Check out this tour de force on fascism by Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic's July/August 2020 issue. It provides one of the deepest analyses of fascism in the popular press that I've come across to date. It looks at how it is organized, what makes it so seductive, and how and why it works with some people and not others.
The analysis is situated at that intersection of authoritarianism and psychology, as well as sociology and political theory. Drawing on the work of the late Harvard scholar, Stanley Hoffman, she distinguishes between voluntary and involuntary collaborators, with voluntary collaborators being those that rationalize things endlessly together with others that either benefit directly from an immoral government or who actually admire fascism and fascists like Donald Trump.
She illustrates well how for some individuals, particularly a self-styled "aristocracy," figures like Trump help solve personal, as well as professional, dilemmas, according them with a kind of peace. It's more complicated than this but this gives you a sense....
History will indeed judge the complicit. Such a great read for a Friday afternoon.
-Angela Valenzuela
by Anne Applebaum | The Atlantic July/August 2020
