I've heard far more of the latter, including other fascist reasons like "being an ethnostate", training all their citizens to become useful tools for the nation, etc.
It's fascinating because this means there exists a potential future where as Americans' material conditions further worsen, and they start to lose their faith in capitalism/neoliberalism and liberal democracies, they may willingly push for fascism or a dictatorship
the 'efficient dictatorship' trope is kind of fascinating. it's in direct tension with the other popular liberal fantasy trope, the 'inefficient bureaucracy', yet liberals seem to be able to put both into their analysis of Bad States
China Bad Animal Farm 1984, 200 million paid bot internet accounts, the most expansive network of salaried yet fully unaccountable government employees in world history--China will collapse because of this corrupt bureaucracy doesn't know how to run the country well and is calcified in a way they cannot be removed from power
but when China builds a big railroad, tightly regulates an industry in a successful way--it's because the Authoritarian system removes all the red tape us Democratic countries have to Preserve our Rights.
i guess it mostly just falls under the 'unfalsifiable orthodoxy' umbrella as for why they're able to do this, but if you're familiar with where the tropes come from and the actual history of the states and narratives about those states it's quite silly
Sort of reminds me of the contradictions in antisemetic tropes. As in thinking "Jews are inferior" while also believing that "Jews secretly control the world". The combination of the two doesn't make any actual sense, but does give the believer a sense of feeling superior while also allowing them to wallow in their own sense of victimhood or being on the "good" side, which is a powerful emotional combo.