‘Fascism’ is one of those words sprayed around with abandon on social media. The 20th century’s two most…

‘Fascism’ is one of those words sprayed around with abandon on social media. The 20th century’s two most famous fascists here. In reality fascism is just populism, in its endgame. Both hugely popular leaders, and came to power using populist methods. /1 https://t.co/ZqYS5hF0Q4

Popularity if pursued for long enough as a governing form leads to what we call authoritarianism. And from there to fascism, which is what populist leaders do when their nonsense schemes begin to fail. Look at Trump, a 100% pure-bred populist. /2.

Inside one term of government (!) his followers were sacking the Capitol. Echoes of Hitler’s Reichstag fire that he used as an excuse to sweep away all due process in Germany. These leaders see themselves as doing ‘the will of the people’. /3 https://t.co/XVRR8mL8zw

Fascists always talk about ‘the people’. What we never seem to connect though is that’s entirely a construction of populism. The DNA of populism is setting up some fictitious entity called ‘the people’, opposed to existing institutions. It’s the same social movement. /4

Populism is the disease of our time. Not capitalism, socialism, fascism, socialism or any of those other -isms. Populism actually exists, it’s a SOCIAL mechanism for controlling groups. We learn it in high school, the most popular dominate status hierarchies. /5

What we’re seeing now in the West is the result of that high school cultural model sweeping away generations of public administration, set up from the mid-20th century to respond to the catastrophes of two world wars, and a pandemic. That 70-year period was an exception. /6

Now the same populist morons who lorded over people in high school are also running societies. Societies are always, entirely social. Politics is just another name for this. Popularity causes the destruction of societies, as it did for Germany and Italy in the 20th century. /end