Fascism grows in groups that feel like they’ve lost power, don’t understand why, and are devoted to dogmatic principles, oftentimes religion, that prepare them to accept conspiracy theories and simplified explanations that blame vulnerable populations.
This moment, in America, fascism is growing among white people who don’t understand why the economy has changed around them and have been fed white identity Christianity laced with New World Orderism that teaches them minorities are agents of supernatural evil.
So much revolves around the mythology of culture. They believe America is God’s chosen country and every misstep and struggle is either the devil or a betrayal. That’s what the Deep State is, QAnon, all of Trumpism. A struggle to hold a view of self.
This happened after Vietnam. The generals and politicians didn’t let them win. It’s what happened in Germany after World War I. Myth says the country is invulnerable, it must have been a knife in the back. In America, it’s Satan using liberals and minorities.
This hides behind almost all extreme Right rhetoric, is almost transparent in Trumpism, and is absolutely explicit in white supremacist/separatist materials and speech. Listen to them. They’re telling you exactly what’s at play here.
It sounds like a cult because it’s a cult. It feels like a cult because it’s a cult. Fascist movements are cults that gain institutional power and overwhelm culture until their reality is accepted.
It doesn’t mean Trump gets it, the cult gets him. Cults have a long history of attracting conmen who will happily take them for a ride for power and wealth. But his worldview supports their thesis, and that thesis has been living for decades now.
Remember, not every publisher or filmmaker or video game producer who created an apocalyptic, conspiracy-tinged product believed it. This is a grift that found a rebel religion, an authoritarian who found a group willing to lend authority.
But we have to understand this cult, this New World Order/Deep State reality, and recognize its emergence along with Reaganism, globalism, the changing economy and demographics. It’s why we’re in different realities, and it’s already shed so much blood.
Whether you want to believe this is what’s happening or not, a swathe of the population believes this. Many believe they’re in the middle of a live war. They commit mass shootings. They send bombs. They destroy buildings.
And the people who believe this are recruiting and radicalizing people, particularly young men, exactly how ISIS is doing it. They’re cults of aggrieved entitlement powered by conspiratorial, fascistic, dogmatic thinking. It’s a crisis growing by the day.
