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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?
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.
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.
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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
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
People in here acting like authoritarianism is somehow inherent to conservatives but not to progressives. Authoritarianism is a problem. Conservativism is a relative political position, meaning there will always be conservatives on one side of the Overton window, wherever it currently resides.
Both conservatives and progressives can be authoritarian. Fascism though is by definition right wing.
I agree with both of your points, but it seems that many people in here do not agree that progressives can be authoritarian. A ridiculous and potentially even dangerous concept in my opinion.
Imma be real with you, your messaging and vibe sounds like you’re worried about something like you see youtubers screaming about, like “woke” becoming law and having to call people by the right pronoun or go to jail. The only other people to use “authoritarian left” are usually terrible right-wing grifters and so-called centrists that use any opportunity to attack efforts by progressives.
So if you wanted to make your messaging connect better you need to be a lot more specific without being afraid to have a clear and tangible idea in your mind what exactly you’re talking about.
People always want to put me into one of the categories, give me a label, but I don’t really see the need for that. I’m not trying to be on a “team”, I’m just having a discussion. So many interactions on the internet (and politics in general) become a game of identifying which group you belong to and then saying either amen or completely ignoring the ideas or nuance that I enjoy discussing. It’s unfortunately rare to find a good discussion since most people are here to circle jerk about this or that. I think the most important thing is to maintain open discourse so we can freely exchange ideas and learn. That’s what I enjoy on lemmy, the only reason I’m here. Circle jerks are tiresome, boring, and only stoke anger, sow more discord between people, and make real progress harder. They contribute to making our political environment a zero sum game when it doesn’t need to be.
Everyone knows political discourse is really toxic, that’s why when you’re imprecise and hand-wavy about issues people will assume what your position actually is.
You mean it’s confusing if I use examples that aren’t consistent with a single political ideology? That’s exactly the point. My position is simply that Authoritarianism is not limited to a single political ideology, that it can come from either side. That’s it. That’s my position. You can call out conservatives for some bad things and progressives for other bad things, and both of them for authoritarianism if they do it.
Then give some damn examples, otherwise you’re just saying stuff and leaving room for people to ASSUME what you’re trying to say.
Eh, depends on what you mean by “conservative” and “progressive”.
Authoritarianism is the defining characteristic of the right. The right consolidates wealth and power. The left is egalitarian, and is focused on ensuring that wealth and power is shared more evenly. There is no such thing as “auth left”.
If you use “conservative” as a synonym for the right and progressive as a synonym for the left, then there is no such thing as “auth progressive” - you are just using incorrect terminology to talk about different flavors of rightism.
Now if you mean “conservative” as “resistant to change” and “progressive” as “advocates of change” then that’s a completely different thing… but the language is STILL messy, because many who call themselves “conservative” are actually advocates of change in favor or more authoritarianism while those who call themselves “progressive” are also advocates of change, but generally in a leftward anti-authoritarian direction… which once again leads us to “auth progressive” being a contradiction.
Auth left is when progressives are willing to force their ideals on others, whether those ideals are social or fiscal. Forcing people to conform to your ideology is not a trait inherent to either side of the political aisle. For instance, the cultural revolution was a progressive authoritarian movement where wealth and power was stripped by force from people. If you really wanted to, you could make an argument about whether that was justified or not, but no matter how you spin it, it’s authoritarian.
Auth left is when progressives are willing to force their ideals on others, whether those ideals are social or fiscal.
No, that is not how any of that works. See the tolerance paradox.
the cultural revolution
…was rightist.
no matter how you spin it, it’s authoritarian.
Correct. Rightism is authoritarian. You keep describing rightism while trying attribute it to the left. This is usually the result of blindly accepting Tankie (extreme right) propaganda without taking the time to consider the actual definitions and requirements of leftism and leftist terminology.
Authoritarian: “favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of the government, at the expense of personal freedom.”
So freedom and tolerance is the opposite of authoritarianism. And yes, the paradox of tolerance means that it doesn’t work to be completely tolerant because then the intolerant will eliminate or overrule the tolerant.
The conclusion from this is that some level of authoritarianism is required to enforce some level of freedom, which are inherently conflicting. That’s why it’s a paradox.
So are you saying that use of force, when justified by the paradox of intolerance, is not right wing? Or are you saying that even progressive movements have elements of rightism?
No. By your own listed definition, authority and authoritarian are different terms. You can have an authority without authoritarianism. You are conflating terminology, and I’m starting to suspect you are doing so in bad faith to perpetuate the tiresome “both sides” fallacy.
You can’t have an authority without some level of authoritarianism.
I am an authroity in electrocuting myself with car batteries, I can say with perfect authority backed by experience that it hurts like a motherfucker. Wheres the fucken authoritarianism in that statement, sure theres some amount of absolutism in that I am assuming that everyone or atleast most people find electrocution of that type painful. But thats why we have peer review and consensus, get a couple other dumbfucks who arced their car batteries and we’ll find what the consensus is.
Authority is fully seperated from authoritarianism, they simply share a vague as fuck root concept.
To me there is a single defining feature to tell of something is fascist or not. I dont care that much about age old semantics and technicalities. This works as a moral compass for me.
“Does it infringe on the ability of another person to exercise harmless freedom” if the answer is yes its facism.
A harmless freedom being any activity that is not facism according the above, including the right to not be disturbed.
Practical examples:
Physical assault of any kind except as a last resort in order to decrease total harm. - facism
Stating in a conversation about religion that you think religion is unintelligent nonsense - not facism
Telling a religious person in their face that THEY are stupid and believe in nonsense. - facism
Taking a public stance against all kinds of drug use, believing that they only hurt society and have no place within - not facism.
Saying drug use should be punished by police because you believe the users are immoral criminals - facism
Stating that you would never feel comfortable around or if your child turned out lgbtq - not facism
No longer respecting or providing support to your lgbtq children/ placing people you dont like in a disadvantaged scenario - facism
If your left wandering how does one “police” such a world. The harmless freedom to be left unbothered and free of damage seizes to be harmless if the intent is to eacape public backlash from knowingly having commited acts of facism.
A good flow is:
1 notify a person they have committed facism so they can better themselves
2 inform them about aid to help better themselves if they cannot do so themselves, inform other people in the community so they can be alert this person struggles with unhealthy behaviors.
3 If they are not able to voluntarily not hurt others then the last resort is to limit freedoms in just the right amount that they can no longer limit the harmless freedom of others.
In general of course we should start funding proper global education that teaches to respect the world and all its inhabitants. Without that foundation all i just said is a pipe dream.
“Does it infringe on the ability of another person to exercise harmless freedom” if the answer is yes its facism.
Telling a religious person in their face that THEY are stupid and believe in nonsense. - facism
Does an individual telling someone they think their beliefs are stupid infringe on their ability to exercise harmless freedom?
Your real definition seems to be just, “fascism is anything I personally dislike” which deprives the word of any real meaning.
“Does an individual telling someone they think their beliefs are stupid infringe on their ability to exercise harmless freedom?”
The keyword is “their” in their belief, its rarely just theirs so this wording makes it personal and by default people deserve respect.
I understand that this is very context bounded. Saying “your believes” are stupid is a form of assault, attacking what the other person believes is true. Its disrespectful for no reason = an assumption of being more correct or better = the start of an assumption of authority. Therefor i would indeed label this a form of facism.
But Saying “i think this religion is stupid” towards the same person face shares the same opinion but limited to your own perspective, which is of course is by default just as valid. It doesn’t disrespect the other person = you maintain to be equals and you can both agree to disagree in peace.
It also doesn’t it make assumptions that they believe every single detail. Most religious people don’t know not believe every single verse. Simply making assumptions isn’t fascist but still something to avoid. Using assumptions to devalue other perspectives is.
“fascism is anything I personally dislike”
I can see how it looks that way but i can assure you thats not the case. There are plenty of things i dislike and find immoral that is not infringement if rights.
Selfishness is a good example. Someone with abundance watching others suffer from needs and choosing not to share is by my book immoral but not fascist.
To talk to you straight though, I hardly think so literally about this definition in real life. Its much more a fluent awareness of respect. When i try to vocalize and define my logic, thats when i arrive at the above narrow definition.
Being rude to someone is not fascism. Criticizing someone’s beliefs is not fascism. You are wrong and being ridiculous.
There are plenty of ways to be rude where its not facism.
Your comment is a good example of some of the more complex nuance and context in real life situations.
By my definition, most would probably assume your “You are wrong and being ridiculous.” Fits my bill. Because you make it personal.
I do find it rude but not Fascism for the simple reason that me providing my ideas on a public forum (correctly) presents me as open as being challenged. It be different if you send me a private message to say the same thing.
I bet if we would have a long real life conversation where i could include a novel of nuance around expression, freedom, respect and authority you wouldn’t think of me as being such ridiculous anymore but if you take just my definition literally on pure face value i can absolutely see why you feel this way.
No, I’m not taking your definition literally on pure face value. The definition you provided isn’t your actual definition, your actual definition is whatever you happen to feel like at any given moment. Which is incorrect and ridiculous. On a fundamental level, that is not how words work.
As a very specific autist i have no choice then to strongly disagree or my ability to understand the world quite literally collapses. I hope you can forgive me for that.
It may be important to note i don’t experience myself using language to think, my thoughts are abstract feelings and i have to put effort in translating them in human words, which often lack nor fit. I have no inner monologue but i can “see” concept, certain logic and ideas. with my “minds eye” as its sometimes called.
Were getting to the deep stuff now :p and i had a long day already so yes a bit unhinged but not unreasonably so, bear with me. I do spend a life inhibiting amount of time analyzing stuff like this.
What you describe is simply put not my experience of reality but i also want to tell you, your different experience is just as valid.
In my experience:
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our entire experience of reality is that we are consciousness and have the ability to perceive.
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the group of things we cant perceive (dont know) is much bigger and then the group of things we can perceive (do know).
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historically in science we where wrong but not entirely. Plague masks don’t stop the plague but they did have a noticeable working effect. The science of mental health changes and improves every day.
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All people carry bias and hypocritical standpoints. There are many things i stand for that appear contradictory when put next to eachother, This is a sign of incorrect logic, being unaware of all the facts and nuance but as i have never met a person free of it i consider this normal. (The normalcy of holding multiple contradictions opinions was agreed on by a psychiatrist)
I conclude that i can never know if something is fact, and science which is one of my strongest passions which has the goal of finding truth will only ever be an increasingly closer and more correct approximation.
I at the same time found absolutely no use or reason to act like all facts and information i know is all wrong and incorrect. For survival it needs to be as correct as needed to survive, for me personal its as correct as i can be from my own first principles. (Starting with a Decartian “i know that i exist” and moving from there till i manage to reason a recognizable concept i witness or experience in day to day life.
From the above i experience and reason the below:
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all words are made up and there meaning involve over time.
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communication is about copying information from one brain to another. As long as this is successful the communication was successful and all other factors like spelling become irrelevant.
Disclaimer: Known definitions and spelling are generally very useful tools to communicate, especially to not like minded people.
- My understanding of concept of the world should grow over time just like science and language. I actively look for materials and other perspectives to broaden my understanding i incorporate those and adapt definitions all the time. I would be a fool to stubbornly believe my current understanding of anything is an absolute truth, and like i said science , to get to the closest possible approximately truth is a passion of mine.
Having said that, and admitting that yes definitions often are my personal own i do not feel i used language in an incorrect or incomprehensible way.
I use words like “to me” which was my opener and others like “i feel”, “i think”, “i believe” and especially “i know”very intentionally and not at all lightly.
“to me” It means exactly what the dictionary textbook says. That the following statement is a subjective opinion coming from my own interpretation and understanding.
I hope this helped to clarify my stance, your valid to disagree but i hope you can see my perspective is just as.
Btw: love how your username checks out for me.
Language is collaborative. It’s true that the meaning of words can change over time, but if you just redefine words however you want, then the ability to communicate breaks down. The words “dog” and “cat” may have fluid meanings but if I just decide to start calling cats dogs and dogs cats, then it’s going to result in a lot of pointless confusion.
Let’s say I was going to completely accept your definition of fascism. That would mean that going forward, any time I wanted to determine if something was fascism or not, I would have to DM you specifically to find out. Because your definition is both nonstandard and does not follow any kind of consistent, coherent rules. It would be impossible for me to really agree with you about what is and isn’t fascism, because you haven’t given me any sort of coherent way to distinguish between what you think is fascist and what you don’t think is fascist.
Different people do define fascism in different ways, which does create confusion, but at least with most people they can give me a standard by which I can evaluate things. Even if that standard is wrong, like, “Fascism is whenever the government does anything,” it is at least possible to evaluate whether something counts as fascism by that definition, without having to ask the person every single time.
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As “conservatism” is essentially just liberalsm with extra paranoia and hysterics (ie - liberals overtly sidling up to fascism) one has to wonder where the “brain damage” starts…
Less liberalism and just unchecked capitalism. Once you start dictating the means someone else is allowed to live you start infringing on a number of tenants of classic liberalism like low levels of state interference, the upholding of civil liberties and the safeguards that exist to prevent a “tyranny of the majority”. The free market aspect of the balance of it’s design is basically a weak flank on the og ideology because over time people are gunna be sneaky self serving bastards.
Like don’t get me wrong private property rights are fucking up the world but liberalism’s stance on property protections are like only a part of the whole shebang. What conservatives are performing is Liberalism undermined and valuing the fleece to the point its basically just the hollowed out sheep skin wolves can squeeze to fit inside. It’s no more a classical liberal ideology at that point any more than the empty sheep skin is a sheep.
Conservatism always seeks to conserve structures of historic power bases. Arguably they will always find ways to exist even if the game changes from liberalism entirely. As long as there’s some kind of power structure left standing they will be snarling and snapping trying to keep it intact. Some people are greedy and empathetically deficient. They will gravitate to whatever place allows them to scratch that itch best if you don’t watch out for them every second.
Less liberalism and just unchecked capitalism.
It seems to me that the only time liberalism “checks” capitalism is to protect the capitalist class from the consequences of their own actions… almost as if liberalism was designed to do so.
Imagine if that was the case, huh?
the safeguards that exist to prevent a “tyranny of the majority”.
Soooo… liberalism is fundamentally anti-democratic? Glad I’m not the only one who sees that.
Conservatism always seeks to conserve structures of historic power bases.
And liberals don’t? How much money has liberals thrown at the police? You think the likes of Biden, Pelosi and the Clintons won’t swing hard-right and run for the protection fascism offers them the minute their wealth and privilege comes under threat?
Of course they will - liberals always have.
Okay hold up, I am not talking about the Democrats specifically who brand themselves as liberals. I am talking the political theory as put forward by Mill, Locke etc
The “Tyranny of the Majority” is an idea wherein if you left everything to a winner take all election system smaller niche groups come under threat by forces that can frame them out of needed resources or create laws which create undue pressure - the OG philosophers were thinking religious minorities and immigrants (of a very specific sort) because they were fairly white male focused but this principle can and does get applied to racial minorities, sexual and gender minorities for example.
On the other end of the scale when you look at the systems inside the systems like the Roberts Rules of order there are protections for bodies not present. If you cannot get enough people to show up to make quorum your government cannot make decisions for the majority body it governs.
Basically because a democratic system with elected officials will favor a majority rule what happens persay if say a religious majority decides to make a move that undercuts a different religion? (to use one of the og examples) This is why even OG liberalism featured things like a bill of rights and other constitutional checks on the power weilded by the electoral base and things like separation of church and state powers.
Remember though that these systems were built by idealists. So was things like Communism which has been historically internally weak to stopping people who like power entering the government body like viruses and redirecting state resources towards their own ends while paying performative lip service to the ideals.
Liberalism is very bad at checking capitalism on it’s own because it’s founders were hyper concerned about government overreach. But remember where they come from. Crown powers had a lot of power for direct seizure of privately held property at the time. It also was written by people who really weren’t accustomed to protecting the rights of people who fell outside their system or dealing with systematic imbalances of power. There have always been exceptions to who is covered under the protection of liberalism vs peoples who are sacrificed to make the system work.
But that doesn’t mean the entire system is functionally a write off. There is some good stuff in there just overwhelmed by the capitalist forward shit that has come to cause the imminent collapse of the system. There are merits in electoral reform, blended systems that lose it’s fear of government overreach to create more publicly held goods, services and wealth and creation of caps on the high end of wealth accrual to disincentivize the existence of a billionaire class.
I see a lot of people treating liberalism as a dirty word on this platform but I think there are aspects of it’s core philosophy which are reasonable but sorely in need of a modern (socialist) update to addresses the bugs in the system. But we can’t have that discussion at all if people treat the whole philosophy as a cardboard cut out to take pot shots at.
Okay hold up, I am not talking about the Democrats specifically who brand themselves as liberals.
You have one upvote - thanks to me. I don’t see any of the people self-applying the term “liberal” rushing to reclaim that ideology from the capitalists and their sycophants.
The “Tyranny of the Majority” is an idea wherein if you left everything to a winner take all election system
To that I’d say that a “winner take all election system” would be utterly impossible in a society that could be called democratic with a straight face - but I suppose it would stand in stark contrast to the current “winner already has it all election system” that is (disingenuously) labelled “democracy” in our current world order.
So was things like Communism which has been historically internally weak to stopping people who like power entering the government body like viruses and redirecting state resources towards their own ends while paying performative lip service to the ideals.
You are talking about a feature of the way power flows through economic, political and social hierarchies - not an inherent feature of communist ideology (of course, you could say the same about liberalism) It should also be noted that there are plenty of socialists and communists around who are trying to reclaim those concepts from the abuse and warping they have suffered under (so-called) “socialist” states - who, in my opinion, were “socialist” in the same way that “Social Darwinism” was Darwinist.
Liberalism is very bad at checking capitalism on it’s own because it’s founders were hyper concerned about government overreach.
It doesn’t seem to me that liberalism wants to check capitalism at all - merely protect capitalism from itself when it’s parasitism threatens instability.
There have always been exceptions to who is covered under the protection of liberalism vs peoples who are sacrificed to make the system work.
So you are saying that the whole “the law protects some without binding them while it binds others without protecting them” thing isn’t a feature of (so-called) “conservatism” but actually just bog-standard liberalism.
I agree.
aspects of it’s core philosophy which are reasonable but sorely in need of a modern (socialist) update to addresses the bugs in the system
I don’t see any kind of compatibility between socialism and liberalism. The prospects of having the working class control the means of production would have even Mill and Locke running to the fascists for protection… but since you seem to be posting in good faith I’m willing to discuss it.
Socialism and liberalism do actually have overlaps and not all bits of the ideologies are at odds. The “working class owning the means to production” is a catch all phrase but whenever we are talking Marx we have to be cognizant of what point in history he is writing from. Nationalized services were in their absolute infancy during his lifetime. National health care, water, sanitation and fire service for instance were all things that started existing after he stopped publishing in part because of other Socialist movements he disagreed with that was making stuff happen elsewhere. Those services shift the burden of cost away from labour effectively “owning the means of production” on a piecemeal basis. American socialist movements saw a lot of success in the 1930’s creating environmental protections, banking regulations and tax structures that created room for things like, National Public Broadcasting, Library system and so on. The slow disassembly of these systems and the demonizing of socialist movements using communism as a bogeyman without a public understanding that socialism is a wider band of political thought some of which had distinctly American roots went hand in hand with the cold war xenophobia. The dismantling of peaceful socialism is recent but propagandistic. It came about because of poisoning the well and making the discussion taboo driven by a unified Christian base turning against one of the main core tenants of classical liberalism. Freedom of political thought and divorcing religion from the state.
When a lot of people treat socialism as strictly a Marx led school of thought a lot of the discussion frames out the history of Socialist movements that aim not to cause a complete collapse of the system but to peacefully through beaurcratic and changes to system leaving bits that are working to create transparency, limitations on power and enhancement of labour power. These existed alongside Marx in his time period. The criticism of Owenites being hippies who retreated to the countryside to put their heads in the sand isn’t particularly fair. They were trial running different social models. Experimenting on smaller scales and the tail end of Owen’s era became about how to change the systems from the inside. We don’t hear much about them because a lot of their models quietly were adopted and many of those features of the landscape are taken for granted as normal today.
The benefits of classical liberalism are mainly in it’s concepts of minority protections. Communism as practiced by the countries who have at least claimed to be Communist does ultimately very poorly in the protection of minorities. A lot of the talk becomes of personal sacrifice to the state (or the stateless anarchist spirit) which tends to punish any level of apostasy. It means a freedom of expression is often relegated to the bin of sacrifice. Because Marx was notoriously racist, looked at women in terms of means to produce citizens and relegated them to the sort of trad wifery we see on the Christian right so it is a frequent blind spot in his writing which a lot of the scholarship tends to attempt to amend using some of the openings made for equality forward movements that were normalized by the equality and freedoms that were fought for under the framework of liberal ideology. If you believe in the concept of basic rights and freedom of press and expression as a body of law then you have adopted at least a little liberalism into your mix.
My personal issue with Communism is it is overly idealistic. It is very good at pointing out the issues with power inequity and the current models of ownership but it overlooks that human cupidity is always present. A fair number of people, to their detriment at times, desire heirachy. Once the playing feild is leveled power naturally agrigates towards those groups that create new hierarchies because lateral power structures are weak against vertical ones. To have Communism actually work you need everyone’s unreserved sign on with nobody secretly just playing along to further their own end.
You also have the global trade problem. A currency free state is great on paper but unless you get the rest of the world to play ball under the same system you effectively trap your citizens inside the borders of your defacto new state unable to move freely outside because of a lack of liquidity in translatable funds which makes the population who agreed to adopt that policy vulnerable to a potentially abusive regime.
Liberal democratic structures are very successful (mind you not good just efficient and difficult to topple) because of a balance of deferred responsibility, redundancy, structures of checks and balances and the ideals of personal freedoms and protections baked into their foundation. Getting even a corrupt one to fall into the conditions nessisary for communism to take hold is a job and a half. Getting all of them to fall at once is improbable meaning the first one to go faces an uphill struggle as other liberal democracies close ranks. Other forms of Socialism however just changes the rules to involve more forms of public commonwealth. It becomes more compatible. If one country decides to envoke 90% taxation for business owners with over say 50 million in savings and assets it doesn’t effect other countries. You still have the handshake capability for your citizens and international trade. It’s also something other countries can adopt more easily without fears of mass change and could be negotiated across multiple countries to come easily into effect. The idea is absolutely not classic liberal in nature because it clashes directly with the concept of free enterprise and markets and relocates money to fund other public services (ie means of production) … It’s technically a modern hybrid socialism strain - Social Democracy which is sometimes referred to as market socialism, Liberal-Socialism… or from people who gag on the word “socialism” and can’t stomach it but still believe in the principles - responsible capitalism.
A lot of the issues we face today are issues with outdated political infrastructure but also with the generational grooming of the masses towards toxic citizenship. The chronic anxiety created by a false perception of government frivolity of funds, a desire to preserve their place and personal wealth and the simplistic narrowing of understanding of the systems as they are that lock them firmly outside the mechanisms. Wanting to just ditch it all is alluring but ultimately dangerous as it is very easy to defer to a authoritarian regime.
Not to say the tenants of liberal socialism is a cakewalk either. All of the individual issues with the system are technically permeable on a case by case basis- the downside is that you have to get very passionate about individual beaurcratic systems… Which is quite an ask. America particularly is a sticky problem because it’s not just a liberal democracy it’s an old liberal democracy made by very paranoid founders. Your best hope might be essentially taking advantage of the Republican inter party fissures as the party devolves into less and less coherent states while putting more pressure on Democrats to save their own skins by bringing about electoral reform. Only once you fix the foundations of the uptake system can you start restabilizing the house. Democrats at least are avid followers of the internal rules. They might have a more reliable fear of pitchforks.
Sorry for the late reply… things have been rather busy here.
The “working class owning the means to production” is a catch all phrase
I wouldn’t say that. If society cannot control the means of production democratically, this…
The dismantling of peaceful socialism
…becomes a foregone conclusion. It’s not a catch-all phrase - merely the absolute minimum necessary to render the owner-class powerless to execute the very thing you describe in your first paragraph. If they are allowed the power to do so, they will do so - it matters not what legalese a state produces to pretend that it is, or has ever been, on the side of the working class.
The benefits of classical liberalism are mainly in it’s concepts of minority protections.
I find that hard to believe. Even inside the imperial core (where liberalism is essentially de facto state religions) minorites had to wage long and arduous campaigns for even the most meagre inclusion. And then we aren’t even talking about the billions of people on the imperial peripheries (or - as I like to call them - global extraction zones) which liberal elites has always treated, at best, as expendable externalities. In fact, liberalsm’s historical tolerance for the violent subjugation and exploitation of the “other” will fill several libraries - it’s acceptance of said “other” won’t even fill one book.
I do agree that there is one type of minority that liberalism has always sought to protect - the minority that already owns all the wealth and power.
My personal issue with Communism is it is overly idealistic.
Whenever accusations of “idealism” is hurled at the left, I can’t help but think of the way we treated environmentalists back in the 80s - they were painted with the “idealism” brush so hard that the media literally portrayed them as intellectually dysfunctional caricatures (I remember because I was there) Turns out they weren’t actually being all that idealistic, were they? A lot less idealistic than the people who taught us that everything would be okay as long as “red arrow goes up,” in any case.
It’s amazing how quickly yesterday’s (supposed) “too idealistic” can become tomorrow’s “only sane option left.”
It is very good at pointing out the issues with power inequity and the current models of ownership but it overlooks that human cupidity is always present.
Certainly… but I fail to see how liberalism fixes this. In fact, liberalism’s fetishization of law has proven perfectly useful to the needs of the wealthy and powerful - as Anatole France said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids all men to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread - the rich as well as the poor.”
A fair number of people, to their detriment at times, desire heirachy.
Certainly - the formation of hierarchies to concentrate power is something that will always have to be actively managed by any society that wishes to call itself egalitarian. But there is no rule that states that the formation and dismantling of such hierarchies cannot be done efficiently through democratic means. I’d say that the lengths liberalism will go to to prevent the democratic dismantling of hierarchies - including, but not limited to, handing power to the fascist element - is proof enough of liberalism’s fundamentally anti-democratic character.
you effectively trap your citizens inside the borders of your defacto new state unable to move freely outside because of a lack of liquidity
I’d say that the poverty liberalism cannot exist without traps plenty of people inside borders anyway. I don’t see no taxpayer-funded fascist goon squads on horseback waiting to whip Bill Gates when he crosses the southern US border, but that sure does seem to be the lot of those people liberalism treats as disposable externalities.
A currency free state is great on paper
The debate on currency and even markets is still an ongoing one on the left - it is far from settled. Besides… you’re not talking to a communist - you’re talking to a socialist.
Liberal democratic structures are very successful (mind you not good just efficient and difficult to topple) because of a balance of deferred responsibility,
There is a very big difference between “deferred responsibility” and deferred institutionalized power - the former implies consequences for the failure to meet those responsibilities (something absent from practiced liberalism essentially since the Enlightenment) while the latter absolutely does not.
redundancy,
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
structures of checks and balances and the ideals of personal freedoms and protections baked into their foundation.
These are all things that have proven easy to subvert - and that is even assuming that they were doing what they purported to be doing in the first place.
Getting even a corrupt one to fall into the conditions nessisary for communism to take hold is a job and a half.
Well… not really. The problem is that the liberal order essentially does this all by itself. The post-WW1 period is a text-book case. It’s not so much a question of “if” but more a question of “when.”
It’s technically a modern hybrid socialism strain - Social Democracy which is sometimes referred to as market socialism, Liberal-Socialism…
They are still perfectly incompatible… liberalism has been forced to appropriate socialist-sounding ideas - though nothing core to socialist thought itself - and shoe-horn them (no matter how poor the fit) into the status quo in order to prevent socialist ideas from spreading. At the end of the day, it is merely a concession designed to protect the liberal order.
Democrats at least are avid followers of the internal rules. They might have a more reliable fear of pitchforks.
Liberals have always been reliably afraid of the pitchforks. If that was all there was to it, liberalism wouldn’t have lasted very long.
It’s their very fear that makes fascism such a necessity to the liberal nation state.
As a personal request could you not chop up and reply to my posts peicemeal like this? I find it a little lazy and also just unpleasant to interface with. You seem pretty capable of putting together your own treatise and reply rather than just counterpunching and I really would appreciate the effort. It goes a long way to making these conversations enjoyable for me.
The fact that liberalism has incorperated socialist ideals into it, even in incomplete concessions to save itself I think is just a melding of the push and pull of the two systems interplaying. The two systems are not direct opposites, they are uneasy roomates. A lot of the way people interface with them looks at them as enemies but they are just philosophies. You can admire and engage with incomplete philosophies…but that’s not what’s happening. People are reacting to the name of the philosophy like it’s poison forgetting that it like everything is a work in progress. That in practice it is failing to live up to it’s on paper ideals doesn’t make it any different than any other pure philosophy. Every single system of governance that has ever existed has been corrupted at some point. Nothing gold can stay because ingratitude is generational. Anything we fight to make better unless it is maintained with utmost cultural zeal by those who come after us will collapse due to the siren song of personal individual gains. It doesn’t matter what replaces this, in any society those who have the moat participation get their say and a populace’s contentment is a weak flank. What we are experiencing now is basically just a reiteration of what has happened before again and again throughout time and political structure.
I believe in dismantling the structures of colonialism pushed by nominally liberal governments in favour of more forms of publicly held wealth and support…but at the same time I am wary of those who want to make inhuman demons of those beaurcratic institutions because they were founded by people who had blindspots. They all had blindspots. The founders of these philosophic schools were mostly a bunch of white guys in the 18th and 19th century. They lived in a completely different world than us and were fucked up by being a segregated society that inferred personhood much less readily then the average person of today on virtually all fronts. Progressivism isn’t liberal nor is it strictly socialist. The politics of identity and acceptance of the other is a compounding factor independent of those philosophies that those ideologies can choose to incorporate or just as easily become insular and regressive. Socialist groups used to scorn poc and queer people just as much as liberal in groups. There is no neutral governance. A state has power and no matter how soft they attempt to be to citizens someone will be bound by it. Where many people tap out is basically not wanting to be bound by something or wanting to have a personal say in agreeing with the allocation of funds or resources .
By breaking into teams you are rooting for and against and letting anger at the current state of affairs causes people to pull away to create unreasonable expectations of any government body. My main axe to grind is that a lot of these things people take issue with aren’t core to a specific tphilosophy… Like your example of criminalizing people sleeping under bridges. More often than not that’s some nimby bylaw that you need to fight against local citizen interests at a municipal level. That’s not some grand aspirations of a federal system, that’s people being fucking short sighted dicks and showing up to their local council meetings because they want to create their own personal mini utopias. It’s a personal ethics problem. You could place a Socialist government in charge but you are probably still going to be swimming in NIMBY pricks. We have documented fines from the medieval ages of people being NIMBY pricks to each other and a lot of those councils pre enclosure were largely self governing and long predate liberal ideology.
Treating people of a specific political label as though they have defective moral compasses simply for utilizing that term isn’t going to really help matters I don’t think. As much as people want to establish in and out groups it’s pretty unnessisary. You can basically just run individual interest groups. Like a “Pro decriminalizing human movement” group or a “Tax the everliving hell out of multi millionaires” group and have much healthier conversations than trying to construct “the left” “a Socialist” “a liberal”…because you get ridiculous infighting that serves no one. People are much more amenable to having across line discussions when it’s not structured as a team sport.
There’s also a psychological phenomenon of scapegoating at play on this platform by people who claim variable aspects of “the left” “Socialism” “Marxism” and “Communism” . By transferring all of one’s sins to the liberal goat and claiming that they are not existent in your own ideological constructed tribe is very comforting to believe but not always particularly true. You could participate in this ritual with a bunch of different groups using the same goat and some of them are just angry. They want absolution. To not be associated with the sins they’ve assigned the goat while not really having a good idea of what to reach for. I think it’s a trap that will only lead to incoherent screaming. The way we conduct business as a political community is inherently flawed because our structure of engagement is just… Egotism.
Soooo… liberalism is fundamentally anti-democratic? Glad I’m not the only one who sees that.
Those safeguards exist to protect democracy. If you’re not familiar with the term “tyranny of the majority”, here’s a handy wikipedia link to get the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority?wprov=sfla1Those safeguards exist to protect democracy.
Absolutely not. They exist to protect the power and privilege of the few. If you read through your own source, you will see that “tyranny of the majority” narratives has always been nothing but a thinly-veiled set of excuses to justify that which is thoroughly and irrevocably anti-democratic.
There is no if, ands, or buts here - the meaning of the term democracy is hard-edged and non-negotiable… which is what makes actual democracy so contemptible to liberals and their fascist and capitalist cronies. In fact, examples of liberals handing power to fascism to protect them from anything that can be called democratic with a straight-face is so well-attested in history that it’s pretty darn mundane at this point.
You don’t have to believe me - you can see for yourself how powerful elites are protecting you from the (so-called) “tyranny of the majority” by saving you from the evils of… easy and universal access to healthcare.
How heroic of them, eh?
