Fascism in America: Are We There Yet?

[DroppinScience]

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/...e-we-there-yet

An excellent read, and I hope at least some of you read this too and think critically. And no, this is not the same definition of fascism as what Orly Taitz or Glenn Beck would tell you.

For the record, this is the definition of fascism:

Originally Posted by Sara Robinson

The word has been bandied about by so many people so wrongly for so long that, as Paxton points out, "Everybody is somebody else's fascist." Given that, I always like to start these conversations by revisiting Paxton's essential definition of the term:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Elsewhere, he refines this further 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 ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

[saz]

or when corporations control the government.

[Michelle*s_Farm]

Originally Posted by DroppinScience

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/...e-we-there-yet

An excellent read, and I hope at least some of you read this too and think critically. And no, this is not the same definition of fascism as what Orly Taitz or Glenn Beck would tell you.

For the record, this is the definition of fascism:

Will check out the link thanks. However Paxton's definition (your quote of it) seems sort of restrictive (specific to a specific era or group of people Paxton was envisioning perhaps?). Regardless the definition does not appear to be very useful in terms of prediction. I mean how would we ever know facism when we saw it using Paxton as a guide (it is sort wiggly if you know what I mean).