Why You Keep Hearing About Fascism

Everything evolves - and nothing is ever precise at the time. But here’s why you keep hearing the word fascism in 2020s America.

In Stalin’s Soviet Union, communism meant total state control:
Intellectuals were silenced or exiled.
The press printed only what the state deemed “true.” (Pravda means truth. )
Labor unions had no independence.
Corporations barely existed.

Fascism, as practiced by Hitler, kept all that but added corporate partnership:
Big business thrived under military contracts and infrastructure projects (think the autobahn).
The state and corporations shared power.

Communism: The state dominates everything.
Fascism: The state and corporations dominate together. Think of it as for-profit totalitarianism.

Now contrast that with FDR’s America:
Labor unions could strike. And they often did, to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.
The courts blocked major legislation (like efforts to end child labor), to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.
Congress resisted and often changed and sometime rejected FDR’s policies, to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.
The press, intellectuals, and public argued – loudly, to the annoyance of many who thought that this should not be allowed.

It was slow, messy, and full of friction - but it worked. 

After WWII, Nazi Germany collapsed and the Soviet Union ossified, quality of life only slowly improving and dissent largely squelched. 

The US, after having loudly and clumsily gotten so many different moving parts aligned, enjoyed the fastest growing economy – and until about 1990 the greatest narrowing between rich and poor – in the history of the world.

So why do some Americans now flirt with fascism?

Because it’s tempting.

It promises:
Order in place of argument
Certainty in place of debate
Progress without (messy, contradictory, loud, inefficient, cognitively dissonant) process

To people exhausted by democracy’s delays and ossified, ineffective and inefficient institutions, a strongman who silences dissent and drives change looks like relief.
Dictatorship promises cognitive peace and quiet. It promises to “get things done!”

But that peace is a mirage.

Because in the end, a dictatorship must wage war on dissent - and on reality itself. Reality is always messier and more complicated than any model of it. If you try to ignore realities, you don’t just crash against different interests and opinions. You ultimately crash against reality itself.

Fascism appeals to those who want wealth and simplicity.

But the world isn’t simple.

And when systems stop evolving, something new continually emerging out of messy conflict and loud noise, they don’t thrive.
They break.