Old Boomers like Donald Trump and Charles Koch just copied their fascist fathers. Donnie inherited racism and eugenics from Old Fred, while Charlie was indoctrinated in the extremist delusions of the John Birch Society and the pseudoscience economics of the Austrian School acolytes.

They are men with little imagination, who seek to exalt themselves by squishing everyone else down into a mass of un-individuated peons. One of many right-wing Big Lies is that fascism is the opposite of communism — not so. Both are forms of collectivism, in which the masses must be relegated to nothingness by the immense, overwhelming pressures of society — such that a few secular gods of Greatness Thinking may shine above all the rest.

Fascists are Dittoheads

The ethos of “copying” is a signature psychological trait of fundamentalist minds devoid of creativity. Both Trump and Koch have fashioned themselves as carbon copies of Daddy — in true Strict Father Morality style. Thus they feel completely anachronistic in modern times — where children are falling farther and farther from the proverbial trees, ideologically speaking.

Kids are developing more of their own worldview from culture, and from sources like media and social media that were simply unavailable when these 2 oligarchs were growing up. They are no longer simply inheriting the worldviews of their parents and merely accepting received wisdom for themselves. This is especially true of urban kids and any who are less indoctrinated and controlled by fundamentalist elders.

Fascism is a cloning technique

Fascist fathers are PISSED! They view their children as clones or extensions of themselves — that is their purpose and function. Fascists dads expect good little obedient carbon copies and drones who mindlessly follow in Strict Daddy’s all-knowing footsteps. This is how fascist fathers deal with the fear of death — by forcing their kids to live on in their image. By denying the colossal forces of change. By squelching the forces of sovereignty in their own offspring — that they elsewhere loudly and vocally claim to be their core belief system.

Yet it is a provincial, narrow, and narcissistic version of “individualism” that right-wing fathers espouse — they do not mean that all humans, universally, should be sovereign individuals. They believe that they personally should be sovereign — as in, not subject to the rule of law in the way that others should be; particularly The Others they do not like.

Fascist mentality

In order to stop The Others — including their own children — from individuating and differentiating themselves from them, fascist fathers use manipulation, emotional predator techniques, undue influence and influence techniques of all stripes. They employ ethically despicable means for their own selfish ends — to work out their repressed psychological issues on The Others as a cheap and cowardly way of gaining satisfaction (and power) in the world.

They pretend they can stop the entire world through their magical thinking. They seek to trap it in amber — while out of the other side of their mouths, espousing free markets and creative destruction without a shred of self-awareness of this tremendous cognitive dissonance. It is a kind of profound emotional immaturity, arrested development, and childishness — an eternal Peter Pan Syndrome, masquerading as the height of advancement. Fascist fathers can’t let anyone grow up, because seeing maturity outside of themselves would bring their own narcissistic delusions of grandeur and Greatness Thinking crashing down around them. They must infantilize the whole world, or implode.

We must resist.