This doesn’t sound like a couple of fascists.
Probably just best to focus on those qualities you don’t like on the other side and leave the labeling to the future historians.
To steal a few examples from a convenient summary list someone[1] made:
1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
...
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
Open to other definitions. But I look at that list, written in 1995, and it feels like you can check off a lot of these items in things that are rapidly being normalised.
1. https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the...
…this is the guy who bombed Iran?
> to better represent the people
Do you just believe everything that people with power tell you?
If you know your 'Pataphysics or Chaos Magick you know that's a magic spell to put fascists in charge.
This is self-contradictory gibberish. Deregulation and small government for him means further weakening labour laws to the point where the interests of the majority of Americans, ie, wage workers, have no ability to advocate for their needs and no recourse when he encroaches on them.
>Trump [...] seems to be consistently anti-war.
This was already a surreal claim to make when he was sending troops and PMCs into Iraq and Syria, deploying SEALs on abortive raids in Yemen, where Saudi troops were using arms his administration provided them, oh and, I dunno, ordering the assassination of the highest military official of a sovereign nation. It becomes solipsistic in the month after he oversaw the US' direct intervention in Israel's war with Iran.
Curious what you consider fascist about people who hold zero corporate or political power
Ok, so use words appropriate to what is happening. When you work to redefine “scary” words in an attempt to try and piggyback on their negative history you minimize that history.
> Curious what you consider fascist about people who hold zero corporate or political power
The point was that I don’t consider what we see today as fascist and you shouldn’t either…because it’s not.
That's a completely ridiculous definition of fascism and again, if you pick that most Americans would be fascist and consider it a good thing.
I get that you want to redefine what “fascism” is, because historically it’s associated with some really evil things, but I am not willing to dilute that definition.