Fascism is fear and pain amplified until we beg for strength to save us.
Fear is created through a conspiracy without facts: we can protest for our rights without affecting change. In this neutered, weakened state, we turn towards strength, even if it is only an image of strength, a memory of power.
Once affiliated, communally anxious quick fixes are applied: symbolic interactions and stylistic switches. Watchwords, repetitious dogma, flags, and costuming precede conversation, curiosity, or insight. In so doing, we sacrifice self to the tribe.
What must be considered is that we would love to remain individuals, strange and selfish, but when stripped and trapped, we will turn back to primal instinct and scapegoating. The reason for fear is because it is natural.
"Benjamin said that fascism tends towards an aestheticization of politics, in the sense of a spectacle in which it allows the masses to express themselves without seeing their rights recognized, and without affecting the relations of ownership which the proletarian masses aim to eliminate." ~ The aestheticization of politics, wikipedia
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