Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur-Fascism (c. 1996) is informative in this regard. Fascist forms vary and it’s tempting to make comparisons to the German fascist model of the 1930s. To be sure, many many many similarities but not a mirror image to what we’re seeing here today. That’s one way that the Christian right and Trump apologists deflect the label. Eco lays out the prima facie elements of fascism and in an analysis of German, Italian, Spanish, and maybe Russian authoritarian govts demonstrates how some but not all elements have been present in all these states. What we have today is a new permutation of fascism. I tend to think that the role of tech bros and Miller and Vought as well as the mental capacity of Trump distinguishes Trumpism from what happened in Nazi Germany (Hitler’s mental incapacity did not manifest consequentially for many years). Trumpism is fascism nonetheless, and because of the scale of it—playing out in arguably the most powerful country ever to exist—it is vastly more dangerous than Nazi Germany was, Holocaust and atomic bombs notwithstanding. It is hard enough for me with my gimlet eye to wrap my mind around this, that it is actually happening, so it comes as no surprise that ppl who are unwilling to examine history are denying this truth.
Honestly I just don't have it in me to fight for the soul of America or whatever. Convincing idiotic fascists that having a king is a bad thing is not how I want to live the rest of my life. Im convinced this ends either in civil war or dictatorship cause the people are stupid and the dems are fucking useless. If I am right my life is ruined either way if I stay. My mother is about to retire to Portugal and said I could join her I am seriously considering it. Theres nothing for me in America anymore, the nation I grew up in no longer exists and I despise what it has become.
Andy. I hear you. But fleeing the country may not be the answer. Are you aware that democracy in European countries is also gravely in danger ? I know that the choice between living in an authoritarian state and a civil war is excruciatingly difficult but we Americans have to make a stand. We’ve been vaunting our country as the bastion of liberty in the world - are we going to abandon it at the first sensation of pain ? For 80 years the US and Europe have enjoyed freedom because others fought and died for it.
I didn't sign up to die in a civil war because American culture is corrupt and broken, I was just born here. Europe has its problems but at least most of their governments actually care about their citizens. Russia is no real threat to the EU outside of nukes and if that line is crossed its game over for humanity anyhow. A fully fascist US is a threat to the whole world but they are also isolationist. If I had superpowers I would go and kill every single fascist billionaire that is in the cabal behind the destruction of our democracy and save the country. But I don't, so the best thing I can do for myself is leave if I get the chance.
Mike,I m guessing most of your subscribers are pro Democracy believers and doing something to fight back? Any way you can send your writing to Congress or news outlet or the opposition
We are just shouting into the void at this point. The billionaires coup is complete now that the BBB is signed. Ten years without any AI regulations and a massive Ice police state were the only ingredients missing for Project 2025. They think thats how long they will need to turn the country into a nation of serfs with AI killing all well paying jobs outright. They are undermining Trump now to prep the base for the switch to Vance. He will be dead within a year and Vance will be the face of the dictatorship the christian white nationalists have built in the last six months with the tech oligarchs backing. I think its time to leave while I still can.
This is a wonderful recognition, but I will disagree that our efforts are useless or that our human legacy is confined to repeated collapse into fear. JD Vance is incoherent and incompetent, and that's all you need if everyone else surrenders in fear. It required catastrophic losses of life and centuries of building to correct it before, and we have an opportunity to nip it in the bud, to once again raise the flag and take our lumps in small ways that preserve our future. I think of the civil rights warriors who died for our sins. Let's try harder.
You’ve given such an accurate and clear assessment of the situation, but you’re not addressing me and the other people who are attracted by your intelligent observations because of the distress they feel. I’m certainly not « tuned out » , etc. Who are you speaking to? I expressed my frustration here months ago that an authoritarian coup was being called a « constitutional crisis. » We see exactly what’s going on and are trying to keep from going crazy from the continuous flow of cruelty, illegality, destruction and corruption. I want to hear the lucid compassionate voice of someone like you, not lectures intended for people who probably wouldn’t be drawn here anyway.
Sally, I appreciate this feedback, and you're right that the people most drawn to this work are already wrestling seriously with these realities.
But there actually IS a real chattering class I'm addressing—the professional moderates, the op-ed writers, the think tank fellows, academics, etc. who do read me. These are people sophisticated enough to engage with serious political commentary but who have made careers out of treating obvious moral questions as complex policy puzzles.
When I call out the "tuned out" and morally abdicated, I'm not just modeling an argument—I'm directly addressing people who write for major publications, who shape elite discourse, who have platforms and influence. Some of them do read this work. And they need to hear, without hedge or euphemism, what their comfortable detachment actually represents.
But you're also right that this creates tension for readers like you who don't need to be convinced of the stakes. Maybe I need to be clearer about when I'm speaking to fellow witnesses versus when I'm making moral demands of the professional moderate class.
The truth is, both audiences matter. You need frameworks for understanding what we're witnessing. They need to be told, directly and without comfortable language, what their neutrality enables.
Thank you, Mike, for responding. I appreciate it. I agree that both audiences matter, but I hope you will address your "fellow witnesses" more often. (You won't need to make it clear - it will be obvious). In the last weeks, I have found several influential professionals who have taken a stand and speak unequivocally, but your views resonate with me because of your grounding in philosophy and poetry.
These clear and unpleasant truths have to be forever repeated until we grasp the mechanics of an improved set of guardrails -- the foundation of which is civic engagement, not institutions to do our laundry. Necessary and occasional habits of resistance stem from habits of cooperative improvement. This is everyday engagement with authenticity and truth-telling, keeping it real. Accountability must be accompanied by a transformation of child-rearing to foster emotional maturity, to weed out the seeds of abuse. Compassion is our human legacy. Stop compromising it.
See in particular the sections "Can It Happen Here?", "Can We Spot It?" and "How To Stop It".
Note that, likely due to the political necessities of the time, the piece is not critical of communism; the Second World War was, after all, largely decided on the European Eastern Front, with all other theatres (particularly Italy and Normandy) being sideshows at best generally serving only to divert German attention from that front.
Note also that Hirohito was included alongside Hitler and Mussolini as one of the architects of fascism; again for political reasons his role was downplayed after the war and the blame placed on the likes of Tojo as it was felt that the Japanese people would more readily accept defeat if the Emperor remained in his position. (Tojo apparently testified at trial that the Emperor had been fully aware of Japanese atrocities but the US prosecutor ordered him to retract that testimony.)
Note further that neither Francisco Franco nor António Salazar is mentioned. Neither Spain nor Portugal were belligerents, though Spain opened its ports only to Axis ships and Portugal opened its ports only to Allied ships. (In the case of Portugal, they had a centuries-old mutual defence treaty with England, the 1386 Treaty of Windsor which succeeded yet older mutual defence pacts with further history dating back to at least the Second Crusade, and then the United Kingdom; further Salazar reportedly chose to align Portugal, in a non-belligerent sense, with the United Kingdom in the Second World War having predicted both that Nazi Germany would be unable to force the United Kingdom to capitulate and that the United States would at some point be drawn into the conflict against Germany, leading to an Allied victory.) Both, of course, remained in post following the war, with Salazar's Estado Novo lasting until the 1974 Carnation Revolution (Salazar himself resigned in 1968 and died in 1970) even as Portugal, due to the alliance with England, was a founding member of NATO (the only one of the twelve not to be democratic), and Franco, if nothing else, was a staunch anti-Communist (and thus useful) and remained as dictator until his death in 1975 with a democratic Spain joining NATO in 1982 after Juan Carlos had a Constitution written and ceded power to the subsequently constituted government and reigned as a constitutional monarch (though, as it proved decades later following his abdication, a highly corrupt one). (If one wishes to credit them for anything, both reportedly rejected at least the antisemitism of Hitler's form of fascism. Japan was also, apparently, a safe haven for Jews during the war, though the treatment of other East Asian ethnicities, for instance the use of Korean "comfort women" and atrocities visited on the Chinese such as the Rape of Nanjing, was of course horrific.)
Also not mentioned is the Duke of Windsor, who was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler. Recent research has uncovered letters that he wrote while in Portugal early in the war urging Germany to bomb Britain to force the UK to sue for peace. (He was then shipped off to be Governor of the Bahamas for most of the duration of the war.) After the war he retired to France and high-ranking politicians like Winston Churchill helped to cover up his probable treason, likely not wanting the spectacle and tumult of prosecuting a former monarch.
Other notable figures not mentioned are Charles Lindbergh and Avery Brundage.
Despite these various elisions the piece is still well worth reading.
Couldn't agree more. The time is long past for pointless discussions about whether the regime confirms to some strict academic definition.
Two more hallmarks of fascism to add to your list: (1) The designation/demonization of a group as the "other," who are not "real Americans," or even sub-human. No prizes for guessing who fell into that category in Germany in the 1930s. Here, it's not just those with darker skin and foreign accents - political opponents are "human scum" and "professors are the enemy," for example. (2) The tolerance / creation of non-governmental paramilitaries to "protect" the leader and threaten opponents (then: Brownshirts, SS; now, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, etc.).
Umberto Eco’s essay on Ur-Fascism (c. 1996) is informative in this regard. Fascist forms vary and it’s tempting to make comparisons to the German fascist model of the 1930s. To be sure, many many many similarities but not a mirror image to what we’re seeing here today. That’s one way that the Christian right and Trump apologists deflect the label. Eco lays out the prima facie elements of fascism and in an analysis of German, Italian, Spanish, and maybe Russian authoritarian govts demonstrates how some but not all elements have been present in all these states. What we have today is a new permutation of fascism. I tend to think that the role of tech bros and Miller and Vought as well as the mental capacity of Trump distinguishes Trumpism from what happened in Nazi Germany (Hitler’s mental incapacity did not manifest consequentially for many years). Trumpism is fascism nonetheless, and because of the scale of it—playing out in arguably the most powerful country ever to exist—it is vastly more dangerous than Nazi Germany was, Holocaust and atomic bombs notwithstanding. It is hard enough for me with my gimlet eye to wrap my mind around this, that it is actually happening, so it comes as no surprise that ppl who are unwilling to examine history are denying this truth.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism
Honestly I just don't have it in me to fight for the soul of America or whatever. Convincing idiotic fascists that having a king is a bad thing is not how I want to live the rest of my life. Im convinced this ends either in civil war or dictatorship cause the people are stupid and the dems are fucking useless. If I am right my life is ruined either way if I stay. My mother is about to retire to Portugal and said I could join her I am seriously considering it. Theres nothing for me in America anymore, the nation I grew up in no longer exists and I despise what it has become.
Andy. I hear you. But fleeing the country may not be the answer. Are you aware that democracy in European countries is also gravely in danger ? I know that the choice between living in an authoritarian state and a civil war is excruciatingly difficult but we Americans have to make a stand. We’ve been vaunting our country as the bastion of liberty in the world - are we going to abandon it at the first sensation of pain ? For 80 years the US and Europe have enjoyed freedom because others fought and died for it.
I didn't sign up to die in a civil war because American culture is corrupt and broken, I was just born here. Europe has its problems but at least most of their governments actually care about their citizens. Russia is no real threat to the EU outside of nukes and if that line is crossed its game over for humanity anyhow. A fully fascist US is a threat to the whole world but they are also isolationist. If I had superpowers I would go and kill every single fascist billionaire that is in the cabal behind the destruction of our democracy and save the country. But I don't, so the best thing I can do for myself is leave if I get the chance.
Sounds like a good plan
Mike,I m guessing most of your subscribers are pro Democracy believers and doing something to fight back? Any way you can send your writing to Congress or news outlet or the opposition
We are just shouting into the void at this point. The billionaires coup is complete now that the BBB is signed. Ten years without any AI regulations and a massive Ice police state were the only ingredients missing for Project 2025. They think thats how long they will need to turn the country into a nation of serfs with AI killing all well paying jobs outright. They are undermining Trump now to prep the base for the switch to Vance. He will be dead within a year and Vance will be the face of the dictatorship the christian white nationalists have built in the last six months with the tech oligarchs backing. I think its time to leave while I still can.
This is a wonderful recognition, but I will disagree that our efforts are useless or that our human legacy is confined to repeated collapse into fear. JD Vance is incoherent and incompetent, and that's all you need if everyone else surrenders in fear. It required catastrophic losses of life and centuries of building to correct it before, and we have an opportunity to nip it in the bud, to once again raise the flag and take our lumps in small ways that preserve our future. I think of the civil rights warriors who died for our sins. Let's try harder.
Bravo !
The undermining and "prepping" is likely happening as we speak.
You’ve given such an accurate and clear assessment of the situation, but you’re not addressing me and the other people who are attracted by your intelligent observations because of the distress they feel. I’m certainly not « tuned out » , etc. Who are you speaking to? I expressed my frustration here months ago that an authoritarian coup was being called a « constitutional crisis. » We see exactly what’s going on and are trying to keep from going crazy from the continuous flow of cruelty, illegality, destruction and corruption. I want to hear the lucid compassionate voice of someone like you, not lectures intended for people who probably wouldn’t be drawn here anyway.
Sally, I appreciate this feedback, and you're right that the people most drawn to this work are already wrestling seriously with these realities.
But there actually IS a real chattering class I'm addressing—the professional moderates, the op-ed writers, the think tank fellows, academics, etc. who do read me. These are people sophisticated enough to engage with serious political commentary but who have made careers out of treating obvious moral questions as complex policy puzzles.
When I call out the "tuned out" and morally abdicated, I'm not just modeling an argument—I'm directly addressing people who write for major publications, who shape elite discourse, who have platforms and influence. Some of them do read this work. And they need to hear, without hedge or euphemism, what their comfortable detachment actually represents.
But you're also right that this creates tension for readers like you who don't need to be convinced of the stakes. Maybe I need to be clearer about when I'm speaking to fellow witnesses versus when I'm making moral demands of the professional moderate class.
The truth is, both audiences matter. You need frameworks for understanding what we're witnessing. They need to be told, directly and without comfortable language, what their neutrality enables.
Thank you, Mike, for responding. I appreciate it. I agree that both audiences matter, but I hope you will address your "fellow witnesses" more often. (You won't need to make it clear - it will be obvious). In the last weeks, I have found several influential professionals who have taken a stand and speak unequivocally, but your views resonate with me because of your grounding in philosophy and poetry.
Agree
These clear and unpleasant truths have to be forever repeated until we grasp the mechanics of an improved set of guardrails -- the foundation of which is civic engagement, not institutions to do our laundry. Necessary and occasional habits of resistance stem from habits of cooperative improvement. This is everyday engagement with authenticity and truth-telling, keeping it real. Accountability must be accompanied by a transformation of child-rearing to foster emotional maturity, to weed out the seeds of abuse. Compassion is our human legacy. Stop compromising it.
In 1945 the US Army produced multiple works of anti-fascist propaganda. It is eye-opening to go back to them 80 years later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Be_a_Sucker (video included in article)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Army_Talk_Orientation_Fact_Sheet/Number_64
https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism
See in particular the sections "Can It Happen Here?", "Can We Spot It?" and "How To Stop It".
Note that, likely due to the political necessities of the time, the piece is not critical of communism; the Second World War was, after all, largely decided on the European Eastern Front, with all other theatres (particularly Italy and Normandy) being sideshows at best generally serving only to divert German attention from that front.
Note also that Hirohito was included alongside Hitler and Mussolini as one of the architects of fascism; again for political reasons his role was downplayed after the war and the blame placed on the likes of Tojo as it was felt that the Japanese people would more readily accept defeat if the Emperor remained in his position. (Tojo apparently testified at trial that the Emperor had been fully aware of Japanese atrocities but the US prosecutor ordered him to retract that testimony.)
Note further that neither Francisco Franco nor António Salazar is mentioned. Neither Spain nor Portugal were belligerents, though Spain opened its ports only to Axis ships and Portugal opened its ports only to Allied ships. (In the case of Portugal, they had a centuries-old mutual defence treaty with England, the 1386 Treaty of Windsor which succeeded yet older mutual defence pacts with further history dating back to at least the Second Crusade, and then the United Kingdom; further Salazar reportedly chose to align Portugal, in a non-belligerent sense, with the United Kingdom in the Second World War having predicted both that Nazi Germany would be unable to force the United Kingdom to capitulate and that the United States would at some point be drawn into the conflict against Germany, leading to an Allied victory.) Both, of course, remained in post following the war, with Salazar's Estado Novo lasting until the 1974 Carnation Revolution (Salazar himself resigned in 1968 and died in 1970) even as Portugal, due to the alliance with England, was a founding member of NATO (the only one of the twelve not to be democratic), and Franco, if nothing else, was a staunch anti-Communist (and thus useful) and remained as dictator until his death in 1975 with a democratic Spain joining NATO in 1982 after Juan Carlos had a Constitution written and ceded power to the subsequently constituted government and reigned as a constitutional monarch (though, as it proved decades later following his abdication, a highly corrupt one). (If one wishes to credit them for anything, both reportedly rejected at least the antisemitism of Hitler's form of fascism. Japan was also, apparently, a safe haven for Jews during the war, though the treatment of other East Asian ethnicities, for instance the use of Korean "comfort women" and atrocities visited on the Chinese such as the Rape of Nanjing, was of course horrific.)
Also not mentioned is the Duke of Windsor, who was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler. Recent research has uncovered letters that he wrote while in Portugal early in the war urging Germany to bomb Britain to force the UK to sue for peace. (He was then shipped off to be Governor of the Bahamas for most of the duration of the war.) After the war he retired to France and high-ranking politicians like Winston Churchill helped to cover up his probable treason, likely not wanting the spectacle and tumult of prosecuting a former monarch.
Other notable figures not mentioned are Charles Lindbergh and Avery Brundage.
Despite these various elisions the piece is still well worth reading.
Couldn't agree more. The time is long past for pointless discussions about whether the regime confirms to some strict academic definition.
Two more hallmarks of fascism to add to your list: (1) The designation/demonization of a group as the "other," who are not "real Americans," or even sub-human. No prizes for guessing who fell into that category in Germany in the 1930s. Here, it's not just those with darker skin and foreign accents - political opponents are "human scum" and "professors are the enemy," for example. (2) The tolerance / creation of non-governmental paramilitaries to "protect" the leader and threaten opponents (then: Brownshirts, SS; now, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, etc.).
A crime perpetrated in broad daylight is still a crime.
Bravo!
I think Glonzo is 45(7)s Afghanistan
?
Was supposed to post this on Wonkette but substakc just app had me here instead.
https://bsky.app/profile/proptermalone.bsky.social/post/3luakwxwssk2y