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Growing out of liberalism, the logic of fascism retains and depends on the legitimacy of the prior liberal state while undermining the independence of its institutions and re-purposing them for new ends. Fascists need to make a thousand tiny changes, each time following the rules of the liberal institutions until they Ship of Theseus our society out from under us. And all the while, they need everyone to go along with it because they're the legitimate power and, after all, they're only following the rules.
This is not a groundbreaking analysis. We learn this in High School.
So it's real fucking annoying when I ask in pre-shift "What are we gonna do when la migra comes for the kitchen?" and the Clinton-Democrat bartender replies: "We comply. That's the only option."
Edit to add hashtags: #liberalism #fascism
I used to think #fascism was a "thing," like an object that had properties which could be identified, an essence that could be defined, and boundaries you could use to say "here: this is where they crossed the line."
Robert Paxton's book was the first to break this illusion for me. Fascism (like everything else) is a process. It's a logic which unfolds over time differently in each context.
We don't look for the thing, we look for the process.
Stylo the evil Werunicorn 
@mikecarley but we have put into the word "fascism" our own mystical imaginations of what we consider as bad.
This is a problem by itself, cause historic fascism had clear properties, ideas and values (that were by the way quite different to Nazis back then)
This is why ordinary Italians and leftist Italians to find it so difficult to condemn fascism. I think Mussolini by himself described fascism very good.
Many houses of thought we subordinate as fascist today, is simply no fascism, but rather specific forms of nationalism that we are to tired to differentiate.
However, I had developed the idea, that fascism is a way of thinking maybe 10 yrs. ago. The problem with that is, many many people, like almost all politician I would claim to be 'structural' fascists.
The world of processes btw. is a world mostly influenced by capitalism. But fascism is only possible within capitalism.
For instance, if you want the effects of neo-colonialism disappear, just introduce the scientific terms of development economics in which everything gets divided into processes. Notions like 'political instability' are now names of definitions entirely unrelated to a political instability.
This is the procedural thinking, that goes all fascism ahead and is present in all of us.
Like for instance democracy is for us conotated with stability and dictatorships with instability. Historically and globally speaking this is counter intuitive. It's wishful thinking that goes proto-fascist ideas ahead.
@mikecarley I mean this way of thinking, not the particular believe: "Like for instance democracy is for us conotated with stability and dictatorships with instability. Historically and globally speaking this is counter intuitive."