How Fascism Works

[Danioover9000]

@aurum

On 3/8/2023 at 7:44 PM, aurum said:

I can see all that. So let me offer a synthesis.

We can say that we have a spectrum of tolerance towards fascism.

On one end of the spectrum, we have fascists sneaking fascism under the radar with their fascist shenanigans.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have progressives (most likely SD Tier 1) who are unable to see outside their perspective and qualify almost anything outside their worldview as fascism.

Both ends of the spectrum produce problems, with progressives increasing political polarization on one side and fascists gaining ground on the other.

As well-intending and intelligent citizens, it's our job to stay somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. I.e, call a spade a spade, but don't call a spade a shovel. And definitely don't call a spade a hammer.

Making these discernments requires good judgment and clear-seeing, which we can improve by:

1) Studying the history of fascism and why / how it occurs

2) Generating herustics to be able to spot fascism

3) Helping others to spot fascism, which improves our own seeing and helps clean up the epistemic commons

4) Healing trauma and shadow wounds that may unconsciously be causing us to bite on the hook fascism

5) Developing a SD Tier 2 mindset by studying developmental psychology, meta-modernism and integrating the conservative / liberal mind

6) Staying informed and educated on current issues, ideally from sources with steelman positions

with 4, 5 and 6 more so being part of an overall strategy of becoming more politically savvy.

 

@DocWatts feel free to chime in as well if you have any thoughts.

@Ulax good nuance about policing tone.

   I think you need to make one more distinction: Online political variants vs IRL political variants. Very key difference is that the online progressive left lack common sense, and are so stuck in tier one thinking, and so stuck in their bubble they actually cannot empathize nor understand correctly their oppositional ideology.

[Carl-Richard]

11 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

Just ask @Carl-Richard if you don't believe me, the human body is AMAZING.

Haha, you should see me now ?

[Gesundheit2]

@Danioover9000 I can beat your ass in human anatomy, so stop trolling? 

[Emerald]

7 hours ago, Danioover9000 said:

@aurum , @Arcangelo , @Gesundheit2 and @StarStruck , Fascism is just basically you having an idea of fascia, which the name of the system of tendons and ligaments mostly around your body and musculature. They are also integral to how your body moves to begin with, and a crucial part, besides the muscle system and nervous system, in generating tension via FLEXING. This also involves a field of science, and scientists who are obsessed with facia are also called Fascists, and some of the old school body builders, Bruce Lee, Rocky Marciano, some of the most gifted men in strength and a few in speed and explosive movement, were the first pioneers, the first Fascists to engage with the FLEXING in the mirror, and maximizing the GENETIC POTENTIAL OF TENDONS AND MUSCLE, naturally, prior to steroid use. Just ask @Carl-Richard if you don't believe me, the human body is AMAZING.

   Of course, not the other Fascism, that one sucks, but the FLEXING Fascism is important for fitness and athletics!

The word Fascist literally translates to “bundle of sticks” and it’s meant to symbolize strength.

So, I’m pretty sure Fascia and Fascist have the same root etymology.

I’ll censor this next part….

The word fa**ot also means bundle of sticks. And it’s why cigarettes were called f*gs. 

So, all of these words share a common etymology and meaning. 

I always was amused that Fascist and Fa**ot refer to the same thing… and how much a Fascist would hate that similarity the very most.

[Danioover9000]

@Emerald

19 hours ago, Emerald said:

The word Fascist literally translates to “bundle of sticks” and it’s meant to symbolize strength.

So, I’m pretty sure Fascia and Fascist have the same root etymology.

I’ll censor this next part….

The word fa**ot also means bundle of sticks. And it’s why cigarettes were called f*gs. 

So, all of these words share a common etymology and meaning. 

I always was amused that Fascist and Fa**ot refer to the same thing… and how much a Fascist would hate that similarity the very most.

   Well, I guess my old educated jokes are too boomer for this era, despite being a Millennial/zoomer. Time to hangout with the elderly, and tendonize my neck:

 

[Danioover9000]

On 3/3/2023 at 1:56 AM, Emerald said:

I just finished reading the book “How Fascism Works”

And I wanted to share the main components of Fascism… mostly because it can be important to spot these warning signs.

And most people don’t know the full scope of what Fascism entails when asked to define it.

Humanity has had 49 genocides in the past 50 years. So, education is one of the best preventatives.

So, here are the components of Fascism…

1. The Mythic Past - Fascists believe in an idealized mythic past for their nation. And they view ethnicity and nation as the primary identity. And with the Mythic Past, it’s the notion that WE used to be great… but then THEY came along and destroyed OUR greatness. And WE will defeat THEM and be great again.
2. Propaganda - It’s difficult to sell hatred and genocide to the majority of people. So, they cloak the goals of ethnic cleansing and genocide in idealistic propaganda. They might sell their movement as necessary for achieving popular goals like freedom.
3. Anti-Intellectual - In Fascism, the the Mythic Past is the foundation. But this myth is an idealized and untrue imagining of the past. And so, this puts Fascism directly at odds with expertise and higher education. So, it is common for Fascists to spread the notion that institutions of higher learning are propaganda machines that are designed to undermine the “truth” of the Mythic Past.
4. Unreality - Dovetailing off the last point… reality and truth is very threatening to Fascism because Fascism is rooted in myth. So, the Fascist must go to war with truth itself to preserve that myth. And so empiricism is something Fascist movements seek to undermine. They try to simultaneously give the sense that there is no such thing as truth… just differing opinions… while also claiming that their mythos is the only truth. It depends on which suits them in the moment.
5. Hierarchy - Fascism subscribes to the notion of absolute hierarchies to justify inequalities. It has the notion that WE are superior to THEM based mostly off of the mythic foundation. Though Fascists might also use cherry-picked science and use Social Darwinism to add a more rational facade to their emotional attachment to the belief in absolute hierarchy. And this gets used as the justification for why WE get to exploit/harm/kill THEM. 
6. Victimhood - A big part of Fascist propaganda is the convince the dominant ethnic group that they are victims or potentially victims of minority ethnic groups. So, Fascism constructs collective victim narratives about how the other groups are stealing all the jobs, leeching off the system… and pillaging and raping… and otherwise degrading the society. 
7. Law and Order - Dovetailing off of the victim narrative constructed in Fascism, there is also the promise to “restore” law and order and end the victimization caused by THEM. And this is typically one of the selling points of paternalistic authoritarian Fascistic leaders to say “Hey… you may not agree with some of my views. But you need me to take control to protect you from THEM”
8. Sexual Anxiety - The notion of the patriarchal familial ideal is central to the Fascistic mythos where the authoritarian father rules over the land, and the man rules over his wife and children. And the notion of absolute hierarchy also comes into play with this. So, one of the ways to malign THEM is to spread narratives that the men of the other ethnicities/nationalities are savage rapists looking to defile OUR pure unspoiled women. This also comes with an underlying fear of OUR women preferring THEIR men and spoiling the bloodline with miscegenation.
9. Rural over Urban (Sodom and Gomorrah) - Fascism tends to present its rhetoric as very pro-rural and very anti-urban. This is because cities are more cosmopolitan and diversity is the norm there. And that weakens people’s susceptibility to Fascist rhetoric against THEM. But in rural areas, there are very many of US and very few of THEM. And it becomes easier to malign THEM to people who don’t interact much with THEM. So, Fascist rhetoric presents cities as cesspools of miscegenation and degeneracy. And the false notion is floated that the funding for cities comes primarily out of the pockets of those in rural areas (often framed as a handout for THEM), when in fact the opposite is the case as tax dollars taken in from cities tend to flow outward.
10. Arbeit Macht Frei - Arbeit Macht Frei means “Work shall set you free” in German. And this motto was on the signage of many concentration camps. In Nazi Germany, one of the reasons they gave for rounding up Jews is the notion that Jews have lots of money that they didn’t properly work for and essentially stole from the hard-working German people. This rhetoric eventually became the rationale for why Jews needed to be sent to labor camps. So, a lot of Fascist rhetoric frames the situation as THEY are getting special handouts and privileges that THEY didn’t work for, while WE got everything by the merits of OUR work and the sweat of OUR brow. And there is also a push to punish THEM for stealing from US.

I hope this is helpful to all who want to learn about Fascism.

   Nice post, I will be integrating this into my mind.

[Danioover9000]

@DocWatts

On 3/4/2023 at 7:49 PM, DocWatts said:

In addition to @Emeralds points, another useful discernment for telling if you're dealing with a conservative or a fascist, is to assess the degree to which they've made peace with expansions of rights and social recognition that have been won in previous eras and are taken for granted these days.

The idea that today's conservatives are in some ways the liberals of a generation or two ago. This is also the gist of the philosophy of the patron saint of modern conservatism, Edmund Burke, who saw conservativism's role in liberal democracies as protecting society from crazy social experiments by conserving existing institutions and implementing change in a slow, measured way.

A conservative will most likely be uneasy with expanding these rights and recognition further or extending them to other groups, but to the degree that their perspective is conservative rather than fascistic, they're generally not trying to eradicate basic human rights that have been extended to people of color, women, gay people, etc.

Of course the rub is that the cultural and media environment is such that fascistic rhetoric and social policy has been moving into mainstream politics and culture, so in practice contemporary conservatives who haven't completely disavowed the modern Republican Party (or its counterpart in other countries) will exist on a spectrum between Edmund Burke's conservatism and fascism.

   Very nice take.

[Danioover9000]

@aurum

On 3/4/2023 at 11:55 PM, aurum said:

 

I agree that we can and should make a distinction between fascism and conservatism. And that some of today’s modern conservatives have legitimately slid into a territory that should be labeled fascism.

I think what I am getting stuck on with this topic the degree of relativity when it comes to labeling things as fascism.

For instance, @DocWatts you say that normal conservatives will be open to basic human rights already extended within the overton window and not eradicate them. And I think that’s a good rule of thumb to distinguish between healthy and more toxic conservatism.

However, the whole problem is that progressives and conservatives do not sometimes agree on what is a “basic” human right in the first place.

A progressive might argue that LGBTQ marriage is a basic human right, while the conservative does not see it that way at all. Does that make the conservative a fascist? Whose relative definition of a “right” are we using?

The error I feel I see a lot of SD Green progressives make is that they are implicitly assuming that their relative definition of “rights” are political truths are actually absolute. And they are not.

This leads to a noticeable amount of progressives labeling conservatives “fascist” when that label really just doesn’t fit. Or, the label itself just become pointless because essentially conservatism = fascism in their mind.

@EmeraldTo use your example, if conservatives rolled back the majority of the progress that has been made for the LGBTQ community, I would appose it. But I would not generally call it fascism. I  would call it conservatism. Rolling back LGBTQ is precisely what conservatives are interested in.

We also saw this with the overturn of Roe V Wade. Many progressives called it fascist. When in reality, this is just what conservatives want. This is what conservatives fighting against “crazy social experiments” looks like. To them, abortion IS dangerous leftism out of control.

My concern here that a) we become unable to distinguish between conservatism and actual fascism and b) an increase in political polarization by labeling those who disagree with you as fascists. This labeling does not come without a cost and needs to be applied accurately.

 

   Here's another way to know if you're dealing with a true conservative vs a Fascist. The situation: You are in a room with these two people, and the table has a glass with water.

Person A says "The glass is half empty, we may need to reserve the remaining water until we get a refill.".

Person B says " The glass is half full of water, it's so terrible! We need a new glass, one that can be half empty and half full, full of life before it lost it's water to those greedy for it!".

Guess who is who?

[Danioover9000]

@DocWatts

On 3/5/2023 at 0:43 AM, DocWatts said:

That's actually a very good point, as "Rights" by their very definition are intersubjectively constructed, and in a country as large and diverse as the United States it's to be expected that different value systems are going to have their own version of what entails a fundamental human right.  There's never going to be one definition that's going to be Absolutely valid for all people and contexts, as you correctly point out.

That said, even for a country as polarized as the current United States, there are a number of issues of which it can be said that we have reached a working consensus on as a society (or at least as close to one as it's possible to get in a very large and complex society). Whether women and minorities should be able to vote and hold political office is one of the more obvious examples, since anyone who believed otherwise would be well outside of the Overton window, and would have to use dog whistle rhetoric to make their position palatable within the public sphere (and mind you, this is exactly how modern fascism does work).

As for abortion, I'd argue that issue sits somewhere on the border of the Overton window, while a majority of people in a place like America do accept that abortion is something which should be protected, it's also fair to say that it's by no means a settled issue in the way that women's suffrage is.

The three far Right justices that Trump was able to appoint to the Supreme Court all had to lie that Roe v Wade was in their view 'a settled issue' during their confirmation hearings, which to me is good evidence that abortions rights are within Overton window (though perhaps near the edge). Had this not been the case, they should have been able to be direct about the fact that it was always thier intention to roll back rights that were in thier view illegitimate. The fact that they were only direct and explicit about this only after landing their positions with lifetime appointment is telling.

I also share your concerns about progressives conflating typical conservativism with fascism, which is why I do think it's important to be precise when we say that something is 'fascistic'.

A good litmus test to distinguish between the two, in addition to the Overton window aspect which I brought up earlier, is the degree to which the person or movement in question is willing overturn democratic norms in order to get their agenda passed (which consequentially, is why I have no problem labeling the MAGA movement as unequivocally fascistic).

Wanting to overturn Roe v Wade isn't necessarily fascistic; trying to forcibly drag the country back 100 years by burning democratic institutions to the ground absolutely is. Likewise, using either implicit or explicit rhetoric which advocates for political violence is another very clear indication that you're dealing with fascism rather than conservatism.

   Good takes. I think with issues like abortion and others it's relative to the development of that country, just like with value systems, cognitive and moral development, personality types and traits, states of being, life experiences and other lines of development in areas of life, along with ideologies indoctrinated into the psyche. Also, in most cases the problems are complex and nested to several other factors as well, causing an in context and out context survivability of the issue, such that even a perfect solution only solves half the problem. Take for instance Abortion in America, which they can think through and either oppose or support to some degree. However, if we took the American population, cut it down by roughly 25%(which is 82,975,000 out of 331.9 million, remaining 248,925,000!!!), how does this event influence other developmental factors, and the discourse of the legality of abortions? We have lost half the population! How can there be any debate or civil discourse now? It's a must that we lift condoms, contraceptives, and run programs to encourage fertility and try to increase fertility rates, otherwise we lose our position as the super power among other countries, and can't survive a prolonged warfare of attrition.

[Danioover9000]

@aurum

On 3/5/2023 at 3:49 AM, aurum said:

I agree with that.

This is where I think it gets hairy.

Most conservatives are interested in doing just what you described. Perhaps not through genocide or ethnic cleansing. Normie conservatives are not that extreme, and in that way we can draw a distinction. But nonetheless that is often part of the essence of conservatism. It’s a position many conservatives hold who I don’t think rightfully would be labeled fascist.

What else is MAGA but a mythical past that can be achieved by the purging of degenerates? This is not a fringe position. Yet not all trump supporters are fascists. Or if you want to say they are fascists, then I argue the term loses its value.

Again, this sounds like a slightly more extreme version of the standard conservatism we have today.

Many conservatives are very happy with these traditional roles. But I wouldn’t label them fascists per say. 

I think that’s a good distinction. But one of my points was that this is all relative to how you define what is “normal”. And people do have different opinions on this. Different heuristics and epistemology for how we should even go about answering the question “what is normal?”

If you define normal solely through the lens of many progressives, it can start to seem like everything conservative is fascism. Abortion rollbacks become fascism because to some progressives, abortion is “normal” and “obvious”. LGBTQ rollbacks are fascism because LGBTQ rights are “normal” and “obvious”.

Of course not every progressive is thinking this way. But I’ve seen it enough that I think it’s worth mentioning.

I agree with all that.

Good video, I think he has a real point about fascism being more about personality and motivation than particular opinions. I still find his heuristics for fascism vs conservatism lacking, but perfection is not necessary to pragmatically avoid fascist traps. It’s a solid explanation overall.

   I do think most average conservatives just want a normal life really, some people are built to handle only mediocre lifestyle, and are fine with the simplistic life. Not just in the USA but worldwide in many other countries, they just want a normal life. Fascists seem like to me more opportunists and are far more ethnocentric, xenophobic and racist than a healthy traditionalist/conservative.

[Epikur]

Hegel might have argued that the rise of fascism was a natural consequence of the contradictions inherent in modern society.

[Danioover9000]

@Epikur

7 hours ago, Epikur said:

Hegel might have argued that the rise of fascism was a natural consequence of the contradictions inherent in modern society.

   Really?

[DocWatts]

If you want a concrete example of the difference between what healthy conservatism looks like in a pluralistic democracy and how that differs from the fascism of the modern Republican Party, consider how much John McCain's behavior differs from how someone like Trump or DeSantis would have acted in this scenario.

 

Edited March 11, 2023 by DocWatts

[Roy]

This word is so hilariously useless and devoid of intent after being raped and dragged around like Hectors body was by Achilles. Even DURING the war George Orwell talked about this.

It's just become a synonym for, "an attitude of aggressive reactivity from a person or political group who's value system I disagree with or is in conflict with mine."

Edited March 11, 2023 by Roy

[Danioover9000]

@DocWatts

1 hour ago, DocWatts said:

If you want a concrete example of the difference between what healthy conservatism looks like in a pluralistic democracy and how that differs from the fascism of the modern Republican Party, consider how much John McCain's behavior differs from how someone like Trump or DeSantis would have acted in this scenario.

 

   Another good example of a healthy conservative.

[Danioover9000]

@Roy

1 hour ago, Roy said:

This word is so hilariously useless and devoid of intent after being raped and dragged around like Hectors body was by Achilles. Even DURING the war George Orwell talked about this.

It's just become a synonym for, "an attitude of aggressive reactivity from a person or political group who's value system I disagree with or is in conflict with mine."

   True, ir's sometimes important to preserve the definitions of words because wrong usage and meaning over time dilutes the word itself. Semantics and syntax issues over time, the phone philosophy game, lost in translation and so on. Good video that highlights this issue:

 

[Danioover9000]

   Another really good video of how both sides weaponize language, such that it muddies the meanings of Nazism and Facism:

 

[Epikur]

How fascist is genocide? What is genocide?