historians are bad at defining fascism, struggling to separate it from potential other forms of hyper-nationalist, hyper-militaristic, right-wing populist, racial supremacist, nativist, and anti-democratic ideologies

this makes pinpointing fascist movements POST-WWII really hard https://twitter.com/RayRedacted/status/1325571554382647298">https://twitter.com/RayRedact...

I think one major problem is that fascists have tended to be very politically opportunistic, and that opportunism shapes their agendas if they manage to gain power or influence

I also think another serious problem is that a lot of historians prefer liberal democratic critique and direct analysis of fascist literature, but often rarely or never engage with socialist and anarchist critique

(and I think that has a lot to do with the Cold War)

and there& #39;s a massive issue on top of all of THAT with white historians in the Anglosphere engaging infrequently, if at all, with critiques of fascist imperialism from non-Europeans

(like, the field is so Eurocentric it& #39;s rare for them to even include Imperial Japan in analysis)

so you get all these "experts" who buy into American and British exceptionalism, can& #39;t agree on what fascism even is, and won& #39;t engage with a lot of its victims

and they split hairs and hand-wring in the media about leaders who are causing and encouraging bigotry and death