The unintended side effect, for fascism, is that its purposeful destruction carries with it a heavy load of self-destruction.
While fascist policies hurt our economy, it kills the finances of its supporters even more. While fascist policies work to keep us uninformed, it works to kill the intelligence of its supporters even more. And in the case of COVID denial causing so many deaths, fascism works to quite literally kill its own.
So while we work to oppose fascism, take note that when fascism experiences successes, it leaves in its wake the seeds of its own downfall pulling it back. The lessons of the history of fascism, such as Nazi Germany, and its trajectory in other countries, such as contemporary Russia, shows this pattern too.
Fascism is death and destruction whose self-inflicted damage is always its own undoing.
The trick is to make sure it doesn't burn our country down with it while it burns itself out.
@accretionist , but the worst thing is that it is not these themselves who suffer the consequences, but the people. As in the current neo.liberal capitalist system. Those who promote it never suffer in an economic crisis, on the contrary, they enrich themselves even more, the crisis is only suffered by the people, the crisis is even used as an excuse to cut even more rights, salaries and services, to inject millions into banks and multinationals. Fascism goes hand in hand with these.
@accretionist ,
they have all the media at their service and, apart from the haters who vote for them because the haters do worse, there is a large ignorant majority who believes everything that this nice man tells them on TV. More if he is helped by religion, very useful to keep people submissive and obedient. Luckily in Spain we have a left-wing government, which is already doing a lot, despite the continuous boycotts and smears from the most rancid right-wing that we have in opposition.
@accretionist@jhavok, ok, Spain is not so badly situated compared to the rest of the EU, although fascism and ultra-Catholicism is very present in the population, as in the vast majority of the media, as we have seen in the last elections, the 50/50 danger is still very present
@Catweazle@accretionist For what it's worth, I will just point out that one big difference between the USA and many other countries is our constitution, particularly the fact that it is so old and by design very difficult to modify. And then we have one political party in particular that believe the constitution should only be interpreted as the "founding fathers" (all white guys, mostly rich, many slaveowners) would have intended - but only when such interpretations disadvantage the people they don't like. For example, I don't think any of the "founding fathers", believers in limited government that they were, would have approved of the horrible, terrible, despicible "Citizens United" decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
If the U.S. were like some other countries (possibly those with newer constitutions) it would be easier for the legislature to amend the constitution to give a big upraised middle finger to this corrupt court, and nullify such an obviously bad decision. But in the U.S.A., we have a constitution written back in a time when huge corporations didn't exist, and nobody foresaw a time when one political party would serve only themselves and the interests of their wealthy benefactors.
I mean, to give but one example, the constitution supposedly guarantees freedom of the press. Now, if there were true press freedom, you would not see small news outlets (and larger ones as well) gobbled up by big corporations and turned into fascist propaganda vehicles. But because "freedom of press" is interpreted by the corrupt Supreme Court, along with the rest of the constitution, a large and growing segment of our news media has become tightly-controlled propaganda. I mean, even if all we could do is make it a criminal act to knowingly lie and deceive people, and enforce that against the propaganda outlets that tell the same lies to their audience day after day, that would give us more protection than we have now, but because some old guys that were still used to newspapers printed using wooden type didn't better define freedom of speech and freedom of the press to exclude deliberate lying, there isn't much we can do.
(And yes, I realize there would be endless fights over whether or not something is a deliberate lie or just a misunderstanding, but at least the media would understand that they can't just make shit up about their opponents out of thin air).
Now one could take the view that if the fascists burn down our country, one possible side effect would be that the survivors would throw out the parts of the constitution that just don't work anymore. But that would assume a couple of things, first that the survivors aren't the fascists, and second, that at the point when we are at our weakest one of the other authoritarians doesn't swoop in and take over. I just read that Putin wants to take back Alaska and while he wouldn't dare attempt that today, if we were in the midst of a civil war there would be nothing stopping him, and once he had Alaska who says he'd stop there? I'm sure Russia, China, and possibly North Korea, Cuba, or even some other countries in this hemisphere would want a bite of the United States if they could get it.
You only need to look at Russia to see that a constitution is no guarantee of a good government, or that it will stop an authoritarian tyrant. I fear that if the fascist Republicans take power, we will either wind up very much LIKE Russia or even as a PART of Russia. You may scoff and say that would never happen, but look at all the other things we never thought we'd see in the United States that have happened recently.
@accretionist
Can you please define what you mean when you use the word fascism.
Because this rant makes no sense when using the original concept of fascism so it'd be helpful if you made up a new word or gave your new definition of the word.
This is not fascism by definition, but knowing what you think a word means helps understand the gibberish you wrote a little better.
So by this definition both democrats and Republicans are fascists, all sports teams are fascist, especially the patriots under bellicheck.
China, Russia, the eu, nato all fit this definition too.
To be honest, your definition is super vague and has no context to a political position as much as a desire to win.
Fascism is a system of government in which the population is divided into non-government corporations and controlled via these corporations.
The term fasci means bundle of sticks, so each corporate entity was one stick of the bundle.
This could be seen both in the modern context of corporations or in context of 'the black vote', ' the evangelical vote'. In mussolini's Italy the corporations were the industries of each region, think about like wine.
@accretionist
I was just trying to help you not look like a midwit.
Well, according to you republican will stop at nothing for power, except trump didn't actually go after his political rivals while democrats are currently do this on many levels.
However, this conversation wasn't about that, it was about what words mean. Therefore nothing I said was a red herring because all of my statements were about the specific meanings of political systems.
@accretionist
I'm sorry that using words based on their actual meanings is offensive to you.
I didn't make the both sides are the same arguement. I said based on your definition of power at all costs, many things, including both American political parties fit this definition.
@accretionist
If my bs is weak, why have you made NO attempts to actually refute any of my statements?
You've stalked my instance & redirected, but have not actually engaged.
I know it's tough, the whole accepting reality thing, but at some point you will face it.
I'm not one of these n-word trolls. I actually care.
I want to talk all of you off the ledge as I know it's gunna be bad for me too when you midwits start falling. And I believe you folks want to be good people.
I am the way I am because this epidemic of projection and midwittery is going to destroy the comfy lives we live, the fact you want to to ban an instance because you can't define a word you are using to negatively label half the world. In knowing history, and the definition of words, this scares the fuck out of me
@accretionist
Why an instance where I ignore people who yell stupid words into the void nonsensically while I'd argue with you about your hate.
Because free speech.
Because they aren't expressing any ideas to argue and are simply yelling at the void for a reaction, actual trolls.
If they do express ideas, I'll engage.
Because deep down my 'trolling' is seen as way worse then their trolling by people like you.
Another note is that america is a consituational republic.
A democracy is mob rule and has a very low success rate.
Socialism is possibly the only system of government with a worse success rate than actual democracy.
@Sirpantangelini@accretionist I have children in sports right now and what I’m growing to hate about it is just the mentality you are purporting. I’m trying to teach my children that playing sports is about improving oneself and learning how to teambuild. I always tell them I’m proud of them no matter if they win or lose because that should not be the primary goal.
@accretionist I don't see him, I blocked him. I don't even have the patience for crap like that any more. Think I'll be avoiding that whole server from the sound of it. Thank you for the heads up.
@MaryAustinBooks@accretionist I have these moments of pure delight, halfway through a thread, where I suddenly realize that everyone has started arguing with some guy I can't see, because I already blocked him.
It confirms my good choice, and everybody else gets a "gold star" for scoring points off the villain.
So, I came across this discussion by chance, and since i believe unprovoked and intentional aggression in posts is the work of paid agitators, I'm blocking pantangelini, and possibly noauthority.social, and of course, I am now following @accretionist
@accretionist
The US Constitution was engineered on the basis of no political parties. So many of the "good things" are no longer working.
In case you have not discovered this, the TDG is not only about a change of electoral structure, it is about a new way of collective decision making. If we don't learn that new way, the new structure won't matter that much.
Israel has the advanced PR system. It is a good example of PR no longer working.
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