@Leucrotta Oh, I accidentally skipped a step in my argument. n.n; I was going to point out that in the 1940s, direct force was much more effective and people were both much more inured to privation and much more insulated from events outside their immediate lives. That was a rich breeding ground for fascism, which is a very *directly* forceful sort of ideology that was totally unashamed about committing its brutality right out in the open.

In the information age, right-wing populism has had to a much less *directly* violent form. The will for massive state force is still there... as we're seeing with Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton this week... but you can also see the massive backlash which would never have been possible under Fascism.

Instead, Trump has a regime where that kind of backlash isn't devoured... it's DILUTED until it's lost harmlessly in the media backwash and spun out of existence. Trump's brand of plutocratic oligarchy is, again, much more reminiscent of the KGB playbook. Why shoot someone when you can just peacefully neutralize their reputation and poison the public debate? It sure saves money on bullets...

And if anything, I'd argue it might be MORE dangerous in the grand scheme... for the same reason COVID-19 is more dangerous than Ebola. Fascism burns itself out, trying to annex neighbors and set the world on fire. Whatever Trump and Putin have inflicted on the world can just sit there in its tower like Sauron and quietly poison the countryside for years.

@zebratron2084 Okay, so more nuanced; my paranoia and upset *is* taking me right to "these guys are Nazis," but there's plenty of reasons for me to jump that direction.

Would it be a safe assumption that someone really arguing the semantics as "but it's a historically different entity" and "every regime does that", especially on Twitter, is probably doing so to defend the Administration?

@Leucrotta Oh, that I agree with you completely. If the subtext is "nah, you're totally off the wall to imply there's ANY reason to fear fascistic tendencies from this administration," I not only think the obvious "well, fuck 'em," I think they have a pretty weak historical argument. Like I said, Eco's 14 Points is my gold standard for authoritarian movements, and Trump does NOT have a good score on that scale.

I personally prefer to avoid comparing the GOP at large to Nazis, but only because I think it's walking into a rhetorical trap, and gives our political opponents the opportunity to point to horrible things they *don't* do and accuse us of hyperbole -- even though the comparisons are still IMHO totally valid.

I think there are definitely fascist tendencies in the modern alt-right, Trump has been perfectly happen to encourage them, and I personally think one must have their head pretty far up their ass -- and be unconcerned with how many "nice, normal" Germans just put Nazi atrocities out of their minds -- in order to not see Trump as at least proto-fascist. I prefer to compare him to Mussolini or Franco, simply because Hitler is pretty much our culture's 10/10 for violently oppressive right-wing statism. It's hyperbole... but *only* because they don't have the power or cultural will for mass lethal violence that they can't at least couch as Fake News (e.g. dismissing the treatment of detained migrants as leftist hype). "They don't generally machine gun civilians for dissent" isn't a very strong endorsement.

@Leucrotta Also I would point out to your debate partner that PLENTY of *nations* don't do any of them. You don't hear about this stuff happening in, say, modern Denmark, Canada, or Costa Rica. But they usually don't apply the epithet "regime" to those places. -___-