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The_Walrus
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01 Dec 2022, 7:57 am

Dox47 wrote:
In before the parade of those who don't know that "fascism" means something besides "political group I don't like", let alone that it's much more applicable to today's Democrats than to the GOP given the public/private power alliance they've got going on.

Yes, the Democrats are the real fascists.

I remember how, after Trump won the 2016 election, armed Democrats stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the results, chanting “hang Joe Biden”.

I remember how the Governor of Michigan decided to remove a company’s tax break because the company didn’t support gay marriage.

Yes, it’s the Democrats who are obsessed with masculinity, ultranationalism, and “owning the libs”. The Democrats are the ones in favour of the creeping militarisation of the US. The Democrats are the ones trying to stop undesirables from voting. It’s all the Democrats.

(To be clear, hyperbolic claims about the Republicans being fascist are unhelpful and at best are overly broad, but let’s not kid ourselves. Anyone can look at US politics and see which party is closer to Mussolini and which is closer to, say, Matteo Renzi. Public-private co-operation is not fascism.)



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01 Dec 2022, 8:21 am

The_Walrus wrote:
(To be clear, hyperbolic claims about the Republicans being fascist are unhelpful and at best are overly broad, but let’s not kid ourselves. Anyone can look at US politics and see which party is closer to Mussolini and which is closer to, say, Matteo Renzi. Public-private co-operation is not fascism.)


I really hate attempts to rebrand fascism as an ideology with certain economic characteristics. Oh yeah, that's what made Hitler bad, his ECONOMIC views. :roll:


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DeathFlowerKing
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01 Dec 2022, 8:32 am

I wonder if maybe deep down "fascism" has always been a core part of America's system? Given our long history of slavery and genocide, not to mention locking certain families up in prison camps like the Japanese during WW2 or the Hispanics trying to cross our border in recent years.

Or perhaps we're just an apartheid state like what South Africa had?



Last edited by DeathFlowerKing on 01 Dec 2022, 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

magz
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01 Dec 2022, 8:41 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
I wonder if maybe deep down "fascism" has always been a core part of America's system? Given our long history if slavery and genocide, not to mention locking certain families up in prison camps like the Japanese during WW2 or the Hispanics trying to cross our border in recent years.

Or perhaps we're just an apartheid state like what South Africa has?

I sometimes feel like there was something distrubingly common between the death industry of the Holocaust and the Atlantic slavery.
This dehumanization of people considered "under-men" in every aspect of their lifes and deaths. Mass, industrial scale. The ancestry obsession, deteriminig your rights or lack of them. And some social mechanisms that made it possible for regular people to do horrorous things (and, in some cases, to still consider themselves good christians).

Atlantic slavery was older than fascism. It lasted a lot longer. Its impact seems also likely to be lasting longer.


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kraftiekortie
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01 Dec 2022, 8:51 am

The basis of the US is not fascistic. It was, as the Founding Fathers themselves stated, an “experiment.” They were treading new ground in the late 18th century. They were seeking to expand republicanism beyond what occurred in city-sized places like Athens, Florence, and Venice.

It is unfortunate that we had to BS and murder the Native Americans in order to realize our “Manifest Destiny.”

It is unfortunate that slavery was the basis of a considerable portion of the agrarian economy even amid the “experiment.” It certainly besmirched the purity of the “experiment.”

It is a miracle that this “experiment” has succeeded, by and large, even amid many forces which sought to undo this “experiment.”

Russia doesn’t have that basis. Their basis is monarchism and autocracy. The “experimental” phase started with Gorbachev—but this “experiment” was easily overturned by Putin.

A person like Trump probably would have succeeded better in places which do not have as strong a BASIS as the American Experiment.



magz
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01 Dec 2022, 8:59 am

I can't remember who said it but it was somewhere in the Interbellum period when fascism was a positively fashionable trend - some Polish politician said that fascism was impossible in Poland because Poles were not disciplined enough.
Hopefully, it's true about Americans, too.

But it would have been healthy to review each nation's own past attrocities. To understand what happened, how it impacts the present and how not to let it happen again.


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kraftiekortie
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01 Dec 2022, 9:00 am

We have to stop conceding that history will, inevitably, “repeat itself.”



magz
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01 Dec 2022, 9:02 am

The history never literally repeats itself - yet some patterns often emerge again and again.


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DeathFlowerKing
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01 Dec 2022, 9:05 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
The basis of the US is not fascistic. It was, as the Founding Fathers themselves stated, an “experiment.” They were treading new ground in the late 18th century. They were seeking to expand republicanism beyond what occurred in city-sized places like Athens, Florence, and Venice.

It is unfortunate that we had to BS and murder the Native Americans in order to realize our “Manifest Destiny.”

It is unfortunate that slavery was the basis of a considerable portion of the agrarian economy even amid the “experiment.” It certainly besmirched the purity of the “experiment.”

It is a miracle that this “experiment” has succeeded, by and large, even amid many forces which sought to undo this “experiment.”

Russia doesn’t have that basis. Their basis is monarchism and autocracy. The “experimental” phase started with Gorbachev—but this “experiment” was easily overturned by Putin.

A person like Trump probably would have succeeded better in places which do not have as strong a BASIS as the American Experiment.


Well after reading what magz said I'm starting to agree more with her on this. The problems with the system that this country was built on is something even older than fascism and probably worse in the longrun.



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01 Dec 2022, 9:07 am

What you stated is the preferred interpretation of those who make use of the phrase.

The notions of “patterns” repeating themselves.

I wish more people would undertake a concerted, objective study of the inevitable results of repression.



kraftiekortie
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01 Dec 2022, 9:08 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
The basis of the US is not fascistic. It was, as the Founding Fathers themselves stated, an “experiment.” They were treading new ground in the late 18th century. They were seeking to expand republicanism beyond what occurred in city-sized places like Athens, Florence, and Venice.

It is unfortunate that we had to BS and murder the Native Americans in order to realize our “Manifest Destiny.”

It is unfortunate that slavery was the basis of a considerable portion of the agrarian economy even amid the “experiment.” It certainly besmirched the purity of the “experiment.”

It is a miracle that this “experiment” has succeeded, by and large, even amid many forces which sought to undo this “experiment.”

Russia doesn’t have that basis. Their basis is monarchism and autocracy. The “experimental” phase started with Gorbachev—but this “experiment” was easily overturned by Putin.

A person like Trump probably would have succeeded better in places which do not have as strong a BASIS as the American Experiment.


Well after reading what magz said I'm starting to agree more with her on this. The problems with the system that this country was built on is something even older than fascism and probably worse in the longrun.


If we didn’t have our Constitution, we would probably be a “banana republic” today.



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01 Dec 2022, 9:13 am

One only has to read accounts of people in Russian prison camps, going back at least to Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from Underground,” to discern what is meant by Russian repression.

“Darkness at Noon” is the account of a political prisoner during the Stalinist “purges,” which followed the Holodomor.



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01 Dec 2022, 9:15 am

kraftiekortie wrote:

If we didn’t have our Constitution, we would probably be a “banana republic” today.


Which is ironic because we exploit real "Banana Republics" today.



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01 Dec 2022, 9:16 am

We almost became one on 1/6/2021.



The_Walrus
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01 Dec 2022, 9:18 am

There are indeed many unpleasant ideologies, even far-right ideologies, that are not fascism.

The US certain was an apartheid state for most of its existence, but it isn’t now. It hasn’t fully recovered, for sure, the effects still linger, but race doesn’t determine where you can live or work or use the toilet anymore.

There are fascists active in the US. Elements of the Republican Party support them, and larger elements would not resist them (the same is true of the Democrats and various leftist revolutionaries, but for various reasons American leftists are not as prone to political violence). The fascists mostly see Trumpism as a useful stepping-stone, but some do not - they particularly view Trump as “weak on race”. As a voting bloc, they are less relevant than Evangelicals across the nation, but probably more relevant in some key areas with lower religiosity, like the Mountain West.



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01 Dec 2022, 9:22 am

DeathFlowerKing wrote:
Do you guys think that at this point the right wing extremists are winning here in the U.S. of a***holes?

I do not. No.


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