Comment by chillingeffect
1 day ago
You subbed in "ends" for "purpose to is to validate." They're different. Without the seduction of violence and racism, fascism is a much less convincing argument.
Facism is a paranoid carnival that feeds on fear, scapegoating, and blood. That’s the historical record.
Fascism needs violence and racism as tools and moral glue to hold its contradictions together. It’s the myth-making and the permission slip for brutality that gives fascism its visceral pull, not some utopian goal of pure violence, but a promise of restored glory, cleansed nation, purified identity, and the righteous right to crush the other.
Fascism doesn’t chase violence like a dog after a stick. Im fact, it needs violence like a drunk needs a barstool. Strip out the promise of righteous fists and pure-blood fantasies, and the whole racket folds like a bad poker hand. Without the thrill of smashing skulls and blaming ‘the other guy,’ fascism’s just empty uniforms and a lousy flag collection.
Look at Mussolini: all that pomp about the Roman Empire while squads of Blackshirts bashed heads in the streets to keep people terrified and in line. Hitler wrapped his genocidal sadism in pseudo-science, fake grievances, and grand promises of ‘racial purity'...the point was never a coherent plan beyond expansion and domination.
> You subbed in "ends" for "purpose to is to validate." They're different. Without the seduction of violence and racism, fascism is a much less convincing argument.
Yeah I generally meant that there are people who desire violence. Their targets of choice vary, be it along boundaries of race, sex, etc.
Fascism uses this reactionary tendency to amass a following. It's a weapon that is wielded inconsistently. Many Homosexuals were part of the early brown shirts. Hitler publicly said their sexuality wasn't opposed to Nazism.
These brownshirts would attack union meetings, violently break strikes, and generally act as an unofficial arm of violence for the Nazis. Once power had been gained, and enemies squashed, there was now an issue with their sexuality and the Nazi party acted as they are to do.
There's no logic behind the scapegoat. It's fluid and can change on a whim to suit the emotional reactions of whoever they're trying to garner support from.