This.
I mean, I agree with many of the other points upthread, but this gets to the heart of it for me.
Because in my own interactions with fascists, one thing they have in common is that they always believe the other tribe is more extreme.
So, some might even concede that their leader is shredding the rule of law, and that that shouldn’t happen…but they’ll also believe it’s a legitimate response to a far greater destruction that the other people are doing.
And it’s so sad to see…they’re virtually frothing at the mouth, apoplectic with rage about things that are just simply lies. And that’s the reason they vote against their own interests and (professed) principles.
Many (although not all) of the folks calling for Project 2025, a Trump dictatorship, etc. are evangelical Christians who grew up on a diet of Bible stories that praised good tyrants. The Bible strongly praises leaders like David, Asa, Hezekiah, etc. who imposed righteous rule from above with an iron fist and smashed other religions, without consulting the people or caring what they felt of it. Indeed, God commanded the Israelites to put to death anyone in their own ranks who suggested or promoted the worship of other gods. As a quote from the movie Chariots of Fire said, “The kingdom of God is not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship.”
So with that kind of message being read from their Bibles for years or decades, it is unsurprising that many Christians now feel that what liberals call “fascism” is in fact nothing other than taking the form of Old Testament government that was praised in the Bible and applying it to America. The nation needs some good, righteous fascism.
Which harkens back to fascism being ultimately reactionary. The perception that moderation simply got them played for fools; they gave an inch and the opposition took a light-year.
The carefully fomented and constantly reinforced perception that moderation simply got them played for fools; they gave an inch and the opposition took a light-year.
Ultimately, fantasy is at the heart of fascism. But it’s a seductive fantasy that’s comparatively easy for evil forces to get rolling.
Unrelated to the above …
An excellent point here. One well-worth reinforcing. Thank you.
At least here in the United States, I’m not sure Trump supporters started out wanting an authoritarian in office. But they jumped onto the Trump Train and most of them can’t jump off at this point. It’s ride or die at this point and even if they die they’ll never admit they were wrong.
Qualification:
No, some people do enjoy fascism. Wise guys enjoy fascism. When its pointed out that Trump wants to create large camps for immigrants they say, “What’s wrong with that? Everyone likes camping.” Plenty of this on twitter.
Proud boys like fascism. Black shirts like fascism. It is said that nobody likes a bully, but that’s not really true. I wouldn’t say bullies are popular, but they aren’t so unpopular that they would disappear.
True believers like fascism as well as communism. During the 1930s the two groups recruited from the same pool.
Fascism is probably a feature -no a bug- of electoral democracy. Legislation, coalition building, and the strong boring of hard boards is difficult, opaque, and annoying. Trumpists are convinced that Donald Trump could have gotten everything done in 2017 if only the Democrats let him. Never mind that Schumer offered him thousands of miles of wall in Jan/Feb 2017. The fantasy is deeply appealing and as LSLGuy notes does not lack detail.
One thing that’s being overlooked in the thread is the power of belonging. The root of the word fascism is from the Latin fasces, meaning bundle of sticks. One stick can be broken easily, many sticks can’t be.
Humans are social creatures. We like to mingle with like minded people. Being united feels good, being united in a cause feels better, having a common foe is intoxicating. If you look at a Trump rally, those people are having a good time. Same with Nazi rallies. It’s the same feeling of unity that grows religions.
I’ll give an example from my own life. My politics are dull and I’m not religious beyond a vague spirituality, but I listen to a lot of metal. And if I’m walking down the street wearing, say, a Baroness t-shirt and see someone wearing a Clutch shirt, sometimes we’ll give each other a little acknowledgement. Sometimes we’ll shoot the shit, even as complete strangers. It’s a good feeling to be part of a community. I think that’s a big part of the appeal of political movements.
Rather than a democracy where everyone has a say and everyone is “equal” fascism says the people part of the in-group deserve the power. “Others” are lesser.
If you are a part of the “in-group” then that is very appealing…especially if you are young with no good prospects. This group will give you power and (maybe) prosperity they never would have gotten on their own. Competing in a democracy sucks in comparison to that (if you are part of that special group).
Yes, that’s also part of the problem. The underlying notion that “People working together for a common goal are stronger together than as individuals” is fundamentally true. Another way to express this is “It takes a village”, or “Apes together strong!”
The real problem becomes which goal it is you’re all working together towards, and who gets to choose that goal.
Bullies love bullies. Or more accurately, bullies love being bullies. So it’s highly attractive to them.
As so many societies have found to their detriment, there are a lot of bully-adjacent people who will be ordinarily mild-mannered in a society that rewards mild manneredness, yet quickly turn into psychopathic bullies when given the opportunity.
e.g. Nazi Germany needed far more sadistic camp guards, secret police, SS troops, etc., than had Weimar Germany. Somehow, at least in the early years, they had no trouble finding a greatly expanding pool of ready volunteers for those roles.
There are some people who are just looking for a legitimate outlet for their baser impulses. In the past, Almost every nation used to have official torturers and executioners. The US pre-civil war had plantation “overseers” whose job was to whip slaves and keep them in line. Those sorts of people still exist. Some become serial killers, most probably just read about serial killers and dream about “What if…” Have some government functionary start hiring for jobs like this, and you’ll find them. Hell, look at some of the abuses cops and prison guards still get away with. Just tell those guys that there’s no more oversight of their behavior, and you’ll have execution camps running within a month.
It’s not enough to be rich, what good is that if there is no subjugated class? They want servants, housemaids, lawns keeper, laundress, cook, Nannie’s. And they want it at an affordable cost.
A subset want a subjugated class so they can be horrible to someone, release those baser impulses, without reprimand.
You know, like it was in times past. That. They want that.
Until then, there’s no shortage of opportunities for retail managers who get to sort their staff by favored vs disfavored, sadistically assigning the shittiest tasks to those they dislike and jerking everyone around on the work schedules.
There’s lots of chances for low-grade under-the-radar abuse in the Western working culture, and these people will home in on those roles like bees to flowers.
When I was in high school I took a holocaust class. As part of the class, we learned about the appeal of 20th-century fascism and cults generally. The main appeal seemed to be the well-defined sense of purpose, or ass Larry_Borgia writes, the power of belonging. The object of fascism is to promote the interests of the nation at any cost, but what sets fascism aside from other forms of nationalism is how invasive it is in every day life. The individual is constantly reminded of their place and purpose in the national machine; ideally every action is directed toward improvement of the nation.
That being said, power is a strong and corrupting drug. We learned about the Milgram experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, and the third wave experiment. However, these go more towards why fascism is evil than why fascism takes root.
I don’t think fascism is inextricably tied to racism, but the two naturally complement each other.
Oh yeah. I’ve had to deal with such prison guards at the local jail. The only thing that keeps them from losing their jobs is lawyers like me, and our threat of us reporting them if they go too far.
Needless to say, I’m persona non grata at the local jail.
In fairness, most of the guards are just folks doing a job, but there are a few who just want to inflict as much pain and misery as possible on people who cannot fight back. And they take a perverse pleasure in doing so.
As the old saying goes, if your police department has fifteen cops who are good service-minded officers, and five cops who are violent abusive bullies, and the good cops take no action to report or remove or discipline the bad cops, you have twenty bad cops.
I would bet that the average German in 1939 didn’t believe they were joining history’s biggest hate machine.
Much like modern American bumpkins, the average German felt their traditions and heritage was threatened. So when Hitler came along, he tapped into that fear and frustration with promises of restoring national pride and prosperity.
A lot of people seem to give regular Germans a bit of a pass when it comes to the atrocities of the Nazis, as if they were tricked somehow. I don’t believe that is true. That hatred towards Jews and Gypsies and Czechs and those feelings of racial superiority were already there. Hitler just tapped into it.
It’s the same phenomenon I witness with conservative American bumpkins (particularly when I visit my wife’s family). These are little tedious small-minded people leading tedious little lives. They have their strong beliefs about religion and what they think society should look like and they don’t really understand anything beyond that.
They don’t see it as “fascism”. They see it as a strong leader standing up against what they perceive as threats to their freedom and way of life by outside agitators.