Over the last 3+ decades, I've watched the Republican party bring fascism to the brink of victory again, a mere 60 years after its defeat in WWII.
Aided, hand-in-hand, by the post-communist, mafia-state apparatuses of Russia & China - countries the GOP spent the last 100 years using as bogeymen against US voters who wanted better services from their own national government - & by the multi-national corporations that funded the GOP & were rewarded with dismantling of anti-monopoly & FCC laws.
Obviously fascism has still been around, operating in the US and around the world.
I think of "defeat" of fascism more in terms of the way our bodies defeat staph infections or other bacterial overgrowths. Our skin lives with these harmful bacteria always, but a healthy system uses healthier bacteria to keep them in check, at a low enough level that it doesn't kill the whole body.
As Biden's response to Gaza & the GOP's racist border provocation shows, we don't have enough good bacteria.
I'm stunned at the lack of society-wide pushback this has received, within my lifetime. Nazis were loathed by everyone I knew except my uncle, who my mom told me used to be her favorite brother until she realized he was a secret Nazi sympathizer.
*But here's the point, guys: In the world I grew up in, he had to keep it a secret in order to maintain a social existence.*
I'm 100% certain that the pivot point was Murdoch's creation of FOX as a GOP propaganda outlet in the 1990s.
I don't think things could have moved this fast without FOX.
Side note: Don't go on FOX. Legitimizing it as a debate stage hurts the fight against fascists.
You have to find other ways to reach that audience. If you believe they are reachable.
In another sense, though, fascism is another face/evolution of the Frankenstein's monster of white supremacy & profits-driven colonialism by corporations, which begin in the early 16th century.
It's a killer staph infection that we all create by refusing to fight the everyday battles that we can, against racism & corporate domination of people.
Erin Conroy