What's so bad about fascism?

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07 Feb 2009, 7:54 pm

Yep, sounds like a good thread. What makes fascism bad? Can good fascism exist? I decided to leave out a poll this time, but thoughts?

ruveyn
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07 Feb 2009, 7:59 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Yep, sounds like a good thread. What makes fascism bad? Can good fascism exist? I decided to leave out a poll this time, but thoughts?

If you value your liberty you will dislike an authoritarian regime.

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07 Feb 2009, 7:59 pm

Fascism is considered to be a bad thing because it views all of society as a single unit rather than acknowledging the existence of atomistic individuals. Because of this, many of its calculations are wrong and it thus attains poor results.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:01 pm

ruveyn wrote:

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Yep, sounds like a good thread. What makes fascism bad? Can good fascism exist? I decided to leave out a poll this time, but thoughts?

If you value your liberty you will dislike an authoritarian regime.

ruveyn

In case you didn't know, AG is our resident anarchist, so I think the thread was not intended to actually be a promotion of fascism.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:02 pm

Orwell wrote:

There is a difference between being autonomous individual and atomistic. The atomistic view assumes each of us is an isolated being. This is clearly not the case. We are joined to other by common language and culture.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:21 pm

ruveyn wrote:

If you value your liberty you will dislike an authoritarian regime.

ruveyn

Well, you can say "value your liberty", but honestly, is the question really about *my* liberty? Couldn't a fascist regime not impinge upon my liberty at all, but rather impinge upon the liberty of those who disagree with me? Why should I care about the liberty of the latter group?

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07 Feb 2009, 8:22 pm

Orwell wrote:

In case you didn't know, AG is our resident anarchist, so I think the thread was not intended to actually be a promotion of fascism.

Why not promote fascism?

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07 Feb 2009, 8:26 pm

Orwell wrote:

As ruveyn pointed out about atomism, people are all joined together by language and culture. To say that society doesn't have some of the traits of a single unit also seems questionable, would you say that there are not common goals and common dreams in society? Why shouldn't government take an active role in promoting what is good, and ultimately the common ties binding the nation?

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07 Feb 2009, 8:34 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Orwell wrote:

People are interconnected and interdependent, but remain distinct. There must be a balance between viewing every man as an island and picturing society as an ant colony.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:39 pm

Fascism requires military expanision and the enslavement of (racially inferior) people to survive. It promotes genocide and military conflict to attain social darwinism, this alone shows that there cannot be a 'good' form of fascism, it is inherently evil.

A return to fascism and nationalism will herald the destruction of the planet, we are at the tipping point for global survival, nationalistic viewpoints will not allow the gobal efort that is needed.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:39 pm

Orwell wrote:

People are interconnected and interdependent, but remain distinct.

Well, I do not think that anyone has been trying to argue that interpersonal differences do not exist. This is fascism, not statist socialism.

Quote:

There must be a balance between viewing every man as an island and picturing society as an ant colony.

Assertion. In any case, lines between the 2 are drawn in most views of society, the issue is just where this line is drawn.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:46 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Is world unification a bad thing? Not only that, but racial discrimination is so passe nowadays, it hardly seems necessary. As for social darwinism, let's be honest, is it a terrible mistake to apply the logic of evolution to social realities? It is hard to say that a state of non-improvement is desired, and it seems that removing problematic elements is a good way to get improvement.

A healthy love of one's country will destroy the planet? I have my doubts good sir, this planet has survived a large number of things and still not died, and even if it began to suffer, the notion of a sudden implosion seems problematic.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:47 pm

Living under fascism is unpleasant and fascism gets bad results. That is enough reason to reject it, and I don't need to go into any deeper reasons to refute it.

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07 Feb 2009, 8:57 pm

Orwell wrote:

Living under fascism is unpleasant and fascism gets bad results. That is enough reason to reject it, and I don't need to go into any deeper reasons to refute it.

The fascist nations were known for actually having better living standards before the 2nd world war, and their success was enough that the coup that wanted to kill FDR wanted to do so in order to create a fascist government.

In any case, how many fascist governments have we had that you can go take massive extrapolations? I mean, I know you like empiricism, but it seems incredibly sloppy to claim off of rather limited data that bad results are inevitable, at least without a theoretical stand on this matter. Heck, I do not think that most philosophers of science take the naive empirical view that you do, but rather focus much more upon theories.

In any case, yes you have to go into deeper reasons to refute it. Pure empirical data can NEVER refute anything, if you don't recognize that, then you should go read about Hume's problem of induction. Heck, even if you were going to attempt this, you would need a statistical sample more so than an example.

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07 Feb 2009, 9:04 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

You might want to check your dates. The failed fascist coup against FDR occurred before Hitler had firmly established fascism in Germany. And living standards are not the only thing necessary- it is still unpleasant to live in slavery.

Quote:

In any case, how many fascist governments have we had that you can go take massive extrapolations? I mean, I know you like empiricism, but it seems incredibly sloppy to claim off of rather limited data that bad results are inevitable, at least without a theoretical stand on this matter. Heck, I do not think that most philosophers of science take the naive empirical view that you do, but rather focus much more upon theories.

I think you exaggerate the extent of my empiricism by quite a bit. Given that our sense are not perfect, empiricism will never be able to tell us anything with *absolute* certainty anyways.

All the fascist governments that we have had have been terrible. All the proponents of fascism have seemed to be nut jobs. Fascism, in its theory, requires oppressive measures that would make existence a living hell for many people. It would also likely kill off a number of people who disagreed with it. Besides that, fascism would probably fail economically after a while.

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07 Feb 2009, 9:11 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Is world unification a bad thing?

Fascism is not about world unification, it is nationalism. One nation state may triumph in the various wars caused by fascism, but I would hardly call the dominance and subjugation of the worlds cultures and races by one nation 'unification'.

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

Not only that, but racial discrimination is so passe nowadays, it hardly seems necessary.

What are you talking about, racial superiority is an essential concept in fascism

Awesomelyglorious wrote:

A healthy love of one's country will destroy the planet? I have my doubts good sir, this planet has survived a large number of things and still not died, and even if it began to suffer, the notion of a sudden implosion seems problematic.

How can you expect nation states to come to agreement on environmental issues when their major concern is the short term position of their own needs, with regard to the sudden imposion of the planet, well what we are seeing now has been gradual and the return to stability will take time and dedicated effort that only a global perspective can achieve, if instead we go down the path of nationalism and fascism the resulting world wide conflict with its associated environmental destruction will make life on this planet extremely challenging

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