Bear in mind the drop in deliveries from Musk's fascist antics isn't even reflected in this data yet due to lag time between sales and delivery.
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Two people I know were holding off from purchasing Tesla cars last year, thinking that if Trump lost then the political views of Musk wouldn't really matter any more. As Trump won, one has bought a VW, and the other is continuing to wait.
A core feature of historical fascism is a significantly expanded government. For example, under Mussolini’s regime (1922–1943), the Italian state dramatically increased its control over the economy — by 1939, it controlled over 80% of shipping and shipbuilding, and around 75% of iron and steel production. He also significantly expanded the state bureaucracy to enforce fascist ideology — from education to the media.
I’m not defending Musk’s behavior or suggesting anything, but labeling him “fascist” doesn’t seem historically accurate.
> […] strong regimentation of society and the economy.
> "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure […]
> Paxton argues: “fascism redrew the frontiers between private and public, sharply diminishing what had once been untouchably private. […] It reconfigured relations between the individual and the collectivity, so that an individual had no rights outside community interest.
> The Fascist Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of profits.
Etc.
All quotes taken from:
He is an active, high-level, participant (formally an adivsor, clearly practically exercising directive influence) in a fascist, kleptocratic regime. There may be some definition of personally being a fascist where this is consistent with him not being a fascist, but I would suggest that any such definition is inconsistent with what the bast majority of people you might speak to mean by “being a fascist”.
> Fascists don't follow neoclassical economics.
Neoclassical economics, like Newtonian mechanics, is an approximate descriptive model, not a normative system; to the degree that it is accurate, everyone follows it, regardless of ideology.
Musk and Trump - are well within the bounds of Liberalism. They may not be John Rawls. Trump is a Neo-Liberal protectionist. Musk tends to be more classical liberalism.
You may not like it - but his constituents elected him to defund, or try to (congress is really the only people who can), those politically bias programs. This is how democracy works.
Yep, so liberal, doesn’t sound like a fascist even a little.
Once again - wake me up when they ban political parties, centralized power to the federal government, install political officers in the public and private sectors, and ban capitalism.
That is not true in any sense in which it was not equally true of Adolf Hitler in 1933 Germany.
Fascist regimes don't usually spring from the head of Zeus as fully formed unelected autocracies, they are a failure mode of other systems, very commonly representative democracies.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism 2. Disdain for the importance of human rights 3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause 4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism 5. Rampant sexism 6. A controlled mass media 7. Obsession with national security 8. Religion and ruling elite tied together 9. Power of corporations protected 10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated 11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts 12. Obsession with crime and punishment 13. Rampant cronyism and corruption 14. Fraudulent elections
By my count, Trump and his movement score 14 out of 14.
Fascism does not care about ethnicity. Fascism is Anti-Capitalist Anti-Socialist. It cares about the collective. It thinks some capitalist mechanisms are important but it must be under the state control.
Nazism may function similar to Fascism as is also Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Socialist but it requires German Mysticism. German Mysticism pins the idea of Aryanism to rule.
This is all besides the point - it is not 1933 - what is happening is nothing like 1933 - Their policies are not even close to 1933 - your failure to recognize that prevents you from seeing the actual issues and offer real solutions. This is why Trump won the majority vote. Stop using thought stopping clichés
Nazism is a specific instance of fascism the way the latter is used as a general political term; it is, of course, distinct from Fascism in the narrow sense of the particular Italian movement of Mussolini.
If a regime can’t control education, is shrinking the size of government, and is expanding individual rights (e.g., gun rights), can it truly be called authoritarian?
The issue with much of the modern left is that it often misidentifies the problem. The left should be focused on advocating for the working class and the poor. After all, figures like Trump and Elon Musk clearly align more with the wealthy elite.
But the current left seems dominated by affluent, highly educated people, and instead of class-focused politics, it often resorts to dramatic labels that don’t reflect reality.
Step one in solving any problem is understanding it. And that starts with asking harder questions, not just repeating slogans.