Defining Fascism

34 bookmarks
Custom sorting
How to Make a Fascist
How to Make a Fascist
Chapters:00:00 - Introduction: How to Make a Fascist08:50 - Chapter One: Fertile Soil18:28 - Chapter Two: The Pure of the Earth47:08 - Chapter Three: The Sci...
#fascism
·youtube.com·
How to Make a Fascist
RAINDROP: Fascism
RAINDROP: Fascism
MY YOUTUBE TOPIC LIBRARY
·youtube.com·
RAINDROP: Fascism
Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” | Los Angeles Review of Books
Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” | Los Angeles Review of Books
Referenced in https://youtu.be/vusjRPQwUmc?si=J12Tnn4o3fBnjZ1B
The alt-right now regularly denounces or promotes science fiction films as part of its recruiting strategy: fascist Twitter popularized the “white genocide” hashtag during a boycott campaign against inclusive casting in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But Villeneuve’s film seemed to provoke greater outrage than normal because Herbert’s book is such a key text for the alt-right.
but geek fascists see the novel as a blueprint for the future.
As Norman Spinrad suggested, fans are willing to accept a narrative about strongmen exterminating alien hordes when it is presented in fantastic form.
Both Faye’s and Herbert’s worlds represent impossible attempts to square the circle of fusing the destructive dynamism of capitalist modernization with the stable order prized by traditionalism.
Beyond a shared affinity for space-age aristocrats, Faye and Herbert see the sovereign as one who is capable of disciplined foresight. Drawing on the Austrian School economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, many thinkers on the alt-right believe that only men from genetically superior populations are capable of delaying gratification and working toward long-term goals. The alt-right asserts that white men hold an exclusive claim over the future. According to these white nationalists, science fiction is in their blood.
Fascists are repulsed by actually existing modernity but enamored with its innovations. To resolve this dilemma, they claim that capitalism’s expansionary and self-revolutionizing tendencies are actually inborn properties of the white race. In what Moishe Postone would call the capital fetish, white nationalists insist that capital’s propensity to break through every limit and remake the world is merely the external manifestation of a Dionysian drive or Faustian sprit infusing Aryan blood. Conversely, fascists displace all of capitalism’s negative qualities onto racialized others — especially Jews — who are blamed for the anomie, atomization, and alienation of modern life.
As Joshua Pearson has shown, Paul acts like the ultimate neoliberal subject. He is a ruthless entrepreneur with the flexibility to exploit even the most speculative of opportunities. Creative destruction is part of his appeal. Some reactionaries are willing to accept the most punishing of regimes as long as they share the privilege of white skin with the CEO.
Once his antagonists are out of the way, Paul uses this ability to carry out a multi-millennia plan for civilizational renewal that requires him to sacrifice billions. As he worries about his grim destiny, Paul begins to look like the Nazi Einsatzgruppen who pitied themselves for being forced to endure the difficult task of committing mass killings to build the thousand-year Reich.
we cannot forget for a moment that their political program necessarily ends in genocide. When Spencer presided over the Unite the Right rally that ended in Heather Heyer’s murder, he allowed the polite mask to fall long enough to reveal that even the most erudite or fanciful aspects of his public persona are motivated by a will toward brutal violence and racial domination.
Although the game is clearly tongue in cheek — often falling in the same satirical tradition as 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd — many misanthropic young men missed the joke and used the setting instead to play out their macho fantasies of dominance and submission. Matthew Heimbach, who founded the Traditionalist Worker Party and built an alliance between Neo-Nazis and Klansmen, radicalized himself in part through his devotion to the Warhammer 40,000 game world. In 2016, alt-right partisans circulated memes with Trump’s face pasted onto the armored body of the God-Emperor of Mankind, casting themselves as fanatical shock troops willing to die in his service.
Any speculative text that contains Jews, Muslims, or people of color therefore becomes a threat to their entire political project. This is why recent developments in fields such as Afrofuturism and Black horror are so crucial. They provide a critical alternative to the alt-right’s exterminationist fantasy of an all-white future. Just as importantly, they offer readers other ways of thinking about time that do not fall in line with the fascist dream of a history that unfolds step-by-step along the lines of the Aryan dictator’s master plan.
Paul’s army of desert guerillas, the Fremen, clearly owe something to Arabic and Islamic cultures, and Paul’s own genealogy defies the fascist demand for racial purity. The alt-right has tried to wrestle Islamophobic and Antisemitic messages from the book but they are stymied by its refusal to map existing ethnic categories onto the characters.
Herbert himself saw the series as a critique of authoritarianism demonstrating for his readers that “superheroes are disastrous for humankind.” Dune’s aristocrats replaced artificial intelligences with people deformed to act like soulless machines. As Paul becomes the guidance mechanism for a vast social system, he loses touch with humanity. Seeing the terror he has wrought, he plots to end his own despotic command over humankind’s fate. The God-Emperor in Warhammer 40,000 does not get this far: he is locked in suspended animation while the empire he built decays around him. These are obviously not ideals worth emulating.
#fascism#musk#book lists & reviews
·lareviewofbooks.org·
Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” | Los Angeles Review of Books
What Does Fascism Look Like? A Brief Introduction
What Does Fascism Look Like? A Brief Introduction
It would be good to be able to recognize fascism when you see it. Sight is our dominant sense (light travels faster than sound) and provides us warning. In addition, because “fascist” is an epithet as well as political term, it must be used carefully. In 1942, a New Hampshire Jehovah’s Witness named Chaplinsky was arrested after calling a Rochester city marshal a “damned fascist.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the arrest on the grounds that the expression constituted “fighting words,” excluded from constitutional protection. Recent court decisions in the U.S. have widened speech freedoms, but the word “fascist” remains highly charged, underlining the need for historical and political discretion.
A more clear-cut diagnostic of fascism is the MAGA hat. Trump often wears one when he gives speeches, and regularly repeats the phrase “make America great again.” Here’s a few lines from a speech he gave in 2023, that has since become standard at rallies: “Illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions, from all over the world. Without borders and fair elections, you don’t have a country. Make America great again.” MAGA is today emblazoned on millions of caps, T-shirts, yard-signs, flags and more, It’s an expression of palingenetic ultranationalism — almost. By proposing the revival of an earlier time, it’s more conservative than revolutionary; and the “greatness” it promises is not imperialist. There is no discussion of “lebensraum”. Indeed, Trump’s other major slogan, “America First” is isolationist, dating back to Charles Lindberg’s America First movement, which aimed to head off U.S. participation in World War II. But given Trump’s rhetoric about Iran and China, as well as his proposals to increase military spending and massively update and expand the nation’s nuclear arsenal, I’d argue that his policies are in fact expansionist – in that sense, fully consonant with fascist militarism and imperialism. Trump’s rallies suggest he has a war strategy. They are intended to mobilize thousands of followers who will, if needed, storm U.S. voting stations, state capitals and the capital in Washington to overturn an unwelcome election outcome.
Fascism doesn’t have a light switch with an on/off setting. It may be found in capitalist democracy, just as democracy may be discovered in the recesses of fascist states. Maybe it’s better to say fascism is controlled by a dimmer switch. Under Donald Trump, turned up quite high. Under Biden it has been dialed down, but still glows in the background and sometimes flares up, like in the current U.S. president’s growing anti-immigrant rhetoric, or his consistent support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and now Lebanon. That’s fascism by proxy.
When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’…The high-sounding phrase ‘the American way’ will be used by interested groups, intent on profit, to cover a multitude of sins against the American and Christian tradition, such sins as lawless violence, tear gas and shotguns, denial of civil liberties.” Huey Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928-32, himself often called a fascist, said: “American Fascism would never emerge as Fascist, but as a 100 percent American movement; it would not duplicate the German method of coming to power but would only have to get the right President and Cabinet.”  Fascism, as I said at the beginning of this brief survey, is easy to see in retrospect, but not in prospect. However, when it appears right in front of you, identification becomes simple – signs and symbols appear everywhere. As we approach the U.S. election, we can clearly witness one political party’s tight embrace of fascism – but seeing it doesn’t mean we can easily stop it.
·counterpunch.org·
What Does Fascism Look Like? A Brief Introduction
The New F-Word | Episode 1
The New F-Word | Episode 1
The New F-Word | Episode 1 – Second ThoughtSUBSCRIBE HERE: http://bit.ly/2nFsvTSCheck out the rest of the series (and a bunch of other amazing content!) by s...
·youtu.be·
The New F-Word | Episode 1
What If It Is Fascism?
What If It Is Fascism?
Discussions of whether Trumpism is fascist often lose sight of the political stakes of the issue. But like Italian and German fascism, MAGA reflects a political system failing to address capitalist crisis.
But to deny that Trumpism is a contemporary form of fascism one must put forward at least one of those plausible definitions and provide evidence of how MAGA fails to fit. This Bessner does not do.
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood, 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.
I think it’s short a few key elements: class dynamics in place of the weaker sociological notion of “elites”; the role of the charismatic, all-knowing leader; and the destruction, once in power, of the helping parts of the state apparatus while bulking up the repressive apparatus.
For instance, in Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s there was a polarized, blocked democracy in which neither the traditional center-left nor center-right coalition forces were able to vanquish the other. This led to an inability to decisively address the most important challenges afflicting the society through the usual political mechanisms.
Key to fascism is the blockage, not the particular time- and place-bound issues. Fascism represents a breakthrough solution (in the wrong direction, toward the most reactionary sectors of capital) to resolve fundamental issues around capitalist development. In Italy, fascism was a solution to the modernization of the rural economy; in Germany, a response to the crushing burden of war debt; and here in the United States, the antiquated political structures bequeathed by the founders’ concessions to the slavocracy, and the death grip of fossil fuel capital over our planet’s future.
for advocates of the American fascism thesis, these developments all prove that there’s an unbroken line of fascism stretching back to the nation’s founding.” I don’t know to whom he is ascribing this overreaching position; he doesn’t identify anyone. Scholars who argue for fascist precedents in American history, like the rise of the first KKK during Reconstruction, are pretty careful to avoid sweeping statements of this nature.
Trump and especially his movement — because that’s one of the key ingredients of the phenomenon — qualify. What convinced Paxton to publicly change his mind? The January 2021 insurrection sealed the deal for him; he no longer thought that academic quibbling about labels or reservations based on popular usage outweighed the danger of the reality.
While dismissing “extreme far-right ideology” as too baggy a definition, nowhere does Bessner offer a replacement of his own or someone else’s that he agrees with. Instead, he seemingly views fascism mostly as a misguided analogy for three reasons: its analogs are Italy and Germany; it is a foreign ideology only; and because Trumpism is American born and bred, therefore it can’t be fascism. These arguments are tautological and unconvincing. "Fascism represents a breakthrough solution to resolve fundamental issues around capitalist development."
Because the “structures, processes, discourses and patterns” show us the pathways history can take — not so we can peer into our crystal balls and foretell the precise duplication of past events in the present, but so that we can master the critical capacity to see what the man behind the curtain is attempting to put over on us and stop it from happening.
Throughout the article Bessner sets up one straw man after another and knocks them down. He tells us, “The powers that Trump is deploying, and the laws and theories that he is building his attempt to reshape the US state and society upon, are not fascist. They are American…” This assumption, that “fascism” and “American” are nonoverlapping categories, is one Bessner, at no point, proves or even argues for. To the contrary, my argument is that they combine: American fascism.
#fascism#trump#history & archaeology#critiques
·jacobin.com·
What If It Is Fascism?
'The dictionary definition of fascism': Conservative columnist condemns Donald Trump's MAGA 'cult' - Raw Story
'The dictionary definition of fascism': Conservative columnist condemns Donald Trump's MAGA 'cult' - Raw Story
MAGA Republicans have been attacking Robert Reich as a “coastal elitist” in response to an August 23 tweet in which the liberal economist, UC Berkeley professor and former secretary of labor in the Clinton Administration described far-right Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a “fascist.” Reich’s MAGA crit...
·rawstory.com·
'The dictionary definition of fascism': Conservative columnist condemns Donald Trump's MAGA 'cult' - Raw Story
14 quotes about fascism that everyone should read
14 quotes about fascism that everyone should read
The neo-nationalism of Brexit and the election of the nativist Donald Trump have rejuvenated far-right politics in a way that's not been seen since the 1930s.To help shed more light on this hateful, hate-mongering political philosophy, here are 14 quotes from academics, thinkers, authors and politicians who lived or studied the horrors of a fascist state.
·inktank.fi·
14 quotes about fascism that everyone should read
What is FASCISM?
What is FASCISM?
https://www.patreon.com/HorsesPT https://www.instagram.com/horses.ig/ SOURCES: The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton Fascism, by Stanley G. Payne Fascism, by Roger Griffin A History of Fascism, 1914–1945, by Stanley G. Payne The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, by Gustave Le Bon Music: Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen - Before Daybreak Magnus Ludvigsson - Valse Triste Niçoise Gavin Luke - Late Night Sketches Gavin Luke - Chance Encounter Magnus Ludvigsson - Circus Leaving Town Franz Gordon - Theme for Autumn Franz Gordon - Raincoat Waltz Rikard From - Hidden Beneath
#conservatism
·youtube.com·
What is FASCISM?
The 10 tactics of fascism | Jason Stanley | Big Think
The 10 tactics of fascism | Jason Stanley | Big Think
The 10 tactics of fascism, with Jason Stanley Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ►► https://www.youtube.com/c/bigthink Up next ►►"Never Again?" How fascism hijacks democracies over and over https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye4jKSNHhms Fascism is a cult of the leader, who promises national restoration in the face of supposed humiliation by immigrants, leftists, liberals, minorities, homosexuals, women, in the face of what the fascist leader says is a takeover of the country's media, cultural institutions, schools by these forces. Fascist movements typically, though not invariably, rest on an urban/rural divide. The cities are where there's decadence, where the elites congregate, where there's immigrants, and where there's criminality. Each of these individuals alone is not in and of itself fascist, but you have to worry when they're all grouped together, seeing the other as less than. Those moments are the times when societies need to worry about fascism. Read the video transcript: https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-fascism/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Jason Stanley: Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Before coming to Yale in 2013, he was Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. Stanley is the author of Know How; Languages in Context; Knowledge and Practical Interests, which won the American Philosophical Association book prize; and How Propaganda Works, which won the PROSE Award for Philosophy from the Association of American Publishers. He writes about authoritarianism, propaganda, free speech, mass incarceration, and other topics for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, The Guardian, Project Syndicate and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other publications. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read more of our stories on fascism: “Never Again?” How fascism hijacks democracies over and over ►► https://bigthink.com/videos/rob-riemen-never-again-how-fascism-hijacks-democracies-over-and-over Fascism and conspiracy theories: The symptoms of broken communication ►► https://bigthink.com/the-present/fascism-and-conspiracy-theories-the-symptoms-of-broken-communication What Fascism Really Is — And What It Isn’t ►► https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/for-your-next-political-argument-what-fascism-really-is ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Big Think | Smarter Faster™ ► Big Think The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century. ► Big Think+ Make your business smarter, faster: https://bigthink.com/plus/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Want more Big Think? ► Daily editorial features: https://bigthink.com/popular/ ► Get the best of Big Think right to your inbox: https://bigthink.com/st/newsletter ► Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook ► Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instagram ► Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter
·youtube.com·
The 10 tactics of fascism | Jason Stanley | Big Think
Fascism’s 'Legal Phase' Has Begun - PopularResistance.Org
Fascism’s 'Legal Phase' Has Begun - PopularResistance.Org
When Republicans blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act on January 19, 2022, they removed the last safety net preventing the U.S.’s plummet toward authoritarianism. As a result, we are at this moment in a state of free-fall, the culmination of a state-level Legislative And Enforcement Landscape that directly mirrors Jim Crow — or as fascism scholar Jason Stanley recently put it, “America is now in fascism’s legal phase.” Although we do have ways of fighting back, the situation is dire. We often hear that the U.S.’s founding documents, courts and institutions make it immune to despotism, but this claim is simply false and erases our country’s troubling history with white supremacy — one the GOP is poised to reinvigorate.
·popularresistance.org·
Fascism’s 'Legal Phase' Has Begun - PopularResistance.Org
Endnote 2: White Fascism
Endnote 2: White Fascism
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
·youtube.com·
Endnote 2: White Fascism
Fascism: Who is and isn't a fascist, and how you can tell the difference
Fascism: Who is and isn't a fascist, and how you can tell the difference
If you're going to call someone a fascist, it helps to know a little about fascism. For example, all who seek to take over the state or curtail their adversaries' freedom of speech may not rightly be called "fascists", writes Matthew Sharpe.
·abc.net.au·
Fascism: Who is and isn't a fascist, and how you can tell the difference