Christman was grilling, to be exact.
Also looking up the term post-fascim lead to this quote on Wikipedia which I think isn’t too bad in how current fascism is operating. It’s from 2018 by Gaspar Milos Tamas.
“I have coined the term post-fascism to describe a cluster of policies, practices, routines and ideologies which can be observed everywhere in the contemporary world. Without ever resorting to a coup d’etat, these practices are threatening our communities. They find their niche easily in the new global capitalism, without upsetting the dominant political forms of electoral democracy and representative government. Except in Central Europe, they have little or nothing to do with the legacy of Nazism. They are not totalitarian; not at all revolutionary; not based on violent mass movements or irrationalist, voluntarist philosophies. Nor are they toying, even in jest, with anti-capitalism. I should define what I mean by the term “post-fascist”. I take the term “fascism” to refer to a break with the enlightenment tradition of citizenship as a universal entitlement; that is to say, with its assimilation of the civic condition to the human condition. It is this concept of universal citizenship that underpinned the notion of progress shared by liberal, social democrat and all the other assorted progressive heirs of the Enlightenment. Once the Enlightenment equated citizenship with human dignity in this way, its extension to all classes, professions, both sexes, all races, creeds, and locations was only a matter of time. Universal franchise, the national service, and state education for all had to follow. National solidarity demanded, moreover, the relief of the estate of Man, a dignified material existence for all, and the eradication of the remnants of personal servitude.”
That’s definitely what’s happening in the US with ICE and Trump and all that. They don’t need to coup because global capitalism already set everything up and to do fascism they just need to start ripping away whatever bedrock of rights, citizenship, etc. away from chunks of the population as needed.
Imagine they said Fascism 2.0. Trump, Euro-nazis, etc. don’t need to do the seizing of power because global capital already did it. They’re just slipping into it like a hand in glove. There’s not going to be a fascist spectacle or big break from normality because neoliberal fascism has been slowly converting imperial society into a 21st century fascism.
Notice the way Trump has been doing fascism in the US isn’t by creating any new organizations (except space force I guess) but by peeling away or gimping organizations like USAID, EPA, education, etc.