Note on Fascism and the Future 3

The first one was better than this one.

"A good many of the people who liked to insist that Weimar Germany was a fascist state got to find out—in many cases, at the cost of their lives—that there really is a difference between a troubled, dysfunctional, and failing representative democracy and a totalitarian state"

I'll spare you the rest of the article; no, he never justifies the link between fascism and prison camps. I fail to see how a charismatic leader or a uniformed militia imply prison camps in any way that democracy does not. I've already established that totalitarianism is hardly unique to fascism.

I'm sure the Japanese in the west would find it hard to tell the difference too.

Europeans have cultural resistance to alcoholism. For example, the taboos against drinking before noon or drinking alone. Anglo-Saxons have less enumerable resistances to democracy, having been first inoculated by its early, less virulent forms. This is perhaps the only thing that stopped us from going Auschwitz on the Japanese. Or perhaps, had the war gone the other way...

Similarly, these resistances are what stop the inherently totalitarian democracies from realizing their dreams.

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I found his story wildly implausible. Hitler is not adaptive here, it does no good to copypasta his story. Details are good, though. In principle, someone could correct the details, but that would mean profoundly understanding Hitler. Mussolini's story is quite different in detail, but ultimately very similar. An American fascist would seem much, much different - to avoid memetic antibodies, if for no other reason. But, much as atheism is just Christianity sans book and god, an American fascist sans prison sentence, shitty book, and snazzy uniform would still be a fascist.

However, Greer has no reason not to think an American fascist might be a good thing.