The problem with believing in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, as you appear to do, is that you make bad decisions based on them, as Trump did during the Covid pandemic, and more tragically as his followers, who paid for their false beliefs about covid and vaccines with their lives.
Tom Palmer: " First off, I'd like to retire the term fascism as a term of contemporary discourse that's just become so degraded. I think right-wing collectivism is more helpful." It's true that extremists on the left used to call everyone on the right, even moderates, fascists, but most people on the left don't do this. A year ago it was considered iffy to call Trump a Fascist, but today Trump's echoing of Nazi propaganda has confirmed the truth of this accusation. Put simply, a Fascist is someone who glorifies violence, rejects democratic institutions and the rule of law, and delights in spreading lies and conspiracy theories about their favorite low-status groups: Jews, Mexicans, refugees, muslims, or whatever. Just because a few extremists have over-used the term doesn't mean it isn't a valuable label. The parallels between Trump and Hitler are ominous, including Trump's support of QAnon conspiracy theories, his massive output of lies, his refusal to concede defeat in a legitimately held democratic election, his incitement of an insurrection, his total rejection of the rule of law, and his plan to build huge "camps" to "concentrate" all the illegal immigrants.
Yes, let's ignore all the corruption and lies of the Democrats, that they violated the 1st amendment when they violated Free Speech laws to win the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop news story through a co-opted media, locked down the free world for almost 2 years for an exaggerated pandemic, lied about the origins of the pandemic, ignore the corruption of Biden's family (let's add the Clintons as well). Let's point fingers at the right and wonder why they're getting so aggressive at opposing the left.
It's amazing how worked up you can get based on your own MAGA lies. More Republicans died from Covid than Democrats because of those lies, especially in Red states. The origin of covid is still an open question, but most evidence points to cross species infection from a live animal market in Wuhan.
As a lifelong Liberal who argued against gun possession and more government, I have switched sides after taking off the rose colored glasses and seeing through the lies. This is not the Liberal party of decades ago. This is a co-opted war machine fueled only by corporate greed.
The lockdowns have destroyed the economy (possibly permanently - the US is a state in decline that may never recover), destroyed society with unprecedented mental illness and suicide / overdoses, the origin of Covid is now almost settled fully that it came from Wuhan through Fauci and Peter Daszak's research, and the Biden administration is indeed in court for violating the 1st amendment and censoring free speech to protect the lies.
The leader of the "free world" is quite literally guilty of suppressing free speech and violating the constitution of the US. READ THAT AGAIN AND LET IT SINK IT.
You can regurgitate the false narrative all you want, but the coverups are real and becoming more real every single day.
Keep those pom poms good. I refuse to be on the wrong side of history.
I'm sorry, but I feel the need to write more on this. The key to understanding fascists is their embrace of violence. Normal politics is working things out in the absence of violence: compromising between groups within society, dealing with disputes using impartial procedures, the celebration and encouragement of democratic discourse with all its diversity and uncertainty. Vladimir Putin is today's paradigm of a Fascist. We can go through the list, everything on it he does in spades: glorification of violence. strong identification of political leader with the state "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!" Targeting and persecution of low status minorities - In Putin's case it is ethnic minorities like the Kyrghiz, the Buryats, Turks, Chechens, etc. where young men are rounded up and sent to the front where they soon perish. Flooding the media with lies and conspiracy theories and maintaining a steady level of hatred, focused against the West, i.e., democracies, and against various other fictional enemies. Trump openly admits he admires Putin. He doesn't say it, but it's obvious he also admires Hitler. The key to Fascism is in the embrace of violence - that is the flip side of rejecting democracy. So, to get back to Tom Palmer's point about the meaninglessness of the word "fascism" In this case, we can take the word back because it really does explain a difference in contemporary social reality the difference between people who advocate for violence and the people who advocate for democracy. In contrast, the word "collectivism" does not at all bring this difference out. The Canadian province of Quebec has a government with a collectivist philosophy, to the point of deliberately favoring Francophone schools, businesses, etc. and penalizing and restricting Anglophone institutions. They never advocate violence. They are decidedly not fascist. To some extent every nation has collectivist tendencies, if not to mythologize a founding people, then to give ethnic minorities a special collective status: eg. aboriginals.
Mostly they're concerned about the wokesheveks destroying everything during the ongoing campaign to create a utopian society. Yes, the right are living in the past no doubt, but they're not wrong about everything. FWIW/IMHO human identity politics as a whole are obsolete, the planet is dying from human identity politics and all sides are living in the past and living in denial about industrial civilization and pollution. Stop identifying as human and start saving the planet.🌲💀🌲
What’s “ugly” about Classical liberal rhetoric?
The problem with believing in unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, as you appear to do, is that you make bad decisions based on them, as Trump did during the Covid pandemic, and more tragically as his followers, who paid for their false beliefs about covid and vaccines with their lives.
Tom Palmer: " First off, I'd like to retire the term fascism as a term of contemporary discourse that's just become so degraded. I think right-wing collectivism is more helpful." It's true that extremists on the left used to call everyone on the right, even moderates, fascists, but most people on the left don't do this. A year ago it was considered iffy to call Trump a Fascist, but today Trump's echoing of Nazi propaganda has confirmed the truth of this accusation. Put simply, a Fascist is someone who glorifies violence, rejects democratic institutions and the rule of law, and delights in spreading lies and conspiracy theories about their favorite low-status groups: Jews, Mexicans, refugees, muslims, or whatever. Just because a few extremists have over-used the term doesn't mean it isn't a valuable label. The parallels between Trump and Hitler are ominous, including Trump's support of QAnon conspiracy theories, his massive output of lies, his refusal to concede defeat in a legitimately held democratic election, his incitement of an insurrection, his total rejection of the rule of law, and his plan to build huge "camps" to "concentrate" all the illegal immigrants.
Yes, let's ignore all the corruption and lies of the Democrats, that they violated the 1st amendment when they violated Free Speech laws to win the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden Laptop news story through a co-opted media, locked down the free world for almost 2 years for an exaggerated pandemic, lied about the origins of the pandemic, ignore the corruption of Biden's family (let's add the Clintons as well). Let's point fingers at the right and wonder why they're getting so aggressive at opposing the left.
It's amazing how worked up you can get based on your own MAGA lies. More Republicans died from Covid than Democrats because of those lies, especially in Red states. The origin of covid is still an open question, but most evidence points to cross species infection from a live animal market in Wuhan.
As a lifelong Liberal who argued against gun possession and more government, I have switched sides after taking off the rose colored glasses and seeing through the lies. This is not the Liberal party of decades ago. This is a co-opted war machine fueled only by corporate greed.
The lockdowns have destroyed the economy (possibly permanently - the US is a state in decline that may never recover), destroyed society with unprecedented mental illness and suicide / overdoses, the origin of Covid is now almost settled fully that it came from Wuhan through Fauci and Peter Daszak's research, and the Biden administration is indeed in court for violating the 1st amendment and censoring free speech to protect the lies.
The leader of the "free world" is quite literally guilty of suppressing free speech and violating the constitution of the US. READ THAT AGAIN AND LET IT SINK IT.
You can regurgitate the false narrative all you want, but the coverups are real and becoming more real every single day.
Keep those pom poms good. I refuse to be on the wrong side of history.
You make good points!
Thanks! I've been doing a lot of reading on fascism and populism this year, but my main subject is moral philosophy.
I'm sorry, but I feel the need to write more on this. The key to understanding fascists is their embrace of violence. Normal politics is working things out in the absence of violence: compromising between groups within society, dealing with disputes using impartial procedures, the celebration and encouragement of democratic discourse with all its diversity and uncertainty. Vladimir Putin is today's paradigm of a Fascist. We can go through the list, everything on it he does in spades: glorification of violence. strong identification of political leader with the state "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer!" Targeting and persecution of low status minorities - In Putin's case it is ethnic minorities like the Kyrghiz, the Buryats, Turks, Chechens, etc. where young men are rounded up and sent to the front where they soon perish. Flooding the media with lies and conspiracy theories and maintaining a steady level of hatred, focused against the West, i.e., democracies, and against various other fictional enemies. Trump openly admits he admires Putin. He doesn't say it, but it's obvious he also admires Hitler. The key to Fascism is in the embrace of violence - that is the flip side of rejecting democracy. So, to get back to Tom Palmer's point about the meaninglessness of the word "fascism" In this case, we can take the word back because it really does explain a difference in contemporary social reality the difference between people who advocate for violence and the people who advocate for democracy. In contrast, the word "collectivism" does not at all bring this difference out. The Canadian province of Quebec has a government with a collectivist philosophy, to the point of deliberately favoring Francophone schools, businesses, etc. and penalizing and restricting Anglophone institutions. They never advocate violence. They are decidedly not fascist. To some extent every nation has collectivist tendencies, if not to mythologize a founding people, then to give ethnic minorities a special collective status: eg. aboriginals.
Mostly they're concerned about the wokesheveks destroying everything during the ongoing campaign to create a utopian society. Yes, the right are living in the past no doubt, but they're not wrong about everything. FWIW/IMHO human identity politics as a whole are obsolete, the planet is dying from human identity politics and all sides are living in the past and living in denial about industrial civilization and pollution. Stop identifying as human and start saving the planet.🌲💀🌲