Your remarks on paramilitaries gets at this, but more explicitly I think the conservative movement in general is caught in a particular quandary they’re not used to being in - since 2016 they’ve had to spend a great deal of energy in doing little else but defending lawlessness and calls to violence and sedition. The “law and order” party has had to fundamentally recalibrate their rhetoric to pretzel-logic their way through this maze, in an attempt to make conservatism compatible with, essentially, fascist insurgency.
Law enforcement itself is faced with the same dilemma. They’re not accustomed to confronting seditious rioters and violent storm troopers who are regular white guys from the suburbs. The world turned upside down.
The original poster is disingenuous in claiming that the standard academic texts don't differentiate clearly between conservativism and fascism, because that's pretty much what they all set out to do, in their different ways. Hochman hasn't read any of the standard texts and shows no inclination to do so.
That said, even if the questioner is not in good faith, it's a good question. My one word answer would be "counterpower". But mainstream centre-left, centre-right & liberal political discourse doesn't incorporate the power/counterpower distinction very well, if at all. On a cultural level I'll be lazy and quote myself from elsewhere:
"The need for violent redemption is tied intimately to a narrative of national humiliation (which may have roots in real historical reverses, or be purely subjective). “Death to the traitors!” is the rallying cry. There is a psychological relation between the feeling of humiliation and the rage for revenge, directed not only at the chosen human targets for hate, but for the existing social order as a whole. The the gulf between the revolutionary revenge fantasies of the fascist and the conservative’s fear of change has to be registered here. The conservative believes that the traditional order is under threat from subversion and “society must be defended”. The fascist believes that the conservative does not have the courage to face the hideous truth that that battle has already been lost and in reality “the world is upside down” and can only be righted by violent insurrection."
I wonder about two things that may help tamp down the paramilitary aspect in the current proto-fascist movement:
1) These people haven’t usually seen real oppression or experienced real politics beyond those of reaction causing them to be less likely to put their lives on the line.
B) That the surveillance state is so massive and technologically advanced it is just too much of a threat for groups of dopey, violent malcontents to create enough energy and consciousness to create a large enough threat to be used as effective PR--and they know this so it’s more cosplay than a real paramilitary fascist threat.
Just two quick arguable thoughts I had while thinking of why in an era with more technology for violence why these groups of thugs aren’t more present.
(I get it, Jan 6 was bad but it could’ve been worse, considering.)
Rereading this and I've been reading Kevin Elliott's new book, Democracy for Busy People. Thought of it reading your line about fascism as elito-populism. One of Elliott's big distinctions is between political inclusiveness and political equality, favoring the former. The universal franchise is the most inclusive institution that has ever existed. Meanwhile Athens was very exclusionary (by comparison anyway, not necessarily relative to other contemporary regimes) but participants were probably more politically equal than most other systems before or since. It seems to me that part of what you are saying is that fascism *promises* something like the latter, a political equality among the elite, but the elite are a mass, a demos that is circumscribed by race or ethnicity or whatever it is, and certainly does not include the entire population of a particular territory by a long shot.
My takeaway is that the line between conservatism and fascism is actually kind of hard to nail down, sort of like the "you know it when you see it" distinction between erotic art and porn. You spent 1,500 words here, and a lot of qualifying language – lots of "tends to" and "relatively" and "usually." – to make the distinction. It all feels right, but it surprised me to be honest, because (as with porn) it does feel like fascism is obvious when you see it.
The poster is asking: What distinguishes fascism from "normal" right-wing politics?
That's a fair question, because casting a wide net, labelling all Republicans or right-wing voters as fascists is counter-productive.
When Hillary Clinton saw a study where 30% of Republicans self-identified themselves as "Racist" and "Anti-Immigrant" (I saw the same study on the same day) she publicly called them "deplorable," but immediately her comment was interpreted (dishonestly) by the right-wing strategists as applying to ALL right-wing voters and it hurt her badly. But of course she was right, and that 30% were deplorable, and still are, but the broad application to ALL right-wingers was fatally counter-productive. (And of course only a small % of right-wing voters ever saw the study; they simply absorbed the massive right-wing narrative that she was besmirching them all. They still believe her comment applied to them all, and will never forgive her.
Before the mid-terms President Biden tried to carefully thread this needle by distinguishing (successfully I think) between MAGA-Republicans and "normal" Republicans. And the failure of the great Red Wave in the midterms (and probably tonight in Georgia) shows that only a percentage of right-wingers are in fact anywhere near "fascist", but the small group of MAGA die-hards (and their fervid leaders like MTG) still hold power disproportionately greater than their numbers.
I think the poster is asking for a reasonable clarification: what exactly are the characteristics of fascism, especially fascism today in America (what I call neo-fascism: the old poison in a new red-white-and-blue bottle) as opposed to right-wing voters in general?
Rather than try to answer his question directly, I would refer him to others who have tackled this issue:
1. Madeleine Albright, "Fascism: A Warning"
2. Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
3. Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here"
4. Timothy Snyder, "On Tyranny"
I think all of these books, in their own way, distinguish between right-wing politics and fascsim.
Also, I tried to answer the same question myself in my substack newsletter, by identifying what I called fascism's Four Faces. Hitting all four of these is, in my opinion, the difference between right-wing politics and fascism.
It’s interesting how Bush family like Kennedy followed Political dynasties, Trump power was family power too, more family members involved in politics comparing to Bush family. This political dynasty will decide who will inherit the conservative party power in near future.
>[…] they believe things have gotten so bad that only a radical
> move [to?] break the present regime can save the nation
Maybe for some, but for others it's more like 'they desperately want to break the current régime,and love or at least don't mind violence not against them, so they claim that things have got so bad that radical action, and likely violence, were necessary'.
(This is exactly analogous to the argument claiming bad faith on the part of those on the Left concerned with the climate catastrophe, that we claim to believe in it only because it implies anti–laissez—faire policies…analogous, but not definitive to me because I'm much more willing to assume bad faith on the part of a bunch of Fascists.)
More generally, I'd add that authoritarianism can be a conservative means but is always a fascist end. The worst conservatives believe that conservative goals and values are so important that it were right and proper, if maybe regrettable, that force be used to enforce them. Fascism seems to me to fundamentally valorise force as right and proper because it esteems those most willing to use it.
I'd always been meaning to learn more about this in the German context--specifically, about the rise of the Christian Democratic parties after Nazism. My understanding was that the distinction consisted in large measure of having different cultural coordinates--the Christian parties were Catholic, and could credibly claimed to have been oppressed by the Nazis, who were unofficially Protestant. In the post war landscape, at least, they also adopted a much more conciliatory stance toward organized labor, and understood themselves as simply representing the role of capital in a multi-party democracy. Am I putting too rosy a tint on this?
Your remarks on paramilitaries gets at this, but more explicitly I think the conservative movement in general is caught in a particular quandary they’re not used to being in - since 2016 they’ve had to spend a great deal of energy in doing little else but defending lawlessness and calls to violence and sedition. The “law and order” party has had to fundamentally recalibrate their rhetoric to pretzel-logic their way through this maze, in an attempt to make conservatism compatible with, essentially, fascist insurgency.
Law enforcement itself is faced with the same dilemma. They’re not accustomed to confronting seditious rioters and violent storm troopers who are regular white guys from the suburbs. The world turned upside down.
Quality of your writing has gone through the roof, John. Sharing this broadly. Well reasoned and insightful.
The original poster is disingenuous in claiming that the standard academic texts don't differentiate clearly between conservativism and fascism, because that's pretty much what they all set out to do, in their different ways. Hochman hasn't read any of the standard texts and shows no inclination to do so.
That said, even if the questioner is not in good faith, it's a good question. My one word answer would be "counterpower". But mainstream centre-left, centre-right & liberal political discourse doesn't incorporate the power/counterpower distinction very well, if at all. On a cultural level I'll be lazy and quote myself from elsewhere:
"The need for violent redemption is tied intimately to a narrative of national humiliation (which may have roots in real historical reverses, or be purely subjective). “Death to the traitors!” is the rallying cry. There is a psychological relation between the feeling of humiliation and the rage for revenge, directed not only at the chosen human targets for hate, but for the existing social order as a whole. The the gulf between the revolutionary revenge fantasies of the fascist and the conservative’s fear of change has to be registered here. The conservative believes that the traditional order is under threat from subversion and “society must be defended”. The fascist believes that the conservative does not have the courage to face the hideous truth that that battle has already been lost and in reality “the world is upside down” and can only be righted by violent insurrection."
that is exactly the question I had this week!!
I wonder about two things that may help tamp down the paramilitary aspect in the current proto-fascist movement:
1) These people haven’t usually seen real oppression or experienced real politics beyond those of reaction causing them to be less likely to put their lives on the line.
B) That the surveillance state is so massive and technologically advanced it is just too much of a threat for groups of dopey, violent malcontents to create enough energy and consciousness to create a large enough threat to be used as effective PR--and they know this so it’s more cosplay than a real paramilitary fascist threat.
Just two quick arguable thoughts I had while thinking of why in an era with more technology for violence why these groups of thugs aren’t more present.
(I get it, Jan 6 was bad but it could’ve been worse, considering.)
Rereading this and I've been reading Kevin Elliott's new book, Democracy for Busy People. Thought of it reading your line about fascism as elito-populism. One of Elliott's big distinctions is between political inclusiveness and political equality, favoring the former. The universal franchise is the most inclusive institution that has ever existed. Meanwhile Athens was very exclusionary (by comparison anyway, not necessarily relative to other contemporary regimes) but participants were probably more politically equal than most other systems before or since. It seems to me that part of what you are saying is that fascism *promises* something like the latter, a political equality among the elite, but the elite are a mass, a demos that is circumscribed by race or ethnicity or whatever it is, and certainly does not include the entire population of a particular territory by a long shot.
My takeaway is that the line between conservatism and fascism is actually kind of hard to nail down, sort of like the "you know it when you see it" distinction between erotic art and porn. You spent 1,500 words here, and a lot of qualifying language – lots of "tends to" and "relatively" and "usually." – to make the distinction. It all feels right, but it surprised me to be honest, because (as with porn) it does feel like fascism is obvious when you see it.
The poster is asking: What distinguishes fascism from "normal" right-wing politics?
That's a fair question, because casting a wide net, labelling all Republicans or right-wing voters as fascists is counter-productive.
When Hillary Clinton saw a study where 30% of Republicans self-identified themselves as "Racist" and "Anti-Immigrant" (I saw the same study on the same day) she publicly called them "deplorable," but immediately her comment was interpreted (dishonestly) by the right-wing strategists as applying to ALL right-wing voters and it hurt her badly. But of course she was right, and that 30% were deplorable, and still are, but the broad application to ALL right-wingers was fatally counter-productive. (And of course only a small % of right-wing voters ever saw the study; they simply absorbed the massive right-wing narrative that she was besmirching them all. They still believe her comment applied to them all, and will never forgive her.
Before the mid-terms President Biden tried to carefully thread this needle by distinguishing (successfully I think) between MAGA-Republicans and "normal" Republicans. And the failure of the great Red Wave in the midterms (and probably tonight in Georgia) shows that only a percentage of right-wingers are in fact anywhere near "fascist", but the small group of MAGA die-hards (and their fervid leaders like MTG) still hold power disproportionately greater than their numbers.
I think the poster is asking for a reasonable clarification: what exactly are the characteristics of fascism, especially fascism today in America (what I call neo-fascism: the old poison in a new red-white-and-blue bottle) as opposed to right-wing voters in general?
Rather than try to answer his question directly, I would refer him to others who have tackled this issue:
1. Madeleine Albright, "Fascism: A Warning"
2. Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
3. Sinclair Lewis, "It Can't Happen Here"
4. Timothy Snyder, "On Tyranny"
I think all of these books, in their own way, distinguish between right-wing politics and fascsim.
My short reviews of these books are available at:
https://neofascism.substack.com/s/book-reviews
Also, I tried to answer the same question myself in my substack newsletter, by identifying what I called fascism's Four Faces. Hitting all four of these is, in my opinion, the difference between right-wing politics and fascism.
https://neofascism.substack.com/p/four-faces-of-neo-fascism
It’s interesting how Bush family like Kennedy followed Political dynasties, Trump power was family power too, more family members involved in politics comparing to Bush family. This political dynasty will decide who will inherit the conservative party power in near future.
>[…] they believe things have gotten so bad that only a radical
> move [to?] break the present regime can save the nation
Maybe for some, but for others it's more like 'they desperately want to break the current régime,and love or at least don't mind violence not against them, so they claim that things have got so bad that radical action, and likely violence, were necessary'.
(This is exactly analogous to the argument claiming bad faith on the part of those on the Left concerned with the climate catastrophe, that we claim to believe in it only because it implies anti–laissez—faire policies…analogous, but not definitive to me because I'm much more willing to assume bad faith on the part of a bunch of Fascists.)
More generally, I'd add that authoritarianism can be a conservative means but is always a fascist end. The worst conservatives believe that conservative goals and values are so important that it were right and proper, if maybe regrettable, that force be used to enforce them. Fascism seems to me to fundamentally valorise force as right and proper because it esteems those most willing to use it.
I'd always been meaning to learn more about this in the German context--specifically, about the rise of the Christian Democratic parties after Nazism. My understanding was that the distinction consisted in large measure of having different cultural coordinates--the Christian parties were Catholic, and could credibly claimed to have been oppressed by the Nazis, who were unofficially Protestant. In the post war landscape, at least, they also adopted a much more conciliatory stance toward organized labor, and understood themselves as simply representing the role of capital in a multi-party democracy. Am I putting too rosy a tint on this?