Tom NicholsCompte certifié

But again, you seem to be talking about the present state - conditions on the ground in America today. I agree with that assessment. But “Trumpism” is an ideology also. I see no distinction between the governance aspirations of Trumpism and fascism. Do you think I’m off the mark?

Trumpism is a bunch of random synapses firing the mind of a sad little rich boy whose father didn't love him. There's no "ideology" there.

Generic dumbass racism isn't an ideology. Ideologies have a foundation, explanations, hypotheses about how the world works. I suppose you could stretch "brainless rubes with guns" into an ideology, but by that standard, *everything* is an ideology.

There IS an ideology though dude. Its nationalist, its "traditionalist," misogynist and racist, but its an ideology.

I'd argue that those are just the atavistic reflexes of lousy people that are always lurking under the surface. There was anti-Semitism in the USSR, but the Soviet Union's ideology was, formally, anti-racist. I don't like using "ideology" to mean "people's prejudices."

ideologies are intrinsically tied to people's prejudices, racial and otherwise, bc they are about making sense of the way the world works.

Sure, but innate cognitive maps are not the same as a developed ideology. "Trumpism" will not survive without Trump, because it makes no internal sense and has no inner logic beyond hating "Others" and doing whatever Trump is thinking at any given moment. /1