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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29383 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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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

When people say Trump is fascist, you should take them seriously, not literally :V

Clearly strikes me as descriptive, rather than normative.

It's not. Have you seen the context that quote is from? It's Miller justifying the US trying to strongarm Denmark into surrendering Greenland. It's not simply a bare description*, much as its proponents try to present it as such. It's a belief that power entitles you to do what you want, and that acting with scruples or restraint is weakness and stupidity. It is also why they become so petulant and angry when threats fail to secure submission - it's a violation of their understanding of order of the world and why the Trump administration is soft on Russia and China. It's why they seem to have miscalculated so badly with Iran. The IRI was supposed to be reminded of our overwhelmingly power and be awed into submission. Now they're fumbling because it turns out that "might makes right" is actually an extremely naive way of looking at the world.

"Bully worship" is an extremely apposite label. One of the reasons "bootlicker" has such resonance an insult is that it captures this attitude very effectively.

Last i checked, if you fired the first shot, you are the one starting the war.

I am once again reminded that right-wing political violence is completely invisible to many. Either it's excused because it's carried out under a veneer or law enforcement or the perpetrator is written off as a crazy person who in no way reflects on the right more generally. Or the perp gets a pardon. The history of political violence in America did not begin on 9/10/25.

*even as a bare description it is wrong, but it has the appeal of sounding superficially correct and looking like edgy truth-telling.

I am once again reminded that right-wing political violence is completely invisible to many. Either it's excused because it's carried out under a veneer or law enforcement or the perpetrator is written off as a crazy person who in no way reflects on the right more generally. Or the perp gets a pardon. The history of political violence in America did not begin on 9/10/25.

I think more generally it's that you remember and internalize what offended and outraged you, and not what didn't. I'm sure there's a certain kind of trans skeptical person that can cite chapter and verse of every bad thing a trans person has done in the United States over the last 10 years, while your average trans-friendly progressive either didn't hear about such incidents or even if they did hear about them, they weren't horribly offended by them or were happy to say something like, "Yeah, trans people are human, they do bad things just like everyone else," and moved on with their lives.

In a way, it is a form of political myopia that basically everyone who sees themselves as part of a larger political coalition ends up experiencing. The only way to avoid it is to feel in your bones that neither the Right nor the Left are "us", and to instead center your "us" in some completely orthogonal grouping. Otherwise, it will take constant effort to correct for this "myopia" due to then nature of human psychology. And most people don't want to correct the myopia because righteous fury feels good.

There's certainly truth to that, in that most people tend to downplay the infractions of their friends and play up the infractions of their enemies. However, I consistently observe a meaningful difference in how left-wingers and right-wingers have talked about political violence over the past decade, which I think reflects their differing attitudes towards politics more broadly.

Left-wingers (or, more properly, the forerunners of the social justice movement) brought us the phrase "everything is political". While obnoxious to argue against because it involves dealing with people playing word games, it at least clarifies how many of them view the world. You don't have to struggle to get them to acknowledge the political nature of an act. Right-wingers (or at least the current populist-right), by contrast, have a habit of dividing things into 'not political' (meaning: reflects their beliefs/assumptions) and 'political' (meaning: challenges their beliefs/assumptions). Thus you get RWers complain about something being made political because, e.g. it has a gay character or something.

This difference in mindset impacts the way they process acts of political violence. For left wingers, they might condemn it, they might support it, they might try to disown it depending on their mood, particular beliefs, and the act in question, but they're generally not going to insist it wasn't political or didn't happen or doesn't count because the perp was crazy. This is not the case for right-wingers. Right-wing political violence is almost always either outright denied or shifted to another category in the eyes of the broader right (often in a way that is incoherent).

My issue with most discussion around fascism is that essentially, it’s completely unemperical. The things that get counted are basically decided by whoever decides to declare by checklist that some government is fascist.

Politics as war is not a unique concept to fascism. Politics evolved as an alternative to actual warfare any time the leadership of a society changes. The ballot is a form of ritualized bullet, and was invented because the alternative was basically kill the leader and his heirs if you didn’t want that royal line to rule. Elections are a bloodless Red Wedding, to be blunt.

Territorial aggression? Again, nations taking action to prop up regimes friendly to themselves and topple enemies is not some innovation of MAGA and Trump. That was essentially how we fought the Cold War, invade any country that went communist, prop up those countries that went capitalist. There were dozens of these wars: Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and we propped up Pinochet as a capitalist dictator in Chile. We invaded Iraq several times, we bombed Serbia at least twice. Obama had a hobby of drone strikes.

And to cut it short, I think until such time as a warning list for fascism comes that doesn’t allow for the gamesmanship of the person calling the game getting to decide based on vague definitions what counts, the entire discussion is at best a waste of time and at worst, booing the out group.

As something of an unlicensed historian the thing that frustrates me about these conversations is that they almost always neglect or gloss-over what the fascists and their opponents actually believed and were fighting over.

If you asked an Italian or German fascist to describe the sine qua non of "Fascism" in the 1930s they would've had a ready answer for you. A belief in The State as the ultimate sovereign, the final arbiter all authority, legitimacy, morality, etc... Everything within the State, nothing outside of the State, nothing against the State. Everything else is downstream of this core idea.

A distinction between "public" and "private" interests is completely nonsensical in a world were the only interests that exist in any meaningful sense are those of the state.

The idea that any individual human life might have value outside of their current and future contributions to the state is equally nonsensical, as is the idea that a meaningful distinction can be drawn between the "personal" and the "political", or the "moral" and the "political". Anything political is, by definition, about state power/authority, and with the State as the ultimate sovereign there can be no legitimate authority outside of State authority. Again, everything within the State, nothing outside of the State.

I believe that if we are going to have a meaningful conversation about whether MAGA (or any other movement for that matter) is or isn't "Fascist" it needs to be framed in something resembling the above terms. Otherwise I am going echo the point raised by @sodiummuffin downthread, that is that if your model ends up tagging Truman, Churchill, and DeGaulle, as "fascists" alongside Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco, it needs to be revised.

A belief in The State as the ultimate sovereign, the final arbiter all authority, legitimacy, morality, etc... Everything within the State, nothing outside of the State, nothing against the State. Everything else is downstream of this core idea.

This is the best definition by far, and also readily points out what's actually bad about the ideology. (Crushing decent with violence, destroying any opposition, everyone forcibly conformed to the state, etc.) A lot of people who call trump fascist are focused on the way he behaves and how he talks about things. Its almost never about a specific policy he is pushing to achieve this particular goal. (And of course there are probably few of these policies, if any at all, since he doesn't have the authority to pass anything to begin with, congress must.)

The best i think could be argued is that he was heavy handed in his use of the feds from time to time with general protesting, deportation, etc., and that this is dangerously authoritarian. But that's a far cry from removing all opponents from politics and elections, or revamping the whole education system to be beholden to praising and loving trump and the administration. Things that these viscous fascist dictators actually did.

I don't have much to say except it's disappointing how Americans are bound to precedents. Well, not just them, of course, everyone is hidebound but you'd expect more from a brand new intelligently designed super-innovative superpower. And yet, escalating cycle of the culture of victimhood, Plucky Underdogs and Just Revenge (look at the pathetic whataboutism, "Democrats did X, so how can X' be wrong?), this damn geriatric nonsense about fascism, endless epicycles around Jewish WWII trauma, the whole moral arc of the universe wrapped around that European event three generations ago, much like in Russia.

Trumpism is wrong on its own merits. Trump is a dishonorable Latin American type strongman who does petty advertisement, lashes out childishly, takes bribes, doesn't keep his word and relishes crass bootlicking. His appointees like Hegseth and Lutnick are mere thugs. The Based Conservatives here demonstrate craven allegiance to whatever the Party Linei s this week because they see in Trump not so much a reformer as their champion in getting revenge on Democrats. As for the Democrats' party, enough has been said. Is this the Elite Human Capital that is equipped to lead the global hegemon? It's a deeply diseased Republic and too good a Democracy, and it's stuck in the past even as it innovates new ways to be vulgar and demonstrate spiritually third worldist attitude. Just sad.

"I don't have much to say except it's disappointing how Americans are bound to precedents."

Lefty Damage Mag put this humorously: "Can We Have New Bad Things?": https://www.damagemag.com/p/can-we-have-new-bad-things

The author is pointing out, correctly, that the ingredients of fascism mostly exist in Trump’s base(with totalitarianism as a key exception- but one which is nearly the sine qua non of fascism). But of course these ingredients generally are not found in the same people.

I suspect that the cavalcade of ‘yes, this is actual fascism’ are because the situation certainly rhymes with the Roman republic’s transition to empire- with the democrats as optimates. You know, the losers nobody likes. No one wants to cast themselves as the villain, so you back off from that metaphor to concentrate on a different one. The blue tribe trend setters are educated elites who have some familiarity with the history.

certainly rhymes with the Roman republic’s transition to empire

I see the reasons for this comparison, and it makes a lot of sense to me: Congress has continued to cede more and more of its authority to the Executive. I'm not going to say that the current Trump administration hasn't tried to use that in novel way at a rate matching or exceeding his predecessors. But I also only see push-back on this one from the conservative side of aisle: the Roberts court has a continuing theme in its jurisprudence of telling Congress that it actually has to govern (overturning Chevron, the Major Questions Doctrine), and some of its most prominent members were nominated by Trump himself and confirmed by a right-leaning Senate.

It's easy (and sometimes tempting) to compare Trump to Caesar, but the right itself seems split on the direction to go there, not even forming Trump contra Roberts factions. And the left, which also occasionally makes these comparisons, doesn't seem to, at least from where I sit, have a coherent idea of what to do about it at all, not even something like wholesale backing the Roberts court on those principles.

But I also only see push-back on this one from the conservative side of aisle: the Roberts court has a continuing theme in its jurisprudence of telling Congress that it actually has to govern (overturning Chevron, the Major Questions Doctrine), and some of its most prominent members were nominated by Trump himself and confirmed by a right-leaning Senate.

I think there's a real sense in which conservatism in the United States is just right liberalism dressed up as conservatism. Classical liberalism was once (and arguably still is) one of the most radical ideologies in the history of politics, and it is the Foundation of the United States and how we think about ourselves.

While we do have a mythical past conservatives can pine for, I think one of the basic issues is that the freedom afforded by liberalism is what got us here to the present moment step by step. Unless you are some form of reactionary who thinks we need to forcefully return to some past social arrangement, it will be very hard to "hold on" to any particular era of US politics. (I once knew an older gentleman who pined for the left liberalism of the 1960's and JFK, and I had to point out to him that all of the contradictions and craziness of that era are what eventually led to to the "bridge too far" of today that he considered absurd from trans kids to social media.)

Even in glorious past eras, a lot of the problems were caused by groups people today want to idolize. Like, when people bring up something like the 13/50 statistic around black people, I feel like they forget that if that is a real concern, it can be laid entirely at the feet of the ruling elites at the Founding (and reaffirmed on down through time by the post-Civil War amendments, and the reactions of "heritage American" elites and their successors at every step of the process.) I suppose an actually fascist president could just "deport" all of the black people in the United States to Liberia or something at this point, but Trump certainly has no appetite for that sort of thing.

The phrase "we must remember that it is a liberal constitution we are conserving" is (or at least used to be) extremely common in conservative politics and non profits. That was always the primary distinction separating us from the European right, which we pejoratively referred to as "socialists who hate immigrants." We didn't have a volk; we had a constitution.

The younger generation doesn't really seem to believe this anymore, but it still holds a lot of cache in places.

Trump is not Caesar because he doesn’t have the time left to build out the operation for staying in power. His Republican successor may well be.

Trump is a Gracchi Brother, we are still a bit from the Caesarian Era of American Politics

He can still be Caesar Julius.

There is nothing wrong with being a fascists. The issue with fascism is that some dude named Hitler killed millions of Jews but not all fascists kill millions of Jews.

Authors like this guy want people to use the Hitler word when fascism doesn’t mean that. And is therefore not evil by itself.

Every fascist government we've seen has been in the habit of authoritarian suppression and mass murder. While I agree that in theory there is nothing inherently "evil" about fascism, it only seems to appeal to people who want to be authoritarian mass murderers. "Nothing wrong with being fascists" sounds a little like "True communism has never been tried" to me.

Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Spain. Sure they killed a few people and in many cases they were communists and a necessary thing to do to protect the country. Saudi Arabia is probably the most livable country in the ME. People do tend to select authoritarian governments when you have bad that kind of need to be killed if you want to be civilized.

How is Singapore fascist? they have Free and fair election under a Westminster system? The others aren't really fascist either. The fascists in Spain were the Falange who were in a coalition with Franco but not the leading party. I don't think fascist just means "right wing authoritarian" The self identified fascists in the interwar period were all about state intervention over free markets and there was an element of futurism in both Italian and German fascism that we don't see in those governments.

If non of those countries are real fascists then MAGA is definitely not fascists. But if you use the expanded definition of fascists to be all those countries then sure MAGA has some beliefs that are inline with those countries.

The left wants to make the connection that MAGA has beliefs like the countries I listed and therefore they are Jew Killing Nazi fascists. But yes you can’t have it both ways and declare MAGA is fascists but then limit your meaning of fascists to just actual Jew killing nazis. If you use the expanded definition of fascists then all the countries I listed are sort of fascists but also successful governments that didn’t kill a lot of Jews.

I am ok calling myself a fascists if it means like Singapore or Pinochet.

Yeah pretty much I don't think MAGA are fascists.

Calling Singapore and Saudi Arabia "fascist" is a stretch, and Chile and Spain during their fascist eras were at least as bad as living under communism. As for Saudi Arabia, it's a pretty chill place to live if you are a Muslim man with no significant dissident tendencies, but otherwise not a great argument for your case either even if we label it "fascist."

Chile and Spain during their fascist eras were at least as bad as living under communism.

Hard disagree. Nothing Franco or Pinochet did seems comparable to the Holodomor or the Great Chinese Famine. Both embraced economic liberalization programs that led to high growth; Spain experienced the Spanish Miracle and Chile remains one of the richest countries in LATAM to this day. Meanwhile, communist countries are notoriously poor even when they aren't literally starving to death, because communism is the creationism of economics. Pinochet only killed a few thousand people, most of them literal communists; Stalin killed a million people during the Great Purge alone.

If we compare them to like Yugoslavia or East Germany though they are pretty comparable. I wouldn't call Pinochet or Franco fascists anyway.

East Germany

I don't think East Germany is a good comparison given how thoroughly Stasi had infiltrated every aspect of life in East Germany.

Not every communist government has created famines, either. You can debate the relative badness of fascism versus communism if that scratches it for you, but objectively they have both always been pretty bad wherever they have been implemented. "His brutal police state only killed a few thousand people and was good for the economy" is not a ringing endorsement just because Stalin was worse.

Would you consider Salazar's Portugal to be fascist? Because it committed no mass murders, the only significant civilian deaths his regime caused were in various conflicts to maintain control of Portuguese colonies in Africa etc. And it doesn't seem like his track record there is any worse than the other European colonial powers. And certainly far better than literally every communist regime ever.

Meh, I wouldn’t say there is nothing wrong with it. It is after all, a dictatorship

Even in a Democracy nobody really has control or say in their government. There is nothing wrong with 1 tyrant than a 1000.

I mean, the whole point of our mixed constitution is to get all of the benefits of the good aspects of rule by the one, few and many, with as few of their downsides (tyranny, corrupt oligarchy, and mobocracy) as possible. Whether the United States actually accomplished that goal is a separate question, but a major idea of our system is that for a small handful of protected rights we don't just let the mob do whatever they want, but force them to achieve a broader societal consensus before we change anything major.

For less important issues, we allow a simple majority (or really, their elected representatives) to determine government policy. Maybe that could be called tyranny, since we'll always be forcing 49% of the population to listen to whatever 50%+1 of the population has decided, but I'm not sure I buy that argument.

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 think you might really like this series

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.

"Communist" and "Nazi" and even "fascist" has been used as terms of abuse in America for at least all my adult life, and indeed I'd guess you're right it's been going on for 90 years straight. But I rarely, if ever, saw people trying to use obscure loopholes and technicalities to "prove" that some idea they disagreed with was "Communist" and therefore deserved to be disagreed with, like how we've been seeing with things like "misogyny," "racism," and, again, "fascism" the last 15-ish years. It's this apparent attempt at finding a "glitch" or "exploit" in the system that that seems to reflect a belief that everyone else MUST abide by such exploits that I find interesting. Rather, calling something "Communist" (or "Nazi" or whatever) in the 90s-00s was just effectively calling it a slur.

Perhaps even that isn't new. That would mean that video games weren't a necessary part of causing this pattern of behavior, though it certainly could have been a part.

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.

But Mussolini did not carry out any more mass murders than any other authoritarian regime would have(nor did Franco, or half the axis, or Metaxis…) A few fascist governments did. They openly said they were going to do this; Hitler did not pretend that he loved Jews they just had to follow the rules. He campaigned on antisemitism.

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.

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.

This type of mining of trust and collective goodwill happens in other spheres as well, and its just about the most corrosive thing you can do to social cohesion. Eventually the abused side has zero empathy and actual legitimate pleas to ethics and morality are ignored in some sort of cultural 'Chicken Little' effect. I'm concerned that you can't maintain a shared civilization with liberal freedoms if things continue to be abused in this way.

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.

I thought it would make sense to quote what actually happened. But noted, thanks.

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.

San Marino and arguably Spain had a fascist government considerably after WWII, and Baathism is a carbon copy of fascism.

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.

The characteristic of fascist political violence is its organization. There is no MAGA brawler club that he sends to go beat up political enemies.

Yes, Its Fascism

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

MAGA has similarities with the expanded definitions of fascism I give. But nobody thinks those are true shithole countries.

I think people on the left want to motte and bailey fascism at the same time. Use the expanded definition of fascism but then when they mean fascism is bad the connotation they want it to be is the one true bad fascists Germany.

I think people on the left are trying to push their project because within that project their social status is higher than within the society they'd live in otherwise. Not even the implementation of the ideological project, mind you - just the pursuit of it. And they were right about that. Being able to merge the notion of "good" with the notion of "ideology-compliant" and selling that to others means that you no longer need to be "good" by earlier standards to gian status, so long as the people you aim to gain status with also buy into the ideology. And this has been easier than traditional status-seeking for so long that it's actually become the norm in large parts of Western society! So in that framework, slinging the label of "fascist" just serves as a tool to paint someone as "ideologically noncompliant", and allows you to elevate your own status by painting yourself as an active participant in the struggle for Good.

This has little to do with your post. Just a thought that occurred to me. And not even novel.

So now that the leftist counterculture project has become mainstream and you can obtain a modicum of status just by pledging allegiance to it, the right copied the toolkit of the left and is now also doing the counterculture thing, with "woke" being AFAIK the most recent label used in the same fashion as "fascist", though of course with much less purchase among normies. Even though "woke" is arguably an even more identifiable package than "fascist".

Anyways, much talk. Ultimately I'm just tired of the semantic bludgeons and label wars. If not being on-board with leftism makes one a fascist, then why, d'Annunzio was kinda cool you know.

A lot of countries are better off being fascists than Democracies. Most of Africa and the ME likely fall in this category

For a given definition of "fascism", which as we should have learned through the day's discussions can mean just about anything.

The middle eastern equivalent of fascism is Baathism. This is literally an experiment that has been run- Iraq is doing a lot better as a democracy than it was under Saddam.

Yeah strong agree Baathism seems to me the only post war ideology really similar to Facism. I don't see how people like Pinochet or Franco qualify.

Username relevant

How so?

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.

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.

cf. Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance.

I always found the supposed paradox amusing. "Tolerance" just means "Enlightenment liberal orthodoxy" and intolerance just means "heretics." When you translate the terms into what they actually mean in practice, the alleged paradox quickly vanishes.

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.

Indeed, communists do do this, in order to define strong anti-communist movements as evil.

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.

But its not silly because its the rhetorical usage most commonly applied.

No. Take a common use of the term as a slur from the last year: Trump's ICE was widely denounced as fascist by the left.

However, it seems hard to find a communist revolutionary force they were opposing, unless you want to extend that definition to a mayor declaring Minneapolis a sanctuary city.

The governing polity of MN is certainly a spiritual successor

That's my point. Reading over what the "bash the fash" leftists say, they do count everyone else as fascist. Authoritarian leaders without much of an ideology who spring up in opposition to a communist movement are always called fascist.

Communists who oppose other communists get called fascist. ("The only people we 'ate more than the Romans are the ----ing Judean People's Front!")

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.)

So adapting from Moldbug's ideas I'd say a more accurate definition of fascism is "a group of ideologies that sprang up in response to the perceived success of the Soviet Union by trying to create a totalitarian super state run by leaders on the right".

Basically in the late 19th century the lesson learned seemed to be that the strongest / best country was the one that could run the largest central government.

Leninism was about creating a total mega central government run by Moldbug's Brahmins. Early PR about the Soviet Union had everyone convinced that it was highly successful and clearly the future. Moldbug's Optimates, aristocratic families or who ran large industries, decided to try to create their own total mega central governments.

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?"

"[W]hat virtues?"

Universal benevolence, the refusal to declare certain people born less worthy of well-being; a. k. a. the thing that gets bundled with Harrison Bergeron-style pressure toward self-ensmallening to produce Nietzsche's 'slave morality', per Metaphysiocrat's commentary on Alexander's commentary on Nietzsche.

You still haven't answered my question.

I have taken ill the past two weeks, and was unable to attend to many matters; however, I will respond to it shortly.

Orwell was a socialist, albeit a cynical and disillusioned one, and he had trouble publishing Animal Farm because the only publishers willing to publish anti-communist parables were anti-communist. Might be worth bearing in mind.

Oh, I'm aware.

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.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

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.

Referring to fascism as national socialism and mentioning the socialist underpinnings of the movement is the single easiest way to rack up downvotes on reddit without actually breaking any rules. The socialists will never allow themselves to be tainted with that association.

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.

Fundamentally that's more about lumpers vs splitters.

For insiders obviously The People's Front of Judea (PFJ) and the Judean People's Front (JPF) are completely different. Outsiders will generally lump them together.

Or how Antifa is not a thing, it's just a bunch of independent and completely different groups who happen to hold training sessions they all attend, connect to share tactics, cooridinate together at events under the idea of "diversity of tactics"...

I think People's Front of Judea jokes make sense with regards to splitting hairs about who's a communist vs a socialist vs a trotskyist and so on, but your proper anarchists are not going to be interchangeable with the above. Certainly, they're not going to be relevantly interchangeable with them when it comes to whether they'd endorse "fascism is basically just a mutant strain of communism".

I think People's Front of Judea jokes make sense with regards to splitting hairs about who's a communist vs a socialist vs a trotskyist and so on, but your proper anarchists are not going to be interchangeable with the above.

Why not? Were anarchists not a core constituency of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution? Do Anarchists now not trace their lineage back to ideological progenitors who failed the Bolshevik test, just the same as the rest of the trotskyists and socialists and communists?

The truth, I think, is that the ideology is not and has never been load-bearing. Observably, where ideology has imposed unacceptable real-world tradeoffs, the overwhelming majority of leftist ideologues have ditched the ideology rather than accepting the losses. Ideology is a means to an end, nothing more.

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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.

Do collectives exist?

Can collectives do bad things?

If the answer to those two questions is "yes", then collective blame is a necessary concept.

If the answer to either of those questions is "no", then humanity and its history is rendered incoherent. What is war, without the concept of a collective? What is the Civil Rights era, without the concept of a collective? What is Womens' Rights? What is Communism? What is Islam? Christianity? Judaism, political parties, economic classes, modes of government, etc, etc?

If the answer changes depending on what is personally convenient to one on a moment-by-moment basis, then one is a liar.

Do collectives exist?

They exist as a useful abstraction over the interests and actions of many individuals; i. e. they exist on the Map, but not in the Territory.

Can collectives do bad things?

Again, only as an abstraction.

If the answer to those two questions is "yes", then collective blame is a necessary concept.

Sort of. In terms of who gets listed in the 'factors leading to' paragraph in the history texts, it is reasonable to list $GROUP did $THING. In terms of who ought to suffer Consequences, one has a duty to make finer distinctions; e. g., it is not appropriate to blame or ostracise an individual liberal for the murder of Mr Kirk if the liberal in question did not, after said murder, continue to call for violence against 'Nazis' without being clear which right-wing figures do and, more importantly, do not fall under that label.

Sort of. In terms of who gets listed in the 'factors leading to' paragraph in the history texts, it is reasonable to list $GROUP did $THING. In terms of who ought to suffer Consequences, one has a duty to make finer distinctions...

And yet, our society has been built on a sharply limited willingness to make such finer distinctions, in both war and peace, for the entirety of its existence and right down to the present day. I observe that such fine distinctions have been remarkably rare when it seemed desirable to coordinate consequences against my tribe for its perceived misdeeds. We've had affirmative action for generations. We've had hate-crime laws for generations. We've firebombed cities in wartime, we've bombed weddings in the present day. Justice has been apportioned in collective terms for generations, and routinely still is.

it is not appropriate to blame or ostracize an individual liberal for the murder of Mr Kirk if the liberal in question did not, after said murder, continue to call for violence against 'Nazis' without being clear which right-wing figures do and, more importantly, do not fall under that label.

It appears to me that most liberals fail that test, but leave that aside. Why should I even bother to disagree with this statement, as opposed to simply selectively quoting it verbatim when the shoe is on the other foot? I readily agree that it will be highly inappropriate to discuss any concept of Red Tribe's collective responsibility for the hypothetical future murder or abuse of Blue Tribers. I readily agree that the correct response to such attempts is a retreat into a fog of abstractions. In the meantime, it's very important that we take Online Radicalism and Stochastic Terrorism very seriously, and provide accountability to those who foment hate and extremism, so long as all definitions used in this process are mine and mine alone. If that seems like a bad system to you (and it should), you probably should have won the fight against Blue's attempts at full-spectrum social dominance. But neither you nor others won that fight; to the limited extent it was won, it was won by people like me, who burned most of our principles to make it happen. If on the other hand you considered their push for full-spectrum social dominance distasteful and gauche but ultimately acceptable, it seems to me that the correct response is to invite you to consider my tribe's pursuit of dominance in a similar manner.

...Or to speak more plainly, it's not even that you're wrong, it's just that you are incapable of drawing these distinctions fairly, much less enforcing them on society as a whole. Your principles may or may not be wrong, but they are certainly irrelevant because they have never and will never be implemented in the real world. What is, is.

And yet, our society has been built on a sharply limited willingness to make such finer distinctions...for the entirety of its existence and right down to the present day.

Society has been built on a lot of things for the entirety of its existence and right down to the then-present day, until people started to realise that it was wrong.

The Industrial Revolution greatly facilitated this process, which is why I consider degrowthism/primitivism/anticivilisationism to be unwise on the level of tickling a sleeping dragon.

I observe that such fine distinctions have been remarkably rare when it seemed desirable to coordinate consequences against my tribe for its perceived misdeeds.

I do not like the wokists' excesses either; that's why I came here!

We've had hate-crime laws for generations.

Because many (of at least the central examples of) hate crimes have two parts: the direct victimisation of one or a few individuals (e. g. a Black person beaten after registering to vote), and the threat to thousands or millions of others (other Black people deciding whether they ought to register to vote).

We've firebombed cities in wartime

Which, if you are referring to Dresden and Tokyo, I do not condone. (If we hadn't done so, we could've added charges for Coventry to the Nuremberg Trials.)

Your principles may or may not be wrong, but they are certainly irrelevant because they have never and will never be implemented in the real world.

When Columbus sailed the ocean blue, communication faster than a horse or sailing ship had never been implemented in the real world.

Freeing women from the drudgery of hand-washing clothes had never been implemented in the real world.

Eradicating an infectious disease had never been implemented in the real world.

In other words,

Well, first of all, through God all things are possible, so jot that down.

Society has been built on a lot of things for the entirety of its existence and right down to the then-present day, until people started to realise that it was wrong.

This would be a good argument if it came with evidence that people had, in fact, realized that it was wrong in some generalized fashion, as opposed to realizing it was wrong exclusively in the context of when they were on the bad end of the consequences.

I do not like the wokists' excesses either; that's why I came here!

A lot of people don't like a lot of things, and yet those things persist.

To the extent that the excesses of woke have been pushed back, they have been pushed back by tribal identity and tribal warfare. Vibes, papers and essays accomplished nothing; re-electing Trump accomplished much more. Opinions are irrelevant, what matters is what people are actually willing to do.

Because many (of at least the central examples of) hate crimes have two parts: the direct victimisation of one or a few individuals (e. g. a Black person beaten after registering to vote), and the threat to thousands or millions of others (other Black people deciding whether they ought to register to vote).

you are describing the pathway from the individual to the collective. You cannot actually quantify the collective impact of a crime against a black person in any meaningful way. Hate Crime laws do not attempt a rigorous analysis of the individual impacts; they simply assume collective impact and proceed from that assumption. And modulo some quibblings about strategy and focus, they are correct to do so: Collectives exist, matter, and must be managed if complex society is to continue existing. Naive atomic individualism is a delusion that cannot be sustained in the real world.

Which, if you are referring to Dresden and Tokyo, I do not condone. (If we hadn't done so, we could've added charges for Coventry to the Nuremberg Trials.)

Whether you condone it or not, our society clearly has condoned it, and will continue to condone it in the future. Your disapproval is a personal quirk, not a reflection of the moral structure by which our society maintains itself.

Well, first of all, through God all things are possible, so jot that down.

"The poor will always be with you." Reality intrudes.

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.

Han is a pretty overly expansive category if you spend any meaningful time wandering around China, too.

Dongbei and Guangdong natives might both be Han but there's huge visual and behavioral differences there. Like in European terms it's like having Prussians and Southern Italians in the same category.

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.

I think the idea of a distinct German ethnic group was always an oversimplification by the Nazis. Population groups intermingle. A random person living near the borders of Denmark or Italy will probably be genetically closer to someone of the other side of the border than to his fellow Germans from 900km away.

Also, I am pretty sure that the work migration into Germany started in the 1960s, not in the 2000s. A pizzeria run by people of Italian origin or a Doener run by people from Turkey were both common in the 1990s.

I think it makes a lot more sense to define nation states culturally, which is to my understanding more the French way of thinking. Join the foreign legion, learn the language and the culture, and once you are done, you have become French.

I think the idea of a distinct German ethnic group was always an oversimplification by the Nazis. Population groups intermingle. A random person living near the borders of Denmark or Italy will probably be genetically closer to someone of the other side of the border than to his fellow Germans from 900km away.

True. The Germans have always been a cultural nation, not a genetic one.

Also, I am pretty sure that the work migration into Germany started in the 1960s, not in the 2000s. A pizzeria run by people of Italian origin or a Doener run by people from Turkey were both common in the 1990s.

Yes, that is correct. But it qas quantitatively a different situation - the Gastarbeiter were still a clear minority. By now, in between different birth rates, migration rates and cultural retention, cultural Germans are already or are certainly becoming the minority.

I think it makes a lot more sense to define nation states culturally, which is to my understanding more the French way of thinking. Join the foreign legion, learn the language and the culture, and once you are done, you have become French.

Of course, that makes the nation-state proposition far more practical than tying it to phrenology or genetic screening. But in all honesty, I think talking about nationalism in biological terms is, outside of some edge cases, just a waste of time. Rounding nations to cultural nations gets the job done, if one wants these discussions to go anywhere at all.

Of course, as a mongrel myself, I have good reason to say so.

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.

viscerally aware of this. It's "lived experience", dumb as it sounds

I understand but is there reason to suspect this awareness isn't the same as it's ever been which is why historically there had been pressure to conform linguisticlly and culturally.

While teaching English in Germany I had an ethnically Korean student, Karl Heniz, who had been born in Germany and was very culturally German.

I think the conversations around many of these issues would be very different if linguistic and cultural assimilation was required / enforced.

I agree. Germany is a nation primarily of language and culture. We have so many different breeds of German - not even one core population of Han Germans or Yamato Germans; it's been a hodgepodge mix from the start. The last genetically distinct populations like the Saxons were integrated so long ago, they're thoroughly mingled in. A Karl-Heinz of Korean extraction is somewhat rare, but if he's second-generation immigrant or later, as you say? By all means, I believe it. Those kinds of people are easily more culturally German in most ways that matter than genetically european inner-city wannabe gangsters.

It's a shame our language and culture are despised by most Germans. That just makes it a hard sell on the cultural market.

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.

The UK and USA are both explicitly not nation-states from their foundings - that is why they have "United" in their names.

In the sense used here, the US was, from founding, intended to be such -- but without the ethnic purity, since it was mongrel at the foundation.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

So, "one people".

The "United" was about states with different interests, not about different peoples.

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.

In so far as there was a real attempt at British nation-building after 1603, it was mostly based on anti-Catholicism in general and anti-Frenchness in particular. Hence the difficulty of including Ireland.

Empire-building as a national project was an example of civic nationalism, not ethno-nationalism. Upward mobility was always (in theory) and frequently (in practice) open to colonials who displayed the characteristics of an English or Scottish gentleman, starting with loyalty to the Crown and not being Catholic. No ethno-nationalistic society would have elected Benjamin Disraeli Prime Minister.

I was observing the whole thing from a more practical point of view. Apart from building and maintaining a world empire, what else did unite the English, Scots and Welsh? What else did they agree on?

Contra @MadMonzer I would say that Britain isn't a proposition nation any more than England/Scots/Wales is. It's an ethnic one with multiple very similar ethnicities. There doesn't have to be a lot we agree on (though there are certain serious disagreements especially around religion) but we are used to each other. You don't need shared memes with your brother for him to be your brother. You don't even have to like him. You just have to dislike him for long enough.

Apart from building and maintaining a world empire, what else did unite the English, Scots and Welsh?

@Botond173 - it really was the Frogs. After the Scottish Reformation, the Scots hated the French (who had attempted to prop up Catholicism in Scotland) as much as the English did.

I would say that Britain isn't a proposition nation any more than England/Scots/Wales is. It's an ethnic one with multiple very similar ethnicities.

I think "ethnic nation with multiple ethnicities" is a contradiction in terms. The non-propositional view that makes sense given the history is that the Britain (or the UK - if you are doing this type of analysis the Irish Question matters) is a multinational state based on an alliance between friendly nations. And in the modern age they don't work (with Czechoslovakia as the textbook example).

Empirically, the folk nationalism of the British nations agrees. Scottish ethno-nationalism has, in fact, defined itself as anti-English first and foremost. Welsh ethno-nationalism is fundamentally pro-Welsh rather than anti-anyone (it focusses on preservation of Welsh language and Welsh-speaking culture). And in England, polling shows that self-identification as English is a proxy for ethno-nationalism and self-identification as British is a proxy for civic nationalism. And "British" nationalists based in England (like Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage) see suppressing Scottish (but not English) nationhood as part of their British national project. English nationalism isn't anti-Scottish per se, but it wants to reduce Scottishness to a cuisine and a costume.

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.

Germany coalesces as a stateless (because the Holy Roman Empire is both over-inclusive and not really a state) nation surprisingly early - certainly before 1600, and in my read by 1400. (The academic politics of the University of Prague - now Charles University - up to and including the Hussite crisis make most sense understood as a conflict between Germans and Czechs as national groups). Post-Reformation, there is an issue to resolve about whether the German nation is Lutheran (with Catholic Austria excluded) or biconfessional, but nothing as fundamental as the Breton and Occitan issues in France.

Despite being a state, France coalesces as a nation later than Germany. Perhaps because of being a state - from the point of view of a feudal dynastic monarch national identity among your subjects is potentially awkward.

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.

When did Catholic-Protestant intermarriage become socially acceptable in America? You cant combine Anglos and Italians into a single "white American" ethnicity without it.

Sometime in the forties or fifties.

Depends on your circles. In parts of the rust belt different kinds of ethnic Catholics wouldn’t have intermarried with each other, let alone Protestants, before ~1950. Protestant anti Catholicism was a fringe phenomenon by the nineties, but before that it was common in the south- even as the Catholic taboo on intermarriage took serious beatings with Vatican II(northern Protestant anti-Catholicism went into a tailspin at around the same time, for different reasons).

Inter generational Italian language transmission largely stopped happening in the 50’s and sixties, but deliberate government policy was as responsible as changing social norms. The last native French speaking Cajuns were born in the fifties, for another example. German declined earlier for war related reasons.

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