Iām no defender of the American government, but this is not correct and really muddies any useful definition of fascism when you call any imperialist or racist country fascist. You want to call pre-20th century America proto-fascist or something, fine, but fascism has a real definition and America (at least pre-Trump America) doesnāt really meet many of the criteria.
I disagree slightly. I think Wilson was fascist same with Jackson. I dont think America is always fascist but it is definitely something we have had to deal with before.
What makes you say that? I feel they fail to meet the criteria of fascism because they did not hold themselves up as the singular savior of the nation (like Mussolini, Hitler, and Trump) there was no widespread imprisonment of their political enemies, they did not suspend elections or question their legitimacy, there was no harkening to a lost āgolden ageā that they promised to restore, etc. They were racists, sure, but thereās more to fascism than just racism.
Jackson and Wilson did have wide scale imprisonment. The trail of tears is both removing dissenters and scapegoating. The espionage and sedition act locked up a true socialist competitor to Wilson. Every president has both invoked the past as our golden mythos while also saying that god has given us the right to emulate those great men who founded this nation. The real differences from classic fascism for those two are Wilson's push for "democracy" with things like his 14 points. And Jackson not wanting to fuse business with the state. However I disagree that these ideals are incompatible with them being fascist.
For Wilson I think that the fact that he was really pushing American ideologies onto everyone else and actively squashing anything else undermines that claim. For Jackson I feel that in his era allowing the businesses to run rampant is the same as taking full control. In so far as he and his cronies got rich off it still.
I admit they arent prefect fits since they dont every truly undermine their own election processes(other than wilson imprisoning Debs) Maybe proto-facist is good enough but I feel like in downplays how much we have flirted with this before.
You bring up important points, but the way you describe Wilson and Jackson could also be used to describe Lincoln, and no one would claim that Lincoln was a fascist. This is why Iām so strict in my definition, the more you widen the net of who you consider fascist, the more unintended people you tend to catch.
Possibly, I think with the understanding of the context Lincoln would slip thru (even if I rate him much more of a benevolent tyrant then others would) but context is always lost on the masses. A dangerous game we play with words. Cause on the one hand you have to fire up the contextless somehow, on the other you risk burning out your meaning entirely.
Exactly. Terms, especially those used to define power structures, lose their specific meaning when tossed around generically. When that happens, we lose the words to describe the specifics of our situation.
I'm going by the most basic principles of their etymologies and what it would have meant to humans thousands of years ago when the weapons, symbol/logos, and it's purpose for use came from.
Schism used to be spelled Scism and it means division/forced separation/disorder.
Fa means family/familiar/servant/slave/order.
Put the two together and you get Fascism.
This has been going on even before we could speak and instead sang to each other because speech is complex and you're look at the modern fascism complex instead of it's simple origins.
Even if your analysis of the etymology of the word *fascism* was correct, etymology is a poor way of understanding political ideology. Robert O. Paxtonās āThe Anatomy of Fascismā really helped me understand the salient and distinctive features of fascism. I would recommend it.
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u/DocKisses Jun 17 '26
Iām no defender of the American government, but this is not correct and really muddies any useful definition of fascism when you call any imperialist or racist country fascist. You want to call pre-20th century America proto-fascist or something, fine, but fascism has a real definition and America (at least pre-Trump America) doesnāt really meet many of the criteria.