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I don’t know, it seems pretty simple nowadays. Are you a cunt who gives a shit about whether dudes want to bang dudes or dress like chicks? Do you wish to oppress brown or black people, like on purpose, in an exertive manner? Are you trying to subjugate women? Do you long for a country in which the rule of law is taken directly from fairy tales? Are you trying to institutionally establish a single in-group and several out-groups? You’re a fucking fascist, you deserve to have your shit kicked in.
They explain all these away as not that bad, or not what they want. Some examples:
Are you a cunt who gives a shit about whether dudes want to bang dudes or dress like chicks?
Conservative: No, I am for traditional gender roles and family values
Do you wish to oppress brown or black people, like on purpose, in an exertive manner?
Conservative: No, I just think that people should stay with their own kind.
Are you trying to subjugate women?
Conservative: No, I am for traditional gender roles and family values
Do you long for a country in which the rule of law is taken directly from fairy tales?
Conservatives: The US is a christian nation which means our laws should be based on the Bible
They’re going to weasel out of it, not just to stop discussion but also because it makes them feel bad that this is the outcome of their politics.
Have you seen this YouTube video of some black teenagers robbing a Guche bag store? Did you not learn about the immigrants with leprosy? Have you seen what they’re posting on Nextdoor?!! Drag queens are invading libraries and trying to turn these kindergartners gay, and this based traditional father isn’t going to take it anymore.
They spit on our veterans! They want to have sex with dogs! They are becoming radicalized by Shari Law and turning the big cities into No Go Zones with their Ground Zero Mosques! They are PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS LIKE IN THE BIBLE!
I saw it on Newsmax. They’re the only ones reporting on what’s in the vaccines.
Why aren’t you taking this seriously? Is it because of TikTok? Have the Chinese made you Woke?
That’s pretty on point. A lot of normal-brained people can’t comprehend the mind of the rightoid, but this is pitch-perfect.
Man… I am 69% sure this is top-shelf trolling to illustrate the evils of conservatism. But, I am genuinely not sure. If this is a troll, it’s very well done.
Check his post history. He is indeed being sarcastic. Sadly not all of his sarcasm gets interpreted as such.
Thank you for the investigation. Truly masterful performance. I almost down-dooted them!
Well most of those excuses are just reframing the initial thing to sound better. They’re all just “yes, but I don’t like you saying it like that.”
you deserve to have your shit kicked in.
But you won’t, because you’re ensconced behind an increasingly large and heavily armed mob of cops
Beautiful 👏
Excellent description. Saved for reference.
I’ve never understood the label. I’ve had to explain on a few occasions that no, you’re not trying to maintain traditional values. You’re just authoritarian.
Authoritarianism is the traditional value they’re trying to maintain
it’s the traditional conservative value. it’s what they’re trying to conserve, the time when they’re the boss. all the rest is bullshit, every word. If they actually cared about you they’d listen to you
Speaking of traditional values, I still want to know what Southern Pride is if it isn’t glorifying the Confederacy.
So am a southerner, and have relocated, southern pride as in pride in the food, music, language/dialect, and culture all of which is heavily influenced by black people is very different than being one of the assholes flying a confederate flag and claiming the south will rise again.
I should add that I grew up in the 90s and witnessed the rise of black culture to the American mainstream so i probably view my enjoyment of southern things differently than someone 20 years older
i mean, i’m canadian. everybody loves that shit because that shit is good. And it comes from oppression by conservatism, conservatism writ large and taken as a global pattern (nobody gives a shit about american idiosyncrasies), although that certainly doesn’t mean its credit belongs to conservatism (just in case a redneck wanders in)
I think you and I are in agreement, I’m saying that as a southerner I’m proud of those things that everybody loves coming from where I was raised, the south has a lot of problems and I don’t deny them, that’s one of the reasons I left, but it’s a diverse place and it’s much more than the lost cause narrative
What do you mean by culture though?
In my experience it tends to loop back to confederate flags and worshipping the rebellion, but I’m hopeful you have something else in mind.
Definitely not that, more swagger and smooth talking, chill and laid back, always spitting game. The best example I can give specifically is more or less the entire discography of Outkast and the culture it depicts.
outkast = good shit
Daddy Fat Stacks and Benjamin should be on Stone Mountain instead of those racist fucks
that’s because fascism is not like other political views. it doesn’t come from thinkers, economists, sociologists or philosophers. it comes from maniacs doing maniacal shit. there is no “theory” to read on fascism. which is why the best academic text you find on it comes from its critics.
People don’t recognise fascism when it’s in front of their faces.
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Huge military budget
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weaponized, authoritarian police force with little oversight.
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Nationalist habits like pledging allegiance regularly when young and national anthems when together.
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a strong belief that they are the best nation on earth, often backed with religious certainly.
Bit like Russia then?
A bit? Exactly like Russia. They’re at the full blown invading neighbors stage.
Declaring war on inantimate objects/conditions
REJECTION OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY AS A SHAM AND A FRAUD
After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications and implements. Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can be the determining factor in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage. Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty, while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.“yeah I read theory” - worst person you’ll ever meet
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Ummm many fascists are disguised as intellectuals whose sophistry is only revealed by challenging their assumptions. There were a number of such people who came to rise in Nazi Germany and afterwards, and there are many who are their contemporaries
Fascism is a dictator who thinks they’re intellectually creative. Like any nutter or cultist who thinks they’ve found “the way” to do something that has been obfuscated by [insert things they claimed to be against as they climbed to power], but they’re the ones that have the real answer! They’re so creative that they do the same thing any authoritarian does: Eliminate critics, make bogeymen up, consolidate money and power, and always fear being overthrown.
Ummm many fascists are disguised as intellectuals
exactly… and if I put on a ninja costume, I do not in fact become an ninja.
Sorry but doesn’t make sense! There are people like Heidegger and Sam Harris who have partly useful contributions to intellectual and academic discourse, but their overarching worldview is authoritarian or fascism aligned. My point is: people multiclass all the time, and you cannot and should not underestimate your ideological opponents
I didn’t mean to say Facists are dumb… I mean some are, case in point Trump… but very definitely not all of them
However, being smart does not make any one an “intellectual” nor the source of any sound ideology
An intellectual is anyone who can utilize logic, reasoning, and critical analysis to probe ideas or help understand them. Moreover, a member of the intelligentsia is anyone who the ruling class in a society decides is worthy of membership. It’s not so simple as “that dude is only wearing a ninja costume” when someone can just say “yeah he’s a ninja, fuck you”.
Hmmm to me that is just anyone with common sense…
I was leaning more into a definition like this one (from wikipedia)
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for its normative problems.[2][3] Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by either rejecting, producing or extending an ideology, and by defending a system of values.[4]
I mean, I use logic and reasoning and critical analysis to probe ideas… but I am certainly no intellectual… the ideas I probe are more in the tune of “how sweet can I make bacon candy before my mother will come back from the grave and smack me for having dessert for breakfast?”
The ninja comment was in reply to the “many fascist disguise as intellectuals” which I took to be there to argue that in fact fascists can be intellectuals which I reject… I mean Trump pretends to be a religious person and he could not be further from that as well. However, I did not mean to turn this into a heavy argument as this is definitely not my area of expertise… I would however claim that, in my limited knowledge, most fascists came to power on populist grounds and populism is almost the opposite of intellectualism
It’s easy to say Trump is dumb, and in a lot of ways he is.
But make no mistake, he knows his audience (poor desperate conservatives) well and is highly skilled at manipulating them.
I don’t buy much of it… I get your point but if Trump were actually “highly skilled” we would all be doomed. He has put his foot in his mouth so many times I am certain he has athlete’s foot in the throat by now.
The issue that his popularity is persistent has 2 main root causes:
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A lot of his followers are really angry (justified or not) and they feel they finally can let it out
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A lot of his followers are deeply deeply ignorant… functional illiterate people who feel identified in Trump (case in point) and who cannot understand an iota of nuance in most topics because they simply know so little about most stuff
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Sorry, but what is it about Sam Harris that makes you say his overarching worldviews are fascist?
defending torture is a good start
I was legitmately unaware of this, not trying to stir shit:
For anyone else: https://www.samharris.org/blog/in-defense-of-torture
Conservatism is a distinct political ideology that basically says not all change is for the better, nothing more–it’s in the name: conserve. This is a separate concept from authoritarianism, which is all about how power flows. It’s possible to be conservative and liberal at the same time if society is losing its liberal values.
US republicans are fascists through and through that wear a disguise of conservatism on select issues to convince people to relinquish their political power so that they can do whatever they want.
Sure, it’s theoretically possible, but I’ve never met a conservative anywhere who actually wants to conserve what they have today. In practice, they all want to go back to the past, and most prefer some kind of fictional 1960s past.
That’s the tricky part about conservatism. If their values never change, they are eventually left behind by progress and they become reactionaries. Unfortunately, people just keep accepting their use of the label “conservative” when it stopped fitting them decades ago, which is a convenient cover for the more reprehensible ones.
They don’t describe themselves this way, but you could accurately call modern Hungarian liberals conservatives, as post-Soviet Hungary was a lot more liberal than it is today.
I think you could call most all liberals, conservative. Liberalism has been the main driving force in the US for decades. To be liberal is to try and conserve that liberalism. For example, voting for Clinton in 2016 felt pretty conservative. “Continuing the Obama years with something as similar as possible seems the best of the alternatives right now” is inherently a conservative decision. Alas.
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Conservatism is a distinct political ideology that basically says not all change is for the better, nothing more
Based on what? Conservatism’s roots go back to royalists after the French Revolution. Conservatives were the American colonists who objected to the war of independence calling it treason against the crown. It’s not about change in a general way, it’s about resisting democratic movements and preserving autocratic rule.
It’s possible to be conservative and liberal at the same time
Liberalism is an offshoot of Conservatism that favors empowerment of the economic elite and institutions over kings and politicians. It’s economic totalitarianism instead of political totalitarianism. These become indistinguishable when the economic elite capture the body politic.
US republicans are fascists through and through that wear a disguise of conservatism
This is backwards. The disguise is the thing that turns conservatism info fascism. It’s the dressing up of conservative totalitarianism with nationalism, religious fundamentalism, racism, and other forms of identitarianism.
I like the idea of conservatism, but not the way it is executed… Like why aren’t these people for conservation of the environment, or actually financially conservative? All I’m noticing is greed, and corporate corruption.
Because by “conserve” they mean conserve the status quo.
Rich people stay rich poor people stay poor and anyone who tries to change that is a commie.
Rich people *get even richer and poor people *become even more poor.
The status quo can include trends, it doesn’t necessarily mean a static state. “If the status quo is me getting [richer, more powerful, more control], then that’s the one I want.”
I.e. conservation of momentum not velocity
It seems useful to note that the EPA was signed into law by Nixon. We have fallen a long way since Reagan took office.
The EPA was the idea of the progressives who seemed to have some momentum toward eventually achieving it. The conservatives (and their polluting corporate benefactors) were threatened by it. So, Nixon co-opted it while conservatives were still in power with the purpose of making sure it was ineffective. They achieved that.
You’ll notice that when conservatives have power, they castrate the EPA and make sure it does not affect any of their benefactors. The Dem neo-liberals usually bend a little toward the progressives and will re-instate some of the EPA’s power when the Dems are in charge, but it’s never enough to undo whatever damage the last GOP administration did. This is because neo-liberals are conservatives. (They aren’t as conservative as Republicans, but they are conservative by every international standard.)
Do not give credit to Nixon for the EPA. Like everything else ever done by a conservative, it was an act of self-serving deception. Nothing good in all of human history has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
In the US: regulatory capture is a such a bipartisan effort you can call it non-partizan unironically.
I totally agree that conservatives and conservatism don’t get the credit. However, it’s a pretty stark contrast with the situation today where progressives are only marginally capable of bullying the Democrats. Today’s Republicans consider cooperation with progressives to be political suicide.
True. We really have devolved, haven’t we?
They only thing they want to conserve is their capital/social status.
Conservatism has been those things many times and in many places. It’s traditionally moderate liberalism. Conservatism in the US today is regressivism wearing a conservative hat for branding. Were the Nazis socialists? No, but it was in their name. Are conservatives conservative? No, they’re authoritarian regressivists, because the goal isn’t to be conservative. It’s to be anti-progressive. But the conservative hat gives it recognizability and credibility.
Yes! Been calling them Regressives for a while
I see the lightbulb flickering!
Basically admitting that mainstream conservatism is indistinguishible from fascism.
It isn’t, he’s just trying to pull mainstream conservatives in to defend him. The far right has been very successful at getting normal conservatives to cover for them over the last 50 years. The actual ideas of fiscal and social conservatism are only partially aligned with fascism. The far bigger problem with regards to sliding into fascism is America’s pro corporate stance.
“Fiscal conservatism” has always been a straw man though. Literally nobody holds the policy that government should be reckless or wasteful. All fiscal conservatism does is promote one vision of fiscal responsibility, linguistically represented as some ideal.
And of course, social conservatism is just very thinly veiled hate politics.
It’s been a straw man for some people certainly. That’s what I was saying. But it’s also an honestly held belief going back right to the original liberal political philosophers. And we absolutely worked in a bipartisan manner towards balancing the budget until Reagan.
It’s also incompatible with a pro corporate oligarchy/dictatorship. One thing people don’t learn about Hitler is the reason he wanted “lebensraum” and to legally steal from Jews. Other than his meth addled hatreds, the government of Germany was still broke. He issued new currency that was literally a loan marker to solve this. But then he had to get actual capital and fast. So he stole it. He never stopped issuing those bills and there’s a very good argument to be made that the Third Reich was a ponzi scheme kept afloat because it’s stakeholders ran the government. This kind of fast and loose repeatedly plays out in fascist dictatorships.
Social conservatism is hate politics now. But for hundreds of years it was patronizing and parental. Of the two it’s definitely closer and easier to turn into fascism. But we had it as a characteristic of both parties in the US for 150 years without it turning into fascism. So while it’s hate based now and it’s easy to turn hate into fascism, it too is capable of being a separate honestly held belief. Even if it is scientifically debunked in every way.
So back to the original point, this far right knucklehead is attempting to convince normal conservatives that they’re the target and not the far right so they should ignore the warnings and keep voting for Trump and Co.
And we absolutely worked in a bipartisan manner towards balancing the budget until Reagan.
Balancing the budget is profoundly foolish fiscal policy. Long evidence has shown that countercyclical fiscal policy (running deficits during recessions; paying them down during times of growth) is far more effective. It is imbecilic to cut government spending during recessions when the need for government services is greatest, and it exacerbates economic downturns by removing liquidity from the economy at a time when it’s already short.
I never said it was good policy. Clinton was the last president to make it a thing, and by the time Obama came into office MMT was taking precedence. Bush either didn’t care or shrewdly covered his use of MMT with PR about fiscal conservatism. Now days I hardly ever hear about balancing the budget, fiscal conservatism is also being reduced to hate. They’re just weaponizing it against the poor instead of people who aren’t CIS het. god fearing, white men.
The far right has been very successful at getting normal conservatives to cover for them over the last 50 years. The actual ideas of fiscal and social conservatism are only partially aligned with fascism.
I suppose you could say packing the wad into the cannon after the gunpowder is an indirectly related development to the lethality of the cannon ball subsequently fired from the cannon….
….but I prefer to see it as one continuous gigantically stupid process beginning with centrists priming the chamber with gunpowder via repeated thrusting of a neoliberal austerity rod to crush the working class and then packing in a wad of rightwing conservatives to shape the social upheaval towards meaninglessly violent vectors when the inevitable explosive juncture is reached.
The cannonball loaded last is the dead brain weight of all the fascists gleefully rolling down into the breach of their fiery demise.
The cannonball is what kills people usually (though many a centrist has died in the process of packing the gunpowder in and setting off a premature explosion), but all the steps are necessary to firing the cannon.
That is… A very involved analogy. The thing is people who are actually committed to conservatism inside classical liberalism aren’t fascist. They want a functioning democracy with rights. Fascists have been a mess of corrupt oligarchs stealing everything that isn’t nailed down every time we’ve seen them in history. The three biggest warning flags have been a collective ideology held above helping the poor/disabled/marginalized, (like nationalism); getting too friendly with corporations, which begins to create the oligarchy; and racism to give the masses a common enemy.
So while fiscal and social conservatism are the public rallying cries, they aren’t actually much in line with fascism. Which is why our would-be oligarchs are spending so much money to make conservatives feel like they have to vote Republican or else.
The three biggest warning flags have been a collective ideology held above helping the poor/disabled/marginalized,
Explain conservatism to me in terms of the specific real world policies it pushes for in opposition to progressive policies specifically designed to help poor/disabled/marginalized people with a better social safety net?
Because y’all are literally on the wrong side 99% of the time with this, conservatism is fundamentally a “fuck you I have mine” philosophy dressed up by hacks like Jordan Peterson to seem intellectual and thoughtful. It is a joke on the whole at least in places like the US, it is no more than a mask used by selfish broken people to spread suffering.
You’ve misunderstood. I’m not a conservative. I’m not trying to defend conservatism. I’m just trying to explain why it isn’t the same thing as fascism. Conservatives on the long scale are simply those who resist change for whatever reason. For the last 70 years that’s been racial equality and helping poor people. Which incidentally, lines them up really nicely to be recruited by authoritarians and fascists.
They believe, as part of fiscal responsibility, that everyone is responsible for themselves and their family. That the government helping them actually reduces that family’s ability to get out of poverty. The important thing to notice here isn’t the logical imbalance, but that they believe they’re helping. Obviously we aren’t talking about the extremists who are more than happy to demonize the poor and marginalized. The far right has a completely different set of ideologies. That’s why they have to pay Jordan Peterson to convert normal conservatives.
They believe, as part of fiscal responsibility, that everyone is responsible for themselves and their family. That the government helping them actually reduces that family’s ability to get out of poverty. The important thing to notice here isn’t the logical imbalance, but that they believe they’re helping
These beliefs are just a thin veneer of bullshit, both for conservatives and for rightwing extremists because the hate and exclusion is the point. I see no evidence that rightwing extremists are ideologically any different than normal conservatives at a fundamental level, they just have different ideas about tactics and the tone/rhetoric they actually are willing to publicly commit to (instead of doing it behind closed doors like normal conservatives/republicans). Conservatives will always roll out of the red carpet for fascists, they are intellectually lobotomized by their ideology in a way that has been shown throughout history to be essential for the rise of fascism to power, thus my cannon metaphor.
I consider it all part of the same firing process even if the cannonball is usually the fascists.
I think you’re confusing the Republicans with Conservatism. Fully half the Democrats hold these conservative ideas too. And they certainly aren’t rolling out a red carpet.
So while fiscal and social conservatism are the public rallying cries, they aren’t actually much in line with fascism.
Social conservatism is, at best, fascist-adjacent. Singling out social minorities for harassment and legal persecution is very closely akin to fascist scapegoating.
Oh it’s certainly not a pretty picture. But if we go around attributing everything to fascism then that’s what we’ll end up with because nobody will be able to see it coming. And they’re always trying. Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it but because of the American experience with it and the modern reaction to most of it’s ideas being debunked by science. We tied it up with the civil rights movement and weaponized it. But it spent something like 300 years happily living within the realm of liberalism. So while I don’t like it, it is not in and of itself fascism.
Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it
Please cite your sources because I have never seen a scrap of evidence that social conservatism is anything but thinly disguised hate and fear of the other weaponized into political ideologies.
Cite what? The entire existence of modern political philosophy? Look nobody is denying that it gets misused. Nobody is denying that it’s thoroughly debunked. Nobody is denying that Republicans are using it exactly as you say.
But if you want to deny that a sizeable portion of Democrats are conservatives who have beliefs about traditional family homes because they believe it’s better for the people involved then you’re ignoring an entire demographic just to paint something as purely far right. Going straight to the extremes is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.
Assuming the post was made in earnest - the poor guy is so close to getting it. Just let yourself start with your last sentence buddy, and think out from there.
I hate the name of the community is US Authoritarianism when there’s so much fascist rise in EU
And for extra lols the dude in the meme should be asked what he thinks are “normal” right wing policies
What a dense, stupid motherfucker. Smacked in the face by a sledgehammer of truth that screams at him at full volume, and STILL he cannot grasp the damn thing.
It totally reads to me as someone making a point to connect conservatism and fascism, but surprisingly, some searching reveals that he’s a conservative pundit at the National Review so yeah he’s dense and thinks he’s being clever but only actually pwning himself.
Look, conservatives suck but theyre not fascists. Calling everybody to the right of you fascist waters down the meaning of the word.
Heres a good take by Umberto Eco on what makes fascism distinct from other political movements: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism
It’s hard because, yes you are right, but when can you start calling somone a fascist? Do you have have to wait for them to actually start rounding you up and putting you in prison, or can you point it out early in order to avoid the complete fascist takeover?
I guess my point is that, once a group is actually fully fascist, you will no longer be allowed to call them that.
Yeah good point
Not saying that you’re wrong per se, but where would you put Trump in this context? They are very well going in this direction… And they are not turning back.
I think Trump has some of the fascist traits Eco points out, like xenophobia and appealing to a frustrated middle class. But he is thoroughly lacking in other fascist traits, like (1) the syncretic neo-pagan mysticism and (2) the idea that the state should always be at war, that the state should encourage all citizens to die a hero’s death.
So I’d call him authoritarian, christian nationalist, and stupid. But not fascist.
War, you mean like the war at the southern border?
Fascism is a movement led by a cult of personality with no clear direction, but get people to follow with maniacal views and populist energy against a false premise of a target in an “Us V Them” ideology.
Example: “They stand for everything we don’t stand for. Also, they told me you guys look like dorks!”
“Trying to define fascism is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."
-Ian Kershaw
But yes, Christian Nationalism, oppressive legislation on civil liberties, exploitative economic systems designed to further widen wealth inequality, and support for militant police conduct are all symptoms of fascism.
Are you willing to vote for an obvious criminal who commits election fraud, commits insurrections, extorts foreign governments, and sells top secret documents to adversarial nations? Then you are a fascist.
that’s not what fascism is.
