Comment by sgnelson

Thank heavens for that separation of powers, otherwise the President would be declaring wars and levying tariffs willy-nilly, without even bothering to check with Congress first.

What do you call it when the authoritarians start, then? Are we not allowed to call it that until we’re not allowed to go to the courts or to speak about what’s happening?

Checks and balances have almost completely collapsed, we've got masked, lawless paramilitary forces executing citizens in the streets, kicking in doors without warrants, spending billions of dollars building concentration camps, ignoring habeas corpus, accelerating media capture by friendly oligarchs, the national security apparatus labeling anyone who criticizes this stuff as domestic terrorists, and you're here quibbling over semantics.

> it remains structurally constrained by separation of powers, federalism, and independent courts and media, features that fascist regimes systematically dismantle.

But the Trump administration (a.k.a. the executive branch) is trying to systematically dismantle these things. When people refer to fascism in the U.S. government, they don’t mean the entire government. They mean the Trump administration, which is the face of the U.S. government, has a great deal of the share of power, and is seeking more. The brand of far right nationalism, that the nation is in decline and violence must be used to restore it, along with the economic policies and deference to corporations and the wealthy, are things that make them more fascist than just authoritarian.

Saying that we cannot call it fascism until the transformation is complete doesn’t make sense - if a group of people have beliefs and goals that align with fascism, and are taking steps to impose them, you can call them fascist, even if they have not yet realized the full set of conditions that make the government fully fascist.

> The issue is that when people start abusing words like "fascism" out of context they make those words lose meaning.

So, rhetorical question: was Hitler a fascist during the failed Munich coup? Or did he suddenly became one when he was appointed chancellor? Are we not allowed to see what’s in front of our eyes until they build gas chambers?

> If you start calling everything fascism

Ok, but who is calling everything fascism? He's talking about one particular country at a particular time.

Then better stop them before it comes to that stage.

The US is not significantly constrained - the current SCOTUS is more like an agreived clerical council than serious arbiter of the Constitution, while Trump has clearly been hoping to do away with meaningful elections (and the failures are more so because of how oddly ineffective/silly his faction can be than real systemic resilience). Similarly, he has majorities in Congress, which are just enough to let him do whatever he wants. I will grant that these MAGATs haven't fully succeeded, but it's more like they're 2/3ds of the way there and oddly bad at parts of the game than separation of powers, the courts, etc., working.

On a different level I've been unsure whether it'sgood to call it facsism. But it's effectively at least a stepchild.

Fascist mythos is simple: you're in the greatest nation, and the greatest "type" of human (genetics for the nazis, cultural for the Italian fascists, christian for some South american fascists early 20th century, your choice, but but beware one type of superiority easily bleed into others), but yet, inferior humans (neighbors) seems to have better lives. It's because of internal traitors(jews and communists mostly, "judeoblochevism" as a word exist for a reason, and it isn't because it was a material reality) that are bringing their own country down. We must purge them to finally take our rightfull place.

Fascism cannot exist without internal enemies, nationalist authoritarianism can. If your president/dictator is whining about internal enemies that infiltrated the government and capitalist society to bring it down, congratulation, it's not simple nationalist authoritarian tendencies, it's fascist tendencies.

Basically: if you add an "interior enemy" narrative to a right-wing authoritarism, you have fascism.

> when people start abusing words like "fascism" out of context they make those words lose meaning

The thing is, fascism has always been a bit of a loose term. It doesn't have a strict meaning. It was invented by one guy to name his government, not describe it analytically.

Mussolini invented the word "fascismo" to describe his movement, Fasci Italiani di Combattimeto.

So any use of "fascism" outside this one instance is by loose comparison to his government (because tight comparison would inevitably be unproductive: no government is exact the same as another).

The best we can do in a literalist manner is identify that the etymology is related to fasces, a bundle of rods tied together in Roman times (tying rods together make them far more difficult to snap in half), and recognize that the implication here is that a fascist government is focused on strength through unity.

It was then broadly adopted by Mussolini's adherents.

So, unless we only want to restrict "fascist" to an identifier for Mussolini's party and government, we have motivation to come up with elements of similar politics/government/partisanship by looking at the elements that made up Mussolini's movement:

- nationalism

- right-wing

- totalitarian

- violence as a means of control

etc.

Personally, I like Umberto Eco's delineation of what makes fascism (because he was an intellectual and grew up in Mussolini's Italy): https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...

He elucidates fourteen elements that make up fascism:

1. cult of tradition

2. rejection of modernism

3. cult of action for its own sake (i.e., intellectual reflection doesn't contribute value)

4. disagreement is treason

5. fear of difference

6. appeal to frustrated middle class

7. obsession with a plot (e.g., "there is a plot by foreigners to destroy us from within)

8. cast their enemies as both too weak and too strong

9. life is permanent warfare (i.e., there is always an enemy to fight)

10. contempt for the weak

11. everyone is educated to become a hero

12. machismo

13. selective populism

14. newspeak

I honestly feel like #11 is the only one we don't definitely have in the US right now. I wold prefer not to waste my time giving examples of the other thirteen, but if someone doesn't think it's obvious, I will respond at some point.

At its essence, if you take these fourteen points holistically, the vibe is "the 'right kind of' citizenry is in a constant state of hatred toward some other, and they should be pressured to take action without thought"

> You call it for what it is: an executive with authoritarian tendencies.

I think you misunderstand fascism. Fascism is not gassing certain minority group of people in concentration camps, that's called crimes against humanity. It might be an endgame to fascism if you are government that is allowed to commit those crimes without consequences, but the road to it is still fascism regardless whether you historically know how it ends. Calling press "the enemy of the people" as Trump did (also known as "Lügenpresse") IS a form of fascism. You don't need to push Democrats and immigrants into gas chambers to be full blown fascist. Overwhelming amount of actions taken by this democratic government ARE what most historians call fascism.