#like my education on history and fascism is largely self driven and experiential

[communistkenobi]

Conservatism is taken to mean traditional economic laissez-faire individualism, according to which our economic life is conceived in terms of the free (unregulated) competition of individual entrepreneurs. […] Conservative ideology has traditionally urged that the economic functions of government be minimised. Fear of government power (like union power) is emphasised, and great concern is expressed for the freedom of the individual, particularly the individual businessman.

This is the authors’ assessment of American conservativism in the 1940s, and those base assumptions are what inform all of their political questions to participants. They want to ask people questions that will allow the authors to place them on a general left-right political scale and then map their susceptibility to fascism (“ethnocentrism” / “authoritarianism” are the words they use, I’m using the word fascism) onto that scale. The goal being that they want to define the political character of fascism as expressed in everyday sentiments of regular people.

And I don’t think this is an incorrect assessment for the time period, but if you were to administer this survey today, I don’t think you would capture the political character of American fascism very well. That ^ historical definition falls much more in line with right wing libertarianism, which is currently a political minority in America. And like I’m not a historian but my assumption is that the American conservatives of today abandoned free market individualism when they realised that “the free market” is much more socially progressive (or has the appearance of it, anyway) than they like. This is why they lose their minds about gay people in kids shows, trans flags mounted on businesses, black people in their tv shows, etc. The current western market is very eager to cater to socially liberal sensibilities, and has clearly found great success doing so. Like conservatives have essentially lost that slice of the culture war - the free market has figured out a way to make minorities profitable, and while that has dubious material benefits for said minorities (if any exist at all), it’s still a bridge too far for conservatives.

So like they aren’t economic individualists anymore, if they ever were in the first place. They aren’t small government free market types. They want to control the market they feel has abandoned their values, and the way to do that is through the state. I feel like that whole debate around whether or not christian bakeries should have to make cakes for gay couples is the Ur-example of this. I think it also speaks to the inevitability of economic liberalism leading to fascism - you cannot champion the free market and also hold a set of static and regressive political views, because capitalism is going to adapt to whatever environment is most profitable, which necessarily means it’s eventually going to move away from your insane right wing cultural and social beliefs. It’s not “stable” the way conservative social values are. So if you want to maintain capitalism and your social beliefs simultaneously, you’re gonna need an extremely strong state to control the economy