The economic base of fascism has always been the petit bourgeois, or as I like to call them, the roofing class. Small business owners. The guys who have a handful of contractors and pay 1,200 bucks a month on an F-150 Raptor that’s never been used for any kind of manual labor.

Every worker in this country has always been at the mercy of the elite, but not the elite fascists assume are pulling the strings. It’s not a shadow cabal of elite Jews, it’s just the people who own the means of production. They’re not shy about it. People like Warren Buffet routinely admit there’s a class war being waged, and that the capitalists want to make sure that they win it.

On the whole, there’s a reason the ruling class tolerates fascism and not socialism. Socialism is genuinely revolutionary, whereas fascism is just a cancerous offshoot of capitalism that can, in their mind, be used as a tool when needed.

What we’re seeing today has the same hallmarks of every other period where fascism has grown in popularity: economic insecurity, the formation of fascist paramilitaries, and a series of charismatic figures trying to tap into the rising tide of far-right populism for personal gain.