Member-only story
The Populism to Fascism Pipeline
Parsing Populism and Umberto Eco’s eternal fascism (part 1 of 3)
The populism to fascism pipeline
The results of the recent United States election has many people, myself included, wondering how we — North America — got here. A presidential candidate has openly expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders, and has been accused of praising Adolf Hitler by multiple former members of his staff, yet was still elected to the most powerful political office in the world.
Here in Canada our largely now-unpopular Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, finally announced his intention to step down, after months of his own party publicly expressing their lack of confidence in his leadership. A very weak Liberal party leaves Canada incredibly vulnerable to electing a Conservative government with Pierre Poilievre as their leader, a man who doesn’t know the difference between a neoliberal and a communist, and has an extremely poor grasp of social systems and economics (among many other politically important concepts).
The focus of this article will be the slippery slope from populism to fascism, as such I won’t delve into the laundry list of allegations and crimes which follow the American president-elect, nor do I wish to spend any more time thinking or writing about…