Could it be that people are beginning to understand that fascism won the 20th century?
Since ‘fascism’ tweaks people’s Godwin nerves, it might be better to talk about ‘pragmatic populism’ — so long as it is initially understood that no substantial semantic revision is thereby taking place. Whatever we call it, it’s what has ruled the earth for close to a century, as the culmination of democracy, and the way classical liberalism is actually destroyed. It plays on basic human traits in a way that leaves every other ideology in the dust — tribalism, resentment, vicarious identification with authority, extreme susceptibility to simple propaganda, and all of the remaining highly-predictable, easily manipulable, aspects of hominid social emotion. Ultimately, it’s what humanity deserves, strictly speaking, since it is nothing other than the cynical exploitation of what people are like. The fact that the most insultingly trivial redecorations of this mode of social organization suffice to convince even articulate intellectuals that something else is taking place serves as an ample demonstration of its tidal historic momentum.
FascistsPragmatic populists think that people, as a general political phenomenon, are irredeemably moronic tools, and they’re right.The more politics we get, the deeper pragmatic populism digs in.