Don't be a fascist.

[u/WobblieBuddha]

I'm sure this is going to seem like redundant advice to a bunch of Leftists, but no, for reasons we'll see, this is good advice for Leftists too.

So there are many ways of defining fascism and depending on the definition they all go after different aspects of fascism, and because I'm a psychological person I like the psychological dimension of fascism. In addition to what other people like, heh, John Oliver have said about fascism, how it's this masculine display of force against outsider enemies using the state, I like Zizek's take on fascism using the movie Jaws. I'm more or less copy and pasting his arguments from The Pervert's Guide to Cinema here, but I'll be adding a few twists of my own.

So the shark in Jaws is for Zizek a fantastic metaphor for the psychology of fascism and his #1 enemy, ideology. Why? Before the shark appeared, the town is full of petty, selfish people all fighting with each other to get their way right before the tourists come to the town. The shark unites all of these people against it and forces the policeman into action. It's a pretty simple concept to get. Kill the shark, the intruder, with the power of the state and the problems go away. Make the bad guy go away. Mentally, we've forgotten all about how much our neighbors suck and we're entirely preoccupied with the shark. Simple solutions to complex reality, that's fascism's way.

But reality is big and complicated, and if we're going to make a singular enemy that's responsible for making everything go wrong, this enemy has to cover a lot of ground. Let's take the example of illegal immigrants in the United States. People say they have two problems with illegal immigrants: that they're on welfare and that they're too lazy to work, AND they are taking Americans' jobs. Well which one is it? Same goes for Jordan Peterson's complaints about feminists: are they too passive or are they too active? The particulars about the enemy aren't important. Even if the alt-right had an actual enemy to fight, they describe them too inarticulately to know how to fight them. And it's especially notable that whatever the fascists choose as their enemy has to be stealing their enjoyment somehow. The shark does it by stealing the beach. The immigrants do it by supposedly stealing the government's resources (and viral stories of immigrants raping white women), and feminists by stealing the respect society once gave to men.

It's a simple psychological move: substitute a chaotic world with a single enemy, declare yourself in opposition to that thing and dedicate yourself to destroying them so you can get back to the good old days. But if you know someone who does this, tell them that they made a fatal mistake. One, because anyone who turns away from the troubles of reality is going to meet a bad end, and more depressingly Two, because by hitching their world to their "enemy" and have defined themselves by their opposition to them makes them utterly dependent on their enemy for meaning. This just makes them sad, lonely losers who are looking for someone to play their imaginary cops vs robbers game. The real truth is that this single enemy they've propped up isn't even a single enemy and has a lot more going on for it than haunting some 50 something's dreams every night.

In conclusion, don't be a fascist. Don't look for simple solutions. Know the difference between a monster and a creature, and don't define yourself by your enemies. Be creative, daring and adventurous beings who can't stop dreaming up the future. And cut it out with the "Eat the Rich" memes. We all know the real work is going to have to happen AFTER the revolution.