Does this mean 65% of the country are bloodthirsty Nazis, stomping on babies and operating concentration camps? No
This is what I was getting at. The issue is that -- in practice, when we're trying to win people over to our side -- it's extremely difficult to square "most people aren't fascists" with "everyone in mainstream American politics is a different shade of fascist." There's a ton of overlap between "most people" and "everyone in mainstream politics" at the lower levels of government, which is where a huge amount of governing actually occurs (including the vast majority of policing, for instance). There are a ton of people who would be considered mainstream politicians who oppose the fascist stuff the government does, and who are actively trying to change it. There are a ton of people outside politics -- and this does reach a majority of the country -- who oppose fascist stuff, but not so actively that we would have considered them real opponents had they lived in Nazi Germany.
So it's an ideological dead end, because you can't build a mass movement by calling basically everything people recognize as legitimate politics "fascist." It simply will not compute for most people, and if it won't work, whatever other merits that idea has are immaterial. And that's not even getting to how stacking up each country's list of atrocities glosses over crucial differences in how the U.S. and Nazi Germany function.
This is what I was getting at. The issue is that -- in practice, when we're trying to win people over to our side -- it's extremely difficult to square "most people aren't fascists" with "everyone in mainstream American politics is a different shade of fascist." There's a ton of overlap between "most people" and "everyone in mainstream politics" at the lower levels of government, which is where a huge amount of governing actually occurs (including the vast majority of policing, for instance). There are a ton of people who would be considered mainstream politicians who oppose the fascist stuff the government does, and who are actively trying to change it. There are a ton of people outside politics -- and this does reach a majority of the country -- who oppose fascist stuff, but not so actively that we would have considered them real opponents had they lived in Nazi Germany.
So it's an ideological dead end, because you can't build a mass movement by calling basically everything people recognize as legitimate politics "fascist." It simply will not compute for most people, and if it won't work, whatever other merits that idea has are immaterial. And that's not even getting to how stacking up each country's list of atrocities glosses over crucial differences in how the U.S. and Nazi Germany function.