JOEL KOTKIN: The Strange Afterlife of Fascism.
Within MAGA, right-wing racism is often seen by its critics through their concern that immigration is slowly “replacing” whites who settled and largely built the nation. Like fascism, the term white supremacy has been cited in massively greater instances this decade. Nativism is clearly ascendant on the right, but while some of this is racially driven, much rests on a defense of traditional culture and has only rarely been implicated in organized race-centric violence.
By contrast, the identity politics embraced by progressives in the U.S., Britain, and the EU hinges on pigeonholing individuals as members of specific groups to whom favors are dispensed or withheld. And when it comes to violence, those acting most like the fascists tend to be Trump’s bitterest opponents. The call for political violence is now stronger on the left than the right, and particularly among their young, college-educated base, where it is rising far more rapidly, notes one recent study. Witness, for example, the support and even admiration for Luigi Mangione, who murdered a healthcare executive in cold blood. And it’s a sign of the times that anti-Jewish rhetoric, as well as “anti-Zionist” violence, comes increasingly from the left. Nick Fuentes, who is virulently anti-Israel, is now telling his acolytes to vote for Democrats in November.
The idea that Trump must be eliminated “by any means necessary” certainly does not focus on democratic procedures but reflects attitudes reminiscent of Mussolini’s enforcers – and almost every left-wing dictatorship. A combination of radical politics and personal delusion marks the rhetoric of would-be Trump assassins, as is evident in their digital imprint. Indeed, outside the Washington, D.C., hotel where one recent attempt took place, demonstrators carried “death to the dictator” signs.
Another parallel lies with the embrace of criminal behavior that was typical among Mussolini’s and Hitler’s thuggish enforcers. Today, progressive media figures such as Hasan Piker, as well as writers at the New Yorker magazine, openly embrace theft as a kind of social protest, something practiced on a large scale in the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots. Antifa, the self-appointed center of “resistance” to fascism, most resemble Mussolini’s Blackshirts shirts – and even wear the appropriate color.
“It’s just f–ing rich liberals who just want homo-fascism in the country, that’s it. They want gay fascism. They want gay techno-fascism,” he insisted, without explaining what those terms meant.
Wiener is a prominent gay politician in the state who has heavily leaned into his LGBT background. During the campaign season, [rival Saikat] Chakrabarti had accused Wiener of being wedded with certain artificial intelligence groups that spent to support Wiener’s bid.
In Chakrabarti’s concession statement late Tuesday morning, the flopped candidate claimed he couldn’t overcome “the 7 million dollars of AI, crypto, and AIPAC money that were put into this race.”
In 2019, Chakrabarti seemed to prefer a much less hyphenated form of fascism:
And apparently still does: “In a move that perfectly captures the modern left’s priorities, former Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign manager Saikat Chakrabarti is melting down because Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Jake Auchincloss dared to call out a Nazi tattoo on Graham Platner as personally disqualifying—and suggested voters might feel the same way.”