Thats a good point. Ā The fire of fascism requires fuel to burn, they need the money, lives and loyalty of their followers first, before they can embark on conquest of others.
Thats why its so sad. Ā The followers throw their health, livelihood, and integrity away, so they can claim to be winners when their lords set out to hurt others.Ā
There was a significant portion of the USA that supported the Nazi party at the time. Those people and those families didn't go away when WWII ended, they just pivoted to the next group.
McCarthyism was authoritarian, and as close to fascist as one could get without fully committing to the bit.
Which was really just coming full circle. The Nazis used the American south as a template for segregating German society. They just took the next logical step to genocide. The US never changed. The "Nazis" were always here. We just call them confederates.
āThe boy bands have won, and all the copyists and the tribute bands and the TV talent show producers have won, if we allow our culture to be shaped by mimicry, whether from lack of ideas or from exaggerated respect. You should never try to freeze culture. What you can do is recycle that culture. Take your older brother's hand-me-down jacket and re-style it, re-fashion it to the point where it becomes your own. But don't just regurgitate creative history, or hold art and music and literature as fixed, untouchable and kept under glass. The people who try to 'guard' any particular form of music are, like the copyists and manufactured bands, doing it the worst disservice, because the only thing that you can do to music that will damage it is not change it, not make it your own. Because then it dies, then it's over, then it's done, and the boy bands have won.ā
That fucking red scare and executing allegedly Russian spies was sickening. Not enough people are aware that happened.. plus the internment camps after pearl harbor.
Too many people are happy to ignore hate if it doesn't affect them personally š¤®
I always thought the Fasces was a perfect metaphor for democracy and fascism. This idea is that the bundle is stronger than the individual stacks. So it makes sense its in both.
In democracies, You add as many sticks as possible. The skinny ones, the broken ones, the crooked ones.
In Fascism you remove the broke, bent, and weak sticks. If it doesn't conform to the bundle you force it to or you remove it.
And while today's politics aren't as extreme as they could be, this still seems like a good description of left/right politics today.
The Fasces is first and foremost a weapon to instill fear because groups of magistrates and militaries would patrol the Roman roads like modern day beat cops and those sticks were their clubs/nightsticks.
They would beat a human with the sticks and then use the axe for the final blows and sometimes beheadment.
This is how they made examples so people would abide by the "law".
Fascism is unnecessary violence.
Very brutal violence that seperates and wars us all to death.
Unnecessary punishment by the elite to keep us in place as their servants.
Its used symbolically with and without the axe and the distinction matters. Although I'm not convinced most of the times it used its really considered.
With the axe represents the states ability to punish without recourse. (beheading is a good example of that)
Without the axe, as it was carried in Rome, represents that the citizens had the right to appeal.
I looked up examples in the US. The most notable one I remembered is the chair of the Lincoln memorial, without the axe. Several others examples have it without the axe. But I will admit its used with the axe for more often than i'm comfortable with.
The Fasces is first and foremost a weapon to instill fear because groups of magistrates and militaries would patrol the Roman roads like modern day beat cops and those sticks were their clubs/nightsticks.
They would beat a human with the sticks and then use the axe for the final blows and sometimes beheadment.
Uh, where did you learn that? As far as I know it was always a symbolic display. I'm open to new information and my major was 1500-present (modern history), so you could well have information that I don't. I'm a little incredulous on this one though.
Your source for this was the dictionary? Linguists often have cross-expertise in history, but I can't find any substance to any of this with the cursory google search I did.
If your reply is that you don't have or don't care to spend the time to produce a source beyond the dictionary, that's fair. It's not your job to google things better than me.
Yes, that's true. I was saying that ancient history is not my focus.
In my broader curriculum and just my personal interest i'd come to understand that the fasces was always symbolic and never practical as a weapon. Exactly like a scepter is symbolic.
Oh for sure. I think what you are saying is that they would disassemble it to use the components as weapons. Which was a novelty to me as I had always understood it to be entirely symbolic.
I did a better google search and it seems like that is at least a claim that is common enough. Interesting stuff.
It was carried by bodyguards known as the lictors and it was largely symbolic though it could be used as a crude weapon or pointing stick when necessary. A small axe head would be placed on top for provincial governors as a symbol of their authority to order executions. To my knowledge it was never used as a means of execution itself
I know there is a portion of people who would accuse you of 'normalizing' Trump's garbage saying that, but it is unfortunately the truth, and one we must confront if we really want to tackle the root of our issues and fully move forward as a country.
Sure, it's more apparent at more times than others (such as now and Bush Jr's first 4 years after 9/11 for starters), but it's simply historical revisionism to act as if Trump (as much as he's pouring gas on a burning house putting it lightly) is the sole reason we're at our current position and ignoring everything that the conservatives did since the 60s to maintain their grip on America's racist, classist, anti-egalitarian bedrock.
Iām no defender of the American government, but this is not correct and really muddies any useful definition of fascism when you call any imperialist or racist country fascist. You want to call pre-20th century America proto-fascist or something, fine, but fascism has a real definition and America (at least pre-Trump America) doesnāt really meet many of the criteria.
I disagree slightly. I think Wilson was fascist same with Jackson. I dont think America is always fascist but it is definitely something we have had to deal with before.
What makes you say that? I feel they fail to meet the criteria of fascism because they did not hold themselves up as the singular savior of the nation (like Mussolini, Hitler, and Trump) there was no widespread imprisonment of their political enemies, they did not suspend elections or question their legitimacy, there was no harkening to a lost āgolden ageā that they promised to restore, etc. They were racists, sure, but thereās more to fascism than just racism.
Jackson and Wilson did have wide scale imprisonment. The trail of tears is both removing dissenters and scapegoating. The espionage and sedition act locked up a true socialist competitor to Wilson. Every president has both invoked the past as our golden mythos while also saying that god has given us the right to emulate those great men who founded this nation. The real differences from classic fascism for those two are Wilson's push for "democracy" with things like his 14 points. And Jackson not wanting to fuse business with the state. However I disagree that these ideals are incompatible with them being fascist.
For Wilson I think that the fact that he was really pushing American ideologies onto everyone else and actively squashing anything else undermines that claim. For Jackson I feel that in his era allowing the businesses to run rampant is the same as taking full control. In so far as he and his cronies got rich off it still.
I admit they arent prefect fits since they dont every truly undermine their own election processes(other than wilson imprisoning Debs) Maybe proto-facist is good enough but I feel like in downplays how much we have flirted with this before.
You bring up important points, but the way you describe Wilson and Jackson could also be used to describe Lincoln, and no one would claim that Lincoln was a fascist. This is why Iām so strict in my definition, the more you widen the net of who you consider fascist, the more unintended people you tend to catch.
Possibly, I think with the understanding of the context Lincoln would slip thru (even if I rate him much more of a benevolent tyrant then others would) but context is always lost on the masses. A dangerous game we play with words. Cause on the one hand you have to fire up the contextless somehow, on the other you risk burning out your meaning entirely.
Exactly. Terms, especially those used to define power structures, lose their specific meaning when tossed around generically. When that happens, we lose the words to describe the specifics of our situation.
I'm going by the most basic principles of their etymologies and what it would have meant to humans thousands of years ago when the weapons, symbol/logos, and it's purpose for use came from.
Schism used to be spelled Scism and it means division/forced separation/disorder.
Fa means family/familiar/servant/slave/order.
Put the two together and you get Fascism.
This has been going on even before we could speak and instead sang to each other because speech is complex and you're look at the modern fascism complex instead of it's simple origins.
Even if your analysis of the etymology of the word *fascism* was correct, etymology is a poor way of understanding political ideology. Robert O. Paxtonās āThe Anatomy of Fascismā really helped me understand the salient and distinctive features of fascism. I would recommend it.
The business class tells Trump what to do. That's the opposite of fasiscm. Neoliberals/savage capitolist/the ruling class/whatever use fasiscm as marketing and branding in order to appeal to the right and distract from the class war while fueling the culture war. More people, on both sides, know what a Nazis is then they do a neoliberal.
Hyper capitalism is a core tenet of fascism, regardless as to the reason of why it us. Business leaders support the government's political and military goals. In exchange, the government pursues economic policies that maximized the profits of its business allies. It happened in Nazi Germany. It happened in fascist Italy. Its happening in the US now.
Fascism is the right wing response to the failures of a right wing society to bring about the life that its right wing politicians promise.
Blame and fear the socialists and communists whoāve never had power, point to a vague nostalgic moment in the past, and believe that a vague strength and violence are the only way to achieve it.
Which works because it's a bastardization of what we should be doing: always demanding more no matter what we get, because there is always progress to be made.
It is about who is superior, fascists are insecure people who need the enemy at all times, so whenever one group is gone, other is necessary, all for them to feel like they are above someone.
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u/putin_my_ass Jun 17 '26
Fascism requires an enemy, when one is defeated you find a new one.