What is fascism anyway?

Joseph R. Price
5 min readAug 10, 2018

In August 2017, one word was thrust back into the spotlight: Fascist.

Much of it had to do with the political-ideological violence we saw play out in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Berkeley, California last year at the “Unite the Right” rally.

Alt-right members preparing to enter Emancipation Park holding Nazi, Confederate, and Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flags. Photo by Anthony Crider

The violence, which left one person dead, led to a political circus, with President Donald Trump morally equivocating “both sides.” It was an embarrassing moment for the Republican Party, who despite their condemnations of Trump’s comments, quickly fell back into line, with contrarian voices within the party growing weaker than before.

Apparently, the lesson that the Republicans learned is that no matter what Trump says, the party’s base will support him. It showed that there are no consequences for Trump in regards to his statements from the party’s base, but there are consequences from party members who condemn them, which has led us to where we are today.

Back to fascism, which is the word of the day.

But what the heck is fascism anyway?

Well, if you ask people who put themselves on a right vs. left ideological spectrum, it’s either A) a “left wing” ideology because…

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Joseph R. Price

Weirdo who writes futurist-tinged columns about technology and science’s impact on society by night. Unfortunately, 2020 compels me to do politics too.