This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
5mo ago·Edited 5mo ago
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
Words do have meanings, just not a single one for each word. And handpicking the meaning you like to imply the interlocutor is unaware of it (as opposed to "doesn't care") is the kind of pointless wordcelery that should be dismissed. It offers no new information.
BurdensomeCount
Singapore is the only country that learned the correct lessons from the British Empire.
sun_the_second 5mo ago·Edited 5mo ago
An interlocutor who doesn't care is even worse than one who is unaware, they should be shamed and ridiculed even more. Ignorance is bad but deliberate carelessness is worthy of punishment. If they wanted to say "totalitarianism", then they should have said "totalitarianism", not mangled up the meanings (I absolutely agree Saudi Arabia is extremely totalitarian).
Plus you have offered no response to my large list of differences in what life is like for an ordinary person living under fascism vs absolute totalitarian monarchy.
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Notes -
Words have meanings, and the way fascism was being used here was in a negative perjorative sense, that doesn't apply to "absolute totalitarian monarchism" if only because that's too big of a mouthful for the average man and is also too much of a fargroup for westerners in a way that "fascism" is not. Using words incorrectly is a slur treadmill and a bad thing, and deserves to be called out and ridiculed.
But if you ask about the difference for someone living there:
Fascism is a one party society, Monarchism is a zero party society. This obviously influences how much personal political power you can get if you start out with none but are determined to make something of yourself.
In fascism your loyalty is to the country, in monarchy your loyalty is to the royal family. The "country" needs not even be a well defined thing beyond a necessary legal fiction for the modern world, indeed "Saudi Arabia" is named after the House of Saud, the family which rules it.
Fascism glorifies its state and ruler as being better than others, there is no such thing in monarchy: you are a subject of your monarch, therefore you must serve him, even though other monarchs may well be better.
In fascism, power comes through seizing it (or rising up the ranks of the party), in monarchism power (generally) comes through being born into it.
Monarchy tends to be more internally stable (as long as the ruling king does his duty and properly nominates and grooms a heir before he dies), because there are fewer people who can legitimately claim power and thus cause internal strife, fascism is vulnerable to coups in the leadership by any strong enough random who thinks he can serve the country better than the current leader, this leads to civil strife and suffering for the whole population.
Fascism is very atheistic as it raises the state above everything, a totalitarian theocratic monarchy is obviously very religious (it's literally in the name). But still Fascism is probably fine with your religion as long as you don't make it interfere with state business, totalitarian theocratic monarchies would not be happy with you being a member of the wrong religion.
Fascism is more egalitarian on a personal level than absolute monarchy, as long as you glorify the state and are a citizen everything is well and good, in monarchy there are more divisions with some people being elevated higher than others (titles of nobility).
Fascism is generally like a planned economy, it's corporatism done on a state level (the state run like e.g. Apple), Monarchy doesn't have much to say about how the economy is best run.
etc. etc.
These are massive differences between fascism and totalitarian state monarchy, even the last one on its own is a huge difference to the life of the average person (akin to the difference between a capitalistic/communist society). The inhabitants do get both nationalism and authoritarianism and a bunch of other similar things, but their lives under the two systems are very different on a day to day basis.
And if you're going to use this to say that fascism sounds better than totalitarian theocratic monarchy for an average citizen then fine, you can make that argument but that still doesn't make it OK to say totalitarian theocratic monarchies are "fascism", no different to how getting punched in the face is better than getting your leg cut off, but saying someone got punched in the face when they got their leg cut off is comepletely wrong, and using it as hyperbole (bacause society has memetic antibodies against punching in the face but not legs getting cut off) is straight up wrong and deserves to be called out, mocked and ridiculed for being next level stupid.
Btw, Saudi Arabia is actually a pretty nice place to live these days if you are in any ways economically productive, I have cousins (including female ones) who went to live there for ~8 years or so, made a lot of money due to low tax while having a nice comfortable life due to modern day amenities that would be much more expensive to replicate in the west, then came back and used the saved money to straight up buy a house.
Words do have meanings, just not a single one for each word. And handpicking the meaning you like to imply the interlocutor is unaware of it (as opposed to "doesn't care") is the kind of pointless wordcelery that should be dismissed. It offers no new information.
An interlocutor who doesn't care is even worse than one who is unaware, they should be shamed and ridiculed even more. Ignorance is bad but deliberate carelessness is worthy of punishment. If they wanted to say "totalitarianism", then they should have said "totalitarianism", not mangled up the meanings (I absolutely agree Saudi Arabia is extremely totalitarian).
Plus you have offered no response to my large list of differences in what life is like for an ordinary person living under fascism vs absolute totalitarian monarchy.
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