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Comment by piva00

1 year ago

What's your personal threshold for gatekeeping when people are supposed to call it fascist?

Have you done your nerd research on how Nazis dismantled the democratic state? If so, at what step would you have gatekept calling it fascist?

Blanket calling worried people as "juvenile" as a dismissal is in itself pretty fucking juvenile, hope you can see that.

Progressives are using words like Nazi and fascist, purely as a slur against a political rival, without really understanding what those words mean nor the attrocities they represent.

What the Nazi's did was horrifici, and it's incredibly insensitive, inappropriate, and, yes, juvenile, to water that down by using it for political point scoring.

  • What’s the threshold before you can say it? Doing nazi salutes and mass deleting the public research / books / info pages isn’t far enough yet?

    • I guarantee you’ll still be seeing people doing this long after Trump is dead. The point isn’t that there is an actual line. The point is that there IS NO actual line. The goalposts will shift forever.

  • Not only progressives are calling it fascism or proto-fascism, do you understand the steps fascism takes to fully take hold? Don't you see any parallels? Have you read any books on the subject?

    It seems like you get butthurt from reading people calling moves very similar to fascism done by politicians you support, fascism takes many flavours, Italian fascism was different from German fascism. The way it's going the past month looks like to be shaping an American flavour of fascism.

    There's no watering down, you are seeing with your own eyes a movement happening where the leader of the executive is attempting to snatch power, it never happens at once, it's always through salami slicing. What will be the breaking point for you, specifically? What signs do you expect so it can be called fascism?

    You are all around this forum whining about "progressives" trying to heed a call about a dark path being traced. You never seem to acknowledge there are very worrying moves happening, for some reason you do not want to hear it, you want to shut off the discussion at every turn by using progressives as a slur, and anything said by that out-group as wrong or hysterical a priori. Can't you see how stupid it is? You are always attempting to throw a wrench into these discussions with vitriol, as a non-American I really ask you to inform and educate yourself better, to learn about the process of fascism before coming with knee-jerk reactions because you don't like "progressives".

    Go read "Hitler's Beneficiaries", read any book on historical recounts of the process of fascism unravelling from the 1920s to the 1930s, you are behaving exactly as the citizens enabling Mussolini and Hitler. American Fascism will not be Nazi or Italia Fascista, it has its own shape and form (such as not being anti-semitic, completely different to Nazis) but even though the topography differs, the core principles are pretty much the same.

    Don't be an enabler, you won't like to be on the wrong side of history.

    • Few days ago, in Poland died a journalist, historian and former Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner. He was known for speaking every year there. His last speech was - remain vigilant.

      I think that speaks for itself and I need not to comment on this.

      Americans, why? Why are you so keen on dabbling with a homegrown fascism of yours? Why are you so keen on setting the world aflame?

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    • > What signs do you expect so it can be called fascism?

      I think some people just know a few images from the Nazis at the height of their power. Or the death camps, that were only discovered because the Nazis lost the war (the plan was to erase all traces, after all). No concept of the 1920s, not even "Mein Kampf", nothing.

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  • I don't call Trump's recent actions as strictly Nazi, but they are definitely Fascist.

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  • From Hitler's mouth itself[0]:

    > "Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"

    > "Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

    > "Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.

    > "We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."

    [0] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatint...

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    • Fascism is a reaction to a capitalist crisis, Nazis weren't socialists by any definition except for using populist agendas like sharing of profits and welfare to rally their base.

      Nazis never nationalised any industry and rather used corporatism to take hold of them while those were still private entities, same in Italy, industry and fascist regimes walked hand-in-hand.

      Saying those are equivalent to socialism just due to populist rhetoric is misleading and historically wrong...

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