American Fascism on the Rise

Post Reply New Topic

Welcome to Trumpamerica!

This is one of those 1-in-1,000 occurrences where Fnord replies to a new thread featuring a YouTube video with something other than "never let a YouTube video do your thinking for you".

What happened, Fnord? I guess YouTube videos are fine when you agree with the message. And sometimes the temptation to have another moan about Donald Trump must just be too much to resist.

I responded to the subject line since I pay no attention to YouTube videos being used as "evidence".  So . . .

Never let YouTube videos do your thinking for you.
There.  All better now?

Those who cannot refute the message often attack the messenger.

Nobody, or at least very few people who do post youtube videos here, let youtube videos do the thinking for them.

Posting Youtube videos is no different from writing a thread or post on a forum.

It's just that people have watched a youtube video and somehow agree with the message in it, because that youtube video has an in-built explanation for the message, whatever that might be.

If they disagree with the youtube video, they usually write something additional to the video they post here.

If they can't make up their mind, they just post the video and read the comments - then they'll perhaps make up their own mind.

Again: Nobody are using youtube videos, documentaries or anything else to do the thinking for them.
Unless, of course, they publicly announce that, ie. some religious fundamentalists who says "The Bible says so, therefore it must be true!" - THEN you can say "Never let someone else do the thinking for you".

Of course American fascism is on the rise.
American conservatism for the last half-century was built around two things: laissez faire capitalism and American nationalism. If you were a centrist, 'Chamber of Commerce' Republican, you've either changed parties or have decided to stay with a party that does not give a sh*t what you think.

Nationalism was already on the rise once a black man entered the White House. This was bad enough, but now an unprecedented number of Republicans are anti-capitalist and even anti-liberal (liberal in a general sense, not a left-of-center sense). These were people who, apparently, were only accepting of capitalism because they were raised to believe that the free market was part of what made America great and unique. The financial crisis already damaged that belief for many, but the widespread adoption of socially liberal stances by corporations (sincere or otherwise) was the final straw for people who prioritized conservative nationalism over government non-interference in the economy.

So when you have a party whose main coalition for the longest time was free-market capitalism and American (often Christian) nationalism, and that group then starts to abandon free-market capitalism as a core ideology, what are you left with? Christian and secular American nationalism. Nationalism which is tired of acting like it is in any way fine with social liberalism and is willing to give government a blank check to regulate the economy and society as long as it keeps corporations and the government from forcing them to act like they tolerate f*gs and tr*nnies like me.

Didn't they used to always say that opposition to free markets was socialism? And many of them are openly calling themselves nationalists?
So what happens when you mix socialism (as they define it) and nationalism? What would you label that? I'm pretending I can't figure out, so I'm waiting for a conservative to spell it out for me.

And yeah, even if the video someone posts is utter bs, it's not helpful or constructive to just tell them to not let YouTube do the thinking for them. Lots of us get information or participate in discourse on YouTube (for better and for worse). It just stops the conversation dead.

Critique what is being said in a video--dont critique someone's argument solely for using a video as an example of something they already think.

Oh, look!  There really IS a Santa Claus!



Not.

Santa is the real reason we saw Covid spikes in winter. That fat bastard got sick and left his germs in hundreds of millions of homes!

Roronoa didn't say we should prove anything by posting a video.
The argument as put forth by Roronoa is that whatever one might write could as well be posted in a video as well as writing a post.

That does not make the video nor the written comment true or false for that reason alone.
But neither does posting a video make the video statements false. You have to watch the video and hear them out before you can judge anything.

What you're doing is something like "This is a video. Therefore it cannot be trusted".

The video statements may or may not be trusted, but for entirely different reasons than for the sole reason it is a video.

No, I am implying YouTube videos cannot be trusted.  There are videos from reputable sources that can be trusted; but not those posted on YouTube. Even though some YouTube videos DO originate with reputable sources, it simply makes sense to go to those sources first and avoid YouTube altogether!

Last edited by Fnord on 07 Jan 2022, 4:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are youtube videos that are verified by reputable sources as well.

Then one would do best to consult those reputable sources instead.  Anyway . . .

I have noted since Trump took office in 2017 that Fascism was on the rise in America, and that he was spearheading the effort.

Well, personally I consider myself a right-wing progressive rather than a conservative, but I’ll answer that and say yes, ok, very clever, we get it: nationalism + socialism = national socialist = the name of Hitler’s party in 1930s Germany.

But are socially conservative types actually wrong to come to the conclusion that neoliberal capitalism doesn’t serve their interests? Without parroting things they learned in school about 1930s Germany, can anyone explain from first principles why the idea of mixing patriotism/nationalism with socialism bothers them so much more than the supposedly more traditionally Republican idea of mixing patriotism/nationalism with capitalism? I mean, if you were a socially leftist, neoliberal globalist type like Tony Blair I could understand your concern, but why do so many traditional socialist types wet their pants at the idea of patriotic types adopting socialist economic positions when on paper those traditional socialist types should should welcome this development? Is it because this development shows up the traditional socialists’ supposed “anti-establishment” stance for the sham it is?

The fact is most people in general (unlike most people on this website) are, deep down, socially rightist and economically leftist, and the political choices they have traditionally been given in Western countries like the US (where patriotic types are encouraged to embrace capitalism, and socialist types are encouraged to embrace social liberalism) are almost completely artificial. (I mean, I can sort of understand why this weird mix of patriotism and laissez-faire capitalism has been so popular in the US, but the days of the Wild West have long gone now.)