Alternatively, liberal democracy was never really so liberal or democratic as it was supposed to be. People look at local suspensions of rights, and see it as f

Alternatively, liberal democracy was never really so liberal or democratic as it was supposed to be. People look at local suspensions of rights, and see it as fascism, but I feel like the truth is a bit more subtle. It can be fascism. The Nazis extensively used 'exceptions' to persecute their enemies. On the other hand, it's really hard to imagine a functioning capitalist society where all of the rights people have in theory were actually upheld in all cases. Federal or local agencies blithely ignoring the law when it suits them is absolutely not new. The FBI disregard for privacy under Hoover, for example, extended to wiretapping a sitting president. (Also after Hoover, but that's another story). I think realistically, there's no clear divide between fascism and liberal democracy. People like Orban, Duterte, etc, live in the middle ground. Fascism is what capitalist states do when they are threatened. Sometimes that's on the micro level, when a police officer who's job is basically to harass homeless people is more brutal than strictly required by the job. Sometimes that's on the macro level, when we decide felons shouldn't have voting rights, or that privacy is an alienable and even occasional right.