crypto-fascism

or cryp·to·fas·cism

[ krip-toh-fash-iz-uhm ]

noun

1. secret support for fascism:

   The party's program contains underlying crypto-fascism that many have commented on.

Word History and Origins

Origin of crypto-fascism¹

First recorded in 1930–35

Example Sentences

Joyce is a byword for difficulty and obscurity, Lawrence for weedy crypto-fascism and misogyny, but Woolf’s work, while densely lyrical and complex, has such apparent availability that it prompts near universal adoration in critics, writers, students and book clubs.

From New York Times

How else can the censorious and admonitory extreme political correctness of some university campuses coexist in the same world as the unabashed rise of crypto-fascism?

From The Guardian

It’s horrible now, and given the weaponizing of white supremacy and white innocence and white gullibility as a political tool for manipulation and crypto-fascism, it is indeed highly unnerving.

From Salon

I reject out of hand the notion that we have thrown up our hands and succumbed to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and crypto-fascism.

From Los Angeles Times

If this were a sufficient explanation, though, one would expect Trump’s own peculiar brand of Home Shopping Network crypto-fascism to track those anxieties, and one would expect the most marginalized and threatened among us to be most taken with it.

From The New Yorker