That the "media main character" of the last decade is a fascist or, to more meekly put it, has fascist tendencies, is a fact slowly gaining more mainstream acceptance. This acknowledgement parallels a growing - not yet mainstream - acceptance of those politics, albeit mostly while rejecting the outward label.
There are many and varied reasons why it has taken so long for the pundit class to acknowledge the fascist label, despite the ample evidence sitting in plain site, almost always in "their own words". For starters, it's a long overused epithet. Don't like someone? Fascist! Disagree with a policy? It's fascism! It was the left-ish analogue to the contemporary tendency of right-wingers to label anything they don't like or understand as "Marxist" and non-right wing politics as "Communist". It's all a bit tiresome.
And yet... the banality of a label doesn't in and of itself make a label false.
The key cause for rejection here, I think, is overfitting. Our chief examples of fascism are - no, scratch that - our singular chief example of fascism is Nazi Germany. Yes, Mussolini was first and Franco's regime the longest surviving, but in the US we think Nazis. And so our model of fascism is overfit to Nazism (neverminding their increased willingness to represent themselves in public). That means brown shirts, Roman stylized banners, large - and disciplined - rallies of uniformed supporters, it means specifically opposing Jews and for the crime of being Jews, period.
We don't have those things! Red hats, ill tempered rallies, proto-paramilitary gangs without any direct connection to anyone in power... it's just obviously not the same!
The model is overfit.
Originally published 2025-09-18