'Calling a bad thing by its proper name is pointless if it doesn't make that thing go away' is... a take, too. Guess we need new names for everything from cancer to tsunamis.
Cancer is also used as an expression ('this thing that irritates me is cancer'), so I guess that makes it meaningless as a word, too.
My point is just that someone else will figure out how to do that populism. Same as communist stuff didn't die when the USSR collapsed. It doesn't take a genius to follow a recipe that's more than a century old. Trump may do it better than most, I'm willing to concede that, but do you really think nobody can look at it and think, "hey, I could do the same"?
My point is just that someone else will figure out how to do that populism. Same as communist stuff didn't die when the USSR collapsed. It doesn't take a genius to follow a recipe that's more than a century old. Trump may do it better than most, I'm willing to concede that, but do you really think nobody can look at it and think, "hey, I could do the same"?
i consider it a misnomer to call Fascism a populist ideology.
Fascism is based in dividing the population into "good" and "bad", and ruling by having the authority to place anyone arbitrarily in either group at any time.
Trump is only a populist to his Base. He is the self-declared enemy of every American who doesn't fit, according to him.
i consider it a misnomer to call Fascism a populist ideology.
Fascism is based in dividing the population into "good" and "bad", and ruling by having the authority to place anyone arbitrarily in either group at any time.
Trump is only a populist to his Base. He is the self-declared enemy of every American who doesn't fit, according to him.
'Calling a bad thing by its proper name is pointless if it doesn't make that thing go away' is... a take, too. Guess we need new names for everything from cancer to tsunamis.
Cancer is also used as an expression ('this thing that irritates me is cancer'), so I guess that makes it meaningless as a word, too.
we don't, it just makes people uncomfortable and they don't want to talk about it. the united states of america is the greatest and most free country in the world, so it can't be a fascist state because we have all these laws and rules to guarantee our freedom and they're ironclad in the us constitution, which is the greatest document ever written by man. so if it's not fascism and still a western democracy, then everything is going to be ok. so we need to go down the list and find a way to make this not technically fascism in a few bullet points, so things will technically be ok
Arguably, so was Mussolini. There's a reason I brought up his manifesto. He was basically just harping on how everyone should be super-patriotic and act together as one, and almost nothing else. It's what even gave him the party name and the emblem: a bunch of twigs (fasces) which are individually weak and easy to break, but together they're unbreakable.
Mind you, he didn't invent the notion and the symbol. It is of Etruscan origin. But he revived it to make his point.
But seriously, the guy pretty much invented modern populism. Like, you thought Trump was ridiculous for posing as working at a burger joint? Pfft. Mussolini INVENTED that kind of photo op. He posed as working wheat fields with a scythe, ploughing with an ox plough, chucking wheat into a threshing machine, etc, side by side with peasants. (He actually closed a field in the middle of harvest for his photo ops.)
I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is...
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He said that was one reason why Italian Fascism wasn't totally totalitarian. Because it was too incoherent for that.
...If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.
Italian fascism was certainly a dictatorship, but it was not totally totalitarian, not because of its mildness but rather because of the philosophical weakness of its ideology. Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy...
But seriously, the guy pretty much invented modern populism. Like, you thought Trump was ridiculous for posing as working at a burger joint? Pfft. Mussolini INVENTED that kind of photo op. He posed as working wheat fields with a scythe, ploughing with an ox plough, chucking wheat into a threshing machine, etc, side by side with peasants. (He actually closed a field in the middle of harvest for his photo ops.)
i consider it a misnomer to call Fascism a populist ideology.
Fascism is based in dividing the population into "good" and "bad", and ruling by having the authority to place anyone arbitrarily in either group at any time.
No, that's not the point. Almost everybody does that. Fascism divides the population into those who belong to it, the proper Germans (or Americans), who do belong, and those who don't, i.e. the foreigners, the Jews, the Gypsies, the communists. The latter are die vaterlandslosen Gesellen (Wikipedia). In addition to that, there are the frail, the sick and the effiminate, who don't deserve to belong to the population; who drag down the race and weaken it.
Trump is much more than self-declared. He was elected to be the "enemy of every American who doesn't fit," but that was supposed to somehow benefit the true patriots, who are now "increasingly frustrated" with the guy they elected, and this frustrated patriotism may be much more dangerous to the U.S. Führer than the people who are the immediate victims of his version of patriotism.
Are you kidding? Mussolini pretty much wrote the book on how to be a populist. Well, not literally in the book, but as I was saying, the photo ops and everything you see populists doing these days, he was patient zero.
Fascism is based in dividing the population into "good" and "bad", and ruling by having the authority to place anyone arbitrarily in either group at any time.
Naziism was. Japanese militarism too. Italian fascism, not so much, really. As I was saying, Mussolini was just harping on being super ultra patriotic to Italy. He did get strong-armed by Germany into doing some token persecution of Jews much later (and even more when he was a prisoner puppet of Germany,) but initially he didn't seem to give a flip.
I suppose you were a "bad guy" if you opposed his vision, but that was about the extent of it. And even then, you probably wouldn't go to a concentration camp, or not the first time, but be asked to toast to Il Duce ("the leader", same as "der Führer" in German; you're probably seeing the theme there) with... castor oil. A couple of glasses for good measure, to show your devotion. And we're not talking about shot glasses. Then you were free to go home and crap your pants on the way. I'm not even kidding. A bottle of castor oil was THE symbol of political repression in fascist Italy.
Historically his main things were revanchism (as in being wronged by foreign powers) and irredentism (as in, some historical "Italian", well, really Roman, territories should be his.) Your ethnic or religious group, nope, not his concern.
No populist ever appealed to everyone. The idea of populism is just to be some kind of "champion of the people" in your speeches. WHICH people and how many of those do you actually seem appealing to, that's another thing. I mean, Adolf also didn't look like a champion to the Jews and Roma.
There is a recipe for fascism in the U.S. I think.
The Pew Research Center says that twice as many nonwhites back the Democratic Party, which is about 44 percent of the party today. In the 2016 election, whites voted for Trump despite economic difficulty. This is an implicit rejection of class conflict, and an acceptance of electoral politics along racial lines. Though Mussolini was not a fanatical racialist, he did believe in class collaboration. I think something similar could develop in the U.S. within the next decade and the battle lines will be more clearly based on race.
Notice what has shifted in people's knowlege since then!
More and more Americans have become aware ('woke') that the reason why they're poor and never seem to get ahead isn't the non-whites, isn't the descendants of the former enslaved race or brown immigrants. They have become aware that the economy can be doing fine, the rich getting richer, and yet nothing drips down to them.
In previous elections, most people still believed that when no wealth dripped down to them, it was because all the wealth produced went to keeping the 'undeserving poor' alive. Nowadays, they know who owns that wealth. This time, Trump's parade of billionaires at his inauguration helped open their eyes, and it has only become more apparent since then – thanks not least to Bernie Sanders pointing it out to the masses (and to the media) with his Fight Oligarchy tour where he repeated his message about the 1%ers who own it all.
At this point, people have actually tired of the winning Trump promised. They have noticed (because it has been pointed out to them by Bernie, AOC and the DSA) that they were not included and were never meant to be included in Trump's "we": "We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning." [1, 2]
They now know that what he meant was: We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of seeing us win and whine and dine!
And only die-hard MAGAlytes still pretend to believe that ordinary people's health-care costs are as high as they are because all the money goes to transgender surgery for schoolchildren, illegal immigrants and DEI soldiers. Nobody else believes those lies anymore, and they immediately recognize the GOP's attempts to distract them with stories about furry pilots.
That's what people are sick and tired of in 2026. That's why MAGAlytes with a bit of brains left over to think for themselves and watch something other than Fox and Newsmax now consider voting for black and brown and Muslim socialists as the much better alternative to MAGA politicians.
Are you sure? Consider the number of black and brown Americans who voted for Trump – some of them several times. The Jews Who Voted for Hitler (The Atlantic, Aug 25, 2026) The JewsThat Fought For Hitler (War Stories on YouTube, Feb 3, 2026 – 50 min)
I read this book several years ago. I can recommend it:
Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany (Wikipedia)
In the book, Hans Massaquoi describes his childhood dream to join the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth was established in 1926 to recruit soldiers, but in 1933 it transitioned to a new role teaching children loyalty to Hitler and Nazism. In German schools like the one Massaquoi attended, children were taught "love for Hitler, obedience to state authority, militarism, racism, and anti-Semitism."[4] When Massaquoi describes his longing to be a "good German" like he was taught in school, and is greatly disappointed when he is told he cannot join the Hitler Youth like his classmates who all "had cool uniforms and they did exciting things — camping, parades, playing drums.
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