American Fascist by Timothy Snyder -- The New Yorker

https://archive.ph/gagW5


A century ago, socialists wanted to believe that fascism was just another sign of the decay of capitalism. And they were right, at least insofar as businessmen then didn’t understand that fascism would reshape all of politics and society, and not just suppress labor unions and undermine democracy.
Today, though, the point would be much sharper. Trump does not actually have a lot of money, but he pretends to—getting away with that lie is part of his presence.
And his close fascist allies, Musk and Putin, are probably the two wealthiest people in the world.
The fascism of today is nestled between the digital oligarchy (Musk) and the hydrocarbon oligarchy (Putin).
Trump has pledged himself to America’s own hydrocarbon oligarchs, thereby insuring climate disaster, suffering, immigration, and even more occasions for division.

The oligarchs bring to our fascism its libertarian entry point: they preach that government is the source of all evil.
As we yield to that logic, the hydrocarbon oligarchs drill away at the earth and the digital oligarchs at our minds.
A weakened government can control neither, nor can it promise sound infrastructure or the welfare state. In these conditions, freedom is viewed not only as a struggle against the government but also as a struggle against one’s own neighbors. The people who claim to want individual freedom are the same people who clamor for mass deportations. America’s hydrocarbon and digital oligarchs support this kind of libertarianism; it is social media that guides men (and it is usually men) away from the idea that they are solitary heroes to the conviction that other groups must be punished.

Fascism is now in the algorithms, the neural pathways, the social interactions. How did we fail to see all this?
Part of it was our belief that history is over, that the great rivals to liberalism were dead or exhausted.
Part of it was American exceptionalism: “it can’t happen here” and so on.
But most of it was simple self-absorption: we wanted to see Trump in terms of his absences, so that our way of seeing the world would go unchallenged.
So we failed to see his fascist presence. And, because we ignored the fascism, we were unable to make the easy predictions of what he would do next. Or, worse, we learned to thrill at our own mistakes, because he always did something more outrageous than we expected.

Fascism is a phenomenon, not a person. Just as Trump was always a presence, so is the movement he has created. It is not just a matter of the actual fascists in his movement, who are scarcely hiding, nor of his own friendly references to Hitler or his use of Hitlerian language (“vermin,” “enemy within”). He bears responsibility for what comes next, as do his allies and supporters.
Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis.
Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence;
again and again, we have failed to name the consequences.
Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.