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i mean theyve always been openly couping and subjugating the rest of the world. its just been successfull for their own population for most of this time.
as the meme says, its just ran out of space to expand and its now fucking over their own people and allies instead.
what fascists are doing right now in the us is not much different from what they have been doing to south america, africa and east asia for quite some time now.
So I’ve had this issue too, it’s because we can’t agree on the definition.
I use the definition in the dictionary and based on that, US could fall under it, kind of loosely but technically correct.
Umberto Eco’s Ur Fascism definition I think is pretty good. Often times, the “dictionary definition” isn’t the best definition to use, especially when it comes to topics like political ideologies, which tends to be a bit more complex and nuanced than what can be encompassed in a simple colloquial dictionary definition.
Imma post the ur fascism aspects here.
1.“The cult of tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
2.“The rejection of modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
3.“The cult of action for action’s sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
4.“Disagreement is treason” – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
5.“Fear of difference”, which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
6.“Appeal to a frustrated middle class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
7.“Obsession with a plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson’s book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
8.Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak”. On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
9.“Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy” because “life is permanent warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
10.“Contempt for the weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
10.“Everybody is educated to become a hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”
11.“Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality”.
12.“Selective populism” – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people”.
13.“Newspeak” – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
Edit: numbered
I should have scrolled further before replying. IMO you nailed it. Umberto Eco is my go-to whenever this comes up.
Which dictionary are you reading? A key component of fascism is a dictatorship. You can argue about controlling oppositional voices or segmentation of society in the US, but a dictatorship is pretty core to fascism in any definition I’ve seen. And yeah, our voting system sucks that still doesn’t make it a dictatorship.
dictatorship was happening outside their own borders for the longest time. kind of why you guys pay so much money to keep a military almost bigger than every other in the world combined.
inside the us the blacks have seen the boot way more. ask any awake black person if its been a democracy for them.
or ask central, south america, africa and east asia if the repeated coups over the decades are anything less than dictatorial.
Yeah, that’s grasping really hard. Even if we assume the it isn’t a democracy because voting was unfair, it still isn’t a dictatorship because power was being passed around to different people. Also, outside has nothing to do with the definition of a dictatorship.
its not. look up your own history of installing brutal dictatorships in the aforementioned places.
and of bullying the third world into neoliberal capitalism with very exploitative terms or else. it doesnt matter we have “elections” if the us is the one always calling the shots.
Dude, that is not fascism. That’s imperialism. Those are totally different things and Fascists are not the only imperialists, nor are Fascists imperialist by definition. Fascism is something specific, not just “evil” government.
they do implement fascism out here. both sides of the same coin.
fascists are the only ones to practice imperialism to nearly this extent after the industrial revolution.
Which dictionary are you reading?
I like Umberto Eco on this one. I’m in my 50s. We’ve checked many of these boxes throughout my life, and for some others you can point to various moments in our history, many but not all of them recent. Certainly enough to satisfy the meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco
Yeah, those are traits of fascism, not a definition of fascism. Anyway, yeah the US has met many of them throughout its history. So has almost every other nation. The term is useless if you just call everyone fascist. The US has not met most of them at any one particular time. You can’t just take that list and say some traits were met in this period, some others in this other period, etc. and then say they covered all the traits at some point in time so must be fascist. That’s not how that works.
I was talking about the forceful oppression of opposition. That is an element that has existed in the US for a long time.
US has had no dictator yet but a president has much more power than a prime minister.
If you consider fascism to be a spectrum, then US has always had these elements. Dictatorship is basically the end of said spectrum.
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Original Nazi party literally used USA tactics as an example to follow
That still doesn’t prove the claim “America was always fascist”
Partially because being copied by the Nazis doesn’t intrinsically mean you’re fascist (they copied a hell of a lot of things, including but not limited to fascism)
And partially because that doesn’t cover the “always” part at all
A lot of racist, fascist shitbags have cooped a great many things over the years.
I assume you’re referring to couping, as opposed to storing chickens
Your statement may be true, but also doesn’t prove the original claim
The definition of fascism is not when someone is racist, or when someone does a coup
The whole “fascism is when thing I don’t like” is exactly the thing the commenter above me was complaining about
They meant “co-opted”
O’Brian is messing with the pattern buffer again.
Yeah, but in the case of The U.S. the things the Nazis copied were the fascist things.
The Nazis were inspired by the American Eugenics movement. Fun fact the Eugenics movement was probably more popular in the U.S. than it was in Germany.
They were also inspired by segregation for black people. I think most people would agree that at the time racial segregation was an improvement over how The U.S. treated black people at the founding of the country; when there was an even more intense form of racial hierarchy in the form of chattel slavery.
The U.S. was also founded on the genocide of the Native Americans. That continued past the founding in the form of manifest destiny. More fun facts Hitler justified his invasion of Russia in the terms of manifest destiny.
That’s a short list of some of the fascist things the Nazis took from the U.S. that stretch back to its founding.
What did the Nazis take from America that wasn’t fascist?
Those are fascist things, but they do not make fascism. Dictatorial rule is pretty core to fascism. Yes, it shares similarities to fascism, but it is not fascist. It also shares traits with a ton of other political idiologies that it does not totally meet the definition of.
For an example of insufficient conditions, Skyrim is a first person game where you fight enemies, sometimes while shooting. It is not a first person shooter though, even though they share traits it it. You must meet all traits to be that thing, not just some of them.
At this point we’re just begging the question. If fascists could get what they want and call it democracy. They would do that. Throughout most of American history with rare exceptions our “democracy” has been captured by capitalists/corporate interests.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power. — Benito Mussolini
If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck then it’s a fucking duck.
Look if this is something that makes people who still hold onto American exceptionalism uncomfortable then I would say perhaps America has not “always” been fascist. There have been times of exception. However I want to emphasize those have been the exception rather than the norm.
Basically the only exceptions have been during times of intense civil unrest. During the civil war, the civil rights movement and, perhaps WWII on an international level.
It didn’t cost the nation one penny to integrate lunch counters. It didn’t cost the nation one penny to guarantee the right to vote. And the things that we are calling for now would mean that the nation will have to spend billions of dollars in order to solve these problems. —MLK
The BLM protests were the largest movement of civil unrest in american history. We got Nancy Pelosi kneeling in kente cloth and Genocide Joe as president in response. The question remains if the U.S. can shed what remains of its fascist history. Because to do so would cost those corporate/capitalist interests something.
Well said.
If it was fascist at that time, would it have been less fascist when America had legal, designated concentration camps of black slaves?
I understand the instict to dismiss it and maybe “always” will be a step too far but i think a lot of Americans are in denial the extensive cross over between early 20th century USA and nazi Germany. I’m not even just talking about how hitler literally based the Jewish ghettos and anti Jewish laws on the black ghettos and Jim crow or Germany’s Eastern expansion and extermination for land being modeled on Americas Western expansion:
The economics of fascism is croney capitalism, with mass privatisation of public assets, ultra low tax for the rich, pitiful wages and endless toil for everyone else, huge corporate subsidies, handouts to the rich and a merger of the corporate and the state. Some of the state might even be outsourced. Whatever way they set it up, the result was always that.
I’m not even saying that from a presumed position of my country being better. I’m from the UK and the East India company/royal west African company being a corporate state is about purest form of fascism you can get. Thats before you get to all the rest of it. Our biggest export is class subjugation.
Cope
Don’t know why you’re getting down voted. Hitler literally said he looked to the US Army’s genocide of Native Americans as a proof of concept for his own Jewish Holocaust.
I’m making the yanks uncomfortable.
To be fair, Russia is as big as it is because of genocide too.
Lefty Memes sees heavy Liberal traffic, in my experience.
But what does that have to do with the definition of fascism? That is an evil action that inspired a fascistic government.
Doesn’t really prove much. If the meme said “the US has always beaten down its minorities” or something like that, we wouldn’t be quibbling over the wording here.
I’m sorry but how is that unique to the US, that’s literally all of human history and all humans in human history have always had an “other’”.
What makes the US of any more note, if anything, is just the level and formalization of such disgraceful treatment of the “other” that, started with the colonialization of America and the slave trade that boosted it.
Do I think it could be said that this is not the first time that such a thing has happened in history? It’s just this cycle, who knows how long these Cycles go, and hopefully it’s when we eventually evolve to get off of.
They didn’t say it was unique to the US?
they even copied the segregation tactics the us was using against blacks, except they used it against jews.
it was rightly treated as worth of national shame for generations for nazis, but when it comes to the us it was just an oopsie sorry but we aint doing it anymore. except they kind of are at home and moreso abroad.
In art i use tactics by bob ross, am i now as great of a painter as bob ross? Am i now bob ross? No! See how your argument is shit?
I don’t think your argument is making the point you want to make 😆
Parts of the definition do not make the definition. Are you intentionally obfuscating? Just because some actions share fascistic traits doesn’t de facto a fascist country make. Perhaps educate yourself on the definition of fascism?
I think it’s stupid to say they have always been fascist, but people definitely don’t grasp what fascism is, they think it’s people marching in nice grey uniforms on the street and concentration camps out in the open and if you try to call anything that’s not that they call you stupid and overreacting
“All men are created equal”
is slave state
Always has been
Would you say it might apply to an openly genocidal state conquering its neighbors?
How about when that state also has up to 30% of its population by region in racial chattel slavery?
How about when the genocide is done and the slavery ended but it still enforces apartheid politics?
How about when it overthrows the government of any neighbor it disagrees with?
Invades other countries and kills millions?
But, hey. It’s not technically fascism as long it’s white men voting to do that, right? They usually weren’t even Italian! It’s stupid to call it fascism when it doesn’t come from Rome!
Those are definitely trait you’d expect from fascism, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient to be fascist. Fascism is not just doing a bad thing. It’s a very specific set of traits, which the US does not meet —in my opinion and any other informed opinion that I’ve seen.
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So when I kick down your door and execute you for not agreeing with me politically, it won’t be a fascist action, good to know.
It could be. They can do that without being fascist as well. It is neither necessary nor sufficient.
Im probably not going to go through all these, but for 1 your example is far too broad. Every single thing we make is inspired by other things in the past. That’s how we improve. A cult of tradition is more like saying “we are the third Roman empire (third riech), and we are deserving of inheriting their history. We will enforce this idea and destroy anything counter to it.” America does have better examples of this that what you used though. I wouldn’t argue it doesn’t have a cult of tradition.
For 8, that’s also a bad example. I don’t think there was an idea the natives were strong. They were just savage and violent. They needed us to “civilize” them was the (bullshit) idea. I don’t recall seeing much ever about them being particularly strong, just murderous and evil. A better example, though you have to get fairly modern, is communism. It’s both a useless form of government destined to fail, but also we need to send solders and spies all over to protect other countries from falling to it.
9 we do not have really. We are fairly jingoist as a nation, but it’s never (or rarely) said to be treason to disagree. After 9/11 it would be hard to be elected whole disagreeing with a war, but Bernie Sanders did and has done fairly well politically and not executed for treason.
11 is not about individualism. It’s about every person needs to live their life for the glory of the nation. Individualism is anti-hero. A hero should live their lives (and die) for others. Individualism is you should be self-serving.
Go unalive yourself, you deliberately blinded ostrich.
Wow dude. Wtf is wrong with you? What did I do to you?
(Don’t actually, but maybe grow the fuck up and realize that times we fought monarchists and Nazis doesn’t change everything else)
No. Obviously not. I never said such. Things change over time and the same nation could be fascist at one point and anarchist at another. Don’t imply I said something that I didn’t please. This is actually an argument against the US “always” being fascist though, because we haven’t met all the traits you’ve listed at the same time, even using the examples you gave which I don’t agree with. Any nation will meet all of those eventually if you give it enough time.
Also, these are traits of fascism. They are not definitionally fascist. Again, probably the main point of fascism is a dictatorship. Without that you can only be fash-ish not fascist.
It’s pretty clear that your definition of fascism is heavily predicated on your feelings. And that judicious reservation of judgment is applied to actions that don’t effect you while emotional appeals are applied when it does.
Man, it’s so easy to dismiss an argument by saying someone is just arguing from emotion. I don’t feel like anything I said had anything to do with emotions, but I guess it makes you feel like you won the argument so I’m glad that makes you happy. It doesn’t make you right, but whatever.
You were given numerous material examples which you handwaved away. No one is dismissing your argument as emotional. It’s emotional because you refuse to engage with the material evidence before you and retreat to unfalsifiable definitions that are based on your feels. This means no one can prove you wrong because know one can know “you’re TRUE feelings” Typical concern trolling, seen it a million times.
The US has a centuries long history of genocide and enslavement that continue into today. All their power and wealth is predicated on this bloodshed in the here and now. And it was all done for the sake of private interests.
You deny that it was always fascism because you and your family are settler house servants in this scheme. You get a small piece of property and a middle class lifestyle in exchange for your implicit support for the US to continue to eat the bodies of he colonized and impoverished.
I don’t deny it’s fascism because I benefit from it. It’s because imperialism is not the definition of fascism or we wouldn’t have two very different words for that. You want to call it fascism because your political vocabulary apparently sucks. Fascism is not just a synonym for something bad, which I agree the US has done tons of evil. It just isn’t that specific word.
My political vocabulary doesn’t suck. You’re a typical reactionary tankie that thinks that using Lenin’s outdated analysis and calling it Marxism gives you the authority to dismiss the grievances of the colonized.
Marxism and capitalism doesn’t have stages. Where capitalism exists all of Marx’s critiques apply. You use the tied old “muh imperialism” argument because you’re a Russian chauvinist that fears that the fascist accusations could apply to current day Russia and the fallen Soviet Union.
Next thing you’ll say is that a constitutional monarchy can’t be a fascist state.
Why would I say that. That is a dictator. If they meet the other requirements, sure. They aren’t just because they have a single person ruling, but they could be.
Ah, so some kind of Grand Council wouldn’t count either?
It’s only fascism when it’s effects me you see.
Doing evil things =/= fascism.
Fascists do evil things, so do others.
I think this is the best video on fascism https://youtu.be/5Luu1Beb8ng?si=Bfyx8qpyz9EbuFQX
I don’t disagree that fascism has been part of the US always but it has been everywhere, it never went away, but it really came out with trump whether you think Trump is a fascist or just a useful idiot/ opportunist capitalist is up to debate imo. But his following has a large group of fascists.
They worship trump to an almost religious degree, they use fascist symbolism, they are predominantly white and believe they have a right to rule and be on top just because, they accept minorities and some lgb (not T) people as long as it lets them get into the position of power, then turn on them ( as seen by the many leopardsatemyface posts about gay republicans)
Fascism is a specific political ideology that has some telltale signs not just a collection if evil deeds, what’s the point of using words if we bend the definition to whatever we want to say?
Man, at this point the word has no more meaning. The definition has been coopted and broadened so much that anything bad is a fash
That’s imperialism, fascism is a very, very specific concept.
Lol, brainlet Lenin take.
Best not to use to academic language when dealing with those that Academia has failed so thoroughly. Or the ones who already know and don’t care cuz they got enough of a kickback from kicking down.
This wasn’t encough for the libs.
House of Representatives Votes 269-144 to Ban State Department from Citing Gaza Death Toll
I am pretty sure England allowed the Anschluss and for Germany to take parts of Czechoslovakia before WW2, because they thought that would be enough for Hitler, so does that mean England was fascist?
so does that mean England was fascist?
The biggest imperial and colonial power of perhaps all of history? yeah probably
imperliasim and colonialism =/= fascism…
Why do you conflate two different things --both bad-- but cant distinguish the definitions for each? There’s a reason we have separate words for Imperialism and fascism? There’s a weird fetish for this word here and you are very intent on applying it for some reason.
I can distinguish the definition for each, which is why I’m applying the label. I’m just using a different definition than you.
To perpetuate supremacy and keep an in group and out group amongst all it’s colonies and populations, something that they found necessary in order to be able to extract colonial goods and maintain property, they had to build a hierarchy. That hierarchy was partially based on race. The US was a colonial state and actively engaged in the genocide of the native americans, both before and after, so much so that hitler took notice and said, gimme a slice of that. This happened with basically every colony that England took, even their first ones, like ireland, where now a very slim population actually speaks irish. I don’t really feel bad in calling that kind of behavior to be like, prototypically fascist.
Maybe if you were to define fascism as integrally privatizing other public goods, like mussolini and hitler did, then that might swing things a little bit, but america and england both went and did that later on and historically have had no problem with doing that. There’s really not a good definition of fascism that I’ve ever heard that doesn’t apply to america or england, other than “oh, well, those countries were super authoritarian”, and then somehow they don’t recognize, say, that america has 1% of the world’s prison population and a massive police state, and the level at which we propagate authoritarian governments globally in order to further our own interests. The semantic argument that people try to hash out over definitions of fascism, it’s not the real crux of the issue there, it’s just a kind of obfuscation of the real talking point, which is that people aren’t realizing the massive amount of bullshit the imperial core has been engaging in on a near constant basis for like the past couple hundred years, and precisely how bad it really is.
Why are we creating our own definitions for words? Fascism is a term used to describe a very specific form of governance characterized by elements not included in your description. Chief among them is ruling by a dictatorship and exclusive single party.
The things you described are indeed bad things, some which have been adopted and implemented by fascist regimes as well. But just because two people engage occasionally in the same practices it doesn’t make them twinsies by definition. Sometimes me and my buddy wear the same shirt, but he’s a communist and I’m a liberal. Just because we wear the same shirt sometimes it doesn’t suddenly make him liberal or me communist.
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race
There is a strange fetishization of this word online and it has since lost any meaning it used to originally have because now every bad thing has become a fash. It’s meaningless.
Tell me that you don’t know what fascism is without telling me you don’t know what real fascism.
What the USA has been for a long time is an oligarchy, and there are literal Princeton studies to support it. It’s only now that it’s following Russia into becoming full-fledged dictatorships.
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The Ku Klux Klan was a tool of the slave owning oligarchs.
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I would argue it’s fallen out of favor with the preferred organization nowadays being the GQP Trump personality cult. But yes, and they still trade in what slavery basically was, insurmountable debt.
Yeah, Trump’s movement is fascist, and I’m sure that we’ll be in some kind of fascistic autocracy if he wins the election, but I think what this meme is trying to describe is imperialism, not fascism.
That would make sense, imperialism and colonialism go hand in hand. Maybe fascism is the inevitable consequence of when expansion is no longer possible and the imperialism and its faux patriotism turns inward.
Why not both
brain dead take.
Always a racist slave state? sure. A military cult since like 1910? sure. A broken oligarchy? sure.
Fascist? defs heading that way. Not always.
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Which definition of fascism are you applying?
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yeah fair actually
Not the guy you replied to, but we hit most of Umberto Eco’s points IMO:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco
You clearly don’t know tour hustory.
France going the same direction.
Unfortunately much of the world is going in the same direction… really worrying to see. A third great war seems inevitable in our lifetimes
Are you saying a country built upon colonization, Genocide and slavery has a systemic problem of oppression?
We just need to vote harder for Genocide!
a country built upon colonization, Genocide and slavery
Which country wasn’t?
Probably the two most unusual things about the US are that instead of either absorbing and assimilating, killing off, or enslaving the natives we mostly relocated them and that we imported most of our slaves from overseas instead of primarily enslaving the conquered people(s). I mean those, and we’re one of the later examples of all of it in history.
Which country wasn’t?
America is an outlier. Concentration camps and intentional shipping Europeans overseas with the intention to colonize an 'unpopulated land (see “thinking the Natives weren’t human”)
Most of history lands were conquered and populations were absorbed into a kingdom. Occasional Genocides too place but wiping such an area to replace the natives is special. Not to mention it all happened just 250 years ago.
Adolf Hitler was literally inspired by how America wiped out all the brown natives and replaced them with the white Ubermensch.
We could start by agreeing on the definition of the term. Because 30s fascism is no more, and that is a fact. What constitutes fascism in todays world? As an Argentinian, the USA meddled with my country via dictatorship whthin operation Condor. That amounts to fascism, or at least, a subtype of it. I think Frank Zappa warned us about this…
It’s authoritarian tribalism based on nationality. In other words the forced elimination of opposition, because of the belief in one’s superiority. And since one’s superiority derives from their nationality, it inevitably has to include some traditional values. Any in fighting is just arguing over the meaning of their nationality. I don’t understand what people don’t understand or how they keep getting it wrong.
Lol true
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
As per the wikipedia definition, it does seem the USA has been fascist towards the rest of the world, just not towards its own citizens (overtly) until now…
So if we agree fascism can apply internationally but not domestically (which is not usually how the term is described) then the meme is accurate
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As per the wikipedia definition,
You stopped real close to the top of that article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#By_scholars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco
So, we have an imperialism which has both historically been in place around the globe and constantly been effecting an in-group, which exists internal to borders, and an out-group, outside them. We also have a couple different in and out groups within the US. Black people, Native americans, you name a racial minority, we’ve done fucked up shit to them. So, pretty textbook so far. Violent military expansionism, imperialism, and high levels of domestic racism is what most people would probably tally up fascism to be as, colloquially. They might not even pick up on a dictator being a central component. We also have corporate capture, which is pretty solidly the case in america. We have an erosion of public utilities and infrastucture. We have a police state. Fervent nationalism, controlled mass media, blatant theocratic intervention, you know, we have all the classic markers of pretty much all the definitions.
The only qualification I can cook up is that we’re presumably a “democracy”, right, which I didn’t really even think of as being a requirement. You can have a fascist democracy, it’s just a democracy where not everyone can vote, which has always been a kind of tenuous characteristic of democracy at best. We went from wealthy, white male land owners being the ones to vote, to rapidly most everyone being able to vote, actually fairly recently, in the grand history of the US. Especially horrible once you factor in gerrymandering, segregation, white flight, and redlining, which means that the average black voter had much less say (and still does have much less say) than your average white voter. We also elect people, who elect people, with more or less vote weight on both a local basis through gerrymandering and more or less weight on a per state basis through the electoral college, in a fptp system, where a kind of nash equilibrium ensures that there’s only gonna ever be two viable parties or candidates in local, state, or federal elections, for pretty much the majority of america.
So, we’re a “democracy”, but I would say that we’re only a democracy insofar as a 5 month old fetus could be considered a human. We might consider athens to have been a “democracy”, too, right, according to the formal definition, but if only white male landowners can vote, then that’s already such a subset of the population that you might legitimately be closer to an oligarchy at that point. And both an oligarchy and a democracy can be plenty fascist. Hell, the germans arrived at their fascism through mostly totally legitimate democratic processes.
So, I mean, yeah, america’s pretty much always been a fascist country, sorry to break it to ya.
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thank you
Based
This just isn’t true
How so?
Their killings of minorities were just run of the mill racism. A bottom up approach if you will
And this is why 405000 Americans lost lives fighting against nazism and Japan imperialism? I do not belive how this is both offensive and stupid.
They did it to uphold Anglo imperialism. That’s why they intentionally let the Holocaust happen and were fully prepared to integrate Nazi Germany into the international order after their invasion of Poland.
Also why they spent the next 60 years fighting to keep colonies from gaining independence.
This reminds me far right conspiracy theories
I seriously recommend you to read about imperialism. Imperialist nations (i.e. late stage capitalistic, industrialized nations, with sufficient accumulation of capital and sufficient development of monopolies, trusts and cartels, to the point of the most profitable action being the export of capital to other, poorer nations, with or without the consent of the locals), clash with each other in these attempts to expand their sphere of influence. This happened in WW1, WW2, and we’re seeing it again with the Russian-NATO conflict which led to the Ukraine invasion.
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Primarily the Russian government’s fault, but of course NATO is partly at fault. Belonging to NATO isn’t a human right, and the expansion of NATO further east than Germany shouldn’t have taken place. If European countries wanted a military alliance, they should have made their own. I don’t believe I need to preface every comment saying “I wholeheartedly condemn the actions of the fascist Russian government in Ukraine”, which I do, as much as I don’t preface my comment saying “I wholeheartedly condemn the actions of NATO in Iraq”, which I also do.
Why should the expansion of NATO past Germany not have happened? No one forces countries to join NATO, they all willfully joined, often having to jump through several hoops to do so.
As I said, I know they willfully joined, I’m saying they shouldn’t be allowed to join a military alliance with NATO, the same way I would want China not to create a military alliance and then incorporate Mexico and Canada, even if Mexico and Canada wanted to. Joining a military alliance isn’t a human right.
Actually that is a human right. Countries are free to ally with whatever country they want pending any previous agreements. Eastern European countries made zero promises and had zero obligation to not join NATO. Russia doesn’t have fucking “dibs” on them, just like the US doesn’t have “dibs” on Canada or Mexico. I wouldn’t have a problem with Mexico or Canada willfully joining an alliance with China because that is, in fact, their right to do so. And it would speak volumes to how far relations would have had to deteriorate between them and the US to get there, but that is their right to do so. Maybe if Russia wasn’t such a shitty, untrustworthy neighbor, more countries would be willing to ally with them instead of NATO, but hey, that’s Russia’s problem.
Actually that is a human right
Source?
Countries are free to ally with whatever country they want pending any previous agreements
Free to do so, for sure, I’m not claiming illegality, I’m claiming it’s wrong. It leads historically to escalation, not to mitigation of tensions. Remember the missile crisis
Eastern European countries made zero promises and had zero obligation to not join NATO
Again, you’re not understanding me for some reason. I’m not putting the blame on those countries, I’m putting the blame on NATO itself. It’s not that these countries shouldn’t want to join a pre-existing military alliance, it’s that a supposedly defensive military alliance shouldn’t incorporate member countries ever closer to the declared enemy of the US of A.
I wouldn’t have a problem with Mexico or Canada willfully joining an alliance with China
I would have immense problems with China fostering military relations with the neighbouring countries of their geopolitical adversary, and if you don’t, I think you should rethink that.
Maybe if Russia wasn’t such a shitty, untrustworthy neighbor, more countries would be willing to ally with them
I don’t want any countries to ally militarily with Russia. I fully understand that Russia has a fascist aggressive government and I’m glad I don’t currently live next to it as a Spanish citizen. My whole point is that NATO isn’t a “purely defensive military alliance of independent countries”, it’s an organization subservient to the interests of the USA which has shown no remorse to act on foreign countries which didn’t threat military action against member states of NATO, as was the case in Libya and Yugoslavia, and unofficially in Iraq.
Right, and the heroic Soviets also fought to combat the evil that were the Nazis, because they were natural enemies, no other reason no… /s (just in case it wasn’t obvious.)
Being a facist doesn’t stop you from fighting other fascists, especially when those other fascists are fucking with your shit. The only difference until now was that the two parties managed to deadlock each other needing the support of an uncaring populace to gain total power. Once one ultimately wins, this whole “pillar of democracy” thing is over. Having literally only 2 parties for centuries is a bad omen for democracy.
In his book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), Jason Stanley defined fascism as “a cult of the leader who promises national restoration in the face of humiliation brought on by supposed communists, Marxists and minorities and immigrants who are supposedly posing a threat to the character and the history of a nation” and that “The leader proposes that only he can solve it and all of his political opponents are enemies or traitors.”
While this resonates with trump, could you tell me how this fits to other American presidents? What traits US poses to call it “fascist”?
Before I get to your question…that’s a really weird definition. I mean it excludes most stereotypical fascist regimes, like nazi Germany for example. A communist revolution wasn’t really on their list of fears or even concerns. In Weimar Germany they even shared voters. Most communist party voters became nazi voters once they became a thing, they run on the same platform. It’s in the bloody name, Nazi = National Socialism. This definition seems to deliberately only target America, the US is the only one that goes fucking ape-shit when socialism let alone communist is at all mentioned.
Anyways, to your question. We weren’t really talking about presidents specifically, tho most of them fit the bill. Both democrats and republicans say the fucking “you’re with me or against me” shit, like really??? The US generally has a rich history of violently shutting down competing powers, be it domestic or abroad (a 2 party system IS NOT natural for a democracy!). American imperialist wars are pretty much build on forcefully spreading American culture at any cost (especially if it involves killing anybody claiming to be socialist or not christian). From a young age US citizens are indoctrinated, the shit where they swear loyalty to the flag every morning is creepy as fuck, also the flash everywhere. Like christ, just look at how Americans treat foreigners. Didn’t even mention the police yet…
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Is this really what makes a fascist? Almost every party in democratic world uses similar rhetorics.
Nope, predominantly an American quote in the 21st century. And while it doesn’t necessarily make you a fascists, it does check the extreme tribalism flag. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us
This is pretty much 99% of human history.
Correct, and modern democracies tried their best to change course. Some more successfully than others. If you want successful examples look at Finland, those guys played a significant role in many peace treaties, including the famous European peace. And here’s the kicker, FOR NOTHING IN RETURN. Or rather no immediate monetary or political gain.
and what to tell about single party systems, like China? Do you call them fascist too?
YES, quite literally and unironically YES! Like come on? “Communism with Chinese Characteristics”? We’re just a couple word plays away from “National Socialism”. The Chinese government is actively conducting ethnic cleansing and jailing anybody who isn’t Chinese enough. Come on!
I do not feel forced to watch “Top gun” or eat McDonalds
At this point I’m starting to feel you’re a troll, but hey, it’s fun, so let’s keep going xD I was more referring to America’s foreign policy here.
thanks god they did not kill Bernie Sanders
Again, mainly meant foreign policy. However Burnie doesn’t get off free either. The democrats didn’t even give him a chance to be a presidential candidate despite being the crowd favorite. The guy’s getting silenced.
like any other fucking country, just look at Chinese schools
Not every country, again, look at Finland, Estonia or the Netherlands. Great examples of an education system that respect the people’s freedoms. And while most other European countries have something fucked up, non are anywhere near “KNEEL FOR THE FLAG!” level.
still, rather weird tradition or aesthetics, not a fascism, for fuck’s sake
Weird esthetics? Maybe because the esthetic invokes the other counties that did this which most were under either fascism or communism. Like sure, it doesn’t necessarily make you fascists, but role-playing as one every morning is still fucking suspicious.
they behave like assholes at worst, still millions of foreign people dream about living in USA
Look in a mirror. The US treats everyone else like a terrorist before they even step foot into the country. And yes, half the people that didn’t go to America yet still think it’s amazing. America is really good at advertising. If America doesn’t want foreigners to dream about it, maybe it could stop advertising it self as the only valid way of life.
This sucks indeed, but this is not inherent to USA, rather to police in general.
Kinda, there are some bad apples in other counties too, like France for example. But the US still stands proud and tall for having one of the worst. Literally no other county arrest more people per capita than American. Not even your favorite China. Also having snipers at every protest? Fucking really? Direct military hand downs?
You say my “accusations”, but most of what I said are statements you didn’t even negate, just said that some of em don’t necessarily make the US fascist and the rest you renamed to “imperialism”, which IS NOT BETTER! The only difference is that imperialism doesn’t need to include nationalism, it’s an umbrella term, under which fascism falls under!
But boy, it’s funny you’d mention the Russian shithole, considering the US seems rather proactively aiming towards it. The republicans especially seem to have em as their role model. If things keep changing the way they have been for the last 20 years, I give it tops another 30 years before the only thing that makes America better than Russia will be the running water. Maybe faster if the supreme courts keeps up the pace it demonstrated the last 2 weeks.
First of all, I made references to China and Russia because I wrongly assumed that you are a tankie (I perceive the Lefty Memes community as the nest of them). My apologies.
And while it doesn’t necessarily make you a fascists, it does check the extreme tribalism flag. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_are_either_with_us,_or_against_us
While choosing East vs West is by no means comfortable, it is actually true. You made examples of countries like Finland, Estonia or the Netherlands. The last one recently has turned far right, but overall countries like that, including Sweden and Norway are cool and as for me, the rest of the world could be like this, I do not expect more from the world and I saw too much to dream about some communist utopia. Anyway, such cute countries alone cannot compete military and thus geopolitically with behemots like Russia or China (though Sweden and Finland seems to have decent means to defend themselves). And history taught us that since the dawn of humanity the winner is the guy with the bigger stick. Even within NATO, the European countries are rather supporters to US. Therefore, at the global stage, this all boils down to the dichotomy East VS West or NATO (mainly US) VS Russia+Iran+North_Korea+China. In the end of the day, there are only us VS them.
But boy, it’s funny you’d mention the Russian shithole, considering the US seems rather proactively aiming towards it. The republicans especially seem to have em as their role model.
This actually scares shit out of me. WTF. I wish they had to live in Russian province for couple of months, that would be a good part of punishment. The US cannot be defended from outside, but only by itself (by republicans, to be precise).
To the rest of the points I generally agree, but… If you pick only the shittiest parts of this country, you end up with such a picture. Again, I feel it is not right to equate the main trait of Nazi Germany (fascism) to US, who helped to liberate half of the Europe from this brown shit. Even in the case of genocidal China, “authoritarian” seems a more proper word. There is no consensus on definition of fascism, so neither you or I can provide more than such judgments. Back to US, even if it fails to realize the “American Dream” to many, it is RELATIVELY bearable hegemon in the history. And in the jungle, there is always one.
Ey, cheers mate, refreshing to get a composed response!
I’d argue there are more sides than just NATO vs China and friends. India often fucks over both sides because both refuse to acknowledge it and its concerns for example. It saddens me that such counties don’t give a shit, but I can’t really fault them too much considering we do the same to them. And such rhetoric only serves as fuel for them to mock us.
You’re definitely right that we also need military might to protect our values, as a European I’m disgusted by our inactivity and reliance on the US. On the subject of cute counties, I’d argue Finland isn’t one of em, I’d also add Sweeden just for military reasons while I’m at it. Both have strong militaries with plenty of reserves/mobilization potential, Finland even has nuclear ready bunkers under every major city. So glad we got em in NATO now, hope the rest of Europe catches up soon.
And not gonna lie, as much as I shit on America, it’s largely because I’m also sacred. The US is on a slippery slope due to decades of ignorance and if the US goes to shit it’s gonna have far and wide consequences around the globe. I hope the Trump situation will act as a wake up call for us in Europe, and we’ll get our shit together, not only to be self sufficient, but hopefully emerge as a genuine ally for peace and freedom that reaches beyond diplomacy. If America falls and Europe doesn’t get its shit together, that’s good bye for Ukraine and then what? That would set a new standard, a world in which might makes right… No even an attempt at rule of law.
