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Fascism is un-American
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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None of that is fascism. It's just run of the mill liberalism.
Anyone downvoting this, should be able to explain why what the the US and European powers did to Africa, Asia, and the americas during the 1700-1900s, was any better or fundamentally different than what fascist formulations from 1920-1945 did. And those atrocities were all done using a far more stable form of government: bourgeois parliamentarism / liberal democracy.
People really need to read Losurdo's - Liberalism, a counter-history. Liberals invented the slave trade, and the victorian holocausts. The only difference between them and the fascists, are that they're far better at colonialism and genocide than the fascists were.
I keep trying to tell people classical liberals were bastards. There's this perception that just because we can vote that means we can't be the bad guys. It's an ideological catechism that actually fits with the above picture. If Fascism is just whenever mass suffering and death is perpetrated but also World War 2 non voting systems run by strong men then it gives the modern person living in a democracy permission to stop paying attention. After all they can vote and their guy would never.
We need to get this through people's heads, stop putting flashy words on human rights violations and start holding leaders accountable. Because a culture of not being accountable is how you get actual Fascism.
While not exclusive to it, they are elements of fascism.
It's funny that we have all these lists and essays and books on how fascist ideology and policy is a confluence of many such elements, yet people still act as tough "is this person/party/state fascist?" is a simple yes or no question with no gray area.
There's a joke that if you ask 10 people to define fascism, you'll get 10 different answers.
It's an imprecise term whose definition changes with every author who makes a try of it. Even the more popular lists of traits like Eco's or Paxton's have a lot of issues and contradictions which ppl have pointed out.
Any posts that even mention fascism always devolve into ppl trying and failing to agree on its definition, the point of this deflective practice enabling ppl to uphold their own liberal democracies as being sacred and less genocidal.
It's not quite that ambiguous. I find that when you're willing to engage with fascist rhetoric and the underlying worldview, you can see the patterns emerge that these scholars have pointed out.
I absolutely agree that (neo)liberal western societies usually only engage with it in order to isolate differences to feel better about themselves. That was my whole point actually. If you understand it's possible that a society or movement partially but not entirely meets the criteria for fascism, that's an actual starting point for a conversation to counteract it. Rather than doing the fig leaf thing from above and say "see we're technically not fascist" as an excuse to shut down that exact conversation.
Its arguable that its better to define them by the intent of the ideology rather than just their outcomes.
Same difference, just one has a smile and bright colors.