While Education and Organizing is building the parts for a new engine the rest of the year.
this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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As I said, this only works when you redefine fascism to mean anything to the right of Mikhail Bakunin.
And fascism is, itself, a very slippery term. There's not a single definition or checklist that has universal or even near-universal support among academics. It's like defining a cult; Dr. Steven Hassan has a long checklist of items, but not all of those are present in every cult, and some of those behaviours only become dangerous signs when taken to an extreme.
fascism its self is not a very slippery term, there are maybe 3 academic definitions of fascism, these are incredibly similar to each other, and are in some cases literally only semantically different, these are almost universally supported by academics (as long as you ignore the people literally calling for eugenics and ethnostates)
and yes, just because someone or a group may match one point on these definitions doesn't make them fascist, but when they routinely fall under the vast majority of fascist traits, they just might be... fascist
Cite your sources.
Umberto Eco
Ian Kershaw
Robert Paxton
but you won't be satisfied by this, will you? no, nothing can satisfy you, because I indirectly called you fascist, and instead of maybe doing some self reflection, that maybe just maybe, the actions and rhetoric of the republicans has been fascist, you need to double down, because at some point in time, you were a republican and can't imagine yourself supporting something evil. Well, surprise, many Germans didn't know what kind of evil they supported until it got total power.
First: that's a list of names, rather than a listing of specific sources. So, cool.
Second, all of them have differing definitions of fascism, and what specific elements are required for something to be fascist, and to what degree those elements need to be present. Some scholars have ended up with definitions that are too broad and can interpreted to mean that all political ideology that includes any hint of authoritarian control is fascist. Others have been too narrow, excluding political movements that are more widely seen as fascist.
If you took a deep dive into my history, you'd see that I'm pretty unapologetic about having been pretty far right in the past; I was raised in what I would qualify as a far-right cult--according to the checklist used by Dr. Steven Hassan--with lovely christian political values like homophobia, racism, extreme misogyny, and fuck dem poors. Your refusal to try to see anything outside of your own views and to other people that don't already share your own values isn't going to do you any favors.