Let's just get out there and say it: Trump has finally gone full ******

[shosta]

Third world coups, anti-communist movements/paramilitaries, etc. are products historically of non-fascist states more than fascist states.

We would have to start getting into the concrete examples at this point but rather than ruin this thread with that I'd rather just ask you if, since you think the qualities listed are good fascist tropes, it's wrong to give trump the moniker when he satisfies them, too.

The Doctrine ... spends little time on communism ...

Well that's why I said the actions are more important because fascists spent almost all of their time before seizing power and immediately after whipping themselves into a frenzy over communists.

[Tasty]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

[benjipwns]

And yet there were governments which had maybe 95% of the distinguishing characteristics of fascist authoritarianism but nonetheless were not totalitarian. Is the shorthand for this family of political tendencies really such a crime? Does it really lessen the word when people use it to describe reactionary conservative movements? Even when they end up in the same place?

This isn't a gotcha type thing but I want to get on the same wavelength so I'm going to ask for a few examples of what you have in mind. Because they may not be at all what I'm thinking of.

Well that's why I said the actions are more important because fascists spent almost all of their time before seizing power and immediately after whipping themselves into a frenzy over communists.

Not anymore than they did against the other groups they sought to displace. The main thing with the Communists was tied to how the Communists actually were willing to physically resist them and take up arms. Most everyone else was willing to compromise believing it was a non-existential threat.

I just think you're focusing on the wrong thing, as important as that thing might seem.

Maybe, but different governments provide different civ-wide stat bonuses especially when combined with how they change the specific policy choices available.

[Boredfrom]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

Trump is using undercover federal agents to arrest protesters in certain cities.

[thisismyusername]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

Federal Agents kidnapping protestors in Portland (and Seattle IIRC). I haven't been paying too much attention to it since the news is BARELY covering it, if ever.

[shosta]

This isn't a gotcha type thing but I want to get on the same wavelength so I'm going to ask for a few examples of what you have in mind. Because they may not be at all what I'm thinking of.

Resetera, Slaent, Lucky Strikes Bowling after they told me I couldn't keep drinking and bowling at the same time

[benjipwns]

Trump is using undercover federal agents to arrest protesters in certain cities.

Federal Agents kidnapping protestors in Portland (and Seattle IIRC). I haven't been paying too much attention to it since the news is BARELY covering it, if ever.

The CBP is operating in their legal 100 mile zone to arrest terrorists and anarchists under both a Trump Presidential directive and an Obama Administration administrative court ruling upholding the 100 mile zone, both of which were originally introduced by the Bush Administration to protect us after 9/11. Complaining about it is being divisive and undermining national security. Consider yourselves both reported.

Especially YOU Boredform, being a foreign terrorist. And landlord.

[thisismyusername]

I was already anti-Iraq invasion and anti-Patriot act (hence my industry). If I wasn't already on the FBI's terrorist list, me being a pinko-commie pro-worker union/etc. would put me there solidly in the McCarthy era.

PS: Fuck AmeriKKKa. Shithole country, you can put that in my file, handler.

[Boredfrom]

Where do I signup to get a 100 mile zone around my house where I can abduct people in a van without any form accountability or identification.

Asking for a friend.

:James 

Go to Mexico and become a Narco or a Mexican politician. If you are good, your stand range is unlimited.

[benjipwns]

My main point with the pedantry is more that I just think it's easier to say Trump (or whoever) is going more authoritarian, leaving fascism with its history, ideology and everything out of it, but then that just leads us to realize that it's not really new, we've been authoritarian in a lot of ways much more than we think about. Fascism still sounds exotic, different, the big bad we beat once, "can't happen here" and all that. Even though we adopted plenty of it in our own more diluted ways for a century. I still think it should be treated that kind of way as being unique. Like we wouldn't as easily say we're adopting Nazism until we got to the racial stuff and overtly so. We wouldn't say we're adopting Communism until we... actually nevermind

[shosta]

Looking at Qanon, looking at anti-mask protestors, looking at neo-nazi gatherings etc. they're not so much directed by the state nor are they acting out of direct information.

They're more emboldened than anything.

Their information is more informed from institutions predating Trump, Trump kinda is just along for the ride and acts purely out of ego.

I don't think he's literally on step with anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers/qanon, he's very passive and divorced from our real threat from an objective point of view.

It's helpful to acknowledge that.

the deep ocean currents of American conservative paranoia gestating over four decades and propelled through time by a whirling dynamic between ruling class opportunism and the slow dessication of white settler kkkulture ... we are truly a nation sui generis

[Kara]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

shosta got mad at benji in an argument and shosta got so owned that he sent Kara a direct message on Facebook calling for backup

I don't condone engaging in arguments whose substance differs little from the old "Was the Soviet Union state capitalist or a degenerated workers' state?" cleave in Trotskyism.

And certainly not with purported adults who use terms like authoritarian earnestly.

[benjipwns]

I've never purported to be an adult

[curly]

Off the top of my head I'd say Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion...just something I came up with.

[Human Snorenado]

All I'm hearing is that you cucks have a sad because America is finally Great Again

[BIONIC]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

Trump is jailing Animal Crossing villagers without due process 

Next stop: Ohana 

[shosta]

Nice definition curly. Just building on that, I'd say fascism's main mobilizing passions are

- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions
- the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it
- the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external
- dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences
- the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary
- the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny
- the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason
- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success
- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle

Just my thoughts, feel free to add to this

[OnlyRegret]

FACT CHECK:

READ SETTLERS GENTILE.

Full fascist would entail stuff like other parties being disbanded and holding sham elections.

You still got ways to go, but maybe you‘ll get there

The U.S. always has sham elections, are you just talking out of your ass again or is this you "trolling."

return from the blue to dunk on bis, again

[benjipwns]

this is starting to explain your guys grades on BisMarckie's exam

[BIONIC]

FACT CHECK:

READ SETTLERS GENTILE.

Full fascist would entail stuff like other parties being disbanded and holding sham elections.

You still got ways to go, but maybe you‘ll get there

The U.S. always has sham elections, are you just talking out of your ass again or is this you "trolling."

return from the blue to dunk on bis, again

Pole on Pole violence.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[shosta]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_irredentism

spoiler (click to show/hide)

curly and I were quoting from a good book

[close]

[shosta]

That was on my birthday too... never forgave you for that

Edit:

Sometimes you post like an unmedicated schizophrenic person

still true

[Kara]

FACT CHECK:

READ SETTLERS GENTILE.

Full fascist would entail stuff like other parties being disbanded and holding sham elections.

You still got ways to go, but maybe you‘ll get there

The U.S. always has sham elections, are you just talking out of your ass again or is this you "trolling."

return from the blue to dunk on bis, again

I posted about the above the line tax deduction for education expenses the other day.

[OnlyRegret]

FACT CHECK:

READ SETTLERS GENTILE.

Full fascist would entail stuff like other parties being disbanded and holding sham elections.

You still got ways to go, but maybe you‘ll get there

The U.S. always has sham elections, are you just talking out of your ass again or is this you "trolling."

return from the blue to dunk on bis, again

I posted about the above the line tax deduction for education expenses the other day.

didn't see it, so it never happened
that is how it works

[benjipwns]

We defeated fascism at the primary polls already, our weapon was Joe Biden Thought.

[Kara]

Good meme. There may yet be hope for this thread.

[benjipwns]

NEVER

WAIT NO

THIS ONE

[OnlyRegret]

triangles are the strongest shaping
therefore the premise is nigh unassailable

[VomKriege]

He's certainly accelerated some authoritarian degeneracy and he is getting a lot closer than I expected to fulfilling the most hyperbolic and hysterical worries of 2016.

Ousting him will not magically revert course but four more years of this shit could turn really sour.

I think there will be some exceptional fuckery for the election and  a mild case of "Civil War" incidents soon are not off the menu at this rate.

[shosta]

I agree with Vom. All of the trends in American polity are irreversible and electing Biden won't change our future.

[benjipwns]

A "civil war" breaks down too poorly over what territory is held. The prior one had a nice clean dividing line with one specific issue. Now there are enclaves and tracts within territories and less than 60/40 splits in those areas that show up as one color in a county map.

The last time, the Republican Party wasn't even on the ballot in the eventual Confederate States. And the Democratic Party had split along geographical lines. And they had clear dividing lines. Plus state loyalties first.

What would the issue even supposed to be? And it'd probably be so limited to a single area it wouldn't animate anywhere else.

[shosta]

It already happened in YOUR statehouse!

[benjipwns]

You seriously think a small handful of protesters yelling at state legislators is a prelude to civil war?

[VomKriege]

I agree with Vom. All of the trends in American polity are irreversible and electing Biden won't change our future.

I don't know they are but yeah the problem runs a lot deeper than having "one bad actor" at the levers. Trump is an incredible black light on just how fractured the citizenry and the system is.

It's not just the USA, liberal democracies in general are overdue structural changes. Otherwise we're due for a carrousel of "saviours" who won't live to the expectations at best, or leverage the personality cult for heinous policies.

[benjipwns]

Otherwise we're due for a carrousel of "saviours" who won't live to the expectations at best, or leverage the personality cult for heinous policies.

That's been both of us friend since after the wars.

[VomKriege]

You seriously think a small handful of protesters yelling at state legislators is a prelude to civil war?

You understood well what the quotation marks were here for.
Not a LITERAL CIVIL WAR yet, but I can certainly foresee more and more violence between protestors and authorities and from one faction to another.

Mass shootings becoming political statements more commonly in lieu of targeted shootings, bombs, hostage takings etc... is maybe a prelude.

[team filler]

FACT CHECK:

READ SETTLERS GENTILE.

Full fascist would entail stuff like other parties being disbanded and holding sham elections.

You still got ways to go, but maybe you‘ll get there

The U.S. always has sham elections, are you just talking out of your ass again or is this you "trolling."

[benjipwns]

edit

[EchoRin]

edit

your wish is my command

[Mandark]

The central argument of fascism makes certain claims fundamentally about the individual and their relationship with the state.

idk sounds like a rhetorical device to posit libertarianism as the real antipode to fascism

[MMaRsu]

The political system is US is so fucked. How is it possible you only have creepy uncle Joe and dictator idiot Trump as choices?

Both seem fucking terrible to me.

[BisMarckie]

I took curly's advice to heart and didn't read any of this shit

[Positive Touch]

this was the most worthless discussion possible on this topic; good job all

[headwalk]

that +15 production when training melee units was too tempting not to pursue.

[Great Rumbler]

I took curly's advice to heart and didn't read any of this shit

I'm so sorry.

[ToxicAdam]

I'm so sorry.

Don't be too hard on yourself. I'll bet that moblin was pro-facism before this thread was created and now you've changed their mind. They just can't express it.

[BisMarckie]

[
People have a tendency to say that fascism (or communism I guess) are the opposite of things they like but good to see it realized in academia.

Anyway some good stuff from curly/shomsta/kara as always but we haven't really touched on the economic dimension of fascism yet... Understandable since the United States already projects force at nearby states and internal groups to extract wealth as it's normal function, guess it won't be obvious till we send tanks into Manitoba or wherever arvie lives during our death throes and force him to work for free or periphery wages at the Coca Cola factory.

Tbh to simply describe fascism as the ultimate form of capitalism is just intellectually lazy and a major gripe I had with a lot of Marxist scholars.

[BisMarckie]

[
People have a tendency to say that fascism (or communism I guess) are the opposite of things they like but good to see it realized in academia.

Anyway some good stuff from curly/shomsta/kara as always but we haven't really touched on the economic dimension of fascism yet... Understandable since the United States already projects force at nearby states and internal groups to extract wealth as it's normal function, guess it won't be obvious till we send tanks into Manitoba or wherever arvie lives during our death throes and force him to work for free or periphery wages at the Coca Cola factory.

Tbh to simply describe fascism as the ultimate form of capitalism is just intellectually lazy and a major gripe I had with a lot of Marxist scholars.

Look at you asshole, back to reading things again

[CatsCatsCats]

Sometimes mayors need to be tear gassed to preserve federal property

[Stro]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

Federal Agents kidnapping protestors in Portland (and Seattle IIRC). I haven't been paying too much attention to it since the news is BARELY covering it, if ever.

MSNBC has been covering this for days, on every hour and show of the day 

[Lonewulfeus]

I've been pretty out of things, what is it this time?

Federal Agents kidnapping protestors in Portland (and Seattle IIRC). I haven't been paying too much attention to it since the news is BARELY covering it, if ever.

MSNBC has been covering this for days, on every hour and show of the day 

That doesn’t disprove TIMU’s assertion that the news isn’t covering the federal kidnappings

[tiesto]

I think what's wilder is that half(ish) the country doesn't even give a shit and support his moves to own the libs aka people not like them. Every Republican should be flipping the fuck out right now, but I haven't seen shit from any Republicans about Portland and sending in the mini van goon squad into other cities and how they're mighty quiet on the one time the 2nd Amendment directly applies to a modern and on going situation.

The "libertarians" I know who should in theory be up in arms against a fascist government throwing protestors into unmarked vans are all like "but it's OK, those people are Marxists being paid off by Soros to destroy America!"

[shosta]

Tbh to simply describe fascism as the ultimate form of capitalism is just intellectually lazy and a major gripe I had with a lot of Marxist scholars.

no one said that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, fascism is what capitalism does during a prolonged economic crisis once property is threatened.

[shosta]

(necessary for understanding say, Indian fascism)

India still has elections... not yet totalitarian... can't call it fascism. Sorry.

[VomKriege]

Ultimately I think a way out is finding a new modulation of politics. I don't know if it's switching back to a more parliament based regime or moving to more direct democracy because new technologies maybe make that old canard more viable than it used to be. I don't think devolving everything back to local level is the milk and honey solution to fix problems but shorter, sustainable circuits & al. have been trending for a while in other domains of thoughts.

Because otherwise I'm not seeing anywhere any third way / centrist / liberal really turning the tide, at best slowing for a while the drift to the far right.

[VomKriege]

Also the fascism thing is kinda sterile and academic. I get the impulse to be a pedant but can we all agree democratic checks and balance (among other things) eroded significantly under Trump ?

[Stoney Mason]

The political system is US is so fucked. How is it possible you only have creepy uncle Joe and dictator idiot Trump as choices?

Both seem fucking terrible to me.

One is an average typical politican. The other is a complete racist corrupt awful shit bag. Not overly aimed at you but this sort of I'm too hip
for actual discernment equivalence is a big pet peeve of mine when we say one thing is just like the other when one thing is exactly not like the other.

Hey I accidentally stubbed my toe does not equal, I got ebola and it ate all of my flesh and now I'm probably gonna die. That distinction is the very purpose of a message board.

[Stro]

I think what's wilder is that half(ish) the country doesn't even give a shit and support his moves to own the libs aka people not like them. Every Republican should be flipping the fuck out right now, but I haven't seen shit from any Republicans about Portland and sending in the mini van goon squad into other cities and how they're mighty quiet on the one time the 2nd Amendment directly applies to a modern and on going situation.

The "libertarians" I know who should in theory be up in arms against a fascist government throwing protestors into unmarked vans are all like "but it's OK, those people are Marxists being paid off by Soros to destroy America!"

Why do you know so many pedophiles, bro 

[shosta]

Ultimately I think a way out is finding a new modulation of politics. I don't know if it's switching back to a more parliament based regime or moving to more direct democracy because new technologies maybe make that old canard more viable than it used to be. I don't think devolving everything back to local level is the milk and honey solution to fix problems but shorter, sustainable circuits & al. have been trending for a while in other domains of thoughts.

Because otherwise I'm not seeing anywhere any third way / centrist / liberal really turning the tide, at best slowing for a while the drift to the far right.

Finding the will to change the political system requires an independence of thought and a willingness to break with the existing order of things that people just don't have yet. But with the way things are, if they do get to that point in their political maturation, they're not going to try to reform the United States, they'll try burning it down.

[Kara]

Also the fascism thing is kinda sterile and academic. I get the impulse to be a pedant but can we all agree democratic checks and balance (among other things) eroded significantly under Trump ?

This topic tends towards inanity by virtue of the fact that it treats fascism as something begotten, not made, which is to say only reproducing itself in a like manner. Analyzing past fascist movements is instructive, but ignoring their developments since then is frankly not very dialectical. (This of course excludes the people who use such discussions to show off their latest strawmen for sale.) Consequently the definitions that get bandied about either come to resemble an amorphous blob (if evolutions are contemplated) or are hopelessly out of date.

Dog Mod, as a friendly criticism of your initial claim, President Trump came from the bourgeoisie and his presidency (despite the anxiety about squatter decline from both him and the media) has served that class position in its entirety. From the new Internal Revenue Code, to the gutting of federal regulations / agencies there can be little dispute as to whom he governs on behalf of. (Hell, how many bourgeois have been in the various permutations of his cabinet?) The U.S. is an archipelago of little dictatorships, they're called private businesses in right to work states. That he himself may appear to have dictatorial tendencies is more a reflection of that than it is fascism.