Don't wanna write a wall of text, but historically fascist movements have come to power under the banner of a charismatic leader with majority support from the population. As fascistic as America is today, I'm not sure there is enough support to sustain a serious fascist movement. Nearly every major city is at least a 50/50 split among liberal democrats and republicans. Many of those republicans are politically uneducated and don't have a real desire for authoritarian dictate. The Republican candidate has won the popular vote in the presidential election once in the last 30 years and the only places where fascists outnumber every day liberals is in rural America.

So can fascism exist without popular majority support in dense urban areas? What does the fall of capitalism look like with no strong left or right movement? Am I naïve and should we expect reactionary attitudes to grow in response to a collapsing economy? My materialist brain is usually pretty good at seeing the direction we're headed but I'm not sure on this one.

I suppose the doomer take is that we haven't actually collapsed yet, and when the jenga tower really starts to fall, libs will be forced to choose between going right and going left. At that point if we don't have a popular workers movement with enough power, actual fascism will become a threat.

  • AFineWayToDie [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    It needs some popular support, but definitely not majority. The Nazis never won an electoral majority, they were given power as part of a coalition government with liberals and conservatives who were more comfortable with fascism than the growing socialist movement.