Thomas Zimmer’s blog Democracy Americana, part II of a series on the very left having a fascism problem.

The Anti-Liberal Left Has a Fascism Problem, May 24, 2024

A week after January 6, Samuel Moyn, one of the country’s most prominent leftwing public intellectuals, posted something interesting on ex-Twitter, explaining why he objected to applying the fascism concept and terminology to Trumpism: “FWIW, my reluctance was and is rooted less in the analytical propriety of the term as in my sense of the likely political consequences of certain framings.”

This remark hints at what is really fueling the stubborn refusal by a specific camp of leftwing intellectual Skeptics to engage seriously with the fascism argument and the radicalizing tendencies on the Right. Their overriding concern is not to get the diagnosis right. They are engaged in a political struggle against what they believe is the real enemy: The (neo-) liberal elites, which they define in very broad and unspecific terms to include basically the entire mainstream of American politics from Center-Left to Center-Right, and particularly the Democratic establishment.

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