does anyone have reading recommendations that clarify the difference between liberalism and fascism? I’m having trouble distinguishing what is just like normal levels of imperial/colonial violence conducted by a liberal state and what pushes it over the edge into a fascist state. Is fascism simply mature liberalism? Is it liberalism in crisis? Can we only make historical, reactive judgements about what is fascist, which is to say, can we only know if fascism occurred after it has come and gone? I take the general point that calling all liberal states fascist can let them off the hook for types of violence considered normal or “just doing business,” invisibilising the daily violences they conduct as part of the regular maintenance of a liberal capitalist state. People are calling the US fascist for its direct participation in and funding of the genocide in Palestine - a diagnosis I don't disagree with, but if that’s the case, where do you draw the distinction between the US being merely a liberal state with aggressive global imperial ambitions and the US being a fully fascist state? Perhaps more bluntly, what’s the difference between a liberal drone strike and a fascist one? I’m struggling to understand the value of the fascist label, because everything it describes (ultranationalism, a theory of racial and cultural degeneracy/decline, paranoia about an imminent external threat expressed as violence against internal populations deemed to have insufficient loyalty to the country, a turn towards a mythologised tradition of the past, imperial expansion, genocidal projects against minority populations, etc etc) just seems to me like a description of United States in general lol