Some of these answers have been very good in defining, on the one hand, the emotional qualities of social interaction that can be usefully described as fascist (82_28) and, on the other, the political qualities of explicitly fascist ideology, movements, parties or states.
So I'm quoting several of those below.
I think it would be useful at this stage to disentangle different ways in which the word is applied.
I think we can distinguish three types of usages, although they shouldn't be seen as mutually exclusive:
The fascist drive: Extreme authoritarianism coupled with a particular fetish for power expressed in outbursts of often arbitrary brutality, generally against the designated out-group and the weak. This can be highly individual. It is extremely patriarchal with a violent cult of manhood, that must be said up-front, although it may simultaneously allow selective images of women as warriors as well as faithful nurturers of the national offspring. Fascism's primary appeal is to stupid, violent, frustrated, fearful men. (As an aside, it should be noted that there are types of authoritarian personalities that are not fascist and do not fetishize violence, even if they recognize it as the necessary bottom-line for order.)
Ideological fascism, movement fascism or "classical fascism" is the particular organized form that developed out of 1890s militarist nationalism and came to the fore in many European nations in the 1920s and 1930s, very much in response to the rise of communist revolution as well as the perceived depravities of liberal bourgeois society. Its global faith was that racially-defined nations are at war with each other for survival and supremacy. The nation is the required state religion. Society must be forged with violence into a unity that actively excises and ritualistically destroys the designated others and all who won't conform to the national way. All persons receive a defined role within a steep hierarchy that is considered organic and natural; in a functioning society, we are all parts or cells of a single body. Deviations cannot be tolerated and must be punished. And yet all this is in the service of traditional elites and those who were already rich and powerful. In the ideology, it is the modernist, foreign-influenced or internationalist abandonment of supposed national traditions that cause the chaos that the fascists arise to vanquish, so naturally they view their radicalism as a defense and renewal of conservative values. In the actual history, it was the majority of traditional elites and the powerful, again in several nations from Italy in 1922 to Spain in 1936-9, who chose to become or to support fascist parties as a response to real economic and political crisis. I should mention that all this was positively bathed in the idea that this was true "freedom," and I think that's still a word fascists like to front today. Also, fascism is going to take on an intensely particular national character in each nation, so that fascists regimes will not all look the same from the outside, and of course they are unlikely to label themselves fascist.
Third is the fascist way of governance, the mass-psychological handbook of how to use fear, hatred and national flattery; the institutional technology and ideological tropes that can actually be detached from a generally fascist worldview and deployed by any state or large organization. These techniques preceded and were also mutated within the classical fascist states, and continue to be developed and adapted and remain available for use to this day.
It's untrue to simply call the US fascist, although I'd say a large part of the Republican Party has become ideologically so, and the likes of Limbaugh and Beck and the political Islamophobes a la "libertarian" Pamela Gellar as well as many of the televangelist Christianists are clearly would-be fascist rulers, not to mention leaders of movements large and small; though luckily the movement members are mostly obedient job-drones in the normal economy and otherwise couch potatoes. (Alex Jones is small-potatoes whose main contribution has been to muddy the waters around the so-called "conspiracy" issues beyond reclamation.) I've often said that if the German variant of fascism (its own species, indubitably) required total mobilization of all popular resources to enable a relatively small country's plans to conquer, the American leviathan's post-fascist imperialism does best when 80 percent of more of the people simply sleep. Gives a whole new meaning to Silent Majority.
Meanwhile, the highly compartmentalized and segregated realms of nation-state and society include many institutions that make use of fascist governance: within the prison-industrial complex, the military, the "drug war" and "war on terrorism," the reaction to protest and strong social movements (ranging up to mass imprisonment and assassination), and of course in the way that many corporations handle their "human resources." It's hard to look past the many elements of fascist ideology or rhetoric within the political discourse, and the degree to which these are far more top-down than in Nixon's time (when the white majority entered the grip of a genuine popular reaction). The US state has often supported regimes overseas that are classically fascist or neo-fascist, such as the Condor nations among many other examples. The US has been a pioneer of the fascist toolkit, establishing research programs and international schools of torture and violent counterinsurgency. The state has prepared and wargamed for decades for the contingency of implementing a full and open military rule in the name of freedom, if this is ever considered necessary; and the expansion and perfection of the surveillance regime is the most impressive achievement in that effort.
Finally, the term is absolutely subject to abuse and has been watered-down from over-use and projection. So we have PC fascists, feminazis, the idea that Obama leads a fascist movement, Islamofascists - these tend to come from people on the right who confirm that "projection is powerful" - and, of course, over-easy application by leftists of the fascist label to any authoritarian or arbitrary policy.
And as a post-script, it is useful to distinguish between what I've called classical or ideological fascism as opposed to post-fascism (the passing of the "toolkit" into the common realms of governance, which can also come in a liberal form) and neo-fascism (explicit attempts to revive classical fascism).
bks wrote:At the core of fascist ideologies is an aggressive contempt for what it perceives to be weak. Could be women, Jews, the poor, socialists, etc.
82_28 wrote:Capriciousness in law and how it is meted out. A general lack of concern, amidst the subjects for one another. Fear. A contradiction in simultaneously being for your nation but do everything you can to destroy it as corporations hollow it all out.
A government with a lack of empathy. A government with built in rules of empathy, but they remain rules, they don't emerge from the human heart, all the while remaining capricious enough to be incomprehensible yet set in stone.
Money and religion.
War.
Distrust.
Surveillance.
The State is more important than its many communities.
Total control over how the children are raised.
Rigidness and totally careless for those who do not have the means.
justdrew wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Fascism promotes political violence and war as forms of direct action that promote national rejuvenation, spirit and vitality. Fascists commonly utilize paramilitary organizations to commit or threaten violence against their opponents.
The fascist party is a vanguard party designed to initiate a revolution from above and to organize the nation upon fascist principles.
barracuda wrote:- cult of extreme nationalism
- totalitarian ambition
- expansionist imperialism
- fetishised masculinism
- blurred demarcation between the state and corporation
Elvis wrote:
That said, FDR made this essential point about fascism:
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power."
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938. Message to congress.