I get where you’re getting at: the role of past and ongoing colonialism is still being downplayed. But you’re wrong. There are very good reasons why we should fear fascism in particular.
Umberto Eco completely ignores the material basis for fascism, which is usually the downwardly mobile petit bourgeoisie. Fascism takes advantage of superstructural elements, which is why Eco’s list contains the elements it does in a kind of grab bag fashion. But it still has a material basis, itself being a response to a crisis within capitalism. Would highly recommend The Jakarta Method for further reading on what people are discussing in your replies and in this thread.
But scapegoating poor whites keeps the conversation away from fascism’s real base: the petite bourgeoisie. This is a piece of jargon used mostly by Marxists to denote small-property owners, whose nearest equivalents these days may be the “upper middle class” or “small-business owners.” FiveThirtyEight reported last May that “the median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000,” or roughly 130 percent of the national median. Trump’s real base, the actual backbone of fascism, isn’t poor and working-class voters, but middle-class and affluent whites. Often self-employed, possessed of a retirement account and a home as a nest egg, this is the stratum taken in by Horatio Alger stories. They can envision playing the market well enough to become the next Trump. They haven’t won “big-league,” but they’ve won enough to be invested in the hierarchy they aspire to climb. If only America were made great again, they could become the haute bourgeoisie—the storied “1 percent.”
The USA genocided an entire continent under it’s current form of government, and committed and is still committing countless other atrocities. Look at what Europe did to Africa and Asia under that same form.
Bourgeois parliamentarism is a much more stable shell for colonialism than any other form of government has proven to be. Demonizing a dead form of colonialism (fascism) lets them off the hook, and never forces them to look at what their own governments are currently doing. They get to keep their chauvinist / supremacist myth about “liberal democracy” being the superior form of government, without challenging it.
I’d also like to add that hitler was very specific about his desire to emulate the US model of colonialism: and do to eastern europe, what the US had already done to its native peoples.
The only difference between lebensraum and manifest destiny, is that bourgeois democracy was far more effective at indigenous genocide than fascism was.
Fascism is a pretty specific ideology. If you want to learn more, Umberto Eco made a list.
I get where you’re getting at: the role of past and ongoing colonialism is still being downplayed. But you’re wrong. There are very good reasons why we should fear fascism in particular.
A much better read on how fascism inevitably arises out of liberal capitalism https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
Umberto Eco completely ignores the material basis for fascism, which is usually the downwardly mobile petit bourgeoisie. Fascism takes advantage of superstructural elements, which is why Eco’s list contains the elements it does in a kind of grab bag fashion. But it still has a material basis, itself being a response to a crisis within capitalism. Would highly recommend The Jakarta Method for further reading on what people are discussing in your replies and in this thread.
The Nation, 2017: Trumpism: It’s Coming From the Suburbs
another good read on the subject https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/trump-american-gentry-wyman-elites/620151/
The USA genocided an entire continent under it’s current form of government, and committed and is still committing countless other atrocities. Look at what Europe did to Africa and Asia under that same form.
Bourgeois parliamentarism is a much more stable shell for colonialism than any other form of government has proven to be. Demonizing a dead form of colonialism (fascism) lets them off the hook, and never forces them to look at what their own governments are currently doing. They get to keep their chauvinist / supremacist myth about “liberal democracy” being the superior form of government, without challenging it.
I’d also like to add that hitler was very specific about his desire to emulate the US model of colonialism: and do to eastern europe, what the US had already done to its native peoples.
The only difference between lebensraum and manifest destiny, is that bourgeois democracy was far more effective at indigenous genocide than fascism was.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/nazi-germanys-american-dream-hitler-modeled-his-concept-of-racial-struggle-and-global-campaign-after-americas-conquest-of-native-americans.html