Bipartisan Fascism

Fascism is an inflammatory term, but if we look at it as a phenomenon, rather than a scare word, and divorce it from any spurious left-right associations, we find that both of our political tribes today have fascistic elements. Those in tribe blue, like the Nazis, believe in racial essentialism, anti-Semitism (white hatred, which includes Jews, is suddenly fashionable in tribe blue), statism, and anti-capitalism. Tribe red, meanwhile, has the fascistic cult-like devotion to a strong man, an insurrectionist anti-democratic will to power, a blood and soil nationalism, and, as of this century, the same statist impulses as tribe blue. The false left-right conception obscures the kinship of our two ideologies and the way that both of them draw on elements that Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo drew on the 1930s. If either side should adopt all of the fascistic elements of the other side, we could head down the same path Germany went down a century ago. I’m particularly worried about a cult figure emerging to draw the worship of tribe blue and serve as a rallying point/figurehead for them to focus their fascistic tendencies and energies. Currently, their movement is Maoism without Mao—if they get a Mao, the Cultural Revolution light that we have been experiencing over the past decade would become a Cultural Revolution heavy.