ICH | Robert Paxton wrote in “The Anatomy of Fascism”:
The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be as familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascisms were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans, as [George] Orwell suggested. Hitler and Mussolini, after all, had not tried to seem exotic to their fellow citizens. No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitations of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.
Fascism is about an inspired and seemingly strong leader who promises
moral renewal, new glory and revenge. It is about the replacement of
rational debate with sensual experience. This is why the lies,
half-truths and fabrications by Trump have no impact on his followers.
Fascists transform politics, as philosopher and cultural critic Walter
Benjamin pointed out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate aesthetic for
the fascist, Benjamin said, is war.
Paxton singles out the amorphous ideology characteristic of all fascist movements.
Fascism rested not upon the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s
mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion
related to romanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of
individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise
denied romanticism’s exaltation of unfettered personal creativity. The
fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of
politics that they would experience sensually: the warmth of belonging
to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power;
the excitement of participating in a wave of shared feelings, and of
sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill
of domination.
There is only one way left to blunt the yearning for fascism coalescing
around Trump. It is to build, as fast as possible, movements or parties
that declare war on corporate power, engage in sustained acts of civil
disobedience and seek to reintegrate the disenfranchised—the
“losers”—back into the economy and political life of the country. This
movement will never come out of the Democratic Party. If Clinton
prevails in the general election Trump may disappear, but the fascist
sentiments will expand. Another Trump, perhaps more vile, will be
vomited up from the bowels of the decayed political system. We are
fighting for our political life. Tremendous damage has been done by
corporate power and the college-educated elites to our capitalist
democracy. The longer the elites, who oversaw this disemboweling of the
country on behalf of corporations—who believe, as does CBS Chief
Executive Officer Leslie Moonves, that however bad Trump would be for
America he would at least be good for corporate profit—remain in
charge, the worse it is going to get.
