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The two competing C20th theoretical orientations about fascism
And why avoiding misunderstandings is pertinent now
Part of the confusion surrounding whether to call the “MAGA” movement “fascist” or not reflects decades of specialist debates in “fascism studies”. This is a recondite academic subdiscipline given over to the question of how, if at all, we can provide any definition of fascism, whether this definition should include Nazism, whether “fascism” was a singular historical phenomenon, and related questions.
Then there is the way the “f-word” has been thrown around, often irresponsibly, to name any kind of authoritarian gesture, person, or political phenomenon: from a neurotic local schoolteacher to Joseph Stalin. After 1945, the outrage at “the crimes that stank in the nostrils of the world” committed by the Nazis [i] made fascism almost synonymous with evil and political illegitimacy.
Accordingly, the “f-word” is used politically, including by those on the Far Right, to designate anyone people disagree with. In this way, it is even used synonymously, for instance by Mr Trump, with “Marxist”, to absurdly designate people like the neoliberal American Democrats.
In philosophical debates after 1945, it seems to me there are two more or less diametrically opposed understandings of…