memes

It isn't the name that matters, it is the underlying social relations. Whether Trump as an individual is fascist is secondary, he will opportunistically side with fascists, and empower them as they suit his administration's plans.

The petite bourgeois character of these movements is the same. Expansion of ICE is an attempt to create a neo Friecorps, one of the only missing components of historical fascism: the Fuhrer's private army.

Fascism is structural. While I agree it is important to keep very close eye on the way we are defining things, the capitalist relations that create fascism are either developing or already here.

Every way of analyzing 1920s-1940s fascism cleaves closely to Trump and the new American fascist movement. Trump may not be a fascist, like Joe McCarthy wasnt a fascist he was just a psychopath drunk; but Joe McCarthy was the chosen one for the early America First movement, an expressly American, expressly pro-nazi fascist movement. Even the name of that movement reappeared to back up the president.

Trump is really a guy who is good at doing legal crime, and good at extracting every drop of value out of something that would have functioned correctly. He isn't ideologically fascist, but ideas aren't proven in the mind but in the world.

There is no need for new words. In fact the idea that "we don't have a word for it," that is in and of itself a function of hegemony and domination. Language is deeply, intrinsically connected to power and the spread of power. The ability to name the actual problem is the first step of revolutionary change. So saying that we don't, or we can't name the problem actually benefits Trump and the ascendent fascist movement. Not calling you a crypto-MAGA or anything, I've seen many good comrades who I trust make a similar argument. But what really matters are what are the fundamental relations and contradictions, and how to leverage them for better conditions for the masses. I am totally unconvinced that not naming this movement what it is, especially hesitating to name it anything, is crippling to our ability to act against it.

I will concede two major differences, since Germany and Italy had imperialist ambitions, but were not the center of the capitalist empire, although Germany was the most technologically, socially, and industrially advanced country in the world by the 1920s. Whereas, the USA is the global hegemon. But to me, that just makes our neo fascism that much more dangerous. The other is the techno-serfdom thing that the tech elite have going on, but I believe that is a nascent condition. Palantir's "Techno-Republicanism" is just straight up corporatism, so even that I'm skeptical has a different character than what we commonly refer to as fascism.

We can always just keeping adding neo to stuff

Cult leader, at the very least.