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Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

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Two decades later, confronted with the changing global landscape, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the crumbling Soviet Union, Cohen reflected on how and where democracy might be realized. Now a celebrated songwriter, Cohen looked to the United States, where his music was produced and marketed for world-wide audiences. He saw the “sorrow in the street” of working-class grievance; “the holy places where the races meet” that were never far removed from white supremacy; the gender difference scratched into human relationships expressed in “the homicidal bitchin’/that goes down in every kitchen/to determine who will serve and who will eat”; and the deserts created domestically and internationally by an America confident in its imperial dominance. Yet for all of this, 1992 seemed a bridge to a better future. “Democracy,” yet to be realized, “is coming to the U.S.A.” Cohen insisted. Amidst turmoil, tension, and recognition of revolt’s righteousness, Cohen was nonetheless hopeful.

So, too, were others, albeit of a different bent. Proclamations of “the end of history” came from ideologues of the right and postmodernists of the ostensible left. Capitalism, finally victorious over its century-and-a-half nemesis – actually existing, and undeniably deficient, socialism – promised boundless prosperity and expansive profits for those pulling the now unrivalled levers of possessive individualism. Windows of political and economic opportunity opened widely, offering a luxuriating vision of a new world order.

The post Is Fascism Coming to America? first appeared on Sevenelles.

Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators—he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.

Also on Tuesday, the Atlantic published a report that Trump allegedly said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

The revelations have dominated discussions on Fox News, and prompted two-dozen GOP senators to call for Tr—haha, just kidding.

Instead, Democrats and their supporters once again contend with a muted reaction from the media, the public, and politicians, who seem unmoved by Trump’s association with the F-word, no matter how many times Kamala Harris says “January sixth.”

One exception was Matt Drudge, the archconservative linkmonger who has been hard on Trump, who ran a photo of the Führer himself. This proved the rule, argued Times (and former Slate) columnist Jamelle Bouie: “genuinely wild world where, on trump at least, matt drudge has better news judgment than most of the mainstream media.”

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Both of these statements are fundamental to the discussion of contemporary fascism that is the essence of Alberto Toscano’s recent book titled Late Fascism. As the world watches the potential re-election of Donald Trump to the White House, the genocidal war against the Palestinians being waged by Israel with full support from the United States and the Biden administration, and the ongoing popularity of numerous far right movements around the globe, the question of fascism is both relevant and frighteningly current. Despite this, there seems to be no generalized understanding of fascism’s modern manifestations or how to fight and prevent its potential rule, especially in the so-called West.

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Varoufakis is also a prolific author; his 17th book, written as a letter to his techno-curious father, chronicles the evolution of capitalism from the 1960s advertising boom, through Wall Street in the 1980s, to the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. In its most compelling stretches, Technofeudalism argues that Apple, Facebook, and Amazon have changed the economy so much that it now resembles Europe’s medieval feudal system. The tech giants are the lords, while everyone else is a peasant, working their land for not much in return.

To Varoufakis, every time you post on X, formerly Twitter, you’re essentially toiling Elon Musk’s estate like a medieval serf. Musk doesn’t pay you. But your free labor pays him, in a sense, by increasing the value of his company. On X, the more active users there are, the more people can be shown advertising or sold subscriptions. On Google Maps, he argues, users improve the product—alerting the system to traffic jams on their route.

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For readers not of the left, this debate may come as a surprise, given the narrative dominance enjoyed by corporate liberal outlets, which all seem to agree that fascism is indeed happening here. Seeking to convey the broad strokes of this discussion is a new anthology, Did It Happen Here?, edited by the Wesleyan historian Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins. The collected volume’s title, a play on Sinclair Lewis’s dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here, brings together several academic voices to debate whether fascism has, can, or will come to America’s shores.

For the contributors who believe that fascism is indeed here or on its way, the modern populist right and similar movements overseas are fascistic because their political vision hinges on racial hierarchy, nativism, national renewal, authoritarianism, and a disdain for majority rule, all to be enforced by violence and intimidation. Several of these writers argue that America’s history of nativism and racial violence was itself a form of proto-fascism, a history they claim is being resurrected by a new anti-democratic right.

The post The F-Word and Its Consequences first appeared on Sevenelles.

The post When Faith Meets Fascism first appeared on Sevenelles.

As more and more people seem to be flooding toward dangerous echo chambers reaffirming their own unethical beliefs, the discourse surrounding Nazi-punching has become a hot button issue. Conversely, Harrison Ford has long been regarded as one of the funniest and most relatable A-list stars in Hollywood, with many stills and soundbites from his interviews frequently becoming clipped and shared as memes and GIFs across the internet. Therefore, it shocked some fans when Ford stated his political leanings in such a broad an unflinching capacity, leading to a host of bad faith discourse on Twitter.

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Places like this are the most common form of American life—as of 2017, 52 percent of Americans lived in suburbs. There are of course differences between, say, a suburb in Connecticut and a suburb in Texas. But they’re all variations on a formula, and lives lived in suburban areas tend to revolve around the same kinds of places, and the same kinds of ideology.

And so it makes sense that these are now the places where fascism grows; that’s what these places were designed for. The suburbs were invented as a reactionary tool against the women’s liberation and civil rights movements. The US government, in concert with banks, landowners, and home builders, created a way to try and stop all that, by separating people into single homes, removing public spaces, and ensuring that every neighborhood was segregated via redlining. The suburbs would keep white women at home, and would keep white men at work to afford that home. These were explicit goals of the designers: “No man who owns his house and lot can be a Communist,” said the creator of Levittown, the model suburb. “He has too much to do.”

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Discussing the meaning of the taboo f word in relation to Donald Trump’s past behavior and future plans should he get back into the White House, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance wanted to know: “Can we call it fascism yet?” 

As a simple and working definition of fascism, and one way to call out fascist politicians and political parties for what they are, I recommend using the Britannica dictionary: “a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.” 

Think about Governor Ron DeSantis of the Republican-controlled state of Florida. The “anti-woke” governor epitomizes a legalistic fascist without the benefits of the First Amendment. 

As far back as December 2015 people were asking whether Donald Trump was a fascist. At the time, eight experts weighed in and Vox determined: “Call him a kleptocrat, an oligarch, a xenophobe, a racist, even an authoritarian. But he doesn’t quite fit the definition of a fascist.” 

At the time, and even after Trump took the reins of power in 2017 and held it through January 19, 2020, Trump and his followers may have been anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and chauvinistic.  Back then and now, Trump and company may also have been refusing to denounce the violence of the MAGA extremists or domestic weapons of mass terrorism. However, the anti-fascist labeling folks of the media were giving Trump a pass as a fascist because he has never been in charge of or led a fascist government. 

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