I’ve previously written on how Robert Paxton’s 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism identifies a series of characteristics of fascism that the Trump movement fits remarkably well when it attempts to justify itself intellectually.
• a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; (“knowing what time it is,” denigrating the Constitution, calls for authoritarianism from Yarvin and Haywood)
• the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; (individual liberty must give way to forcing virtue on the public and removing all immigrants)
• the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external; (white grievance politics, conservatives being hunted and killed, exaggeration of DEI, elites are selling your country to foreigners through immigration and free trade)
• dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; (foreigners as figuratively and literally polluting American culture, liberalism and consumerism making people weak, selfish, and disgusting, women in institutions ruined everything)
• the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; (demands for mass deportation, calls to round up leftists, all in the name of building a “high-trust society”)
• the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny; (Trump cult, in the process of being transferred to Vance)
• the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; (Trump, trust the plan, election denial as a litmus test because it’s the leader’s will despite no evidence for it at all)
• the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; (every problem can be solved by strength and not being a cuck)
• the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle. (the ideology of Heritage Americans, Stephen Miller channeling the Melian Dialogue, law can’t be allowed to interfere with preserving white demographic dominance and defeating the left)
Again, this was all published over a decade before Trump became president. Yet it seems to describe the movement that he leads perfectly. Trump, nearly universally opposed by intellectuals and other elites, even among those on the right, achieved power first. Then came the process of reverse engineering justifications for his instincts and prejudices, which he shared with his electoral base. Naturally, more serious intellectuals who glommed onto the movement were disappointed, as MAGA over time morphed more completely into mindless leader worship and a vehicle for those with fascist sensibilities.
Trump’s movement resembles those of Mussolini and Hitler not because he or those around him are students of history. Rather, there is an underlying human nature that is alienated from organic elites, but occasionally overwhelms democratic politics when a particularly charismatic and ruthless figure comes along at the right time. It wants spectacle and it wants to hate. This happened in Italy and Germany in the aftermath of the First World War and the breakdown of their parliamentary systems, and again in the United States with the rise of the internet and social media.
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Richard still doubling-down on his bizarre argument that if you think a depiction of Welfare abuse should depict it's most realistic user demographic instead of "Woke" obfuscation of the issue, that you are a white supremacist, or whatever. A long strawman.
Nor can he explain why another demographic group, probably the largest group of net taxpayers, should should be happy with being portrayed as the go-to villain in every media depiction of undesirable characters, when the evidence does not warrant it.
I'm not white yet I'd be upset if a group I was part of was consistently the only acceptable one to portray in a negative light and used in place of other groups in various negative scenarios, the reality being that my group is one of the least or indeed the least likely to actually be involved (e.g. grok claims 2% of welfare users are young white males).
Anyone who glorifies Marx as a "system builder" - ROTFL! - is disqualified as a political thinker. This essay reads like an updated version of Richard's 10th grade essay, "Why the Jocks at Our School Shouldn't Be Considered Cool, Ackshully, McKenzie," which was roundly vilified at the time. I see his update includes a partial book report from a Marxist. Odd inclusion.