Isms

There's an interesting interview with a Yale Philosopher about the nature of fascism.  Jason Stanley identifies fascism as a form of politics more than a belief system.  When I teach fascism, I teach it as a belief system.  In the poli sci definitions, liberal democracy prizes freedom above all else, communism prizes equality and social democracy attempts to balance both.  Fascism stands outside this dialogue, saying freedom and equality are both irrelevant.  The individual is irrelevant.  Only the People (the Volk) and the State matter.  You exist to serve the State, which serves the People. 

Fascism works - and Prof. Stanley and I agree on this - by creating in-groups and out-groups and exploiting fears.  But ideologies, by definition, have an end result that they prefer.  Belief systems have something they are trying to reach and a way to get there.  In this way, fascism is programmatic.  But so is communism and liberalism and social democracy. (Anarchy is over in the corner, playing with itself and muttering.)

By divorcing fascism from its programmatic aspects, the word can simply be thrown about to describe divisive politics.  I think that's unhelpful.  By his definition, Trump is definitely a fascist politician.  But fascism almost always comes with military mobilization.  All Trump does is want to have a parade (which gets cancelled) and use the troops as props. 

We need to differentiate different forms of authoritarianism.  We spent a great deal of effort delineating liberal democracy from social democracy from democratic socialism; we separate out parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems.  But we've tended to lump dictatorships into types with really integrating what Prof. Stanley has examined: the politics of authoritarianism in the 20th century.  Calling it fascism just muddies the waters.