drone wrote:


Tbh I can agree with your disagreement here. Reagan was not a fascist, the republican party was not fascist before Trump, and the reasons why he may be considered fascist isn't summarized through those five bullet points of Wombat. I don't think that's really what Wombat is saying, either, though. More like - while fascism is an ideology specifically describing Mussolini's Italy, it's not so strictly defined as to only be that. Nobody will bat an eye if you say that nazism is a type of fascism (with a heightened focus on race / antisemitism, not necessarily inherent elements in fascism), people will also agree that Franco was a fascist, and while he hasn't gotten the same international coverage, Salazar largely fits the bill, too - but without really resorting to indiscriminate mass murder (at least inside Portugal). Today, definining Russia as a fascist regime, even if it's obviously different from Italy 100 years ago in many many ways, doesn't really result in any opposition either.

Then, the thing is that while Trump strikes many as a fascist, it's not like he has succeeded in turning the US into a fascist regime. His rule is also increasingly unpopular - he's been losing important MAGA influencers, he hasn't been able to silence the media, his disapproval rating is record high, he's had to budge on ICE, he has stated that he's not running for reelection (and honestly, I don't think he actually gives a shit about whether republicans maintain power if he's not personally wielding that power, aside from potentially receiving a presidential pardon (which might be significant, I guess), I actually think he kind of prefers republicans failing without him because then he can say see, it was all me), and right now, it honestly feels like it's all fizzling out a bit.

Looking at Trump, specifically though, I do think looking at the Umberto Eco list has some merit for this discussion - and I'll give that a brief effort.

1: Cult of tradition / cultural syncretism: I mean, there's something to it in the form of some of those AI-generated pictures with Trump as a muscular savior of the Judeo-Christian American nation, but this one isn't particularly strong. Definitely possible to find some traits of this applying, but this isn't the strongest point. Him portraying himself as Jesus seems to have played badly with his base anyway.

2: Rejection of modernism - definitely.

3: Cult of action for action's sake: Absolutely.

4: Disagreement is treason: He's done this pretty much ad verbatim over the Iran war.

5: Fear of difference: Against trans people, yeah. Against immigrants it's both yes and no.

6: Appeal to a frustrated middle class: Absolutely (but you could say this particular aspect is kind of ubiquitous to many different brands of politics and not at all inherent to fascism - at the very least it's something you see in all sorts of populism), so I'm not gonna hang him over this one.

7: Obsession with a plot and the inflation of and focus on an enemy threat. No doubt - 'the enemy from within', vastly exaggerated description of Portland as a lawless hellhole in dire need of the national guard.

8: 'Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak."' - I think this one can largely apply too?

9: Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy because life is permanent warfare: This one is a bit iffy. On one hand, Trump has genuinely campaigned on being a president of peace, irc he stated that this was his number one priority in terms of how he wanted to be remembered - as a bringer of world peace - to the point where many people voted for him because they thought he would keep the US out of stupid wars on foreign soil. And then he just whimsically goes to war against Iran. He has never really embodied pacifist ideals at any point - but I think he might be the first fascist to obsess over the nobel peace prize.

10: Contempt for the weak - yeah.

11: Everybody is educated to become a hero, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. I honestly don't really know what this means and I can't really relate it to something Trump has been doing.

12: Machismo - yes, although I'd say he's far less anti-gay than any other fascist leader I can think of.

13: Selective populism - yes.

14: Newspeak - fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning - unquestionably so.

One of the central points of this entire discussion however is recognizing that fascism operates on a spectrum, and even to people who agree that Trump is authoritarian in a distinct way which is reminiscent of fascism (as opposed to say, Lenin, whom I would never consider a fascist, but whom I would consider even more authoritarian), Trump's America gets a pretty low score. But I'm uncertain whether this is because Trump isn't all that fascist (I've argued that he doesn't really have any ideology aside from believing in whatever allows him to increase and maintain his own personal power - incidentally, of all the ideologies, fascism would be the ideology to go for if one has that disposition) or whether it is because the US does, in fact, have some strong institutions and a cultural diversity which makes fascism very difficult to actually achieve because the attempts get a ton of push back.

My opinion on this has also matured a bit over the past year. Not really in terms of Trump being a fascist (again, what I said in the paragraph above) - but in terms of whether the US is going to bounce back or not. I think the combination of tariffs, Epstein, Minnesota and Iran have been so harmful to Trump that his support is breaking and you'll see an increasing amount of republicans and various conservative thought leaders distancing themselves from him, and while I think there's a chance that the midterms won't be entirely free and fair, I think it's more likely that Trump tries to win through stuff like disenfranchisement than through like, murdering and jailing political opponents; and I think you can't win big enough to hold through the former. There have been multiple smaller elections already and democrats have been crushing those.

On April 24 2026 07:04 Liquid`Drone wrote:


I've long maintained that people should definitely avoid 'nazi' for this reason - because while I believe that there are many traits of fascism you can find in Trump, 0 of the traits you find in nazism but not in fascism are really present.

Authoritarian is definitely accurate and impossible to really argue against, but it might be too tame, and I think you can argue that there's enough 'fascism-adjecent' stuff that at least 'fascism-adjecent' is a reasonable description.

On April 24 2026 08:29 LightSpectra wrote:
DOJ Omits Crucial Element in Southern Poverty Law Center Charges: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/doj-omits-crucial-element-in-southern-poverty-law-center-charges

"The Justice Department relied on a lesser-known bank deception statute to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center while omitting an element needed to prove the crime: intent to influence a financial institution.

The infirmities suggest federal prosecutors in the Middle District of Alabama who brought the case may have improperly instructed grand jurors, which could lead a judge to dismiss the case or demand transcripts of the typically-secretive proceedings in which DOJ obtained the indictment, said several defense lawyers and former white-collar prosecutors."

On April 23 2026 20:31 WombaT wrote:
Your argument appears to be that policy should be made to placate folks you appear to consider drones.

On April 23 2026 20:17 WombaT wrote:
These strawmen do get rather tiring, especially when we’ve all done this merry dance before already. Possibly multiple times by now.

Fascism isn’t innately genocidal, it certainly can be, it also tends to vary by locale given its propensity to lean very hard into national myths.

It also doesn’t tend to go from 0-60 immediately, people don’t tend to like that. It gets in situ and can get more extreme as the Fascism is normalised, or alternatively/additionally, opposition is purged.

A bit like the boiling frog analogy. People jump out of the pot if you lead with genocide, but leave the frog to simmer and it might get on board.

Suffice to say I don’t think ‘well they’re not killing everyone so it can’t be Fascism because that’s not necessarily a pre-requisite

FWIW I dunno if Trump 1.0 went past borderline for me, Trump 2.0 is pretty solidly Fascist, although still of a much milder variety than some other incarnations

On April 24 2026 09:33 baal wrote:


I think policy should be made to make the most reasonably secure elections possible, a simple photo ID seem absolutely reasonable.

This is something that happens in pretty much all of the world, in countries with far less resources yet the US has one of the least secure systems.

I've said the electoral college should be abolished too, while the intent is reasonable the application sucks making most votes irrelevant, I say this to make it clear that I'm not parroting Republican talking points like the leftits retards in here do with Dem points.

On April 24 2026 07:00 Liquid`Drone wrote:


11: Everybody is educated to become a hero, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. I honestly don't really know what this means and I can't really relate it to something Trump has been doing.

On April 24 2026 07:25 LightSpectra wrote:
"The enemy/scapegoat is simultaneously all powerful but idiotic and weak" is both the cornerstone of fascist rhetoric, and the defining difference between it and other kinds of right-wing authoritarianism.

To be clear I agree that Trumps rhetoric is dangerous and it certainly flirts with fascistic ideas yet a retarded leftist screaming fascist at everything is ironically the biggest ally a true fascist can have.

On April 24 2026 10:03 Razyda wrote:


Interesting point.

Like, you know, someone can be an idiot, doing whatever last person he saw told him, while being demented, and at the same time evil dictator destroying democracy, and sneakily implementing project 2025

On April 24 2026 09:52 baal wrote:


You feel we've done this before but that post wasn't directed to you because I think we mostly agree.

Fascism obviously can become genocidal as it has in the past and it is indeed dangerous and it's a huge problem to throw the term lightly because it exactly dilutes the danger of fascism.

-------

Lets get into a more abstract an interesting subject...

The left uses language tools effectively to suppress counter ideologies, terms like fascist, transphone, misogynist, fatphobic, homophobic, racist, islamophobe, antisemite etc.

These "weapons" are at the begining very powerful, early on a mere accusation destroyed careers but as they are used more and more often and time passes their power wanes, people dont lose their careers anymore, and it keeps losing power to the point they become completely meaningless.

I don't know if you are aware on the shift on the internet but anybody who isn't in the left doesn't give a flying fuck about being called racist or transphobic anymore, people laugh at being labeled fascist.


The boy who cried wolf is wise story, there are real fascists with genocidal intent and every time you call anyone lightly a fascist you actually do what you dread, normalizing fascism.


To be clear I agree that Trumps rhetoric is dangerous and it certainly flirts with fascistic ideas yet a retarded leftist screaming fascist at everything is ironically the biggest ally a true fascist can have.


So when I say "I think it's reasonable to require photo ID to vote" and somebody comes with "I'm never doing anything these fascist want" then all I see is a clown.