Chapotraphouse

You’re still confusing symbolic attachment with structural dependence. No one is denying that Amerikkkan fascists revere Trump currently or that his personality functions as a rallying symbol. Marxism does not deny charisma exists. What it rejects is the idea that charisma is the source or sustainer of fascism.

History already tested this theory repeatedly, and it failed every time. Mussolini was captured and executed. Italian fascism did not vanish; it persisted through institutions, parties, police, and capital. Hitler died, his death alone changed nothing. Franco died peacefully in office, and Spanish fascism remained embedded in courts, police, and the military for decades afterward. Pinochet lost power and later died; Pinochetism dominated Chile for forty years and is again making a return.

If fascism were sustained by individual personalities, these movements would have collapsed the moment their leaders disappeared. They did not. They survived because the leader was never the foundation, the material conditions were. What you’re describing as a “nucleus” is not an origin point. It’s a personification. Fascism always condenses itself into figures because mass alienation seeks symbols. That does not mean the symbol generates the movement. The movement generates the symbol.

Trump did not create or sustain Amerikkkan fascism. He was selected by it. The same contradictions: capitalist crisis, settler panic, institutional decay, imperial decline would simply elevate another figure if he vanished. Often that replacement is more disciplined, less chaotic, and more dangerous.

This is exactly why Marxism rejects great-man theory as liberal idealism. Individuals can accelerate or concentrate tendencies, but they cannot produce or sustain them. Capital replaces leaders easily. Only organization, institutions, and class power endure.

Fascists loving a leader does not make that leader the source of fascism. History has already buried that argument along with every fascist who supposedly held their movement together.