> alienation is core to fascism

Fascism, a neighbour of Futurism, idolises technology, of only for its semiotic power. But then so did Soviet Communism. Stalin executed all the "bourgeois engineers" and Bolsheviks who built the industrial engine of the CCCP. Alternatively, the great leap forward in China and Pol Pot in Cambodia both rounded up the thinkers, teachers and engineers first.

So I don't think it's unique to fascism. What is common?

Seems it's a hallmark of the treachery of totalitarianism. Tyrants fear but use intellectuals. They need actual smart people to gain power, but then who is more threatening than people who know how the system works because they built it for you? So they are always betrayed. Consider Oppenheimer. Many of the great scientists and artists are put out to pasture once they've done what's useful for the party.

> "alienates the best thinkers" seems like a good litmus test.

Almost the whole Frankfurt School were Jewish intellectuals who fled to America.

I've written (probably in Digital Vegan) on how the Silicon Valley Billionaires, once they've built their "Social Media Digital Utopia" - a pageant of vanity, fear and cybernetic governance - would simply dispose of the coders (perhaps not as directly as Stalin). Maybe an indicator of that came early with the layoffs when some got a bit too moist about "AI". I think they hope that "AI" will be the way to pull up the ladder, leaving no challenging class.