I think Matt said it best in his stream today: Fascism implies that a nation has a mass politics already established, which America doesn't have anymore, if it ever really did. Because our politics as most people perceive it is based on culture and not class now, textbook Fascism will never come to the US, but we are currently in this state of Post-Fascism. Politics has completely become a spectator sport, a popular sign for Fascism, but instead of brownshirts we have amazon drones or whatever other subtler form of control there is. So even if we elect president Death Incarnate with 5000% of the popular who runs on a platform of nuclear holocaust and murdering literally everyone who isn't white, we're never going to feel like we're in Nazi Germany.
This applies to Europe too - Poland might become truly fascist but if what Macron is doing in France continues it will just be Neoliberalism with the racism dial cranked up. It was late for me when I wrote that and I was tired, but what I was trying to say was:
We lack a major part of what made fascism fascism; mass politics, which the USA will foreseeably never have. barring that, we're basically already there.
Mass politics would be an understanding by the working masses that politics is about power and affects their material conditions and believing they can change things, resulting in grassroots political movements. Not necessarily class conscious, but class informed at least. Matt argues that the republican/democrat divide is mostly cultural at this point, and people are checked out of believing in politics, so therefore, no mass politics.
I think Matt said it best in his stream today: Fascism implies that a nation has a mass politics already established, which America doesn't have anymore, if it ever really did. Because our politics as most people perceive it is based on culture and not class now, textbook Fascism will never come to the US, but we are currently in this state of Post-Fascism. Politics has completely become a spectator sport, a popular sign for Fascism, but instead of brownshirts we have amazon drones or whatever other subtler form of control there is. So even if we elect president Death Incarnate with 5000% of the popular who runs on a platform of nuclear holocaust and murdering literally everyone who isn't white, we're never going to feel like we're in Nazi Germany.
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This applies to Europe too - Poland might become truly fascist but if what Macron is doing in France continues it will just be Neoliberalism with the racism dial cranked up. It was late for me when I wrote that and I was tired, but what I was trying to say was:
We lack a major part of what made fascism fascism; mass politics, which the USA will foreseeably never have. barring that, we're basically already there.
deleted by creator
Mass politics would be an understanding by the working masses that politics is about power and affects their material conditions and believing they can change things, resulting in grassroots political movements. Not necessarily class conscious, but class informed at least. Matt argues that the republican/democrat divide is mostly cultural at this point, and people are checked out of believing in politics, so therefore, no mass politics.