- cross-posted to:
- usauthoritarianism
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- usauthoritarianism
- [email protected]
If the Twitter/X thing teaches you one thing, let it be this: Twitter was a neoliberal place. Then Elon Musk made it into X, a fascist place. Once again, neoliberalism laid the foundations of fascism. But that’s not the (whole) lesson… Neoliberal folks are still using X, calling it Twitter to make themselves feel better, and pining for the good old days. And there’s the real lesson: When neoliberalism turns into fascism, neoliberals will adapt to life under fascism. Right, class dismissed.
(We really need a better way to crosspost from mastodon…)
Fascism is a political strategy that seeks to preserve, create, and entrench structures and relationships of power imbalance by means of promoting and facilitating mass, broad-spectrum chauvinism in ways that are likely to encourage widespread individual and systemic violence.
“Chauvinism” here-in refers to an irrational belief that one’s own identity makes them superior. Note that this definition essentially covers the 14 characteristics of fascism as detailed by Umberto Eco, and generalizes them. It is not, as you imply, a type of governance nor is it a coherent political philosophy as so many seem to think. Under this definition, the conduct and statements of Elon Musk in general and his management of Twitter in particular certainly qualify.
Thanks for mentioninng Umberto Eco’s 14 traits of fascism. I hadn’t seen them before, but the summary was a good read. I’ll list them out here, with a few tweaks to the phrasing because I’m like that:
I can accept this definition. It’s notably not meant to say “it’s only fascism if it covers all 14 points.” Eco states that fascism might coagulate around only one of these points, but I don’t think that should be taken to mean “if it meets one point, it’s fascism,” just that it could be. Otherwise, an order of knights is a fascist regime for meeting point 11.
I think it’s also valuable to take these points and do a little introspection to make sure you’re not being fascist (or fascist-like) yourself. I know my beliefs can be construed to hit around 2-5 of the points partially.
All that said… What you defined is violent systemic chauvinism (I’ll call it VSC for short.) There’s definitely major overlap between that and fascism, but I don’t think it covers all of fascism, and I think it covers things that are fascist-adjacent without technically being fascist (even though they’re still very evil.) For example, you could have a more communist flavor of VSC where the majority demographic of the middle class actually rules themselves and gets violent against anyone else, but it’s not fascism because there isn’t a placable dictator or even oligarchy. Or you could theoretically have a fascist regime without chauvinism, which doesn’t meet VSC.
Can you provide some examples of each? That is, things that are useful to think of as “fascism”, but are not covered by my definition and things that are convered by my definition but considering them “fascism” is utility-negative? Having those to work off of would help me further refine my definition. The purpose of the definition is having a foundation to make inferences about the nature of fascism that are useful when discussing (among other things) strategies to counteract it, and so examples of the former are more valuable than examples of the latter.
Sure. Be warned that my arguments aren’t rock-solid here. I’m not a professional debater, I’m a casual who prefers to portray my thoughts more honestly rather than filtering out the inconvenient.
Fascism that isn’t covered by VSC
See 1984. Even though they don’t directly target minorities (or maybe I missed that part, either way it’s not prominent,) they still check all the other boxes of fascism and are very evil. If you think chauvinism is a necessary component of fascism, you might delude yourself into thinking a movement is okay because they’re not fascist (especially if they portray their enemies as fascists, making them the lesser of two evils,) and unknowingly become a fascist yourself.
VSC that isn’t fascism
The definition you gave includes a systemic combination of power imbalance, chauvinism, and violence. Totalitarianism is not necessary there. You could take an otherwise normal country, and if anyone with the authority to do so tells them “anyone who’s not a straight white person is lesser and not protected by the law,” it immediately fits the bill of VSC (if I interpreted it correctly.)
Don’t get me wrong, this is dangerously close to fascism, but the key difference is that straight white people are allowed to disagree and perhaps even campaign for equal treatment. They’re not being coerced into violence, just encouraged by the statements and lack of punishment for doing so.
I don’t have a problem with condemning this just as much as you’d condemn fascism, and it’s definitely fascist-adjacent. But I don’t want fascism redefined to include fascist-adjacentism, because then there’s a new ring of fascist-adjacentism ready to get redefined in as well, and no clear stopping point.
I know this is a bit of a slippery slope, but if you’re able to frame an ideology such that everything evil to you is fascist, then it becomes convenient to think that only fascism is evil, and miss non-fascist evil. I don’t expect you to fall into that pitfall, but I expect that if this trend continues, some people will. That’s where it’s utility-negative.
I’d like to point out that it’s fallacious to think that not fascist implies not bad, and I recommend not trying to incorporate the assumption that someone else will commit that fallacy into your argument.
With that said I would say that Oceania qualifies as fascist under my definition since they are depicted as strategically using deliberately cultivated chauvinism to maintain their power. It’s been a while, so I don’t recall all of the details, but the most obvious instance is how the main character is treated worse by children because they are aware he is a “thought criminal”. The children have been subjected to propaganda that cultivates a sense of superiority in identifying with the regime; they belive that “thought criminals” are, in essence, sub-human. I don’t recall any instances of explicit interpersonal violence being depicted in the story, but it’s probable that true believers attacking known thought-criminals would be a common occurrence given the rhetoric we are exposed to. The key component here is that this is used to deliberately maintain power; no one will rebel if everyone who even doubts is The Enemy.
The key component you’re missing is that fascism deliberately uses VSC to accumulate and maintain political power.
I agree. However, I don’t currently seek to address this particular issue.
Huh, I hadn’t considered that chauvinism doesn’t have to be demographic-based. Yeah, that makes a difference.