A curious trend I noticed on other social media hellsites:
Apparently it is now popular among the alt-right crowd to claim that if something doesn't adhere to Mussolini's original definition of #fascism, it's not real fascism.
(Which then seems to lead to claims that the Left are the real fascists somehow, because what else did I expect?)
@juergen_hubert part of the problem here is that even Mussolini's "original" fascism wasn't internally consistent or coherent. It was a slippery mishmash of excuses for power hoarding with public relations and street violence to help move it forward. It's just not very useful as a descriptive tool other than describing something as being both "bad" and "political."
Post-World War II, there have been several attempts on defining what fascist ideology consists of, e.g., separately by John McNeill, Robert Paxton and Jason Stanley:
@juergen_hubert
Also there is the left (as in pragmatic socialists) and the left as in Bolsheviks and Stalin. Chalk & Cheese. I'm sure the millions murdered by both Stalin and Hitler didn't argue if Mussolini had a good definition of fascists.
Now there is Putin, allegedly out to rid us of fascists, aka Nazis.
Does it matter what label bad people have? Mostly they are the ones labelling others.
@juergen_hubert
But the people hung Mussolini, yet Franco (enabled by Italy & Germany) survived WWII.
Hitler once supplied Mussolini's enemies (Ethiopia) because initially M didn't support the Anschluss. A fasicist's definition of fascists isn't useful.
@juergen_hubert Not to worry, I've also run into claims that if we/you haven't even read the International Law on Warfare, and the Geneva Convention, we don't know what really qualifies as war crimes, and really "more of a guideline" style, it's merely to try to avoid causing harm to civilians, y'know.
Plus as "Arabs attacked in 1948, they started the war, so... they're like the Nzis". /Trufax Twtr, perfectly normal people & all. Only the latest atrocities exist, from 1 perspective only etc.
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