Still image. Two panel meme. First panel: Older person wearing a headscarf and an exasperated expression, eyes closed, mouth open. Text to the right reads: America is in danger of Fascism Second panel: Older person wearing a headscarf, right hand pointing at the reader, index finger outstretched, smiling expression. Text to the right reads: America has always been fascist it's just we've come to the "and then they came for you" bit.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
As per the wikipedia definition, it does seem the USA has been fascist towards the rest of the world, just not towards its own citizens (overtly) until now...
So if we agree fascism can apply internationally but not domestically (which is not usually how the term is described) then the meme is accurate
The term you are looking for is Imperialism. It's fucked up but probably the most correct for the last 150 years. Fasciscm doesn't really work as most of it's definition is internal. Though we do have parties working towards it unfortunately.
So, we have an imperialism which has both historically been in place around the globe and constantly been effecting an in-group, which exists internal to borders, and an out-group, outside them. We also have a couple different in and out groups within the US. Black people, Native americans, you name a racial minority, we've done fucked up shit to them. So, pretty textbook so far. Violent military expansionism, imperialism, and high levels of domestic racism is what most people would probably tally up fascism to be as, colloquially. They might not even pick up on a dictator being a central component. We also have corporate capture, which is pretty solidly the case in america. We have an erosion of public utilities and infrastucture. We have a police state. Fervent nationalism, controlled mass media, blatant theocratic intervention, you know, we have all the classic markers of pretty much all the definitions.
The only qualification I can cook up is that we're presumably a "democracy", right, which I didn't really even think of as being a requirement. You can have a fascist democracy, it's just a democracy where not everyone can vote, which has always been a kind of tenuous characteristic of democracy at best. We went from wealthy, white male land owners being the ones to vote, to rapidly most everyone being able to vote, actually fairly recently, in the grand history of the US. Especially horrible once you factor in gerrymandering, segregation, white flight, and redlining, which means that the average black voter had much less say (and still does have much less say) than your average white voter. We also elect people, who elect people, with more or less vote weight on both a local basis through gerrymandering and more or less weight on a per state basis through the electoral college, in a fptp system, where a kind of nash equilibrium ensures that there's only gonna ever be two viable parties or candidates in local, state, or federal elections, for pretty much the majority of america.
So, we're a "democracy", but I would say that we're only a democracy insofar as a 5 month old fetus could be considered a human. We might consider athens to have been a "democracy", too, right, according to the formal definition, but if only white male landowners can vote, then that's already such a subset of the population that you might legitimately be closer to an oligarchy at that point. And both an oligarchy and a democracy can be plenty fascist. Hell, the germans arrived at their fascism through mostly totally legitimate democratic processes.
So, I mean, yeah, america's pretty much always been a fascist country, sorry to break it to ya.
