So Musk did a gesture that was likely a Nazi salute. It could’ve also have just been some other type of salute from another country known for genocide. Much like Ukrainian soldiers have been spotted using “resignified” fascist symbols. And honestly, this is always the least damning and easier to backtrack evidence that somebody or some organisation might be similar to the fascists of the thirties.
It doesn’t matter if billionaires or politicians maintain prisons for non-citizens on the border, employ immigrant-catching police, uphold laws for hyperexploitation of minority ethnicities at home or use military force to subordinate countries abroad, or even fund the fucking genocide of the Palestinian people.
The only smoking gun these “commentators” have on whether Trump or Musk (or even Bolsonaro or the Azov battalion) might be like the fascists of the 30’s is if they replicate (consciously or not) their aesthetics with motorcades, rallies, salutes and swastikas. Otherwise, who can really know?
(Yes, I understand that using those symbols is making their ideological roots explicit, and giving cover and legimaticy to groups that never really went away. My point is not to minimise it, but that a billion articles will be written about “Did Musk do a Fascist Salue?” rather than the much more necessary “is Musk a fascist?”)
i personally think ‘fascism’ is a rhetorically useful concept but not particularly so analytically for the current wave of reacitonary ideology. feel like if it was up to me i would largely keep fascism contained to its historical moment, mostly because someone doesn’t need to be fascist to be a genocidal freak as you said with the churchill example.
or i guess less radically it’s been a bit overextended in its usage - america is a reactionary empire, but it wasn’t fascist in character for a while, and this qualitative shift does have even more negative outcomes than the previous paradigm even if this was probably going to be that stage’s result regardless.