Something else we need to understand more than ever is that fascism relies on capitalism. In fact, I think it’s fair to argue that fascism is a distinctly capitalist phenomenon (tho genocide and nationalism are not)

I’ll explain

When we call Trump a fascist it’s important to get that he is/was a capitalist first and this leads him to his position of reverence by emergent fascists.

By capitalist I don’t mean “someone who believes in capitalism,” I mean “someone who owns capital”

(To distinguish these I use the term “pro-capitalist,” which includes some working class people)

It kind of flows like this:

Capitalism has always meant periods of crisis, because a capitalist economy isn’t designed to prioritize the needs of its population, rather to generate wealth for capital owners.

Over time a working class population essentially develops a trauma response to repeated crisis, even if they’re not fully aware of what’s causing it.

It’s like a condition branch.

One branch leads to the response of liberalism, which is the attempt to find possibility of reform of capitalism so that it becomes more humane. Liberalism is defined by an optimism that capitalism can be made to work and minimize crises.

The branch in the other direction leads to the response of fascism, which is the attempt to make capitalism work for some of the working class by narrowing who can benefit from this.

The theory here is that the crises come from too big or too “weak” a population

IOW the fascist believes on a gut level that capitalism WOULD work if there weren’t “degenerates” overloading it. So if you have a nation of strong, able, racially homogenous and gender-normative people, you can finally make the system work.

Another main point is that fascism is more or less thus in tune with capitalism, and vice versa. So any population unwilling to abolish capitalism will, consciously or not, always end up more amenable to fascism than socialism.

This is also why it’s such a consistent tactic for ruling class political parties to fearmonger about socialism. It’s directly an appeal to accept fascism over socialism, because at least it would let us still have capitalism!

A big difference between these responses is that the impulse that leads people to liberalism can also lead them to socialism, if they are willing to abandon their belief that capitalism is somehow necessary.

The impulse toward fascism doesn’t do this.

This is what happens in effect: the more we try to hold onto some kind of capitalist framework, the more room fascism has to grow. And as global conditions (including environmental ones) worsen, the faster the growth.

We can’t oppose fascism merely on the ideological level, by being “anti-hate.” The way to oppose fascism is to *oppose capitalism*