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I heard a quote awhile ago that was something like "be careful telling people they are Nazis, because one day they might believe you."
If every young white man who has a valid criticisms of the prevailing cultural dogma is pigeonholed into that classification, the author isn't doing himself any favors. It's true that Dissident Right talking points are increasingly being embraced by the mainstream conservative movement. Is that due to sadism, or is it maybe because the DR is getting at something real, and the perspective can no longer be ignored by the conservative talking heads?
Here's Matt Walsh a couple weeks ago:
It would have been unthinkable for someone like Matt Walsh to say this even a few years ago. Matt isn't saying this because he's sadistic, he's saying it because the prevailing cultural dogma is actually pretty hostile to white people. Gaslighting people with "If you believe that you're a Nazi" has greatly contributed to the Nazi memes, I can guarantee you that.
This is so uncharitable that it bears no resemblance to reality. Let's take a look at one of the many various compilation videos of Hitler's speeches that gets clicks from e-fascists. The fascist subjectivity here is not the indulgence of sadistic feelings. It invokes:
Feelings of revolutionary triumph from an undesirable status quo
Sense of community
Strong leader with a charismatic devotion to the people
Proposing the nation as inherited from a people
The author has no understanding whatsoever for why this propaganda is compelling to those people, and why there might be a lack of these elements in the present culture that does indeed explain Trump and the growing influence of the Dissident Right. But it's not due to sadism, it's due to very real deficiencies in the culture that do not provide for these human needs, so they are sought in heterodox and taboo spaces.
Edit: OP deleted the post, which was just a copy + paste of this article with no additional commentary.
Part of the problem is that "Nazi, fascist, far-right extremist, white supremacist" have been so over-used that people are now reacting "If that makes me a Nazi, okay I'm a Nazi" instead of falling over themselves trying to deny it or dropping whatever argument they had been making.
Trump is a fascist. DeSantis is a fascist. I'm a fascist, you're a fascist, they're a fascist. Everybody except me and the six people who agree with me in lockstep are fascists, and as soon as one of them demurs even slightly from my list of acceptable right-think, they'll be a fascist too.
It's weird how nobody seems to recognize this, from either side. The right keeps diluting "socialism", and then the left calls them on it... and proceeds to dilute "fascism".
Ironically, the right only showcases their own ignorance when they call someone like Joe Biden a socialist. It's one of the most insane and asinine things I've ever heard.
People say this shit as self evidently true but really why is it self evident? Biden doesn’t believe in government ownership of the means of production but he seems pretty into the government control of the means of production along with re distributing wealth (albeit to his tribe). The amount of money the federal government spends would make many socialist governments blush.
He isn’t a 1960s socialist but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a socialist.
I'm extremely confused on what you're getting at (or even talking about?).
It's pretty clear. Biden has enough socialist policies that calling him a socialist is not "showcasing his own ignorance".
What socialist policies does Joe Biden promulgate? Last I checked, he isn't trying to democratize Walmart, trying to make it look more like the Mondragon Corporation.
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Yeah but the amount of people who'd outwardly self-identify as Socialist/Marxist influenced is far greater than the amount of people who'd outwardly self-identify as fascist.
Yes, because the professed ideals of socialism (universal brotherhood of man, equality, freedom from toil and force and brute necessity, creation of riches and plenty for all, etc.) are pretty consistent with the professed goals of western liberal civilization.
Thus, it's easy to convert people to a crude form of socialist-identity just by saying "don't you want sick people to be treated by doctors? Don't you want people not to starve? Don't you want people not to have to work 16-hour days in horrible coal mines?" and yadda-yadda-ing and handwaving (or even just ignoring) the question of how we get from here to there.
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