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I'm pretty sure I'd be better off under fascism that favors East-Asians over current European democracy.
What sort of state are you envisioning?
If I try to imagine a situation where I, a Caucasian Australian person, lived in an East Asian fascist state, the closest examples I can think of are things like 1) WWII Japan conquered my country and took over, 2) I move to North Korea, 3) Somehow China gets a lot more populist and expansionist and either conquers my country or I move there, or something else along those lines.
In all those examples I think I would be worse off than I am currently under liberal democracy. If imperial Japan took over Australia, I think there's a chance they treat European people better than southeast Asians, but realistically we're probably going to become a second Manchukuo, turned into a resource colony. Ethnic Japanese settlers would likely come down and turn into a local aristocracy. That seems bad to me. I don't think I need to explain why the North Korea option is terrible. And as for China, well, I wouldn't want to be an ethnic minority in China now. How much better would it be if China went even more militantly Han-supremacist? You don't even have to bring up the Uighurs or something - look at how, for example, the Manchus went from a majority of the population in multiple northeastern provinces to the small minorities they are right now, and anti-Manchu conspiracy theories are still common. Let's just say that as a laowai I do not think I would be safe under an intensification of the same sort of thing.
China's got pretty-strong affirmative action for minorities in present. They're definitely less well-off on average than the Han population, but on the other hand the Han population is essentially concentrated in the areas that are easier to develop and the infrastructure build is increasingly rolling out. You can also make historical arguments that frequently what allowed a Chinese minority to stay a distinct minority population tended to be some form of 'will live in/was forced out to areas that even the Han didn't particularly want to live in' which then has significant impacts on their average welfare in modernity.
It's also further complicated by other situations. I spent a year in Darwin with 'the locals', and I do think the Chinese system would probably be better equipped to 'fix' the Indigenous situation of Australia since they'd have little-to-no qualms with making short, sharp interventions to try and shift them back into shape. The Uighurs also somewhat similar, where I believe that the longterm median life conditions of the Uighurs are probably better than they'd be if the same issue were handled with the typical Western ineffectual fumbling at Islamic society, but also the period of pacification was intolerably brutal by Western standards. The West, through an abundance of empathy, frequently makes decisions around minorities that don't really benefit anybody long (or even short) term but they aren't being 'mean'.
I'd much rather live in a France right now where the Chinese state were in charge of ethnic issues than live in one where well-intentioned bureaucrats just kind of allowed things to snowball endlessly.
I don't think anybody will argue that Australia's approach to indigenous peoples is anything but broken, but the number of Australians in any way affected by our approach to indigenous peoples is very low. I'm Victorian and I encounter approximately zero Aboriginal people on a regular basis. If you don't live in the Northern Territory, you're just not going to run into the issue.
I am by no means defending our Aboriginal policy to say that firstly, even assuming hypothetically that a Chinese fascist government would handle Aboriginal policy better, that is such a minor, insignificant issue that it does not factor into my judgement of whether Chinese fascists would be better for me than the present system; and secondly, I do not think Chinese fascists would handle Aboriginal policy better, neither for Aboriginal people themselves nor for the majority.
My take is basically that today the People's Republic of China is a state run for the benefit of the Han majority, and a hypothetical fascist China would only intensify that. If fascist China conquered Australia, I think that would, in the long term, be worse for people like me than sticking with liberal democracy.
None of that means that I think the present establishment is flawless, or even good. I do, however, think it is less bad than it would be if the Chinese took over. Hell, if nothing else, I prefer a relatively free market to socialism with Chinese characteristics!
True. Was actually funny to me after moving back to Melbourne and I didn't see an Indigenous person again for 3 months until I boarded the 109 and there was one going about his business.
I do think you've got a bunch of vast misunderstandings of what modern China is and how it operates. You're living in Socialism with Australian characteristics and there's an abundant relatively free market over in China that's going about its own business. China having a layer of fascism allows a lot of absurdities to be managed with less insane pointless slogs that pop up in the Western system as of present.
Are you thinking of any examples?
To be clear, I don't think that modern China is fascist. I'm imagining a fascist China that exaggerates and intensifies some of China's existing pathologies. My understanding of the state of modern China, absorbed mostly from talking to Chinese people, is that everyday life is a lot like everyday life in the West, only everything is a little bit nastier or more corrupt. Cities are a bit dirtier. Officials are slightly more on the take. Little everyday things are just a bit more frustrating. Still, it is perfectly liveable.
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Other points aside, this one in particular was a decision of the Manchu court to counter increasing Russian influence in the region and to increase development in the area, not something that happened during the Republic or China or in the People's Republic. The Han were already solidly a majority in the northeastern provinces for a long time by the fall of the Qing.
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The closest thing we've had to East-Asian supremacist fascism didn't go too well for those under its boot.
How's that "the closest thing"?
How is it not? Ultra-nationalist racial supremacists turns out they don't like other races I'm shocked. The Japanese treated the white people under their rule pretty terribly and they had a significantly white city in Harbin at the time. If you mean some sort of East Asian non-democratic technocracy well that's hardly what people mean by facism.
I feel like you and Opt-out are treating Fascism the way campus leftists treat socialism. Actual existing Fascism was not about raising prosperity for everyone with competent government, it was about raising prosperity for the chosen group.
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Are East Asians your opponents?
They're not "my group", so at the very least your first statement is proven false, yes?
In the sense that you believe you'd be better off, yes.
I actually kind of doubt you'd be better off under fascism that favors East Asians than under current European democracy, but whether you would or would not be really depends on the degree of fascist favoritism.
You can kind of doubt whatever you want, political disagreements are perfectly fine, but your claim that actually what any fascist must actually be arguing for is favoritism for their group is just flatly wrong. There's also a hidden assumption in what you're saying that democracy prevents favoritism, which is also just flat out wrong.
I suppose there are fascists who care more about the principle of fascism than about ensuring that their own group is on top, but to me that seems kind of pointless. I guess I don't see any appeal to fascism unless it's to get my own group on top. But some people have different preferences and genuinely like other things about fascism. I suppose many of those would be people who for whatever reasons genuinely like the idea of collectivism.
Democracy definitely does not prevent favoritism. Almost by definition. But so-called "liberal" democracy does limit the degree to which favoritism causes problems by limiting the power of the majority to change things just because they are a majority. Of course when enough voters want to do things that are prevented by "liberal" democracy, then "liberal" democracy does tend to go away.
It boils down to a sense of public order, and clear rules to be followed. There's even variations of fascism that are fairly universalist and don't really put one group above the other, so it's a bit weird to me that you want to boil it down to favoritism.
It seems to have forgotten to put a limit on what can be done in the name of a minority.
I guess I do it because you can have public order and rules with just plain authoritarianism. To me what makes fascism distinct from authoritarianism is that it attempts to make the state and the nation the same thing. So there is a notion of some privileged nation. Although, it is important to note that the nation does not have to be defined based on genetics. For example, Italian fascists were relatively comfortable with Jews, as long as the Jews participated in the "Italian" nation.
And, to the extent that it's done that, it has become less liberal.
If we consider the famous phrase:
then it's fairly clear that it's not necessarily racial in nature. My understanding of Italian fascism is that prior to Nazi influence it was mostly cultural-supremacist and state-supremacist in nature (though still indulging in the popular prejudices of the time e.g. against blacks).
I suppose given that formulation you could argue that the Chinese are -- to an overwhelming degree -- already the most successful fascists in the world, with the subordination of society and government to the party, despite not having many key components that we associate with it like the heavy militarism and glorification of war.
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