Subject: Anatomy of Fascism by Paxton
This is from a Substack article that quotes the definition of fascism by Paxton from Anatomy of Fascism written in 2004 so not influenced but recent history.

The second last point was pretty striking to me.

Certainly reminds me of a group in power at the moment.

Aussi

https://open.substack.com/pub/...

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without legal or ethical restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

Following that, Paxton has a series of bullet points outlining what he calls fascism’s “mobilizing passions.”

A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;

The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it;

The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

Dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effective of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;

The need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable incarnating the group’s historical destiny;

The superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;

The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to a group’s success.