And when so undermined, fascism points to the weakness of the state - that it helped along - as justification for why democracy failed.

Ironically, small government, anti-regulation libertarians have helped create the very conditions that enabled the rise of fascism in the US.

At that point, the people turn towards anyone who claims, however falsely, to be able to protect them and who promises to raise their standard of living.

Fascism uses the qualities of traditional liberalism - equality, free speech, democracy, the rule of law, et al - to undermine the state.

Furthermore, fascism has risen up all over the world in countries that had Democracy experience with the Italian Fascists or the Nazis.

Democracy can turn to fascism when the power of the state is weakened to the point that it's perceived to be unable to protect and provide for its citizens.

The administration and Republican party have largely been taken over by actual fascists (per six different historians' related definitions), but Homan is one of the few who has earned being called a Nazi.

He earned it when he said he wanted ICE to be lime Amazon Prime for deportations.

It's amazing to me how many self-identified libertarians turned out to be radical authoritarians.

It was clear afte 9/11 that the far left and far right were far closer to each other than most liked to admit, but Trump has made it clear that the same is true of libertarians and authoritarians.

This is also the policy document of a fascist government that believes itself secure in its power and authority.

I recommend everyone take an hour to read this. If it doesn't terrify you, come back and ask me to explain why it should l.

...aggressively asserting economic influence over neighbors backed with the threat of military intervention, and pursuing explicitly racist policies at home and abroad while encouraging other nations to be similarly racist - they're all key parts of both this strategy and Nazi foreign policy.

It is also parallels Nazi foreign policies in ways that should be terrifying to anyone knowledgeable about that era of world history. Abandoning international institutions, rearming the military, division of the world (Europe WRT the Nazis) into spheres of influence...

Agreed. That has a bigger impact here in the US than somewhere like, say, Germany, where the history is taught in detail and you live surrounded by it.

The US has always had a bit of fascism embedded in it, especially since the Civil War. The KKK are arguably the first proto-fascists, after all.

Of course it's possible to make the same mistake twice. Italy voted for a fascist PM, after all (her party goes back to the original Fascists and yet she's less bad than Trump, amazingly enough). But it's also possible to do what France did to block Marine Le Pen.

"More resistant" is just that.

There was a reason my family and I dropped our subscription.

Yes and no. Europe has the experience of having lived under fascism once before, so they're more resistant to it. It can still happen, of course - fascism is an ever-present risk to democracy - but at least they can't falsely believe it'll never happen, because it did once before.