Fascism is a top-down theory of government in which the people are told to do what's good for them, or else. Benigno Mussolini was the leading exponent during the 1920s and 1930s in Italy. He allied his nation, with dreams of glory for another Pax Romana and mare nostrum (our sea, the Mediterranean) with Hitler, only to lose the war and find himself hanged by his people.
Fascism has since become an all purpose pejorative. Frederick Crews of U.C. Berkeley once tried to separate the strands of fascism, a notoriously imprecise term. Miguel A. de Capriles, my corporation law professor, who re-wrote the New York State Business Corporation Law, described corporate governance as essentiall fascist in nature, assuming I'm recalling him correctly. It's been awhile. The top-down part and rule by a few instead of the many sounds right.
Could the United States find itself being run by a fascist dictator?
It's not too hard to drift into fascism by a certain kind of wrong thinking that we're unfamiliar with in this country. We've fought it back before. The question is whether we can do so again.
Years ago I read an analysis of cult-thinking. The main precepts of a cult were given as an organization built on some stated ideal, after which the main efforts were to (1) Brook no dissent, and (2) Devalue outsiders.
When you've succeeded in doing that, you've created the model for everything from the Rev. Jim Jones's People's Temple and the Jonestown Massacre to the U.S. Marine Corps, except that the Marines allows a certain amount of dissent, from the top, that is.
Read the following article from the Manchester Guardian sent to me by my son, Robbie, 33. I'm glad the boy is keeping a sharp eye peeled for what's important. Thanks, Rob.