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Comment by LAC-Tech

1 day ago

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Fascism is a form of ultranationalism based on a myth of national rebirth (“we must purge decadence and be born again”), which seeks to create a new, regimented society through authoritarian power and mass mobilization, often embracing violence.

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Facism is a very appealing form of organizing society, so no surprise that people would like to have it. The same way many europeans though that facism is an answer to many problems of those times.

But wait, why, beyond shallow demonisation, such seemingly great idea could be considered undesired? Thoughts?

  • How is fascism even slightly appealing?

    Violence and chaos for anyone with "wrong" ideas, or friends, or genealogy. One man dictating your life choices and options. State control of quite literally everything you do, with the threat of violence and death as their tool.

    Fuck. That.

  • I think a good comparison would be the word "puritan". At one point puritanism was an existing social movement that mattered, and lead to a lot of upheaval.

    But the context in which it existed is gone. So if someone calls someone a puritan now, they don't mean they're trying to rid the Church of England of catholic influences. The reformation is over. It's now a fuzzier kind of "cultural" insult.

    I think people are finding hard to let the word "fascist" go. For so long you could use it to immediately put people on the defensive. But much like puritan, the sting is basically all gone. Hard for people to grasp here as I know this place trends older and more left wing, but time marches on.

    • “Puritan” retains meaning beyond its historical context, since it was originally a descriptive term that became a term for a specific movement. “Fascist” does not, because it doesn’t have a (useful) descriptive meaning, it was only ever a symbol for a specific ideology.

For a more rigorous definition than “things I don’t like”, there’s Umberto Eco’s core characteristics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

  • Funny how points 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 14 and often also 2 and 13 are fundamental for rhetoric of the modern "progressive" left. Thank you for the link. It's the best thing to send to those who are too quick to call their opponents fascists these days.

>The word "fascist" now has positive connotations for me

Spoken like somebody who never had to endure real fascism.

>I realise a lot of you will want to call me fascist for this comment, or more likely something a bit snider and less direct. Just know that I genuinely don't care. It's just a word now.

No, you may not be a fascist, but it's opinions like yours that helped make it possible. Mitläufer.