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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

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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