site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   12813 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, Its Fascism

I decided to come in with an open mind and read this, and i have to say, im only somewhat impressed.

There are 7 primary points that I have a big axe to grind with, lets jump into it.

Blood & Soil/White & Christian nationalism

A fascist trademark is its insistence that the country is not just a collection of individuals but a people, a Volk: a mystically defined and ethnically pure group bound together by shared blood, culture, and destiny. In keeping with that idea, Trump has repudiated birthright citizenship, and Vance has called to “redefine the meaning of American citizenship in the 21st century” so that priority goes to Americans with longer historical ties: “the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War,” as he put it, or people whom others on the MAGA right call “heritage Americans.” In other words, some Americans are more volkish than others.

While Vance, Trump, and MAGA do not propound an explicit ideology of racial hierarchy, they make no secret of pining for a whiter, more Christian America. Trump has found many ways to communicate this: for example, by making clear his disdain for “shithole” countries and his preference for white Christian immigrants; by pointedly accepting white South Africans as political refugees (while closing the door to most other asylum seekers); by renaming military bases to share the names of Confederate generals (after Congress ordered their names removed); by saying that civil-rights laws led to whites’ being “very badly treated.” In his National Security Strategy, he castigates Europe for allowing immigration to undermine “civilizational self-confidence” and proclaims, “We want Europe to remain European,” a rallying cry of white Christian nationalists across the continent. Taking his cue, the Department of Homeland Security has propagated unashamedly white-nationalist themes, and national parks and museums have scrubbed their exhibits of references to slavery.

Here is my push back for some of this: 1st, trump has passed laws that are in the interests of minority communities here & here There are some others as well. And has gone out of his way to condemn racists on multiple occassions 2

From the whitehouse website, the immigration that is largely approved is mostly from europe, asia, latin america, and oceania. A good chunk of people from these regions are not white, are free to come in the country. This is a heavily skewed exaggeration. White Christians are not being favored in the way the author wants us to believe.

I will concede here that attempts to white wash history (and the confederates) are bad, im not convinced that by itself is white nationalism. Even if it was, the fact that trump has been willing to go out of his way to help non-white groups proves that he probably isnt explicitly hateful in any real sense. To be honest, i dont think he cares for race that much.

As for europe. They have had enormous trouble with immigration, that warrants the type of nationalist response. The continent has been dealing with repeat violence and mass rape. This behavior is simply unacceptable. Your not a nazi for not wanting Islamist buffoons in your society, or for not wanting your societies demographics to shift towards those kinds of populations.

What’s private is public.

Classical fascism rejects the fundamental liberal distinction between the government and the private sector, per Mussolini’s dictum: “No individuals or groups outside the State.” Among Trump’s most audacious (if only intermittently successful) initiatives are his efforts to commandeer private entities, including law firms, universities, and corporations. One of his first acts as president last year was to brazenly defy a newly enacted law by taking the ownership of TikTok into his own hands. Bolton understood this mentality when he said, “He can’t tell the difference between his own personal interest and the national interest, if he even understands what the national interest is.”

So only one of the links given here is barely comparable to Mussilini.

Lets have a quick rundown of what Mussilini did to really get accross what is meant here: Mussolini sought to ensure that no independent centers of power could exist:

  • Labor unions were replaced with state-run “corporations.”
  • Youth groups, sports clubs, and cultural organizations were absorbed into fascist structures.
  • Education was redesigned to indoctrinate children into fascist ideology.
  • Religious institutions (especially the Catholic Church) were pressured, negotiated with, and partially subordinated through the Lateran Accords.
  • Banned all political parties except the National Fascist Party.
  • Suppressed opposition newspapers, labor unions, and civic organizations.
  • Employers, workers, and the state were merged into state-supervised “corporations.” The goal was to ensure that every social identity — worker, student, parent, believer — was mediated through the state.

Targeting law firms, while certainly poor, cant really be equivalent too this.

The other link is him appointing someone to look over steel companies. This isnt him making the steel company a corporation of the feds. Whats likely happening here is that he is trying to appease the blue collar part of his base, and keeping steel jobs within the country. The intention here is seems different, at least to my eyes.

Then there is the part about the education cuts. Yeah, again, i agree its bad, but not fascism. The point of those policies is to reduce the federal governments influence and hand power to indvidual states and parents. This is the opposite of consolidation

Might is right

Also characteristic of fascism is what George Orwell called “bully-worship”: the principle that, as Thucydides famously put it, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” This view came across in Trump’s notorious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump showed open contempt for what he regarded as Ukraine’s weakness; it came across explicitly, and chillingly, when Stephen Miller, the president’s most powerful aide, told CNN’s Jack Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Those words, though alien to the traditions of American and Christian morality, could have come from the lips of any fascist dictator.

While I agree trump acted poorly in response to Zelensky here, the quote "We live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time." Clearly strikes me as descriptive, rather than normative. It would of course be ideal if being strong wasnt the relevant factor, but thats not the reality of the situation. Those who have power makes the rules, doesnt make it ok, but it is what it is.

Territorial and military aggression

One reason I held out against identifying Trumpism with fascism in his first term was Trump’s apparent lack of interest in aggression against other states; if anything, he had seemed shy about using force abroad. Well, that was then. In his second term, he has used military force promiscuously. Of course, many presidents have deployed force, but Trump’s explicitly predatory use of it to grab Venezuela’s oil and his gangster-style threat to take Greenland from Denmark “the easy way” or “the hard way” were 1930s-style authoritarian moves. The same goes for his contempt for international law, binding alliances, and transnational organizations such as the European Union—all of which impede the state’s unconstrained exercise of its will, a central fascist tenet. (Mussolini: “Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism … are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations.”)

Ok, so greenland comments here, fair enough. Bad. But on the bright side, he rolled it back. His foreign policy isnt the same as desiring to invade and conquer every country a la Mussolini. CFR notes that “many of [trumps] actions mirror those of previous administrations,” even as the strategic framing differs.

This is the last one im gonna touch on, because i find it so fucking gross.

Politics as war

A distinctive mark of fascism is its conception of politics, best captured by Carl Schmitt, an early-20th-century German political theorist whose doctrines legitimized Nazism. Schmitt rejected the Madisonian view of politics as a social negotiation in which different factions, interests, and ideology come to agreement, the core idea of our Constitution. Rather, he saw politics as a state of war between enemies, neither of which can understand the other and both of which feel existentially threatened—and only one of which can win. The aim of Schmittian politics is not to share the country but to dominate or destroy the other side. This conception has been evident in MAGA politics since Michael Anton (now a Trump-administration official) published his famous article arguing that the 2016 election was a life-and-death battle to save the country from the left (a “Flight 93” election: “charge the cockpit or you die”). In the speech given by Stephen Miller at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, MAGA’s embrace of Schmittian totalism found its apotheosis: “We are the storm. And our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve, our passion … You are nothing. You are wickedness.”

Dude, for fucks sakes, the dude went and fucking murdered a man!. He almost certainly is not coming in good faith or wanting to be buddy buddy with conservatives or the people he perceive as fascists. Leftist extremist who are referring to others as fascists and desiring to bash the fash, and actually carrying out the violence are clearly asking for a fight. People have the right to denounce those kinds of people as the assholes they are. Last i checked, if you fired the first shot, you are the one starting the war.

This post is getting long, but i just wanted to rant about the parts that really bothered me

It is worth noting that the author explicitly identifies himself as opposed to Christian culture:

I suppose you could say I’m very much an outsider to Christianity. I grew up with a bad attitude toward it, and for good reason. People like me were just regularly abused and oppressed by bigoted and cruel Christian teachings. And so this book represents a real change of course for me

He admits that his own group enjoys the hallmark feature of nationalistic narrative-maintenance and victimhood, yet has not written any criticism about this:

As a Jew, I grew up immersed in a narrative of persecution, flight, exile, vulnerability, and vigilance. […] I feel an immense pride in America’s pluralism and tolerance while remaining conscious—as a Jew and also as a homosexual—of my status as a minority and an outsider.

He admits to being aligned with a unique heritage, culture, ethical sense, and outlook:

I am Jewish by heritage and culture, atheist by belief […] I have Jewish ethics, Jewish sense of humor, Jewish outlook—pretty much everything Jewish

There is little reason to believe that he is arguing earnestly here. This is like if a Saudi American who talks about his identity as a Gulf Arab wrote an article criticizing Canada’s use of fossil fuels. He would never write an article condemning Israel for “its insistence that the country is not just a collection of individuals but a people, a mystically defined and ethnically pure group bound together by shared blood, culture, and destiny”. He would claim that that is Different, for Reasons.

It seems to me that a piece like this hinges on the assumptions that the concept of "fascism" exists in a way that rationality can show and then instances of it can be identified through the application of shared, dispassionate scientific evidence and logical argument, and further, that "fascism" is universally and obviously "evil" in some incontestable normative sense (also proven through the application of rationality, I guess?). You'd have to go along with these assumptions for this style of argument to even make any sense. And so, in this theory, if sufficient members of the Elect (to borrow the term from Joseph Bottum's "An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America") can thus show that something is "fascist", then the broad masses will have to accept, by those preceding assumptions, that it has to be rejected, fought, exiled, etc.

I've seen Freddie de Boer, long ago, inveigh against this habit from young Progressive activists as something like the "Magic Word" theory of politics; if you can just get the dreaded magic word to be applied consistently to the thing you abhor, then broader society will have to accept that you won the argument, and then Progressive social change will surely follow. He probably had some Marxist materialist complaints to go with it, but I think the observation and critique itself is really useful as a phenomenon I see constantly.

I'm actually open to all sorts of fact based critiques of various aspects of the Trump administration. But the moment the "Magic Word" stance is trotted out, I recognize myself on the receiving end of a rhetorical bludgeon that I can either choose to participate in or resist. This has already happened with a bunch of other "Magic Words", and it seems like we're reaching the point of running on fumes here for having any kind of theoretically shared moral vocabulary at all. I imagine I'm just not in practice the audience for this line of argument, but at a certain point I'm not sure what happens when the theoretically shared moral vocabulary is entirely exhausted for broader society.

And for what it's worth, I really appreciated Paul Gottfried's "Fascism: The Career of a Concept", for actually trying to wrestle with the history of the idea and its context in broader historical contexts more generally.

I've seen Freddie de Boer, long ago, inveigh against this habit from young Progressive activists as something like the "Magic Word" theory of politics; if you can just get the dreaded magic word to be applied consistently to the thing you abhor, then broader society will have to accept that you won the argument, and then Progressive social change will surely follow. He probably had some Marxist materialist complaints to go with it, but I think the observation and critique itself is really useful as a phenomenon I see constantly.

Like many people, I started noticing this in the early 10s, and one thing I've been curious about is, to what extent this was influenced by the fact that millennials and later generations grew up with video games being just a typical pastime? Video games, obviously, exist in an artificial world of computers and code, where developers can and do set up strict rules which can create arbitrary "win" conditions that have little to do with whatever underlying reality the game might be trying to simulate. Some even have "Magic Words" like iddqd which explicitly allow you to circumvent traditional vulnerabilities your character normally has, and the game universe will strictly conform to your Magic Word (unless you're in a Nightmare, anyway). Many games have glitches and exploits that allow you to gain advantages that the devs didn't intend but which the game must honor, at least until the devs push an update (even then, single player offline games can just not be updated).

Perhaps my thought is on this because of hearing about something kids are calling the "Klarna glitch," where you can enter someone else's name and SSN at checkout to charge someone else's account for your purchase. Calling it a "glitch" makes it seem like it's something that the "developers" of our universe accidentally "allowed," when, in fact, it's just criminal fraud that doesn't have very good pre-enforcement.

I think it's much more simply a form of in-group pressures, which have grown stronger in the age of social media. If you don't use the most extreme adjective to describe [negative thing X], then aren't you really actually in support of [negative thing X]?

This is not something unique to social justice progressives.

that millennials and later generations grew up with video games being just a typical pastime

The three generations before millennials spent 90 years straight calling everything they didn’t like communism, so I don’t think it’s just the video games.

and further, that "fascism" is universally and obviously "evil" in some incontestable normative sense (also proven through the application of rationality, I guess?)

The steelman of this step in the reasoning is the idea of slippery slopes and logical endpoints. The claim is that any fascistic system of government will inevitably trend towards uncontroversially evil policies like mass murder because those are the natural extrapolations of its founding principles, even if the initial proponents don't intend to go that far. So maybe moderate fascism is benign or even beneficial in the short term, but if you elect a moderate fascist, there is a serious risk that he will gradually turn into a full-blooded fascist dictator - perhaps because he was always more ruthless than he made himself appear, perhaps just because power corrupts - simply because that's the result of putting his money where his mouth is.

Mark that I present this as a steelman, not something I claim is the belief of everyone who uses Trump-is-a-fascist rhetoric. But I do think it's a relatively mainstream understanding of why it's meant to be such a devastating blow to call him a fascist, given the almost voyeuristic lust for a flashpoint they can describe as a mask-off moment, crossing the Rubicon, etc. Hence, I don't think it's quite as simple as a case of Scott's "Worst Argument in the World", which is what the "Magic Word" complaint reduces to. The claim is not just "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you must shun Trump", but "Trump fits this technical definition of a fascist, the most famous fascist regimes were horribly evil, therefore you shouldn't be fooled by current-Trump's relative benign-ness: he will predictably get exponentially eviler if he continues along the current trend".

Of course, one might fairly ask if this is uniquely true of fascism, or if any political ideology taken to "its logical endpoint" can turn into an evil dictatorship.

It seems to me that a piece like this hinges on the assumptions that the concept of "fascism" exists in a way that rationality can show and then instances of it can be identified through the application of shared, dispassionate scientific evidence and logical argument, and further, that "fascism" is universally and obviously "evil" in some incontestable normative sense (also proven through the application of rationality, I guess?).

Yeah, it's interesting to think about the mentality that produced this piece. I mean, if the MAGA movement is harmful, why not just argue that it's harmful? Why is it so important to label Trump/MAGA as "fascist"?

Perhaps I am speculating a bit, but I strongly suspect the reason is that in the Progressive mindset, once a person (or entity) has been labeled a "fascist," it becomes morally permissible to use just about any means to oppose that person; to deny that person his rights; to use political violence against that person, to be gleeful at anything that harms that person, no matter how unfair or unjustified, etc.

On a spiritual and cultural level Maga is something far more sick, ugly and deranged than Nazism.

Do you write for the Atlantic as well?

"MAGA is HITLER and STALIN! WORSE than NAZISM! CRUEL! CULT OF PERSONALITY!"

Yes, and here's how it's a good thing...

On a spiritual and cultural level Maga is something far more sick, ugly and deranged than Nazism.

If that's the case, the entire American culture is worse than Nazism. You can trivially find Blue counterparts for "recognizing no concept of dignity whatsoever".

Okay, what's your angle? Are you fishing for a ban, or did you just not sleep for three days straight?

On a spiritual and cultural level Maga is something far more sick, ugly and deranged than Nazism.

There was a time, eons in internet time( 10 years ago ) when I warned the various leftie shitposters and online agitators against their casual deployment of the super weapons of hatred and unpersoning. They were marking the likes of the bog standard neocons like Romney and Ted Cruz with epithets like Nazis and Rapists. I warned them back then, if they continued on this same path there would come a time and a person in power far worse than the normie con, and the public wouldn't really care, indeed there is a measurable chunk of the right for which the cruelty deployed against the left's client identity groups is the point. The right is fresh out of fucks to give. We are far enough in the polarization cycle where no amount of emotional or ethical pleading will have effect.

They crucified Romney even while he was trying to virtue signal his obsequience to the feminist gender equality altar with his "binders full of women". In contrast, A few more years of leaders like Trump and you can expect women to be removed from the military and other govt positions, not on any capability considerations, but on pure spite.

Bro. Let’s be real here. The nazis threw an entire race of people in gas chambers and made them bury their own graves. Trump and the GOP have done nothing like this. That is almost certainly a bigger indication of lacking dignity than a dumb hick posting a video of trump beating a hockey player. In what world are the two even remotely comparable?

Seems like the author steals a lot of bases.

As examples:

  1. Tying fascism to ethnostates. If so, then the vast majority of countries are fascist. That’s seems over inclusive.

  2. Complaining about Trump exerting authority on law firms etc. The author is fish not realizing it is swimming in water. The federal government has massively inflicted and controlled private industries for sometime. Trump is perhaps doing it more openly and for the first time in some time in a rightward manner. But the scope is actually much less compared to the default. So if he believes Trump is a fascist, then Biden or Obama must be arch fascists.

  3. Asylum seeking. The author seemingly believes all asylum seekers are actually seeking asylum. In reality, the vast majority are economic migrants. I’m sure the authors believe the same re the SA asylum seekers (or more likely believes others actually are seeking asylum but SA is abusing it) but here the author without evidence is mind reading re Trump.

Obligatory warning against arguing from fictional evidence (though I can't remember where I first saw this warning), but this definition from an alternate-history author who presumably has done some research into the topic may be relevant.

Between January and June of 1929, the CAUR [Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalità di Roma, Action Committees for the University of Rome, led by Eugenio Coselschi at the direction of Mussolini] worked on three separate goals: a universal definition of fascism, an aim later picked up at the Conference of Montreux in 1929 and 1930; to identify the criteria that an organization must fulfill in order to qualify as truly "fascist"; and, finally, to lay the groundwork for the Conference, to be held in December of that year. The first major obstacle, that of creating a proper and official definition of fascism, proved to be particularly troublesome and ultimately led to rather loose criteria's being used for the first conference, which was opened to all who had "their spirits oriented toward the principles of a political, economic, and social renovation based on the concepts of the hierarchy of the state and collaboration between the classes". In practical terms, this meant using criteria such as adherence to anti-communist ideals, the principle of "National Revolution", and corporatism, which was in itself loosely defined and allowed for the potential inclusion of any conservative or rightist groups—and, indeed, regimes that were "merely" corporatist.

In this work of fiction, there later is a schism between Nazism and fascism proper.

Amongst the declarations made at Montreux the day following the walkout [from the 1934 Montreux Conference of the NSDAP and its allies], of particular importance was that of Eugenio Coselschi, who in his capacity as Chairman of the Fascist International declared Hitler and Nazi Racism as dissidents who "yesterday opposed Christian Civilization, today Latin Civilization, and tomorrow human civilization itself". Furthermore, a formal declaration was made proclaiming that the International "rejected any materialistic concept which exalts the exclusive domination of one race above others".

from the 1934 Montreux Conference of the NSDAP and its allies

Notable in their absence were any representatives from Nazi Germany. The conference in Montreux occurred only six months after the assassination of the Austrofascist Austrian chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss by Nazi agents and the resulting diplomatic crisis between Italy and Germany. Likewise, Mussolini did not allow any official representative of the Italian Fascist Party to attend the meeting, ostensibly in order to see what the conference could achieve before lending full official support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_Montreux_Fascist_conference#Participants

My quote is from a work of fiction where the first Montreux Conference took place in 1929–1930, was fully supported by Mussolini, included representatives from NSDAP, and successfully decided on a definition of fascism.

It's frustrating to read about 'fascism' as if the sample size is enough to draw conclusions from. There were a handful of self-avowedly fascist regimes in 20th century Europe, and that's it. Even using the present tense to talk about fascism is misguided, because there are literally no governments that describe themselves as fascist, nor have their been for eighty years.

This is one of those things where people are desperate for the label and all the old baggage of the label, but the label has faded.

No, the current US government isn't a fascist one. Yes, someone has called every single administration since Hitlers a "fascist regime". The most fascist government the US ever had, with minorities in internment camps, a militarized society, rationing and government control of industry, was the one that fought Hitler.

Similar to the time there was a poll and a majority of Republicans said they wouldn't vote for Trump if he were a convicted felon, so the Democrats went out and got an extreme technicality "felony conviction", and the Republicans..........didn't care. If you want me to care about fascism, it can't be this banal. We've heard all this before, remember Trump's first term? Trans genocide? Coup? Cancelling elections? FASCISM? None of it happened.

This boy's been crying wolf since the 1930s, every four years like clockwork. Time to let him squall. "Muh Fascism" gtfo.

We've heard all this before, remember Trump's first term? Trans genocide?

The specific claim that a trans genocide is around the corner is still being trotted out.

That actually seems like a much weaker version of what I see as the most common argument in favor of the idea that trans genocide is a real thing that people should be concerned about - not merely as a future possibility but as something that is happening and has been happening for a long time. Which is that, an environment where misgendering someone doesn't carry severe penalties or where transwomen aren't fully welcomed into women's sports and their locker rooms in a way that's indistinguishable from regular women or any number of other well known demands by people claiming to speak on behalf of trans people, will necessarily discourage some trans-curious people from deciding that they are trans and, instead, stick with their sex. This results fewer trans people than in the fictional alternative universe where all these demands were met, which, when you do enough of it, is actually just genocide.

The Charlie Kirk one irks me. He hasn’t exactly leveraged either the attempts on his life or Charlie Kirk’s for any political cause, much less instituted martial law and scapegoated his political opponents for it.

There was also a mass pandemic, in case you don’t remember, where he let Anthony Fauci et al run the show. He could have had marines welding people’s doors shut and suspended elections but curiously didn’t.

Any good fascist wouldn’t waste an opportunity to consolidate power and the fact this hasn’t happened with either of these events makes me think he won’t be be giving a Saddam style purge speech anytime soon.

I’ll admit Jan 6 was embarrassing and mostly his fault but the lead up was a botched attempt to rile up his base and fundraise. He’s just a catty New York businessman who found out that being controversial will get you unlimited airtime. That’s about it.

Yes, Its Fascism

I'm increasingly willing to just self-identify as a fascist and be done with it.

Username relevant

Too modern for my tastes.

The architecture is better than later alternatives, but still leaves something to be desired.

A distinctive mark of fascism is its conception of politics, best captured by Carl Schmitt, an early-20th-century German political theorist whose doctrines legitimized Nazism. Schmitt rejected the Madisonian view of politics as a social negotiation in which different factions, interests, and ideology come to agreement, the core idea of our Constitution. Rather, he saw politics as a state of war between enemies, neither of which can understand the other and both of which feel existentially threatened—and only one of which can win. The aim of Schmittian politics is not to share the country but to dominate or destroy the other side.

This is either ignorance or dishonesty. Schmitt differentiated between "inimicus," the private enemy with whom you disagreed about e.g. tax policy, and "hostis," the public enemy whose way of life is fundamentally incompatible with yours and who threatens your ability to continue your way of life. AIUI he argued that democracies treated both groups as "inimicus" which allowed the "hostis" to undermine the existing culture unopposed. It's actually a pretty anodyne description; I think that outside of a few dogmatic ideologues, people of nearly any political leaning would agree with it.

Fascist ideology isn't particularly well-defined and is mostly notable for its role among the Axis countries during WW2. This provides a good sanity-check when comparing something to fascism: is it more or less similar to fascism than the Allies were? If something wasn't distinctive to the fascist countries, but in fact was widespread among other countries as well, then one begins to suspect that the purpose of associating it with fascism (rather than with the countries that defeated fascism) is because the former has a worse reputation. You can define fascism so broadly that all of WW2 was just fascist infighting, but that makes it a much less useful label and means people have less reason to care about it.

Your point is well taken. However, I would argue that Western Allies displayed some characteristics which were clearly fascist in tendency.

I am not going to accept that putting minorities in camps is healthy, normal, non-fascist behavior just because the US did so in WW2 wrt Japanese-Americans.

More broadly, I think that switching an economy to war production (controlled rather directly by the government), which in the US created the military-industrial complex which has been around ever since is rightfully associated with fighting total wars which is in turn weakly associated with fascism.

Presumably something can be bad without being fascist, then? Communist countries are also known for putting minorities in camps, after all.

These all seem like points in favor of the idea that "fascism" is just too vague a label to use with any solid semantic meaning.

Mussolini specifically did not even bother to attempt to comprehensively define it for good:

The essay was written in 1927 by Mussolini, with the help of Giovanni Gentile. It was first published in 1932, in the 14th volume of the Italian Encyclopedia (Enciclopedia Italiana), as the first section of a lengthy entry on "Fascismo" (Italian for 'Fascism'). The entire entry on fascism spans pages 847–884 of the Enciclopedia Italiana, and includes numerous photographs and graphic images. The entry starts on page 847 and ends on 851 with the credit line "Benito Mussolini". All subsequent translations of "The Doctrine of Fascism" were derived from this work.

[...]

In 1940, Mussolini ordered all remaining copies of the document, which had different editions and translations, to be destroyed "because he changed his mind about certain points".

I'd argue that the most common and consistent definition of fascism is "people who are willing to oppose communist revolutionaries with force".

Outside of the WW2 context it's usually what people on the left mean when they say it.

Fascism is when White people are excited to promote their collective flourishing and use the traditional means of art, ritual, hierarchy, and solemnity to accomplish it. It’s just anything that would successfully secure their exclusive interests. So, marches and men’s groups trigger “fascism”, but not if it’s hoteps / black panthers. Uniforms are fascist, songs are fascist, salutes are fascists. Characters like Pepe the Frog were fascist. Etc

I'd argue that the most common and consistent definition of fascism is "people who are willing to oppose communist revolutionaries with force".

This is silly. This makes simply almost everyone fascist, the Axis countries, Tsarist Russia, the western Allies. Even Stalin might qualify given that he had Trotsky killed.

This is eminently practical from a leftist point of view, as people unwilling to oppose communist revolutionaries with force will inexorably end up being ruled by those very revolutionaries, resulting in their dispossession, deportation and eventual destruction, thus removing them as a potential right-wing threat and permitting future leftist to sing their praises as principled, moderate conservative martyrs. Either way it's the leftists who win.

I've recently come up with an even more biting definition that's guaranteed to please no one, yet I think fits most actual "use cases": fascism is using communist means to achieve non-communist ends.

(Paramilitary youth groups, mass surveillance, centralization of power, expropriation of private enterprises, media censorship, etc.)

This is, iirc, Moldbug's definition, though naturally it takes him a couple paragraphs rather than a pithy sentence. I also liked Nick Land's: "Fascism is a late-stage leftist mutation made toxic by its comparative practicality."

I've recently come up with an even more biting definition that's guaranteed to please no one, yet I think fits most actual "use cases": fascism is using communist means to achieve non-communist ends.

I tend to agree with this, if by "communist means," you mean the sort of overly aggressive ways that communist regimes have traditionally trampled on human rights -- secret police; arrests in the middle of the night for speaking out against the regime; gulags; mass surveillance; etc.

I think that in practice, when a person is accused of "fascism," that's what the accuser is trying to imply --(1) that the person is using or supports these sorts of tactics; and (2) that the person is not a Leftist or Communist.

communist means

There's nothing particularly communist in those means. Those are just totalitarian means.

Agreed, I think “Leninist means” would have been closer to the mark

Orwell once described fascism as "socialism shorn of all its virtues".

My immediate reaction was "what virtues?"

For many people, "meaning well" and being nice is very important, sometimes even more than actually accomplishing anything. There is in particular a stark divide between left and right (and also men vs women) on this issue. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances, when confronted with the dysfunction of some left-wing regulations, will nevertheless defend them and not want them abolished, mostly on account that they were originally meant well and should at most be reformed (which nobody ever kicks off and thus never actually happens). Aristocrats who never actually accomplished anything and certainly don't deserve their wealth will often be more popular on account of modest charitable spending and a public image carefully designed to be maximally inoffensive (which is much easier if you're not constrained by trying to accomplish something) than a revolutionary entrepreneur.

Their view, as I understand it, is that communism at least sounds nice in theory and means well originally, and the same goes for communist activist, whereas fascist activist are just irredeemable monsters. Which I even partially agree with, the problem is just that the people they call fascists pretty much never identify as such and have only little commonalities with the historic concept. It's always Adorno-style sophistry where you use a definition of fascism that is 50% totalitarism and 50% being right-wing and then, upon showing that the right-wingers are indeed right-wing, claim that there are large parallels between fascism and whatever right-winger you choose. Not to mention that irrespective of the good intention of the communist, I don't want to end up in the gulag anyway.

For many people, "meaning well" and being nice is very important, sometimes even more than actually accomplishing anything. There is in particular a stark divide between left and right (and also men vs women) on this issue. Plenty of my friends and acquaintances, when confronted with the dysfunction of some left-wing regulations, will nevertheless defend them and not want them abolished, mostly on account that they were originally meant well and should at most be reformed (which nobody ever kicks off and thus never actually happens).

I can't help but notice how well this parallels the discourse around generative AI and whether or not it has a "soul" in the sense of the author's intentions. To some people, this intent of the author exists in an image (or video or song or a block of text or etc.) only insofar as the actual final pixels represent such an intent; the actual thoughts that went through the author's head in the moment don't matter. To others, it's the actual thoughts that matter, and how well the pixels convey those thoughts are merely a curiosity.

Right now, the culture war lines drawn in the world of generative AI doesn't seem to neatly match other lines of older culture wars, but I wonder if this aspect will mean we'll see support/opposition to treating media generated by AI as having exactly as much meaning as those generated by humans without AI getting split up in right/left or male/female. It's possible we're seeing it happen already (it's hard to get a sense of the latter, especially, since new tech is almost always heavily male-dominated by default).

That issue is somewhat confused by postmodernism and death-of-the-author being associated with left-wing intellectual discourse, even though it's also left-wing to hate on AI for lacking soul. It's not quite irreconcilable - you can say, for example, that the fun thing about experiencing art is trying to guess what the author meant, so that the game is equally spoiled by rigid adherence to factually documented authorial intent or by the knowledge that the content was spat out by a machine and there is no 'there' there to guess at. But it's an interesting paradox.

I use a similar definition - fascism is totalitarian socialism with right-wing aesthetics. (As opposed to communism, which is totalitarian socialism with left-wing aesthetics).

Incidentally, although Singapore is a long way off being totalitarian socialism with neoliberal aesthetics, it is proof of concept that it would be possible.

And so we circle back to ye olde "national socialism".

The problem with this definition is that it indeed won't please the only people who have an interest in using the label of "fascist" in the first place.

Hardly the only people. There are plenty of leftists with an interest in condemning right-wing figures as fascists who would also regard themselves as being against communism - from mainstream Dems who don't even go as far as calling themselves socialists or anti-capitalists, to radical leftists of a more libertarian-adjacent, anarchist bent.

Yeah that’s an interesting take.

Dude, for fucks sakes, they went and fucking murdered a man!.

From my understanding there was only one culprit caught and charged for Kirk's murder, are you aware of any others?

Or perhaps as Tyler Cowen wrote, you just need to stop blaming "them" and start judging individuals as individuals. If you're ever stuck deploying the defund the police logic (one bad apple = all bad apples), you've probably veered off the path. Individual responsibility, not collective blame.

The discourse around Kirk on the left was quite chilling though. There is at least a significant minority of people on the left who genuinely want to murder their political opponents and who are mainly held back by not wanting to risk their comfortable life, in stark opposition to their self-image of being the non-violent non-coercive side.

Individual responsibility, not collective blame.

I'm fairly certain the truth is neither only the one nor only the other. Nobody gets shot if no individuals pull the trigger, but weaving the narrative that justified the shooting in the minds of many was clearly a collective act.

Besides, it's much more practical to just skip the foreplay of trying to find ways to paint the outgroup as bad by some pretense of objectivity and get right to thinking in friend/enemy distinctions.

Individual responsibility, not collective blame.

Since when?

Ok, yeah fair enough. This is simply frustrating for me just reading it. Its like the author doesnt even understand the context here. Does he seriously think that interpreting what happened in this way fascist? Its not an unprompted attack that is being launched for no reason just to demonize the opposition. In this case, the opponent actually is attacking you in a "war" like fashion.

A fascist trademark is its insistence that the country is not just a collection of individuals but a people, a Volk: a mystically defined and ethnically pure group bound together by shared blood, culture, and destiny

I hear this a lot, and I have to seriously ask: Is there a single ethnic group outside of Western Europe and America that doesn't believe this? I'm Chinese, and I can say personally that every single Chinese person I know that was raised in China believes this idea. China is not just the land, it's a people and a culture. The only Chinese people I know who don't believe this are the ones that have been either born in or raised in America, and even then it's a 50/50. Am I wrong?

You're not wrong, it's a post WW2 western based Memeplex, in some parts of the west where the post WW2 consensus had less power even that sort of notion is not really established (Center/Eastern Europe)

I would add some Latin American countries to your list of non-ethnostates, Brazil being a very obvious and notable example.

I recently got into an argument with a pro-Palestine guy, who argued that Israel is the world's sole remaining ethnostate. He did begrudgingly concede my counter-example of Liberia (in which citizenship is explicitly reserved for those of Negro heritage). However, he didn't budge when I characterised Japan, Korea and essentially every Arab nation as ethnostates in all but name. Would you think that's a fair characterisation of China?

No who you asked but yes. Though it's important to note that for Chinese this theoretically includes all the minorities too. China is a nation for the Chinese which are Han and the 55 other minorities. Though in practice less so as pretty much everyone is Han outside of a few regions.

I'd argue that when a foundation of a state as a process entails the expulsion of ethnic minorities, it can be considered an ethnostate. Post-1945 Czechoslovakia and post-1995 Croatia, for example.

FWIW, many German men, especially older ones, also still believe this - although they know better than to speak their minds in public.

Unfortunately, it's just no longer true for Germany. It was, until maybe a generation ago, but clearly isn't anymore.

Isn't the 'German' volk just an outcome of an earlier political process as a collection of Frankish-ruled peoples east of the Rhine? Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Alemanni, and Thuringians, etc. Though Bavaraians likely included some Celtic and Roman provincial populations, Marcomanni.

When do these older German men feel the Germans originated? Charlemagne, earlier, later?

Are the descendents of the Saxons, and Angles and Jutes that migrated to Britian still German or Dane?

We see in England Æthelstan ruling a multi-ethnic kingdom of West Saxons, Mercians, East Anglians, Northumbrians of both Anglo-Saxon and Danish descent, and Norse settlers from various backgrounds, all being folded into a single political entity unified by the English language, a common legal framework, and the Church.

Most of our modern demonyms are the result of an aglomeration of ethnicities bound together via culture and proximity / geography.

Yes, of course. Historically that's all true. But that's not really germane to my point - which is more that until very recently, there was a clearly identifiable German people, and the remaining Germans of slightly later are still viscerally aware of this. It's "lived experience", dumb as it sounds, not historiography.

Japanese and Koreans also believe this and are open about it. Some normie Dutch and Belgians are pretty open about it too, although they will use softer language and qualifications. This "nation of immigrants" idea is really just an American meme that infected the Anglosphere.

The UK and USA are both explicitly not nation-states from their foundings - that is why they have "United" in their names. (FWIW, Belgium doesn't work as a nation-state either and the Flemish-speaking Belgians who talk like it is one are somewhat ambivalent about including French-speaking Belgians in their project)

You can have a concept of Britishness as a civic identity shared by a closed class of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish (or Northern Irish) people, although there isn't an attempt to actually do that until modern right-populist movements, and it goes down like a lead balloon with the Scottish and Welsh. But the idea that an Englishman and a Scot are part of the same blood-and-soil folk community is offensive to both of us.

The US just is a nation of immigrants as a matter of historical fact. The de facto leader of the anti-immigration movement in American is the grandson and husband of immigrants.

You can have a concept of Britishness as a civic identity shared by a closed class of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish (or Northern Irish) people, although there isn't an attempt to actually do that until modern right-populist movements, and it goes down like a lead balloon with the Scottish and Welsh.

I think the one shared identity of those peoples was empire-building.

Germany also was originally a non-nation of immigrants, circa AD 400-700. And yet, in 1900, it clearly wasn't anymore - at some point the melting pot cools and you get something solid. And I don't think it took all of 1200 years; the migrations stopped in the first millenium AD, and from then on local and regional populations took root and it's IMO fair to see a connection of blood to soil from there on out. Well, until urbanization, the World Wars, the Gastarbeiter, the Spätaussiedler and finally the "lol whatever" mass migrations of the third millenium.

Just ruminating. I have no point.

In my opinion, the 1924 immigration restriction act should have been the beginning of that sort of thing for the US: the gradual melding of the European ethnic groups into a single White American entity. (Scottish, as perceived as a separate ethnicity in the US, actually did vanish sometime in the early postwar era).

But the Hart-Cellar act, by neglecting to set hard, very low annual caps on non-European immigration, blew up the chance to have a single ethnic group composing 90% of the population.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats