You say this like it's a given, but I'm not so sure anymore. The word fascist has lost most of its meaning by being applied to everyone from Donald Trump to J. K. Rowling. Can you explain specifically what you mean by this?
One steelman might be to replace "fascist" by "Malthusian populist", eg: someone who wants to decrease the national population of nonwealthy people to place less strain on what they see as a fixed pie of resources for the remaining "first-class" population.
While there is disagreement on the exact definition, Wikipedia sums it up pretty well [1]:
> Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy
A good litmus test is to simply see how many parallels you can draw to Nazi Germany. So let's take a few points in relation to Trump:
- "far right": the attack on the bodily autonomy of women, attacks on LGBTQ (particularly T) people, etc
- "authoritarian": Hitler was elected (technically appointed) Chancellor before becoming a dictator. Trump was elected but it really took the Supreme Court to completely invent the idea of presidential immunity to make that happen. There is absolutely no constitutional basis for that decision. This, and various political moves to argue more power should be held by the executive, gets wrapped up in a psuedo-intellectual veneer like "unitary executive theory" [2];
- "ultranationalist": we just had an election campaign of outright race-baiting and villification not seen since 1930s Germany. It will be official government policy to build concentration camps and to use the military to round up undesirables;
- "belief in a antural hierarchy": well, that's just white supremacy.
As another parallel, it's worth noting that many on the right will argue that we need to root out "cultural Marcists" [3], which is eerily similar to Nazi-era "cultural Bolshevism" [4].
Another Nazi-era conspiracy is the Great Replacement [5], which has been resurgent in the last few years (eg [6]).
This isn't unique to the US as you'll see all of these traits in other countries (eg Reform in UK, AfD in Germany, National Rally in France).
Fun fact: one of National Front's founders (Petain) signed the armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940 so collaborated with Hitler as Vichy France [7].
You say this like it's a given, but I'm not so sure anymore. The word fascist has lost most of its meaning by being applied to everyone from Donald Trump to J. K. Rowling. Can you explain specifically what you mean by this?