Probably worth teasing this apart.

There are:

• Fascist political candidates

…which can be formally appointed or rejected by voting

• Fascist organized groups

…which may attempt to physical seize power regardless of political climate, if the physical conditions seem right, but have a much easier time if the political conditions are favorable too

• Fascist cultural concepts

…which proliferate regardless of political and physical conditions, and can really only be managed through social norms, which are themselves often reinforced at the ballot box

Just because voting only directly impacts the first problem doesn’t mean it has zero impact on the other two.

In fact, it’s really hard to win the cultural battle and cast fascism as a niche extremist philosophy if it keeps almost winning elections.

Wait, so are you trying to clown on the fact that France managed to stop their neofascist party from gaining any real hold on power?

Tbh, I think the democrats are at least partly responsible for perpetuating this idea in the US, because they benefit from being the adults in the room relative to the republicans. Basically since '16, a huge chunk of their pitch has been "we're not the republicans". They've relied on the republicans being fascist to make the sell for them, and I think that the centrist auth Dems really love it because it means that they don't have to really make any big, challenging promises that would piss off their corporate or billionaire donors, they don't have to walk back any authoritarian power grabs, they just have to point at the fascists and say (correctly) "these psychos want to kill you, I don't."

If the democrats get elected, they get a mandate to just kick back and not implement fascism. If the Republicans get elected, then the democrats get a sudden boost of engagement and cash as the fear fatigue is replaced by real, actual fear. In either case, the centrist auth faction of the democratic party aren't going to be rid of their fundraising cow, thank you very much, even if the cow is actively planning to murder them.

It worked because the fascists weren't actually in power yet.

I mean, stopping fascists from gaining power is a pretty good way of stopping fascists from gaining power. If the government is to incompetent and/or uninterested in running the country to actually fix the issues people are pissed off about it's only a stopgap solution, but a stopgap is better than nothing. If you have an actual plan for how to go about the process of creating an actual better system in the real world starting from where we are then by all means feel free to share, but until then voting will save lives.

This is exactly how it's supposed to work in a functioning democracy.

Where ideally everyone, but at least a critical percentage of citizens is educated enough to recognize the pattern of deceit and false, but easy answers to very complex questions from extremist parties.

Where established parties don't feel the need to pander to the votes of extremist parties by cooperating and adapting points pushed by extremists.

Where the average citizen doesn't feel left out by the system and is tempted to align themselves with extremist parties in order to protest the current reality of said system.

Where the system implements safeguards to not allow the system to be taken hostage by extremists.

Would be nice, eh?

Le Pen is an ignorant bigot but she isn’t acting like Trump so I actually do think NR is figuring out its next electoral strategy/how to capitalize on its seats vs. plotting to overthrow a legitimate election and install a dictator.

Make no mistake, the rise of right wing groups is a major problem in Western Europe and people need to be careful. But France is not on the brink like the US is. Le Pen is not Trump.