I have been doing a version of this thread on fascism roughly once a year since 2017. The main thing is, fascism is a feature of liberal democracies. The price of living in a liberal democracy is constant attention and action against nascent fascist movements before they grow to MAGA-sized.

What I mean by "fascism is a feature of liberal democracies" is this: If tyrants could skip straight to totalitarianism without fascism, they'd just do that. Fascism is an evolutionary adaptation that allows right-wing authoritarianism to grow inside this particular ecological niche.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty?