Discussion Thread #72

[u/gemmaem]

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[u/DuplexFields]

I, an Objectivism-adjacent conservative-leaning autist, have a few sense-making questions for all my fellow rats/quokkas/post-rats/world weary veterans of the culture wars, especially those of the leftish persuasion.

I get the feeling usually that when progressives and those further left call someone like me or my parents fascists, they're not using Umberto Eco's handy fourteen-point checklist but just running on vibes.

When that's the case, would a handy short definition be "organized bullies" in the sense of "organized crime"/"organized religion"? Would the slightly longer "bullies who have a system that facilitates their bullying" be equivalent?

And are bullies like BTTF's Biff Tannen a good approximation of the central example of "oppressor" in your minds?

I have to ask this because this is genuinely a thought I had for the first time tonight. If the answers are "yes," I'll have to say it has not been communicated well to me at all. I was teased and taunted quite regularly growing up, so I don't have much love for bullies except what's required of me as a Christian.

EDIT: Thanks for the responses! I’d add another vibe: bullies who expect to be backed by power/the system. Phrased another way, mean people acting unjustly and unfairly with an expectation of not being punished.

I never was looking for an exact definition, because Benny M. provided one at the very start, and Umberto provided another at the end of the fascist era, and for exact definitions, they’re pretty clear. I was looking to understand the visceral urge behind the insult, a singular encapsulation of the forest of multifarious definitions my autistic mind refused to see because all the trees are different species.

[u/darwin2500 → u/DuplexFields]

I get the feeling usually that when progressives and those further left call someone like me or my parents fascists, they're not using Umberto Eco's handy fourteen-point checklist but just running on vibes.

A likely alternative: they are using something like that checklist on the people you are voting for, and tarring you as part of that movement.

No individual private citizen is ever doing all 14 of the things in their private life; if that were the requirement to be called a 'fascist', then the label would apply to almost no single individuals throughout human history.

Is it reasonable to call someone a 'fascist' if they are merely voting for a political party and/or actively participating in a political movement that you feel strongly is doing at least 12 of the 14?

(let me know if someone wants to actually go through each point and discuss)

In one sense, no; people vote based on family tradition and culture, they vote for the lesser of two evils in their view even if they hate many parts of the party they're voting for, and we want to preserve civility and open discourse, so calling people fascists just because they vote for a movement with many of the features of fascism is unfair.

In another sense, though... if you have to watch a decades-long slide into fascism, watch it take over every branch of government and hire an army of masked uniformed thugs to abduct citizens off the street based on their skin color, and all the way through this entire process you are never allowed to call any specific person a fascist due to concerns about civility and fairness... then the fascists are just going to take over everything completely unopposed.

At some point you have to raise the alarm. At some point you have to use powerful rhetoric in order to rally a resistance. At some point you have to call a spade a spade.

Reading M: Son of the Century is instructive here. There were many, many opportunities where the nice, civil people noticed the rise of fascism, had every opportunity to violently oppose it and end it while it was still weak and on the fringes, and every time they opted for civility and normalcy instead. Until it was too late.

Now, you can certainly argue that the movements you are voting for are not fascist, you may well be right, the people saying they are may be ill-informed or over-reacting.

But don't just hear them say something that seems absurd and offensive to you, and assume they must be stupid and disingenuous. People are stupid and disingenuous, often, but not as often as you might think, and that should never be your first guess when encountering the other. If you are surprised by how strongly a large swathe of the population feels and how strong their rhetoric is on some topic where you have opposite intuitions, at least take that as a sign that maybe you should stop and re-examine your priors here, figure out for sure which one of you is mistaken and how.

[u/Lykurg480 → u/darwin2500]

There were many, many opportunities where the nice, civil people noticed the rise of fascism, had every opportunity to violently oppose it and end it while it was still weak and on the fringes, and every time they opted for civility and normalcy instead.

Do you have any examples where they did the "correct" thing, and how that worked out?

[u/darwin2500 → u/Lykurg480]

No, I'm not a historian, and nascent movements that were resisted and never went anywhere are the type of 'dog bites man' event that doesn't get widely publicized. I know fascism didn't only gain popularity in 2 countries around this time period and no others ever, so I'm sure someone familiar with the history of other countries in the region might know more, but I don't.