Austerity does not create fascism. The examples in the article are just all wrong. Even if you call Trump and Orban fascists, they did not follow austerity. The reaction to the financial crisis was the largest fiscal and monetary interventions in history. Orban consolidated power by spending and state expansion, not austerity. True austerity in Greece, Spain, Portugal of recent times led to new parties, but those countries are politically doing surprisingly well.
That's weird Canada had austerity in the 90s and we didn't get fascism.
I'm confused, is Cory under the impression that the fascism isn't already here? America is well underway on the that project. Frankly the fascism was plenty apparent after 9/11, when the Bush years entrenched a permanent security state through endless-war powers (AUMF), mass surveillance (Patriot Act/NSA spying), expansive detention and torture regimes (CIA black sites like Guantanamo), a huge domestic enforcement bureaucracy (DHS/ICE), and tax cuts that concentrated wealth upward, cuts to education and healthcare. These are the exact things the current-day fascists are using to choke us now.
People are only upset today because it's affecting white folk more directly, when back then it was aimed at Muslims. We warned you all back then about this, we warned again in 2016, we warned again in 2024, and yet here we are, knee deep in fascism. Maybe we'll be neck deep soon but let's not pretend this is just starting or about to start because of AI.
Oh boy, we'll step on this rake again and again. It will get much much worse before we could make it better.