A very good read, about increasingly important policies. I have read but little on Mussolini, but have read that he said that Fascism was corporatism, where private corporations are able to participate in the governance and implementing policy decisions of the state it has also participated in formulating. I see that such corporatism is not only evident in the US - although it certainly is evident - but across the West as public/private partnerships, that core aspect of Fascism as I have heretofore understood it. Not just the West, but across Asia, S. America, and Australia and NZ.

The discussion on Morning Joe I can not comment on, as I am unfamiliar with these laws and their practice in the past. However, by nature I am aligned with Democratic checks on government, Judiciary and Executive, a Lockean to the core, because I am born, as are we all, with the exclusive authority over me to will myself to action, to think as I reckon right, and the state does not exist without an agreement of sovereigns whom have the right to rule themselves to agree to rule themselves by such mechanisms they prefer to institute in a state. I would on that basis refute Gentile's philosophies, and further disavow them as referent to Nationalism. It is the nation from which that political form derives - not a state or polity - but a people bound by common culture and ethnic heritage. Thus, again, it is the people that are the author of Nationalist states, and this does not convince me that it is the whole of the people that has rights, but rather that it is still the individual whom is born with rights and sole authority. I see Nationalism as governance in order to protect and advance a people, rather than merely a polity or jurisdiction, and frankly find that a far more palatable purpose.

However, you have raised issues I have not previously associated as defining of Fascism, and Gentile asserts them regarding Nationalism as well. I see that despite the frequent assertions in the Constitution that government is dependent on the will and reckoning of the people, in practice and cumulatively, the power of institutions and government in particular becomes inconvenient and even unassailable to democratic control, judicial restraint, or reason at all. Many bloody excesses of governmental power have resulted in claims of authority that conform neither to individual sovereignty, nor any particular constitutional institution, but simply became possible to ambitious men who took that power they could.

Certainly, for Trump to claim he could literally do anything he wants because he's President isn't even Fascism, but totalitarian Tyranny - which even Trump will not claim is the form of the Government of the United States. Even with the caveat he added 'when the country is in danger.', isn't actually in accord with Republican democratic government. I reckon Trump is less than precise with the particulars of his speech, rather often aiming vaguely at something he reckons is commonly understood, such as that on the battlefield a Commander in Chief gives orders to his military with no judicial nor democratic check, due to the nature of war. Even with the rhetoric about Antifa committing terrorist acts, he designating it a terrorist group, and the overly dramatic characterization of Portland being in a state of war, I don't think he means to wage war with military force as is being waged in the Ukraine. I think he seizes such power to effect such goals as seems meet to him (or his masters) because he can, not because he formally reckons with the political structure and has determined the definition of these things to have been met.

I don't doubt Trump is a Tyrant, and is implementing Fascist public/private partnerships, but that these aren't because of political definitions, rather because they are possible to gain power he desires to effect his ends, and doesn't doubt but that he is doing what he must to preserve 'liberty' and the sovereignty of Americans. He doesn't doubt it because he's given it careful thought, but because he's a Narcissist and doesn't reckon he has to. He's just always right. I don't think he has very precise definitions regarding those things, and doesn't give it much thought. There's a way he can get the things done he wants to do, and whatever claims or however he has to define the words he uses to get the power to do them is what he's going to do, what he reckons right to do. It is rather his being hell bent on a totalitarian surveillance state, in deploying digital currencies to force behaviours he wants, or is told to want, that I think Trump's true politics are revealed. He's not a Republican, a Democrat, nor even a Fascist, or Nationalist. He's a Tyrant.

Thanks!

Edit: I see that Trump is ushering in a global technocratic totalitarian tyranny, as are all their masters' minions, from Putin to Milei.