After clarifying that “The United States itself has never been exempt from fascism”, historian Robert Paxton goes on to suggest:
The language and symbols of an authentic American fascism would, of course, have little to do with the original European models. They would have to be familiar and reassuring to loyal Americans as the language and symbols of the original fascism were familiar and reassuring to many Italians and Germans. (…) No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses. No fascist salute, but mass recitation of the pledge of allegiance. These symbols contain no whiff of fascism in themselves, of course, but an American fascism would transform them into obligatory litmus tests for detecting the internal enemy.
Without quibbling too much with “no whiff,” it’s clear that focusing too much on whether American Nazis would be German-style Nazis in United States rather than Nazis if they’d grown up with Americana is at best a distraction and more often an obfuscation.
The person who who shared Paxton’s analysis is /u/CommieSpaceInvader, moderator and verified expert of Nazi war crimes for the curated subreddit r/AskHistorians; they also offered this analysis on their own:
In essence, [fascism] is swaying people to your political side not by argument or reason but giving them the intensive, almost lustful, experience of being part of something greater, a movement that will solve whatever ails them, of history, so to speak. And this is achieved through ritual, staging, and performance. Fascist mass politics do not rely on content or arguments but on this very performance and war – according to [cultural critic Walter] Benjamin – is portrayed and staged as the ultimate experience of all the above described feelings.
By displays of violence, Fascism seeks to transform politics from the – admittedly often skewed – exchange of ideas into an aesthetic experience itself: Aesthetic violence is the end point of fascist politics, not just its tool.
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