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It seems to me that a piece like this hinges on the assumptions that the concept of "fascism" exists in a way that rationality can show and then instances of it can be identified through the application of shared, dispassionate scientific evidence and logical argument, and further, that "fascism" is universally and obviously "evil" in some incontestable normative sense (also proven through the application of rationality, I guess?). You'd have to go along with these assumptions for this style of argument to even make any sense. And so, in this theory, if sufficient members of the Elect (to borrow the term from Joseph Bottum's "An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America") can thus show that something is "fascist", then the broad masses will have to accept, by those preceding assumptions, that it has to be rejected, fought, exiled, etc.
I've seen Freddie de Boer, long ago, inveigh against this habit from young Progressive activists as something like the "Magic Word" theory of politics; if you can just get the dreaded magic word to be applied consistently to the thing you abhor, then broader society will have to accept that you won the argument, and then Progressive social change will surely follow. He probably had some Marxist materialist complaints to go with it, but I think the observation and critique itself is really useful as a phenomenon I see constantly.
I'm actually open to all sorts of fact based critiques of various aspects of the Trump administration. But the moment the "Magic Word" stance is trotted out, I recognize myself on the receiving end of a rhetorical bludgeon that I can either choose to participate in or resist. This has already happened with a bunch of other "Magic Words", and it seems like we're reaching the point of running on fumes here for having any kind of theoretically shared moral vocabulary at all. I imagine I'm just not in practice the audience for this line of argument, but at a certain point I'm not sure what happens when the theoretically shared moral vocabulary is entirely exhausted for broader society.
And for what it's worth, I really appreciated Paul Gottfried's "Fascism: The Career of a Concept", for actually trying to wrestle with the history of the idea and its context in broader historical contexts more generally.
Like many people, I started noticing this in the early 10s, and one thing I've been curious about is, to what extent this was influenced by the fact that millennials and later generations grew up with video games being just a typical pastime? Video games, obviously, exist in an artificial world of computers and code, where developers can and do set up strict rules which can create arbitrary "win" conditions that have little to do with whatever underlying reality the game might be trying to simulate. Some even have "Magic Words" like iddqd which explicitly allow you to circumvent traditional vulnerabilities your character normally has, and the game universe will strictly conform to your Magic Word (unless you're in a Nightmare, anyway). Many games have glitches and exploits that allow you to gain advantages that the devs didn't intend but which the game must honor, at least until the devs push an update (even then, single player offline games can just not be updated).
Perhaps my thought is on this because of hearing about something kids are calling the "Klarna glitch," where you can enter someone else's name and SSN at checkout to charge someone else's account for your purchase. Calling it a "glitch" makes it seem like it's something that the "developers" of our universe accidentally "allowed," when, in fact, it's just criminal fraud that doesn't have very good pre-enforcement.
I think it's much more simply a form of in-group pressures, which have grown stronger in the age of social media. If you don't use the most extreme adjective to describe [negative thing X], then aren't you really actually in support of [negative thing X]?
This is not something unique to social justice progressives.
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The three generations before millennials spent 90 years straight calling everything they didn’t like communism, so I don’t think it’s just the video games.
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The steelman of this step in the reasoning is the idea of slippery slopes and logical endpoints. The claim is that any fascistic system of government will inevitably trend towards uncontroversially evil policies like mass murder because those are the natural extrapolations of its founding principles, even if the initial proponents don't intend to go that far. So maybe moderate fascism is benign or even beneficial in the short term, but if you elect a moderate fascist, there is a serious risk that he will gradually turn into a full-blooded fascist dictator - perhaps because he was always more ruthless than he made himself appear, perhaps just because power corrupts - simply because that's the result of putting his money where his mouth is.
Mark that I present this as a steelman, not something I claim is the belief of everyone who uses Trump-is-a-fascist rhetoric. But I do think it's a relatively mainstream understanding of why it's meant to be such a devastating blow to call him a fascist, given the almost voyeuristic lust for a flashpoint they can describe as a mask-off moment, crossing the Rubicon, etc. Hence, I don't think it's quite as simple as a case of Scott's "Worst Argument in the World", which is what the "Magic Word" complaint reduces to. The claim is not just "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you must shun Trump", but "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you shouldn't be fooled by current-Trump's relative benign-ness: he will predictably get exponentially eviler if he continues along the current trend".
Of course, one might fairly ask if this is uniquely true of fascism, or if any political ideology taken to "its logical endpoint" can turn into an evil dictatorship.
But Mussolini did not carry out any more mass murders than any other authoritarian regime would have(nor did Franco, or half the axis, or Metaxis…) A few fascist governments did. They openly said they were going to do this; Hitler did not pretend that he loved Jews they just had to follow the rules. He campaigned on antisemitism.
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Yeah, it's interesting to think about the mentality that produced this piece. I mean, if the MAGA movement is harmful, why not just argue that it's harmful? Why is it so important to label Trump/MAGA as "fascist"?
Perhaps I am speculating a bit, but I strongly suspect the reason is that in the Progressive mindset, once a person (or entity) has been labeled a "fascist," it becomes morally permissible to use just about any means to oppose that person; to deny that person his rights; to use political violence against that person, to be gleeful at anything that harms that person, no matter how unfair or unjustified, etc.
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