Doug Jackson opines in Quora that in light of the Donald Trump rise in the U.S. primary polls and his associated rhetoric, the term fascism is being thrown around a lot these days. What do people most commonly misunderstand about fascism today? Jackson suggests the reader view history from at least three sides of the issue to find the truth. He suggests that one of the most misunderstood things about fascism is how integral it has become to American policy and world view. The reason for this lies mainly in the way that corporate influence pervaded, and took over, the halls of government during and after WW2, as was needed.
Corporations are not democracies, but they might be best described as either monarchies, or fascist states, and they are ruled by people who are not accustomed to getting consensus before they act. They certainly have a lot of things in common with fascism. It is worth remembering that when the word fascism appeared in the 1930s, it was synonymous with the corporation. A quote attributed to Benito Mussolini puts into perspective what fascists thought about corporate power. It was something that meshed well with the machine of the state. Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power. Umberto Eco wrote an essay called Eternal Fascism 20 years ago and in it he posed a list of what he considered to be Ur-Fascism. Since he wrote it, the U.S. has accomplished almost every item on the list to one extent or another. The reader can understand a lot about modern fascism by reading through his list. Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt By Umberto Eco Writing in New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995, pp.12-15. Excerpted in Utne Reader, November-December 1995, pp. 57-59.
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