You’re making a good point concerning a landing strip for planes, but there’s actually an explanation for that: the Sanctum. In order to construct that, they’d need an airstrip for larger planes to bring in supplies. There’s probably a small port over there too. That however doesn’t mean that after so many years the airstrip is still in a good condition. Probably largely overgrown by vegetation by now.
Jinn’s a really curious case, I have no idea what TC wants with her. Everything we’ve been shown and told is how much of an incompetent leader she is with little to no backing from others. It makes no sense, you don’t rule for long in a dictatorship if you’re incompetent. There would be plenty of others willing to take power for themselves. The way she’s portrayed, there is just no chance she would be able to remain in power in Gears 6 (but we lack a believable person who would be able to replace her). There’s really no lesson to be learned from her. With Prescott, you knew he was a bad person. He made terrible decisions, but most were for the benefit of humankind (although at a high cost, such as the Hammer Strikes). Jinn just seems to have tunnel vision and is emotionally driven, not showing any rationalism. I doubt that the military brass who have been through the Locust Wars and possibly Pendulum Wars would tolerate such a person for a long time. Hofman and parts of the COG military working behind her back are proof of that.
In general, the idea of the COG being fascist doesn’t really make much sense any more. The fascist ideology heavily relies on some elements, such as that all must serve the state, which is governed by a ‘strong man’ : a male dictator heavily backed by the military. It is a person with usually a military background, given a specific title indicating his dominant role. Just think of nicknames like the ‘führer’ or ‘el duce’. The title ‘First minister’ seems to indicate more of a democracy than a fascist state.
Absolute loyalty and belief in the ideology is also a must, critical thinking and disloyalty are an absolute no-no. Yet we’re seen constant disloyalty, no respect for the chain of command, people acting on their own and even a scene where people are pulling their weapons against Jinn. Any of these acts would be considered treason and enough for capital punishment, the latter would be enough in a democracy to spend some serious time in prison. Yet Delta seems to get away with it all. Of course, people like Marcus have huge credibility. Putting him on trial would lead to a revolt, but this doesn’t excuse other people like Fahz or Kait. There’s also so much credit people could spend, eventually dictatorships find creative ways to get rid of people with credibility such as fabricating evidence to form a sham trial of treason, or to assassinate them and find a scapegoat for the people to hate.
Then there’s also the important element of gender: fascism is notably heavily sexist. It relies on the strong leadership of men, while the woman’s rights are basically downgraded to taking care of the family and giving as many children as possible. You can even see this in modern times, with the idea of ‘white sharia’ (I am not kidding). You can see that partially in the lore with the breeding farms founded by Prescott, in the new saga it seems to be more something heavily promoted by the government rather than enforced. Having a fascist state led by a woman just seems to be odd.
These features could be seen in fascist governments of the past such as Germany, Italy, Spain and Croatia. Other far-right dictatorships from the past in other parts of the world, like South America, displayed similar features. None of this of course means that the Gears universe has to follow the actual fascism we know, yet it’s also weird to call it that way if there aren’t that many resemblances to it. It now just seems to be named that way because of the past and the bad association we put on hearing it, rather than it to be actually true.
For a general idea of how one would have to rule a dictatorship, CGP Grey has made a great video about it:
You can actually see elements of his video back in the real world. Like how did the Arab Spring work out for Egypt? The people were led to believe they overthrew a dictator to bring democracy, yet those in power would eventually put a new dictator in place creating a situation worse than before. How is Belarus working out? Clearly, nearly the entire population is done with its leader. Yet he’s still in power. How? The other ones in power see their best interest in keeping him in power. So you have a bizarre situation of a state openly not supported by the population yet keeps functioning as if nothing happened. TC would need to give a logical explanation concerning the power that Jinn holds, otherwise there would need to be a coup or civil war in Gears 6.
