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  1. #1
    Over 9000! Milchshake's Avatar
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    Who's Behind Those Fascist Ads on TV?

    Trying to enjoy some Fall sportsball and interrupted by some fascist fear mongering ads?
    Who’s behind those vile, right-wing political TV ads during the baseball playoffs


    Every few innings, the dark, grainy TV spots — with a flood of unsettling images of urban crime and civic unrest, or large migrant caravans streaming toward the U.S. border — broke up the stream of otherwise cheerful spots for iPhones or car insurance. One says “illegal immigration is draining our paychecks, wrecking our schools, ruining our hospitals and threatening your family” — blaming President Biden, and telling Democrats to “stop hurting our children,” against an ominous, empty playground swing. The crime spot blames liberals for a wave of “violence, bloodshed and death” as men with machine guns roam an urban wasteland.

    You won’t be shocked to learn that the ads are deliberately dishonest, conflating Democratic immigration policies, for example, with the horrific case of one undocumented immigrant named Christopher Puente accused of raping a toddler at a fast-food restaurant in Chicago (”She was 3 … years … old,” the narrator intones, milking the pathos). What’s not said is that the alleged assault occurred in February 2020, more than three years into the presidency of Republican Donald Trump, well before Biden took office.

    […]

    Open Secrets reports a close overlap between the trustees of Citizens for Sanity — as identified to the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC — and the pro-Trump America First Legal Foundation, which is spearheaded by Stephen Miller, the former Trump White House official behind harsh immigration policies such as family separation at the southern border.

    It says three political operatives involved with the Miller-founded legal group — Gene Hamilton, John Zadrozny and Ian Prior — are also listed as involved with Citizens for Sanity. Zadrozny’s path, for example, has taken him from the fiercely anti-migrant Federation for American Immigration Reform — which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as a hate group — to the Trump administration, including a stint as a top U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service official, to the vile ads you’re seeing on TV now. Citizens for Sanity treasurer Hamilton was point man on Trump’s efforts to kill the program seeking legal status for young migrant “Dreamers.”



    As the campaign heats up in the final weeks before November’s midterm elections, so have overt appeals to racial animus and resentment. And the toxic remarks appear to be receiving less pushback from Republicans than in past years.

    I bet you did NaZi this coming ...
    Government Affiliated Snark

  2. #2
    Spirit Halloween Voter?

  3. #3
    There is no rock bottom, I see.

  4. #4
    Fascism refers to a totalitarian system which utilizes a corporatist economic scheme to pursue an ultranationalist, militaristic agenda, usually centered around the expungement of some kind of out group(s). I have no clue how anybody can refer to either of the two tame, albeit ridiculously incompetent, political parties in their cushy liberal-democratic republic as "fascist", and I envy the privilege and decadence it must take to do so.

  5. #5
    Pandaren Monk masterhorus8's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    Fascism refers to a totalitarian system which utilizes a corporatist economic scheme to pursue an ultranationalist, militaristic agenda, usually centered around the expungement of some kind of out group(s). I have no clue how anybody can refer to either of the two tame, albeit ridiculously incompetent, political parties in their cushy liberal-democratic republic as "fascist", and I envy the privilege and decadence it must take to do so.
    You're perfectly describing one of the parties right now.
    9

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by masterhorus8 View Post
    You're perfectly describing one of the parties right now.
    So, one party is instituting a system in which a class-collaborationist system based on a social contract framing society as a whole as an organic economic body in order to establish a system in which free thought is entirely extinguished, the ruling political party controls every facet of society and brainwashes everybody into complete subservience by eradicating even a glimmer of free thought (well, admittedly both parties are doing the latter, given the lunatic behavior of frothing wingnuts who can only perceive society on the scale of a single-dimensional spatial paradigm) in order to pursue a quest of superregional conquest through active military expansion whilst elevating an abstract, semi-populist notion of "the people" above individual liberties and rights based at least mostly on a form of ethnonationalist (i.e. the superiority of this culture/race/country is inherent rather than institutional) sentiment whilst simultaneously conducting a genocide or mass deportation of rudimentary-selected out groups?

    So, which of the economically-capitalist, dubiously-but-still-relatively-democratic parties whose military policy is either interventionist or isolationist (i.e. neither will be expanding through violent conquest) and whose selected out-groups are scorned (and, in one case, potentially deported) but not actively exterminated are you talking about? I'm very curious, because neither party seems interested in instituting the aforementioned system.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    Fascism refers to a totalitarian system which utilizes a corporatist economic scheme to pursue an ultranationalist, militaristic agenda, usually centered around the expungement of some kind of out group(s).
    Trump literally checks all these boxes, and the GOP seems to be rather supportive. Do you prefer 'borderline fascist'? I mean, sure, to be fair, it's not on the same level as Mussolini, Hirohito or ol Adolf. Would you like to wait until they build concentration camps for political dissidents and foreigners?

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    Fascism refers to a totalitarian system which utilizes a corporatist economic scheme to pursue an ultranationalist, militaristic agenda, usually centered around the expungement of some kind of out group(s). I have no clue how anybody can refer to either of the two tame, albeit ridiculously incompetent, political parties in their cushy liberal-democratic republic as "fascist", and I envy the privilege and decadence it must take to do so.
    Hmm, sounds exactly like the MAGA movement when it talks about any group that isn't white and/or Christian. Groups like the 3 Percenters, Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and the like have no issue using violence to achieve their goals. What is their goals? To get rid of or subjugate anyone that isn't white, male, straight and Christian. They are up front about it. It was the KKK before them. Thing is, they will use minorities to achieve goals but will cast them aside the moment they are done with them.

    It is called "The Others" strategy. It is well known.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Skulltaker View Post
    Trump literally checks all these boxes, and the GOP seems to be rather supportive. Do you prefer 'borderline fascist'? I mean, sure, to be fair, it's not on the same level as Mussolini, Hirohito or ol Adolf. Would you like to wait until they build concentration camps for political dissidents and foreigners?
    See my prior response for elaboration.

    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    This one here.
    Please, if you can, explain how either of the inept political parties plaguing this country are even remotely capable of instituting such a system, or which of them may want to institute such a system which would be so contradictory to the beliefs both profess (i.e. isolationist laissez-faire capitalism, which contradicts the expansionism and corporatism, or interventionist social liberalism, which contradicts the same policies?)—I would love to hear it. If you really believe either party is comparable with actual Fascism, I would surely love to be enlightened with whatever esoteric knowledge you have which so-exceeds any conventional wisdom of political science or history.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    See my prior response for elaboration.



    Please, if you can, explain how either of the inept political parties plaguing this country are even remotely capable of instituting such a system, or which of them may want to institute such a system which would be so contradictory to the beliefs both profess (i.e. isolationist laissez-faire capitalism, which contradicts the expansionism and corporatism, or interventionist social liberalism, which contradicts the same policies?)—I would love to hear it. If you really believe either party is comparable with actual Fascism, I would surely love to be enlightened with whatever esoteric knowledge you have which so-exceeds any conventional wisdom of political science or history.
    So you learned how to copypaste the usual deflection bullshit peddled by your fascist friends online. Good for you! Noone is impressed. You want to defend fascist tendencies, sure. Go ahead, you do you.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Skulltaker View Post
    So you learned how to copypaste the usual deflection bullshit peddled by your fascist friends online. Good for you! Noone is impressed. You want to defend fascist tendencies, sure. Go ahead, you do you.
    The only thing I'm "copy/pasting" is the textbook definition of fascism as held by political scientists and other people who can define politics outside of a narrow and myopic horizontal line. My point is that it's critical to differentiate the Alt-Right from the major political parties, which was the direction I detected this thread would go in. I detest all forms of right-wing populism and actually support that they be politically repressed by any means necessary.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Spirit Halloween Voter View Post
    It says three political operatives involved with the Miller-founded legal group — Gene Hamilton, John Zadrozny and Ian Prior — are also listed as involved with Citizens for Sanity. Zadrozny’s path, for example, has taken him from the fiercely anti-migrant Federation for American Immigration Reform — which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as a hate group — to the Trump administration, including a stint as a top U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service official, to the vile ads you’re seeing on TV now. Citizens for Sanity treasurer Hamilton was point man on Trump’s efforts to kill the program seeking legal status for young migrant “Dreamers.”[/I]
    And I'm also not denying, as demonstrated here, that there exist general pipelines from non-Fascist organizations to organizations which have strong Fascist influences. Going from a listed hate group to these sorts of more outwardly "palatable" organizations is an example of something dangerous. Conversely, what I figured was certain to happen here, and what I rejected, was generic wingnut dross about how Democrats/Republicans are actually the Souper Baddies because {insert exaggeration here}.

    In that connection, I also acknowledge the presence of potentially-fascist tentacles somewhere in this organization, but am frustrated by the endorsement of strong, factionalist language which simply facilitates and enables the allocation of marginals into the side of the imagined "aisle" as a more mainstream faction, which will only facilitate their cooperation. All it does is create one-dimensional, myopic discourse that fails to accomplish anything tangible.
    Last edited by Le Conceptuel; 2022-10-18 at 06:33 AM.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    See my prior response for elaboration.



    Please, if you can, explain how either of the inept political parties plaguing this country are even remotely capable of instituting such a system, or which of them may want to institute such a system which would be so contradictory to the beliefs both profess (i.e. isolationist laissez-faire capitalism, which contradicts the expansionism and corporatism, or interventionist social liberalism, which contradicts the same policies?)—I would love to hear it. If you really believe either party is comparable with actual Fascism, I would surely love to be enlightened with whatever esoteric knowledge you have which so-exceeds any conventional wisdom of political science or history.
    Do you know what the 14 points of fascism are? They tick nearly all of them.

    Here I will help you out: https://www.bremertonschools.org/cms...m%20slides.pdf

    1. 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Fascist regimes make constant use of:
     Patriotic mottos
     Slogans
     Symbols
     Songs
     Flags

    Make America Great Again, flags, Trump flags, songs, they literally have all of those things.

    2. Disregard for Human Rights
    Human rights can be ignored because of fear of
    enemies and the need for security.
    As a result, people tend to:
     look the other way
     approve of torture
     approve of long incarcerations
    of prisoners
     approve of executions and
    assassinations
    These are the same people that thought the enhanced interrogation worked for Gitmo prisoners, hell Trump wanted to execute drug dealers, no matter how much or how little they did. They love assassinations like the one in Japan, and the one they did on that Iranian General. Not to mention they got rid of the right to bodily autonomy for women.

    3. Identification of Enemies as a Unifying Cause
    People are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy
    over the need to eliminate a perceived common
    enemy:
     racial
     ethnic or religious minorities
     liberals
     communists
     socialists
     terrorists

    Literally all of those they are pushing with attacks on Democrats, calling them socialists or communists without even knowing the definitions. Then of course current antisemitic attacks on Jews and other attacks on other people of color.

    4. Supremacy of the Military
     The military is given a disproportionate
    amount of government funding
     Soldiers and military service are glamorized
    Happens every time when people whine about Pride month because they say that veterans don't get a month, not knowing that May is Veterans appreciation month. Then of course we spend more than the next 20 countries combined in military.

    5. Widespread Sexism

     The government tends to be almost
    exclusively male-dominated
     Traditional gender roles are made more rigid
     Divorce, abortion, and homosexuality are
    suppressed
    This one definitely is what the MAGA morons are about, with attacks on abortion, transgender people, 90% of the government is by white men. They hate that people get divorce, but they are also the people with the highest divorce rates like Trump with 3. And of course they want to get rid of gay marriage.

    6. Controlled Mass Media
     The media is directly or indirectly controlled
    by the government
     Censorship is very common
    This is about the only one that they don't have, but if they had the opportunity, they would. If you go on Parler, Gab, or Truth Social you get banned for talking shit about Trump.

    7. Obsession with National Security
     Fear is used as a motivational tool by the
    government over the masses

    They do this with illegal immigrants claiming they are bringing drugs, crime and terrorism, despite all evidence suggesting that isn't happening.

    8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
     Governments use the most common religion
    in the nation as a tool to manipulate public
    opinion.
     Religious messages and terminology are
    common from government leaders
    We have seen them pushing this a lot lately by that bitch Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and other fascists. Trump even tried to push it, but he has never read the bible or ever been to a church.

    9. Corporate Power is Protected
     Mutually beneficial business/government
    relationship
    Here is the autocracy/oligarchy argument that Republicans pushed with Citizens United, not to mention giving them massive tax cuts and union busting.

    10. Labor Power is Suppressed
     Labor unions are seen as a huge threat to a
    fascist government
     Labor unions are either severely suppressed,
    or are eliminated entirely.
    Like I said, union busting and keeping wages low.

    11. Disrespect for Intellectuals and the Arts
     Open hostility to higher education
     Professors and other academics are censored, or
    even arrested
     Free expression in the arts and writing is openly
    attacked
    We have seen this one a lot over the last 2 years especially, because they have demonized doctors and nurses about vaccines and they listen to morons that inject bleach or take livestock dewormer. MAGA morons will listen to an uneducated person like Trump, because he talks at the same level as them over actual professionals and educated people.

    12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
     Local police are given almost limitless power to
    enforce laws
     People are often willing to overlook police
    abuses in the name of patriotism
     Often a national police force with virtually
    unlimited power
    This is another one that has been pretty prevalent. Especially after the summer of 2020 and the murders of unarmed minorities. And some of these police forces, like Uvalde are so overfunded and are so ineffective because they are just bad.

    13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
     Friends and associates appoint each other to
    government positions
     Officials use governmental power and
    authority to protect their friends from
    accountability
    Sounds just like the Trump administration, where he appointed his family to positions they weren't legally allowed to have, while they got hundreds of millions from these appointments. And then Trump pardoned people like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone, protecting them from prison.

    14. Fraudulent Elections
     Elections are often a complete sham
     Elections may be manipulated by smear
    campaigns
     Manipulation of the
    media to control elections
     Occasional assassination of
    opposition candidates

    Trump tried to do that one by stealing the election with fake electors and calling into question the votes of people that voted legally like mail in votes.

    So, they got 13 of the 14 points and if they could, they would get all 14.

  13. #13
    Pandaren Monk masterhorus8's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    -snip-
    Shhh, you're just making the fascists more fascist by pointing it out.
    @Le Conceptuel am I doing this right?
    9

  14. #14
    If you have to call yourself "Citizens for sanity", everybody knows you're anything but. See "Truth social" et al.

    https://www.opensecrets.org/news/202...2022-midterms/
    Last edited by XDurionX; 2022-10-18 at 06:50 AM.

  15. #15
    Void Lord Elegiac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    My point is that it's critical to differentiate the Alt-Right from the major political parties
    Why is it "critical" to do this, exactly?

    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    In that connection, I also acknowledge the presence of potentially-fascist tentacles somewhere in this organization, but am frustrated by the endorsement of strong, factionalist language which simply facilitates and enables the allocation of marginals into the side of the imagined "aisle" as a more mainstream faction, which will only facilitate their cooperation. All it does is create one-dimensional, myopic discourse that fails to accomplish anything tangible.
    Got it. We can't call a spade a spade because it might hurt people's fee fees.
    Quote Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
    The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    Fascism refers to a totalitarian system which utilizes a corporatist economic scheme to pursue an ultranationalist, militaristic agenda, usually centered around the expungement of some kind of out group(s). I have no clue how anybody can refer to either of the two tame, albeit ridiculously incompetent, political parties in their cushy liberal-democratic republic as "fascist", and I envy the privilege and decadence it must take to do so.

    Fascism refers to a totalitarian system
    The Republican party and the defacto leader in Trump want 1 party rule. Trump has spouted authoritarian rhetoric for the past 6 years. My goodness they tried to deny the past legit election. I will add they very much have a god like worship of Trump.

    Call it authoritarianism

    which utilizes a corporatist economic scheme to pursue an ultranationalist, militaristic agenda, usually centered around the expungement of some kind of out group(s)
    Once more, holy sh*t, you are making the case. The ultra rich and corporations heavily lean on the Republican party for policy. In fact when Jan 6th happened, corporations promised to stop donating to people like Hawley. Six months later they started right back up and continue to finance election deniers and worse, which I'll get to in a moment. In fact my little commentary forever has been the money that has kept the Republican Party alive in today's form of fascism. It's simple if they don't get donations, the candidates can't really run.

    As far as groups? Let me count the ways. The Republican Party is dominated by anti-immigrant policy which idk where you are from but turn on any right wing media or talking points they spout straight white nationalist talking points. The other dominant party is ultra, right, Christian or Evangelical fundamentalism. Once more on Roe there biggest weapon is that of their religious beliefs.
    Last edited by Paranoid Android; 2022-10-18 at 07:11 AM.
    Democrats are the best! I will never ever question a Democrat again. I LOVE the Democrats!

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    Do you know what the 14 points of fascism are? They tick nearly all of them.

    Here I will help you out: https://www.bremertonschools.org/cms...m%20slides.pdf

    1. 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Fascist regimes make constant use of:
     Patriotic mottos
     Slogans
     Symbols
     Songs
     Flags
    Fair, but applicable to any widespread populist movement.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    2. Disregard for Human Rights
    Human rights can be ignored because of fear of
    enemies and the need for security.
    As a result, people tend to:
     look the other way
     approve of torture
     approve of long incarcerations
    of prisoners
     approve of executions and
    assassinations
    Everything you've mentioned here is quite truly horrible, and a tolerance for excessive and violent punishment is one of the reasons I'm not a Republican. However, the use of torture and execution would be far more widespread for a fascist party platform—there is no establishment of labor camps for dissidents, and as terrible as American prisons are (and, again, I detest the system as it stands), these do not hold a candle to internment by fascist organizations. The element that is missing in most of these is the sheer degree to which fascism pursues these injustices, not just tolerates or enables them. In the cases of Mussolini and Hitler (let's not even touch madmen like Codreanu), the punishments were far more harsh than the custodial punishments we implement, and execution was far more informal and frequent than it is here.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    3. Identification of Enemies as a Unifying Cause
    People are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy
    over the need to eliminate a perceived common
    enemy:
     racial
     ethnic or religious minorities
     liberals
     communists
     socialists
     terrorists
    These are fair for different subfactions. Some elements of these are just elements of typical civic nationalism, not strict fascism—targeting terrorists or communists isn't going to turn many heads. Conversely, the targeting of ethnic or religious minorities, vanilla socialists, etc. does reek of fascism. This does occur in some capacity, but the injustice is only evident to a fascist extent in such organizations as the Proud Boys, whose fascist leanings are transparent. Racial oppression is an injustice that must be solved, and is justified in being solved, by any means necessary. However, the incarnation of racial oppression and scapegoating in Fascist communities was always violent and transparent—there was no need for the tiptoeing typical to American reactionaries. These instances of oppression were plainly advertised from square one, and Hitler and Mussolini laid out their intentions in no uncertain words in their speeches and writings. Oppression, institutionalized and glorified as it is in fascism, emerges in such a flurry of violence which has not occurred in the United States.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    4. Supremacy of the Military
     The military is given a disproportionate
    amount of government funding
     Soldiers and military service are glamorized
    Happens every time when people whine about Pride month because they say that veterans don't get a month, not knowing that May is Veterans appreciation month. Then of course we spend more than the next 20 countries combined in military.
    This, again, is a point of confusion between fascism and vanilla civic nationalism. This constitutes a generalization of "likes military = militarism", which isn't true. Actual militarism would feature such things as intrusion of the military into civic politics, initially slow and insidious but eventually quite public and subversive. It would constitute a militarization of society as a whole, and the introduction of military ethos into society. This form of public militarization only exists in fringe militias, it is not being earnestly championed in mainstream society.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    5. Widespread Sexism

     The government tends to be almost
    exclusively male-dominated
     Traditional gender roles are made more rigid
     Divorce, abortion, and homosexuality are
    suppressed
    This actually dwells fairly close to the truth. No injustice is excusable, much less discrimination. I will grant you some of this. However, I will also say that the magnitude of the suppression is again dramatically downplayed here. There exists in Fascist societies a very transparent call to the kitchen, usually backed by force, rather than a general air of tolerance for institutionalized sexism. The latter is an injustice, but only the former expresses a transparently reactionary intention. Again, these are not changes which fascists seek to implement subtly. The myth that fascism emerged quietly is one which is used by apologists to excuse the willful invitation of a totalitarian regime by a nation who thought to project their suffering onto others, magnified a thousandfold.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    6. Controlled Mass Media
     The media is directly or indirectly controlled
    by the government
     Censorship is very common
    This I'm not going to argue on. Censorship is inexcusable in just about any capacity save for expunging the most transparent threats to public safety. I am completely on-board with you and I think public acceptance of censorship, which is frankly becoming more evident everywhere, is repugnant. I will never disagree with you on this and I will stand side-by-side with you on this issue.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    7. Obsession with National Security
     Fear is used as a motivational tool by the
    government over the masses
    Most governments do this to some extent, it's not unique to Fascism. Although fearmongering is a tool of reactionary populists, just about any power-seeking asshat uses this one extensively.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
     Governments use the most common religion
    in the nation as a tool to manipulate public
    opinion.
     Religious messages and terminology are
    common from government leaders
    lolWUT? Mussolini and Hitler were both atheists, and both strongly opposed organized religion as anything other than a tool of the state. There were clerical fascists, such as Franco, the Rexists, Salazar, etc. but this is not a necessary requisite by any means. I have no idea where this came from, but you'd better tell Hitler, who was an atheist that practiced eastern spiritual rites, and Himmler, with all his crazy pagan beliefs, that they can't do that. Italy's fascists were mostly-atheistic, deriving from their National Syndicalist and futurist roots, which certainly seems unsuitable for the country that is effectively the throne of Catholicism, whereas Germany's fascists included all sorts of pagans who would definitely fail to mesh with the Christian majority at the time. It varies from movement-to-movement, but religion can range from a legitimate facet (Franco, Salazar), to a tool (Nazi "Positive" Christianity, French Integralism), to actively rejected (Mussolini et al. and Hitler).

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    9. Corporate Power is Protected
     Mutually beneficial business/government
    relationship
    This is a fundamental misunderstanding of corporatism as a whole. Corporatism is a very advanced and strange economic policy, so it's hard to give it a single definition—some forms are free market, others are glorified command economies. Tripartite corporatism, the anti-Fascist version which is practiced by Christian and Social Democrats, as well as the one which I earnestly advocate, supports the creation of a contract between government, lobbyists, and labor unions. Fascist corporatism took many forms, but generally involved the subjugation of corporations and labor unions—in some fascist societies, corporations were indeed elevated, but only on the condition of subservience to the government. These were a twisted variation on the usual corporatist collaboration between government and business, using the aforementioned crony capitalism to allow the state to subjugate the economy and opportunistic businessmen to accrue wealth. Although this relationship is similar to the one you mentioned, it is nevertheless different—the key element is that fascism isn't trying to create a laissez-faire playground for their cronies, they're trying to entirely subjugate the economy with their cronies.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    10. Labor Power is Suppressed
     Labor unions are seen as a huge threat to a
    fascist government
     Labor unions are either severely suppressed,
    or are eliminated entirely.
    Strictly-speaking, corporatism of any form encourages the formation of labor unions. In forming the social bodies of fascism, this is not an exception, but it is malformed. Whereas the laissez-faire approach you are talking about is more broadly anti-union, fascists have a more insidious way of exploiting this. Fascists will usually create state-owned unions, such as the German Labour Front. Mussolini actually emerged from an obviously pro-union movement of reactionary unionism called "National Syndicalism", though he did also subjugate them to the government. The ultimate effect of this is to, in combination with cronyism, effectively deviate from the free, but healthily regulated enterprise of vanilla corporatism and implement a de-facto command economy by subjugating both labor and business to the government.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    11. Disrespect for Intellectuals and the Arts
     Open hostility to higher education
     Professors and other academics are censored, or
    even arrested
     Free expression in the arts and writing is openly
    attacked
    That's fair. I honestly think this is a pretty widespread issue in general, and it also appears in the general "left" of the aisle to a pretty grotesque degree as well, but it is especially concentrated in right-wing populist movements. The Republican Party does have a few noteworthy exceptions to this, however, and I don't think they're going to advocate for going around shooting college professors. You are totally correct that populists in America are seeking for idiots just like them, which is a problem. Everybody does seem to identify with a frothing dipshit instead of someone from a humble background, which is very disturbing. Again, I attribute this to a general trend towards populism overall, but I think this is one of the problems which actually does create a substantial pipeline to U.S. fascism.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
     Local police are given almost limitless power to
    enforce laws
     People are often willing to overlook police
    abuses in the name of patriotism
     Often a national police force with virtually
    unlimited power
    Again, I do see the injustice underlying this that could serve as a pipeline. Police officers are insufficiently-punished for misbehavior and are not disciplined enough. Many of them are incompetent or corrupt—however, this is not the same as, say, supplanting the police with your own national militias to go around disappearing and murdering political dissidents. This is a problem of ineffectual governance in general, and malicious willful ignorance in specific. This does need to be solved, and definitely has an authoritarian undercurrent.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
     Friends and associates appoint each other to
    government positions
     Officials use governmental power and
    authority to protect their friends from
    accountability
    Fair, but that can exist in any illiberal system. That also happens in non-Fascist dictatorships, in communism, and even in illiberal or faltering democracies. This is a party-agnostic problem in the U.S. and not a direct consequence of any political platform.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    14. Fraudulent Elections
     Elections are often a complete sham
     Elections may be manipulated by smear
    campaigns
     Manipulation of the
    media to control elections
     Occasional assassination of
    opposition candidates
    Rigged elections exist in any capacity. I don't think we're seeing a plan to establish a real dictatorship so much as general cronyism and the inevitable results of an emotionally-inflammatory political movement. There were attempts at election-stealing, but these were done in a very different way from how such things are conducted in fascism—similarly, although there was extensive abuse of executive orders under Trump, no direct efforts were made to extend executive power. Most other cases of election-rigging I can think of involve such things as gerrymandering, which is again typical of the United States political system as a whole.

    Many of these features don't even really strike me as historically-fascist—this seems typical of a reactionary authoritarian government, but many of these traits are extant in anything from particularly authoritarian and reactionary faux-democracies to outright fascist countries to entirely unrelated forms of authoritarian. Others, like the elevation of religion are minimized in many European fascist regimes throughout history and only strictly present in a few. Many of these are, in fact, complete misunderstandings or dramatic understatements about what constitutes fascism. These are all traits of reactionary and authoritarian governments, but few are irreconcilably fascist in nature.

    The fact is that "bad" and "fascist" don't have to mean the same thing. Fascism is bad, but not all the bad guys and reactionaries are the same. It is myopic and betrays a certain privilege or misunderstanding of politics to conflate all forms of evil or injustice into one package, and it just spreads the exact kind of creates the same kind of dangerously emotional, anti-intellectual and factionalized conditions that you listed.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Paranoid Android View Post
    The Republican party and the defacto leader in Trump want 1 party rule. Trump has spouted authoritarian rhetoric for the past 6 years. My goodness they tried to deny the past legit election. I will add they very much have a god like worship of Trump.

    Call it authoritarianism
    Trump's a bastard—he's your typical populist demagogue, and all populists like to foster their cults of personalities. I'll grant you that is pretty fascist. It's beyond backward and idiotic to elevate whoever as you politically see fit and put them on a pedestal. It distorts reality, precludes critical thought and turns ones attention from society to the guy they like.

    Quote Originally Posted by Paranoid Android View Post
    Once more, holy sh*t, you are making the case. The ultra rich and corporations heavily lean on the Republican party for policy. In fact when Jan 6th happened, corporations promised to stop donating to people like Hawley. Six months later they started right back up and continue to finance election deniers and worse, which I'll get to in a moment. In fact my little commentary forever has been the money that has kept the Republican Party alive in today's form of fascism. It's simple if they don't get donations, the candidates can't really run.
    Internet people don't know what corporatism is. Color me shocked. It's an economic policy, the sort you might hear about if you looked at countries that had diverse political systems, or opened a history book and didn't try to label everything with "which side is it tho?" The central element is class collaboration, usually formed through contracts between different "bodies" of society (thus the name "corporatism", integrating the Latin "corpus", which means "body"). In functional corporatist economies, such as the Nordic Countries, tripartire corporatism is used to allow labor, lobbyists, and government to work together and regulate one another. In corporatism as it is in fascism, contracts are rewritten and abused to silence labor or allot them into a totalitarian echo chamber, elevate collaborating businesses through cronyism, and ensure government control over both labor and corporations.

    Quote Originally Posted by Paranoid Android View Post
    As far as groups? Let me count the ways. The Republican Party is dominated by anti-immigrant policy which idk where you are from but turn on any right wing media or talking points they spout straight white nationalist talking points. The other dominant party is ultra, right, Christian or Evangelical fundamentalism. Once more on Roe there biggest weapon is that of their religious beliefs.
    Anti-immigration is reprehensible, and governments have a moral imperative to treat undocumented immigrants kindly. This is one of a couple of reasons why I can't really consider myself a Republican by any means. However, the incarnation of their nationalism is more civic than ethnic. It's certainly scapegoating, common in fascism, but it's also not unique to fascism. Any authoritarian, populist shithead can use it—communists can use it, fascists can use it, vanilla authoritarians can use it, conservatives and liberals can even use their toned-down varieties. As for religion, fascism has historically been mixed on that. It can be used to elevate it, but many fascist regimes repress it. The Rexists, Salazar, and Franco followed their religions sincerely. The Integralists in France and Positive Christianity in Nazi Germany used it as a tool, feigning allegiance and rewriting their religions as they saw fit to elevate their nationalism. The Nazis as a whole and the Italian Fascists would pay it lip service, but generally rejected it, and planned on eradicating things like the Catholic Church when the time came.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post
    -snip-
    Did you literally just make excuses for everything?

    I am going to address one bullshit argument you made.

    lolWUT? Mussolini and Hitler were both atheists, and both strongly opposed organized religion as anything other than a tool of the state. There were clerical fascists, such as Franco, the Rexists, Salazar, etc. but this is not a necessary requisite by any means. I have no idea where this came from, but you'd better tell Hitler, who was an atheist that practiced eastern spiritual rites, and Himmler, with all his crazy pagan beliefs, that they can't do that. Italy's fascists were mostly-atheistic, deriving from their National Syndicalist and futurist roots, which certainly seems unsuitable for the country that is effectively the throne of Catholicism, whereas Germany's fascists included all sorts of pagans who would definitely fail to mesh with the Christian majority at the time. It varies from movement-to-movement, but religion can range from a legitimate facet (Franco, Salazar), to a tool (Nazi "Positive" Christianity, French Integralism), to actively rejected (Mussolini et al. and Hitler).
    Mussolini might have been atheist, but Adolf Hitler was definitely a Protestant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi...f_Adolf_Hitler

    Hitler hated atheists. Nazis literally wore belt buckles that said "Gott Mitt Uns", it means "God With Us", they even made deals with the Vatican so they didn't get attacked while Mussolini controlled Fascist Italy til he died when the US got to Italy. Himmler wasn't a pagan either, he believed in the Occult, but he believed in the Christian God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottgl...their%20clergy.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    Did you literally just make excuses for everything?

    I am going to address one bullshit argument you made.
    You made an argument and I presented a counterargument. I'm not sure why you made an argument and were unprepared for some refutation.

    Generally, though, I am not making excuses for right-wing populism of any sort. I detest everything contained within that ideology. Cruelty to immigrants, cruelty to minorities, and cruelty to women are unacceptable in any capacity and must be quashed with extreme prejudice. What I'm saying is that I don't like when people throw around the world's most vile ideology so lightly. It's something that has to be understood in its magnitude and never underestimated or understated.

    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post
    Mussolini might have been atheist, but Adolf Hitler was definitely a Protestant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi...f_Adolf_Hitler

    Hitler hated atheists. Nazis literally wore belt buckles that said "Gott Mitt Uns", it means "God With Us", they even made deals with the Vatican so they didn't get attacked while Mussolini controlled Fascist Italy til he died when the US got to Italy. Himmler wasn't a pagan either, he believed in the Occult, but he believed in the Christian God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottgl...their%20clergy.
    I do think I was mistaken specifying Hitler as atheist, but I wouldn't exactly call him Christian. I usually detest using Wikipedia as a source since it effectively entrusts a bunch of internet randos with the judgment of "meh, good enuff" as a standard of quality. I prefer something with higher standards of quality. Even within the page you linked, however, the general consensus from the sources cited seems to generally be "it's complicated". The gist of it seems to boil down to "started Christian, then became more iffy". He seemed to jump from belief to belief with little consistency, advocating for elements of Islam, Germanic paganism, and German Protestantism.

    As for the Vatican matter, no. People dramatically misunderstand this one. Hitler and the Catholic Church were enemies from square one. Right here, as a primary source, is Mitt Brennender Sorge—this was disseminated in Germany, in German by Pope Pius XI. Much of it consists of fairly transparent claims designed to undermine support in Hitler's platform. It demeans nationalism and attacks the vile ideology on which Hitler stood. The whole "Hitler's Pope" myth is only believed by people whose only historical source is subpar crap from the same channels that disseminate crap like "Ancient Aliens". There was something of a nominal treaty between the parties, but that was functionally the strong-arming of the Vatican by the Axis. When the war did begin in earnest, Catholicism became a strong general enemy of international Fascism in spite of its practice in Vichy France and Belgium.

    The "Gott Mitt Uns" belt buckle isn't exactly strong evidence for their Christianity when they otherwise had a habit of undermining and damaging religious institutions. It was a hollow platitude towards the German masses to assure them that their lunatic ideology was somehow compatible with a religion that states that the divine Logos was a Jewish man.

    As for Himmler I was also wrong about his religious beliefs, but it seemed more like he supported a trend towards vaguely-monotheistic spiritualism from the article you linked. I did not know he detested atheists such that he restricted them from SS membership, so that's admittedly something you've taught me that I didn't know before. However, the esoteric beliefs of the SS could hardly be considered mainstream in the fashion that the criteria you linked stated would necessitate appeals from a Fascist regime, and it seems like he took pains to also ensure that nobody from outside churches brought such corrupting elements as "mercy" and "not being fascist lunatics" to his precious cult.
    Last edited by Le Conceptuel; 2022-10-18 at 08:08 AM.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by postman1782 View Post

    Hitler hated atheists. Nazis literally wore belt buckles that said "Gott Mitt Uns", it means "God With Us", they even made deals with the Vatican so they didn't get attacked while Mussolini controlled Fascist Italy til he died when the US got to Italy. Himmler wasn't a pagan either, he believed in the Occult, but he believed in the Christian God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottgl...their%20clergy.
    Quote Originally Posted by Le Conceptuel View Post

    I do think I was mistaken specifying Hitler as atheist, but I wouldn't exactly call him Christian. I usually detest using Wikipedia as a source since it effectively entrusts a bunch of internet randos with the judgment of "meh, good enuff" as a standard of quality. I prefer something with higher standards of quality. Even within the page you linked, however, the general consensus from the sources cited seems to generally be "it's complicated". The gist of it seems to boil down to "started Christian, then became more iffy". He seemed to jump from belief to belief with little consistency, advocating for elements of Islam, Germanic paganism, and German Protestantism.

    The "Gott Mitt Uns" belt buckle isn't exactly strong evidence for their Christianity when they otherwise had a habit of undermining and damaging religious institutions. It was a hollow platitude towards the German masses to assure them that their lunatic ideology was somehow compatible with a religion that states that the divine Logos was a Jewish man.
    First of all, it's 'Gott mit Uns', and 'Mit brennender Sorge',

    and the belt buckle was a traditional leftover from Prussia and the German Kaiser, they'd been using it for hundreds of years as a motto and battlecry. German troops in WW1 had it as well, and the Bundeswehr used it until the early 1960es.

    Also, 'meh, good enough' seems exactly your level, pal.

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