In 1968 Ayn Rand wrote:
“But even Humphrey looks like the remnant of a civilized past—like a decaying dowager who is ending her days in genteel poverty and clutching at musty mementos—when compared to the third candidate in this election: George C. Wallace.
"I have said repeatedly that the ‘liberal’ welfare-statist movement in this country represents not socialism, but fascism—a hidden, disguised, unadmitted, implicit fascism. (See my article on ‘The New Fascism—Rule by Consensus’ 1965.) George Wallace represents the emergence of an open fascism in this country—or, more exactly, the crude elements from which an explicit fascism is to come.
“Observe the symptoms: RACISM (which he denies, but which is quite obvious in his own utterances and in his past record)—a primitive, undefined NATIONALISM (not a rational patriotism, but nationalism in the form of a pseudo-self-esteem)—militant ANTI-INTELLECTUALITY (not an opposition to a specific group or kind of intellectual, but to all intellectuals, to the intellect as such)—the constant appeal to ‘the little people, or ‘the plain people’ or ‘us folks’ (which, socially, is an appeal to the lowest elements in society, and, psychologically, an appeal to an individual’s lowest potential: to self-righteous mediocrity)—and FORCE, the explicit and implicit reliance on the ‘activism’ of physical force as the solution to all social problems. . . .
“It is the fact that some of his statements—apart from and out of HIS context—are true and needed saying that deludes many people into the belief that he is a defender of freedom or capitalism. Quite obviously, he is not. . . .”
In the past, I have often referred to Trump and his MAGA faction as proto-fascist. That would be a faction such as Rand had described in 1968. However, I now think that faction evolved into something more decidedly fascist. Much window dressing with the American flag, but the old representation of the flag for a nation of individual liberty is now fading. The rights and legal equality won by Black Americans during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s are being suffocated by the newly elected LEADER in control of executive Departments. On every front, the new administration is deliberately moving the form of government here at the federal level to the fascist form. It is not merely making moves which, independently, will be picked up and put into the purpose of fascism. If you visit whitehouse. gov, you find it has been dumbed down to adulatory photos and vague pleasant slogans, not the long-standing repository of texts of presidential public speeches and other presidential remarks. The free and independent press is under continual threats from LEADER. Loss of individual rights and the release of his Brown Shirts from prison for their individual criminal actions in support of his continuing rule coddling White Supremacist propaganda is called freedom and justice by LEADER and his ideological circle. Other public smearing of individuals opposing HIM and Big Lie after Big Lie, and HIS use of presidential power to rewrite history of his crimes and crimes of his Shirts is daily faire. To the glee of millions of citizens.
Since 1968, there were changes in the proto-fascist (now deliberate) faction. They took over the Republican Party and thereby could win more than the seven States won by Wallace. The so-called Moral Majority became a block in the party which candidates therein must placate to win a nomination. The Party winners pay empty lip service to rule by the constitution and the rule of law it enables, but support every push by LEADER to test overrunning what remains of legal restraints on HIM.
Additionally, an excellent diagnosis already in 2019.
