Bauer's History

For the better part of my adult life I have lived in a neo-fascist era. Across Europe and in my own country I have seen how fascist movements have exploded, not on the streets but in the electoral campaigns. Throughout this period I have also seen people, often to the left arguing on whatever or not a specific movement is fascist or not. In the case of the ongoing us election we can see similar tendencies with regard to Donald Trump jr, were many people are still obsessed with deciding on whether or not Trump is a fascist.  A common argument for Trumps lack of fascism is simply this: he does not propose a party-state and he have not (yet) started to build a mass-movement that is supported by the state. Other people claims that Trump is a fascist due to his stands on women, immigrants and his contineous threats towards the media. What all of these discussions somewhat is lacking, is the understanding that fascism, in my view is not a static ideology. The most clear-cut fascist state...

  I recently finished reading Jason Stanlyes much celebrated book " How Fascisms Works - The politics of us and them ". In contemporary debate this work has been described as one of the key works on understanding contemporary fascism movements as well their deep historical roots. Stanleys book contains describtion of how contemporary fascism is part of a continous struggle based on social darwinistic ideas, but one of the key parts of the part book were for me his discussion on the rural aspects of contemporary fascism. I grew up in the middle of south sweden in a muncipality were, in the 2022 election, the swedish right wing populists the Sweden democrats gained their own majority in the municipal council, something I for quite a while struggled with understanding. Most of my friends growing up were from the swedish working class and whilst xenophobia existed in school, it was not very clear that most of the municipals inhabitants would vote for a right wing party. In my opi...