The article <a href="https://crookedtimber.org/2025/08/27/its-not-socialism-its-national-socialism/" author="Liz Anderson" source="Crooked Timber">It’s Not Socialism–It’s National Socialism</a> discusses how buying 10% of Intel does not a socialist make. <bq>When National Socialists speak of “the people,” they never mean, as social democrats do, all the people, but rather <b>the “real” people, the ethno-racial-sexual-religious group that they identify with the nation, to the exclusion of all other citizens and denizens of the state.</b> <img attachment="othering.webp" align="right" caption="Othering"><b>Trump</b>, of course, checks all 3 National Socialist boxes. It’s no secret that his <b>“real” people are white Christian heterosexual patriarchs.</b> And that nobody else matters. That exclusionary message is what bonds his base to him. As Trump once said in a campaign speech, “the only important thing is the unification of the people—because the other people don’t mean anything.” And like all fascists, <b>his promise to them is to restore them to their former supreme position in the nation.</b></bq> This is the appeal for so many people: they don't feel secure enough in their lives---either because of real desperation or because of a desperation imbued by a predatory society farming them for consumption and growth---they accept the embarrassingly simplistic zero-sum framing of society, and therefore quickly have no compunction against plunder---as long it's at least one degree removed from their actions and, therefore, plausibly deniable---and they have no compunction against othering vast swathes of people that they don't know, rounding them down to vermin that can be extinguished without causing a single ripple in their moral calm or sense of superiority.