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Can you break down what "being a Nazi (or fascist)" is supposed to entail here? If you mean "wanting to gas the Jews" I agree, if it's "losing faith in liberalism" or "wanting out of the multi-kulti salad bowl", I'm not really seeing the badness of it.
I even disagree with that. I believe that given human nature communism is doomed to turn people evil, but there's nothing inherently bad about believing in the superiority of centrally planned economies, or something.
I view one losing faith in liberalism much like a good Christian views a fellow believer losing faith in God: understandable, yet nonetheless misguided.
The siren song of authoritarianism is strong, and it is foolish to listen to the devil's lies. But even still, many of us are fools. So it goes. How well they can be redeemed depends on how much they let those lies corrupt their soul. So there is in a sense both nothing and everything bad about believing anything at all. Our free will both condemns us to sin and allows us to forgive.
All to say, as a liberal I view all illiberalism as evil. And this view is to some degree a matter of faith. I could try writing words to rationalize it, but you would almost certainly be better off reading Mill or Scott or some other better writer. Ditto your request for definitions: I will defer to Wikipedia if you still want those. My apologies.
At best I can offer https://youtube.com/watch?v=xGeOEr6yFL4?si=klFr_r8Y2oPSaaju
All illiberal societies converge into dictatorships, and/or they collapse or liberalize. There are no stable illiberal democracies.
I would rather die as Socrates did, a free man condemned by his own foolish people, than to prosper like a child under the rule of a benevolent King.
(Now, a God King is another thing entirely, but I am unfortunately an atheist.)
For the subject at hand, the people in this story are likely redeemable given proper guidance, and many are just victims of context collapse. Young men making crass jokes amongst themselves is normal behavior and nothing new.
Don't worry about definitions then, I think this answers my questions better than any encyclopedia could.
I think each paragraph you wrote here could spark a fascinating conversation all of it's own, but I'll try to stick to the subject that started ours. If we change the scenario somewhat, to be about your fargroup, rather than your outgroup, would it change any of your calculus?
For example if a mostly secular Arab moves into a western Christian town, is met with rejection and bigotry, runs into a Wahhabi mosque that welcomes him with open arms as a brother, would you not say the westerners share some blame for his radicalization, even when the final decision is on him?
I don't think that changes anything. Neither the bigots in your example nor the people overusing the word "Nazi" are blameless. Just as well, in neither case is the subsequent action justified, only understandable. (Almost all behavior is understandable if one tries hard enough to understand it, but understanding does not preclude judgment.)
Ultimately, everyone must take responsibility for their own actions. Casting the blame outwards, as if our actions are mere cascading effects of the people with true agency, is to concede we have none. It's an intoxicating idea. It frees us of the burden of temperance and good judgment. But without that burden we are nothing but machines following a routine.
This feels like haggling over the price a bit. I'm happy to accept that at the each person's decisions are their own, but my point is indeed that neither side is blameless.
This, on the other hand, assumes that everyone, including the illiberal villains, share your moral framework. If I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, I'm not casting blame on anyone for my actions, I'm just pointing out the conduct of liberals snapped me out of my stupor and made me reassess my positions. I don't think there's much I need to temper (or rather - there are things I do, but they are character traits, not positions I hold), and I believe I'm exercising good judgement.
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There are no stable societies. People change, cultures change, and whatever laws and customs suited them at one point will no longer do it at another. Any system can be gamed, any ruleset subverted, any institution compromised, any social consensus undermined. Anything can be corrupted, exploited, turned against its purpose, cannibalized for someone's benefit at someone else's expense. Any form of political organization that is worth abusing will be abused, and that is all of them.
All liberal societies converge into atomized free-for-alls, and/or they collapse or become dictatorships after all. Nothing lasts forever, and liberal democracies haven't even been around for that long. So far it seems they're pretty great at creating prosperity - but that also makes them extremely attractive to subvert and exploit. And malicious actors are getting better and better and doing that, far faster than benevolent social engineers can patch up the social-cohesion-leaks, procedural deadlocks, cultural backdoors and other assorted failure modes.
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