It's who is and isn't sentenced that makes it authoritarian and undemocratic.
Herr Musk | Fascist
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
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It's who is and isn't sentenced that makes it authoritarian and undemocratic.
Trump's pardoning strategy likely doesn't stretch beyond, "is this good for me, or not?", anyway
Never heard that before. Many of us call our government here fascist and it’s because they display fascist tendencies by the textbook play book - authoritarian rule, suppression of dissent, control of media, making institutions act for their benefit, looting the nation’s wealth for political power, implementing a social hierarchy on religious lines etc.
How was pardoning the silk road guy beneficial to him?
Yea, I recognise the definition the way you see it much more than the post you quoted to be fair.
he ran on being pro-crypto so he's just pandering to his base as per
Making a dopeBay surely makes you more of a drug dealer than crypto bro
Yeah, in my opinion it's quite a stretch to not see the fascism at play and focus on certain perspectives that might not fit classic fascism.
Making a dopeBay surely makes you more of a drug dealer than crypto bro
what does the truth have to do with it?
it was a campaign promise that helped get him elected
Trump doesn't give a feck if it was the right thing to do or not, so it's futile to discuss it on those terms
I’m talking about how it’s used in this context, to be fair. Sounds as though the Indian version is more aligned with a classical definition.
FFS. You seriously think I’m doing that? Please re-read my posts.
What I am saying is it's not going to benefit him in the long run because it will serve as a sort of precedent now.
The US ticks most of those boxes and with Nazi salutes?
Again. Re-read my posts. It’s all there. This is a thread about Elon Musk. How many of those boxes does he tick?
yeah, and pardoning Nazi's too I should imagine
I think there is enough that fits the classical definition to not need to try and expand the definition to include wanting a small government. Has Musk not made so much of his money from big government grants anyway? Would small government not want to limit those grants, or is the size of government reach purely a headcount?
I am a little confused by your posts. They do seems to be underpinned by some urge to not classify it as fascism.
Maybe I’m making my point badly. I thought I’ve been pretty clear throughout. My “urge” is to make sure that it is classified as fasicsm. Genuinely confused by you spinning that to mean the exact opposite.
Could be my fault. Sorry if so.
All good. I did crawl up my own arse a bit. But the tangent began when someone wondered how he can be fascist without openly hating Jews. I’m arguing against using too narrow/historical a definition. If it looks like a duck etc
Absolutely agreed on that. Thanks for the clarification, I hadn't read back on the origin of the conversation.
If I may Pogue you do seem to enjoy doing battle in the nuance of these matters, which can be risky. Whilst I think that's a good thing as the nuance should certainly be hashed out in these complex matters, I reckon sometimes it gives the wrong impression of defending things that you aren't actually defending.
I feel like I do the same all the time too, to be honest. People are often confusing me as right wing (despite being very far to the left) because I'll sometimes defend a person on the right in some nuanced way for the sake of being right on the internet.
That's not a narrow definition as much as limited understanding?
Also I think the interchangeability of fascist/nazi has skewed the discourse. It's why older texts are good. I'd recommend Gramsci and Trotsky.
Umberto Eco has a great essay
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/umberto-eco-ur-fascism
His 14 points/characteristics are good..
I've definitely fallen foul of that here.
And in general (not Pogue), people not knowing the difference between fascist and Nazi should perhaps learn what they actually mean before debating them. Again, that's not nuance as much as a degree of ignorance.
Can both things not be true? That he's an edgelord who doesn't understand the boundaries between online shitposting and realife, and that he's a fascist sympathiser?
I don't think he's an out-and-out Nazi/Hitler sympathiser at this stage, but he definitely does appear to have fascist leanings. We're more at the Mussolini stage than Hitler imo.
Thanks. That’s a very fair observation!
I guess I like wading in the muddy waters. It’s where a lot of the most interesting discussions happen. But they need to be in good faith. Which won’t always happen when we resort to point scoring. Which I’m as guilty of as anyone.
But anyway, here goes…
Another wrinkle in the fascism debate is covid. Trump basically lost the last election because of how he handled it. If you were an alien looking at what’s happening on earth. What would look like a more fascist approach? Strict lockdowns and compulsory testing, proof of vaccination etc or the “let it rip” approach the MAGA crew were pushing for?
It’s all gets messy and confusing if you try to make any of this fit classic definitions. It’s a handy shorthand because we all know what it really means. Nationalist wankers who want to abuse power to further marginalise anyone who is disenfranchised. Whether that’s because they’re poor, or a minority, an immigrant, or whatever. I reckon that’s good enough to work with and it’s by far the most important part of the definition anyway.
I think we'd all be better off focusing more on the fascist'y type stuff he's doing than whether or not he fits under the term properly, he clearly doesn't
for one thing, he isn't an ideologue at all, so he could never fit. Trump's ideology is Trump, so if something benefits Trump, he couldn't give a feck if it's left, right, illegal, immoral or whatever, and we don't need any more proof this is true...
so why would we waste our time talking about what he means?
That's a separate complex debate but the belligerent anti mask brigade here in Ireland all also turned out be the main protagonist in the rise of the right post COVID.
Not wholly ideological because it contradicts their abortion stance, Trump and here.
I think we have discussed this in various other threads?
The measures were a welfare issue. As I said earlier anti welfare being one of the reasons to use the term small government.
@Pogue Mahone
I think we're unnecessarily hung up on some sort of classic definition of fascism. There wasn't one. We can discuss the nature of fascism easier than a clear singular definition. Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, the archetype fascists for a lot of us, all did it differently. Stalin's Russia and his authoritarianism gives foundation to a lot of the horseshoe theories. It's not rigid.
From the Umberto Eco essay I posted above.
Well worth reading by the way.
"The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations."
This paragraph below is from Chris Hedges on an article about Gramsci and modern relevance.
I know people have issues Hedges over some of his takes on Ukraine. I do too, but this is a good intro to Gramsci who I think is essential reading at some point if anyone is really interested in understanding and making an attempt at 'defining' fascism.
"Benito Mussolini’s regime claimed, like our corporate state, to be implementing a government based on efficiency, meritocracy, the management of society by experts and specialists and the elimination of class conflict through mediation. It too celebrated “heroic” military values, traditionalism and a mythical past that stretched back, in the case of fascist Italy, to ancient Rome. It also rewarded conformism and loyalty, denigrated the humanities and culture in favor of vocational and technical training, spectacle and patriotic kitsch"
Lots of that rings true with the US.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/antonio-gramsci-and-the-battle-against-fascism/
I think we're unnecessarily hung up on some sort of classic definition of fascism. There wasn't one. We can discuss the nature of fascism easier than a clear singular definition. Hitler, Franco and Mussolini, the archetype fascists for a lot of us, all did it differently. Stalin's Russia and his authoritarianism gives foundation to a lot of the horseshoe theories. It's not rigid.
From the Umberto Eco essay I posted above.
Well worth reading by the way.
"The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations."
This paragraph below is from Chris Hedges on an article about Gramsci and modern relevance.
I know people have issues Hedges over some of his takes on Ukraine. I do too, but this is a good intro to Gramsci who I think is essential reading at some point if anyone is really interested in understanding and making an attempt at 'defining' fascism.
"Benito Mussolini’s regime claimed, like our corporate state, to be implementing a government based on efficiency, meritocracy, the management of society by experts and specialists and the elimination of class conflict through mediation. It too celebrated “heroic” military values, traditionalism and a mythical past that stretched back, in the case of fascist Italy, to ancient Rome. It also rewarded conformism and loyalty, denigrated the humanities and culture in favor of vocational and technical training, spectacle and patriotic kitsch"
Lots of that rings true with the US.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/antonio-gramsci-and-the-battle-against-fascism/
Thanks for all those links @moses very much appreciated. The one about inverted totalitarismus was especially interesting, and frightening seeing basically the complete tech-elite next to the president.
I don't think that everything a group does has to fall under the umbrella of fascism for them to appear as fascist. There is no need to include other features of their actions in some modified definition when they match a good chunk of the core tenets.
Ha. No worries. I can tend to get a bit evangelical about anti fascism. I'm not the popular dinner party invitee I was a long time ago
Yes, that one is an interesting read alright!
This is where I got confused. Fascism is an approach to governance and nationalism, libertarianism is an approach to the economy and morality. There is some overlap in terms of what they're concerned with, but they are conceptually unrelated. So I don't understand why you think whether someone is a libertarian (Trump and Musk), socialist (Stalin), or whatever else (Franco, Mussolini, Godwin's law) would affect the definition of fascism.
I mean, some people might do that; we now have people calling anything slightly leftist Marxism. But we can't start self-censoring because some idiots might then not understand what fascism really is anymore. It messes up language and thereby weakens our ability to call out actual fascism.
(And anyway, by the way people conflate fascism and nazism, that's already the case, in a different way.)
The salute, in a way, ticks all of them.
Nothin wrong with that at all
Not at all. Just laying my cards on the table.
It was a political transaction; a promise he made to Libertarians at their convention in exchange for their endorsement or votes. He got some (individual) endorsements and support, so he did the pardon.
Seriously? I thought we’d already argued ourselves to a standstill on this one. At least give me some time to read the fecking links you posted before kicking it all off again.
I have to admit, I mostly ignored anyone saying it was anything other than a deliberate Fascist salute.
It's like when I salute lefties, it's a broad acknowledgement of what they stand for even though I could argue points with them indefinitely.
Does whether or not the salute was a 100% deliberate fascist or nazi gesture really matter that much if the outcome is that every nazi saw it as one and feel increasingly emoboldened after seeing it?