So what I’m identifying with “hierarchocracy” is that the rule is because of the hierarchy . The hierarchy is not determined by some external factor. It just is. Just like every system has fame but not every system is a diasimocracy, end-stage fascism has rule specifically with a hierarchy and only a hierarchy . Its justification is metaphysical, mythological and arbitrary, facially rather than in a disguised fashion. The degree to which something is specifically becoming especially fascist is the degree to which all existing safeguards, all existing limits on power down the hierarchy, and all existing justifications for the hierarchy disappear. We Are Great. We Are In Charge. No other argument is needed.

My point is that wealth still plays a larger role in politics than fame.

As measured how?

I gave several examples of wealth failing to buy real power (neither Bloomberg nor Musk could ever get elected to any office). They have to wield soft power because that’s all they have. The fact that the Koch Brothers could not stop Trump winning the Presidency twice (and thus had to hold their nose and stuff their cups and endure it) illustrates that the plutocrats have lost control. You can’t buy elections anymore. You can only buy the elected.

That’s why this is a diasimocracy and not a plutocracy.

That does not mean wealth has “no” power. It means that it does not specifically have that power. It is stuck having to get its way through machination rather than simply directly wielding power (as a legislator, judge, or president).

You can think of it like this:

The wealthy have power in every political system. But what they have to do to make things happen (and how hard or unreliable that is) is what differs from system to system. How the wealthy get what they want in an autocracy (think: Russia) is different from what they have to do to get what they want in a democracy (think: Reagan era) and even that is different from what they have to do to get what they want in a diasimocracy (as witnessed by how they have had to change the game under Trump).

So when we talk about “what system of government” we have, we are not talking about what kinds of things can give someone influence in that system (like wealth), but what different kinds of things they have to do to use that system to get what they want. The system is different, even if the influence of the wealthy is not.

-:-

(And this is just as true, BTW, in Communist states, as they do not, contra propaganda, eliminate the existence of wealthy people, they merely delineate differently how one becomes wealthy and thus who gets to be wealthy; and Communist economic systems can manifest in every kind of political system, e.g. Marx himself described a communist democracy; it was Lenin, and then Stalin, who turned it into an autocracy; and despite the way media reports on Xi Jinping, China is actually still an oligarchy—Xi Jinping is not in the same position Putin enjoys.)

I don’t see the value in the term “hierarchocracy.” That simply describes every system other than strict anarchy. So it makes no distinctions. Every system has a hierarchy. The question is how you get into that hierarchy (how it is decided who is where in the hierarchy) and what you are allowed to do with it. Every system can then allow or disallow “fascism” to one degree or another as what’s done with it. But that by itself does not change how one gets in it and what all else one can do in it.

Hence the difference between fascist autocracy and fascist oligarchy—and even (as the U.S. can be described as for the last century), parafascist democracy or diasimocracy (neither of which has ever been an autocracy nor specifically an oligarchy, for example, and either of which can be far more fascist than America already is, and still not be an autocracy or proper oligarchy).

Fascism is any system that allows persuasion through force, hence any system characterized by the use or threat of force to effect political will (rather than free and peaceful discourse), and thus the (increasing or total) absence of permissible dissent (as I discuss in How Far Left Is Too Left?). Fascism can thus be realized in every political system, no matter how it is organized or how its principals gain their stations or what specific powers they are allowed.

One can then argue that, perhaps, certain systems inevitably devolve into others (there is an entire political science to this, e.g. why three party systems cannot arise or last long in first-past-the-post democracies), but that’s a causal prediction, not a semantic distinction. If diasimocracy inevitably collapses over time into autocracy, that still does not make diasimocracy autocracy. For the difference remains until the one collapses into the other.

And case in point: the fascists have a lot of ways to keep getting their way, but its all machination rather than direct control, and they are too often being stymied (by an ironically only half-cooperative Trump as well as a resisting, and thus evidently just as uncontrollable, judiciary—the recent North Carolina decision being only the latest example) to be correctly identified as “in power.” They have power. They are not in power. The system is resisting their charms. That could break. But until it does, we aren’t there yet.

[BANNED]

It obviously depends on the definition of fascism. I’d say that palingenetic ultranationalism with the specific constellations of deep fascist movements end up establishing systems that go so all-in on utterly mindless hierarchy with no counter-balancing elements that they become something like a distinct form of government, hierarchocracy. (This is also why it’s adaptive and idiosyncratic: it’s just tribalism on steroids). Fascist movements and forms, though, definitely can contaminate any form of government. This is actually really critical for people to understand. They think “FASCISM = DICTATOR” and forget that Hitler’s party actually gained power through quasi-legitimate electoral means. So I’d say that a distinguishing feature of end-state fascism is that it becomes completely dissociated from any concept of merit or ideology or philosophy with one glaring exception of the belief in metaphysical supremacy of the “We”. It’s just that a system that falls that far usually ruins itself so quickly with the vicious force of its incompetence that it doesn’t exist long enough to easily analyze.

And I would still argue that they only don’t control the winners electorally. They have a massive amount of ability to dictate policy, both in the narrow sense of politics and the broad sense of the course of institutions, with their direct economic control. That is admittedly combining an economic and a political analysis, and it is definitely a drastic shift that they have to bend the knee to someone who they don’t control.

I think one major thing that is blunting people recognizing how important this change is that Trump himself is an elite… but he’s a very idiosyncratic elite with actually quite limited real non-political power, having been broke quite often (which is an incredible feat for someone with his wealth to have done). It’ll take the election of a fascist who is not independently massively wealthy (or isn’t before he gains political popularity) to really lock in that that has changed. For now, Trump still has far too many personal economic interests to fully do what the hardcore fash want.

I wonder if it’s best to think of Trump as the first diasimocratic President who is also a victim of its processes, not understanding it and being a victim of boomer cable news brain rot. As much as he was clearly always a vicious stupid authoritarian, you can read things like his Central Park Five ad and it comes off like someone who actually vaguely has an idea of the actual events happening around him. (And he almost certainly didn’t write that, but at one point he actually did use ghostwriters and let people like The Apprentice producers sanewash him, so at one point he understood that he needed to do that). I really think FOX destroyed his mind. I think Obama owning him so badly caused him to irrationally double down on the ecosystem he was in rather than realizing that ecosystem had shamed him and prepared him for a fall.

My point is that wealth still plays a larger role in politics than fame. Because of its economic system most of the most powerful positions in american society are outside of the government, being in the leadership of a private company or think thank like microsoft, boeing, amazon, enron, facebook lockheed martin, the heritage foundation, alphabet the cato institute, etc. will give you more power than being a congressman and because of globalization this influence extends internationally. The bulk of american political power is still held by lobbyists, think thanks, rich families and billion dollar corporations. Also one of the examples you give of someone chosen because of fame is rfk, but he was appointed not voted in he only got 0.4% of the popular votes in the actual election he wasn’t even that well known before running for president.

Indeed. Which brings us to my remarks above and below.

Just FYI, I don’t see fascism as a distinct “system” of government, but a style of it. Like patriarchy, it spans many systems. Arguably it can be implemented in every possible political system, so it does not distinguish any. Even democracy simpliciter can be fascist (look what happened to Socrates and the Athenian Empire; and the Roman Republic was fascist even at its most democratic). Even representative constitutional democracy, maybe the least compatible with fascism, is compatible some fascism (look at all American police culture and censorship policy since 1950; remember Stonewall, Ohio State, Ferguson).

Likewise the role of wealth, influence peddling, gatekeeping, machine politicking, etc. These exist (or can exist) in all systems. They don’t distinguish any. For a wealth-power relationship to become plutocracy (and not just a wealth-power relationship) it has to become the primary engine of the system, e.g. if we passed an Amendment (or somehow created a de facto state of affairs) whereby only billionaires could hold any top office in the three branches of government, then we’re in a plutocracy. Or if elections were rigged consistently to just pick candidates chosen by a secret cabal of billionaires (the usual conspiracy theory, but for that to be the case, the evidence would have to match it, and it doesn’t, so that isn’t going on, least of all “by the Jews”), and the cabal set membership to literally anyone who achieved billionaire status (or whatever wealth-target), that would be a plutocracy. Whereas if they did not allow anyone in (or rarely did), and were selected mainly not because of hitting some wealth target but by simply being in a position to form and delimit (or by some gladhanding join) the cabal, it would be an oligarchy and not a plutocracy. And so on.

So we have to distinguish the system of government from its stylistic elements and undergirding machinery. That’s why it matters that the “plutocrats and oligarchs” of America can’t control Trump, but had no choice but to subserve him and hope they can manipulate him from below. They are chasing the winners now, not making them. So they aren’t really in control, no matter how much power they do have, it is not defining how the system operates. It is reacting to how the system operates, and thus using the levers of that system.

And our knowing that gives us a lot of information about how to manipulate or work against the powers that be. “Access comes through fame” is a reality even the plutocrats and oligarchs can’t change (until someone changes the system again).