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If no one else is going to link to Scott's latest CW-related post, I guess I'll try to meet the mods' wishes for a top level comment... (Though I didn't re-read it, so...)
Fascism Can't Mean Both A Specific Ideology And A Legitimate Target
I agree, inasmuch we stipulate "Political violence in America is morally unacceptable" means "literally, categorically unacceptable, due to our assessment of the threat of fascism" and "(at the current time)" ignores the possibility of near-future change in the threat-assessment. Though I emphatically oppose political violence, I don't think it would be logically incongruent to leave open the possibility that fascism is bad enough that we're near the point of political violence being acceptable. But I don't think Scott's doing a motte-and-bailey, by using a narrow denotation; just stating a motte, with the expectation his readers take it at face value.
Characteristic of Scott, the post is a neat exercise in logical tidiness. However, it only gestures at the bigger, scarier question: How do societies classify danger and determine when violence becomes permissible? The classification of threats is important, because names carry significant policy weight (e.g., Trump labeling Antifa a domestic terrorist organization...). Label something "fascism" as a distinct ideology, and you direct attention towards connotations and lineage. However, use the same term as a moral epithet (i.e., a catch-all for political enemies) and you alter the rhetorical perception.
Nobody even seems that interested in what fascism actually is.
Is Miller really a fascist because he wants to enforce immigration laws? Surely not, otherwise we would have to define Eisenhower of Operation Wetback fame as a fascist.
IMO, fascism is a combination of militarism, imperialism and racism within a social darwinist worldview. Not merely 'I don't like these backwater savages' but 'it's our job to subjugate them in the short term and maybe get rid of them outright, we need to tile the world with us and ours'. Nazism is fascism + anti-semitism.
Also, all violence is political to some extent. If a thief (poor) robs someone (rich) then there's a political angle to it. Some leftists would say it's justified, especially if its a big corporation. The whole point of the police is administering violence to baddies, how much violence and who is a baddy, that's a political question. Politics is about power and violence is the most important kind of power. Challenging the sovereignty and values of the state is very political violence.
Fascism is the political movement that Mussolini built to win control of Italy. If I'm being generous, you can lump in the Nazis and maybe Franco (though the Spanish Falange is really a cadet branch at best).
Even your definition is too broad. Was the 19th century US fascist? Australia? Imperial Britain or France? There needs to be some kind of mass mobilization of society to apply. And, probably, intentional mass murder of political opponents and demographics labeled the Enemy, since that's what people most strongly object to and mean to apply when labelling a contemporary a fascist.
The British, French and Americans didn't actually adopt and implement social Darwinism, they had 'the white man's burden' and 'the civilizing mission'. Kipling wrote it to encourage America to colonize even though he makes it out to be a thankless, exhausting burden.
That's critically different from actual fascists who would say 'wtf is this, we're here to extract as much as we can and couldn't care less about the welfare of these subhumans'. The Nazis wouldn't have had any problems with Ghandi, they'd just keep shooting until the Indians were under control.
The native Americans weren't subjugated to eliminate them or permanently other them, they were subjugated to integrate them as Americans, they got treaties and reservations. The Australians went around massacring Aboriginals in an ad-hoc bottom-up way because it was easy but there was never any actual policy to get rid of them, the closest they got is 'the arc of history bends towards us, no big deal if they wither away but we won't actually make it happen, we'll do weird things like them away from their parents and raise them as our own'.
Not social-darwinist, full-bore racism, it was wishy-washy 'civilizing' racism.
This was a later development. The original rationale for reservations and treaties was very much ‘get out of the way’.
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