I made a comment a few days ago and again tonight and I've realized it's the best definition of fascism I know.
Individualism and authoritarianism are in conflict, but each taken to the extreme they unite in an unstable antinomy, like a knot pulled tighter and tighter. Individualists become willing servants, and servitude becomes the end of individuality: the worship of the master they can never be, and the hatred of those maintaining their own individuality, who refuse to serve. I've said similar things dozens of times, but not I think the simple description of the simultaneous imperatives of freedom and its opposite. It doesn't matter if Trump's a fascist. His followers are. In proclaiming their loyalty they declare their own impotence. Political and industrial leaders along for the ride are just that.
He was the sort of man who could side with fascists or republicans, but he wasn't either. He was the sort of man Borges worshipped, but who held Borges in contempt.
“Primitives" and “barbarians” are not “reactionary”, a word describing the rebellion of individualism against itself. p 107.
I added it a couple of years ago.
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