How we talk about fascism

Been thinking about this—subtitle of Undertow is Scenes from a Slow Civil War. (This WaPo scoop is one.) But could be, We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Fascism. Prayer+guns+purity+hate+reverence for “fitness”+ masculinization+mystic nation? Is there a word for that? 3/

— THE UNDERTOW, by Jeff Sharlet (@JeffSharlet) April 13, 2023

Everyone's sick & tired of making the same points over & over again, but still...

The idea of protecting "normal" women & children from scapegoated "deviants" is one of the absolute, fundamental, building-blocks of fascism, 100 years ago, and now.

— David Andress (@ProfDaveAndress) April 13, 2023

When the history of how fascists came to power in the United States is written, it will be particularly unkind to the liberal academics, journalists, and politicians who fear-mongered about "crime" by the poor and pushed surveillance and state violence as the solution.

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) October 23, 2022

THREAD. Two Harvard professors published an academic article calling for 500,000 more armed cops, who they say will arrest 7.8 million more people per year. The article reveals alarming flaws in elite academia at a time of rising fascism. This is one of my most important posts.

— Alec Karakatsanis (@equalityAlec) November 3, 2022

The border is just a mob, exhibit #536854. I was told, upon trying to re-enter the country where I live, no: I have no legal status there. (I'm married to a US citizen but my new green card is taking 5 months + counting to process). Magically, $585 was able to solve this problem.

— Sophie Lewis (@reproutopia) October 27, 2022

The classic fascist genre of justifying the arbitrary criminal persecution of political enemies because someone on their side is actually held accountable through proper legal process. pic.twitter.com/BZ8Ml31URv

— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) March 18, 2023

Read: "What Is Fascism? A century of attempts to define and whitewash Fascism." Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Substack, Dec 7, 2022.

"Fascism is a constant problem of the human condition," Jared Yates Sexton says in this April 16, 2023 Twitter thread. An authoritarian movement, semi-hidden, semi-open, wants "neoliberal globalism" to persist. It's fundamentally about "white supremacist capitalism," and it's "a crisis of a declining America." They want to recreate hierarchies and destroy liberalism and progressivism. All of this is fascism. "So many moderates and 'respectable' Republicans want to believe MAGA is an aberration, but it’s only an intensifying of the same ideas, paranoia, violence, and antidemocratic energies that have been there all along and have been essential for their political projects. Reaganism and classic GOP projects were authoritarian cruelty with a smile and a happy ad campaign. But they used the same racism, the same conspiracy theories, the same ideology. It felt better for them, and what MAGA does is make them confront their deserved shame." And: "Affiliated projects like National Conservatism and Christian Nationalism are cousins of fascism and the religious components it bastardized." They can't complete their project without an "authoritarian push," and they want "someone more respectable than Donald Trump" to do it. Arguing over the fascist label is "an attempt to maintain the authoritarian structures that served you well in an attempt to reclaim them from Trump and the rabble you’d rather control than serve." Here he discusses it in a 25-minute video. At 21:00–21:30, he says that Christian Nationalism is the storytelling that fascism takes on. The worldwide commonality in fascism, Nazism, U.S. movements like this, etc. has been white supremacy.

Mike Rugnetta says on Bluesky, Jan 2, 2024: "fascism isn’t a coherent ideology but an aesthetic position which uses political tools for post-hoc justifications of assuming said aesthetic position." (In other words, primarily it's a preference for looking at displays of hypermasculinity, crosses and flags, etc., and if anyone questions your taste, you just take away their basic political rights to go to the doctor or speak or exist.) Because it's weaponized and it gains power, it's dangerous. Nonetheless, as a philosophy there's little meat on its bones — intellectually, it's a "garbage nonsense position for insecure fools and bootlickers."

A.R. Moxon, March 24, 2024: "A fascist politician has a pretty easy way to differentiate themselves [from other candidates]. All they have to do is offer more eliminationist violence and a more bigoted rationale for it than anybody else is offering."

A.R. Moxon, April 6, 2024: "The conservative project is a supremacist project, which means it is a blame-management system, which is why it has embraced fascism's myth of purification through elimination, and why they intend to accelerate the fascist program of eliminationist violence against their own citizens."

Harrison Ford said the character he played, Indiana Jones, would punch a Nazi. He said: “That was a black-and-white world and its evil presented itself to the world. I mean, it’s incalculable that this vision of evil not be confronted.”