Reply #25: How do fascists overtake democracies with only a fraction of the public behind them

[Juche]

The Nazi fascists, even in their heyday, only had about 35% of the vote. The rest went to the communists and social democrats, who had a supermajority. So how do the fascists take over a country's democracy when they are lucky to get 20-30% of the vote?

The author states no country have become fascist due to military takeover, it was taking over a democracy.

Plus, my understanding is that fascism involves a situation of mass social unrest, where the thugs try to restore order and build goodwill among the public by doing it. There is some of that in the minutemen who harass illegal immigrants and try to secure the borders in this country (the same way Mussolini's brownshirts used to harass public drunks), but I don't think that (right now) our country has the level of domestic stress and unrest we'd need to become truly fascist. Maybe in a few years when unemployment is still 10-11%, peak oil is hitting then they will be more prone, but right now our problems are actually fairly minor to the problems countries faced in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 30s unemployment was 25%, countries were dealing with the severe consequences of WW1 and there was far far less wealth to go around to deal with problems.

Plus fascism takeovers seem to involve ex-military personnel. Most of the wingnuts are old people who have probably never served in the military. In fact, the conservative movement in the US is getting older and older and not really being replaced by young people. The average listener to talk radio is about 60 (Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh), I think O'Reilly's listeners are over 70. There is not a pool of young people with military experience to draw upon in our country. The majority who support fascist movements here are the elderly (those 50+), many of whom probably have no military training. Watch some youtube videos about the disruptors because many are men and women who are physically pretty geriatric, it is a far cry from the blackshirts and brownshirts who were made up of disaffected, unemployed ex-soldiers. Even if there is a fascist movement in the US, it is made up of people in their 70s who are not veterans, as opposed to the fascist movements in the 20s and 30s that were made up of young war veterans (of which there was a much larger pool back then).

Also Germany and Italy did not have long established democracies when they went fascist. Germany had a democracy that was barely 15 years old, and Italy was still a kingdom. The US has had democratic institutions for 220 years.

And keep in mind that the country is moving leftward more and more. Young people lean left, non-whites lean left, unmarried people lean left, secularists lean left, urbanites lean left. The opposite (older, married, white, religious people in rural areas) lean right. Every demographic is moving this country to the left. Liberals and nonwhites combined (aka the base of the democratic party) used to make up about 30% of the electorate just about 15-20 years ago, now they make up almost 45% of the electorate. And that number is going to rise as young white liberals and a growing latino population start voting.

I'm not trying to ignore the seriousness of this issue (millions of armed, poorly informed, enraged wingnuts are out there). However I do not seem them taking over the country anytime soon. I will not be surprised when domestic terrorism spikes even more than it already has, but I think our democracy is safe from these people. They are going to become more and more violent on an individual (and probably a small milita) level, but I think the functionality of our democracy is safe from them.