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Post by stevedtrm on Apr 27, 2016 14:59:05 GMT
Masculinity and honor arent core elements of fascism. Theyre window dressing.
Meritocracy is nationalism. In that the nation needs merit to advance. It isn't distinct.
But for me, authoritarianism is, even more than nationalism, the essence of fascism. Since that is the extreme opposite to social democracy and fascism is essentially extreme "rightism".
A nation is simply a group of people, Fascists are those who'd die to serve their leader no matter what they think. Meritocrats are nationalists and nationalists are those who consider what is best for the group of people they consider are the "nation" irrespective of what the leader orders. And serves the national interest. A true fascist, on the other hand, is an authoritarian. And even dishonour is fine for a true authoritarian as long as the leaer orders it.
Opened a thread to disambiguate "honor".
I suggest, therefore that we eliminate the word fascist from our terminology.
And replace it with "authoritarian", or if you mean nationalist meritocrat, then "nationalist".
Note that fascism IS compatible with nationalism where the individual is convinced the leader will always know best for the nation to the degree that he would even do what the leader says if he thought it wrong, beleiving the authority and possibly even the merit of the leader means he should "have faith" and follow the orders anyway.
Steven.
A true fascist is an authoritarian. And even dishonour is fine for a true authoritarian.
I suggest, therefore that we eliminate the word fascist from our terminology.
And replace it with "authoritarian", or if you mean nationalist meritocrat, then nationalist meritocrat.
Note that fascism IS compatible with nationalism where the individual is convinced the leader will always know best for the nation, even more than the individual in question will ever know.
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 15:08:35 GMT
fas·cism (făsh′ĭz′əm)
n.
1. often Fascism
a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.
Seems like what we're living in?
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 15:14:24 GMT
Further definition:
fascism (ˈfæʃɪzəm)
1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any ideology or movement inspired by Italian Fascism, such as German National Socialism; any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism 2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any ideology, movement, programme, tendency, etc, that may be characterized as right-wing, chauvinist, authoritarian, etc
************
How do you make the difference between the above and a system like the one we're having, where we have "democracy" on paper but it means nothing?
Yeah I don't know what Tim meant by honor. Or anyone does. Masculinity is short for military I guess. Which every empire will be obviously.
So can we all agree we live in a pernicious dictatorship of the right and it needs reversing?
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Post by stevedtrm on Apr 27, 2016 15:26:40 GMT
Mascculinity can't be short for military, because females serve a military purpose as successful and focussed mothers raising the men who will fight.
Women are therefore a de facto part of the miltary.
Only Tim can say what he meant or means by honor. Hopefully he'll do it on the honor diambiguation thread.
This is only a dismabiguation thread for fascism. Agreeing that we live in a pernicious dictatorship would be off-topic in this thread.
Steven.
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Post by stevedtrm on Apr 27, 2016 15:34:49 GMT
1. a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.
See how much better 2. is because it captures all of 1,a in far fewer words?
When you are looking to disambiguate, you are looking for maximum meanings in minimum words.
So if i didnt think authoritarianism was the essence of fascism, i might argue that definition 2 is best.
If fascism is simply oppression, then that just reduces the philosophy to nothing, since every every person wishes to be powerful in a way that gets them what they want as long as they dont feel guilt and shame for doing so.
I'm beginning to wonder how we decide which of these definitions we go with and how we enforce them.
Steven.
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 15:44:33 GMT
Mascculinity can't be short for military, because females serve a military purpose as successful and focussed mothers raising the men who will fight. Women are therefore a de facto part of the miltary. Only Tim can say what he meant or means by honor. Hopefully he'll do it on the honor diambiguation thread. This is only a dismabiguation thread for fascism. Agreeing that we live in a pernicious dictatorship would be off-topic in this thread. Steven. Urm, men traditionally like to see themselves as the warriors and fighters and have ingratitude and contempt for the peaceful if duplicitous nature of women. mas·cu·line (măs′kyə-lĭn) adj. 1. Of or relating to men or boys; male. 2. Characterized by or possessing qualities traditionally attributed to men, such as aggressiveness.
Extrapolated aggression at political level is the military force of the state. When men quote "masculine" qualities as something desirable they like to emphasize that's their territory. There was this angry dude on twitter who trolled the Dept of Defense Twitter because they allowed women in some military position they hadn't had before: arguing aggressively that women can't possibly be fit for battle what with their fingers being so small they can't operate drones...i pointed out nowadays combat is no longer reliant on physical mass and he told me to shut the fuck up and die. An honorable display of masculine prowess.
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Post by stevedtrm on Apr 27, 2016 15:49:20 GMT
"Extrapolated aggression at political level is the military force of the state."
Generated by females as much as males, who therefore are as much a part of the violence as the men are.
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 15:52:16 GMT
erm....I already agree they are part of the system. This was my statement that men like to emphasize masculinity as the monopoly of violence and you hear all sorts of MRAs and fascists etc celebrating maleness for the violence and warrior spirit...I am pointing out THEIR lack of abstract understanding...and narrow mindedness.... and nowyours...
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 16:00:59 GMT
If fascism is simply oppression, then that just reduces the philosophy to nothing, since every every person wishes to be powerful in a way that gets them what they want as long as they dont feel guilt and shame for doing so. My theory is these definitions are circumstantial and political, even propagandistic. So of course all political systems are oppressive, oppression of some groups while a minority enjoys the benefits is innate to any system; some are more opened than others. Even the open ones are still "unfair". See the Declaration of Independence making statement that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."... written by a man who had black slaves and possibly a wife and daughters who had no rights whatsoever as citizens... So ALL systems are fascist and authoritarian from the perspective of the oppressed class and all systems have an oppressed class or two. Furthermore I believe large scale cooperation of humans in political bodies can't be organised otherwise. But some systems are more stable by flattering the expectations of the medium and lower classes. "democracy" and other fictions... Let's not forget unlike "darwinism" floating on the other thread, meritocracy, fascism etc are terms with connotations loaded by the historians who write the winning side; it's all spin. It's part of the tool kit of power, intellectual smoke and mirrors for the mass to believe in a naive dichotomy good evil on the political stage.
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 16:05:20 GMT
Like this constant BBC history doc trope of "we live in the freest time ever" and celebration of how amazingly progressive our times are... Which is total fiction. By the standards of the middle ages we live in dreadful surveillance and mind control; the catholic church had primitive attempts at control, whereas nowadays we are typing this on a device that knows EVERYTHING about us and sends it to the government through the collaboration of companies. And we are supposed to cheer at the progress... Yes this is fascism and absolutist monarchy seems like a freedom camp now.
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Post by stevedtrm on Apr 27, 2016 22:04:47 GMT
Even the open ones are still "unfair".
No. There's a point where inequality is just and fair on the grounds that nature, the ultimate, all pervading law, wont permit anything less unequal.
If you optimise equality in terms of your own selfinterest, you are being just, and justness is fair, even if it leads to the murder of others.
A lion is fair when he eats a gazelle, for he is powerless to not do so. far more egregious human horrors impossible to express publicly or in this forum may well be justified if it provides a perpetrator with pleasure. Predation can be fair. As can preventing and deterring and punishing predation for the people and systems who are damaged by it. Very few people have the internal bravery to understand and accept this. Its a form of integrity that earns respect from me on the rare occasions it is displayed.
Conflicting interests can make all sorts of horrors "fair", sadly. But it takes integrity and bravery to recognise it.
Steven.
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 23:06:08 GMT
A lion is fair when he eats a gazelle, for he is powerless to not do so. far more egregious human horrors impossible to express publicly or in this forum may well be justified if it provides a perpetrator with pleasure. That's a goddam psychopathic statement to make: the lion doesn't kill for pleasure, but for food, to survive. To kill for pleasure is really excessive even by jungle standards. any pleasure there is is an accompaniment of the hunt, to motivate it in the creature that really has no other...gastronomic options to choose from.
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Post by Tundra on Apr 27, 2016 23:15:06 GMT
Even the open ones are still "unfair". No. There's a point where inequality is just and fair on the grounds that nature, the ultimate, all pervading law, wont permit anything less unequal. It's like you completely ignore the part in my statements where I say qualifiers like "fair", "merit", "rights" are highly subjective propagandistic descriptors for one party to ingratiate the other with promise of cooperation. They simply don't exist for real, for they really only ever apply to the people involved in the equation relative to the subject according to their specific goal. Basically, I was highlighting the fact that any such statement of fairness, equality and other post Enlightenment Jesus-like values are hypocritical as they never truly apply but do a good job of dazzling the target group.
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Post by bloodemperortim on May 2, 2016 14:14:48 GMT
Nothing in this thread really grazes the actual nature of Fascism. This is because right-wing concepts do not come instinctively to them, so they cannot parse its sub-types correctly. Everything is coloured by this decrepit modernite perspective. The constantly recurring preoccupation with ‘oppression’ is nothing that a right-wing personality is concerned with. To us, it is just another vehicle for edifying conflict, another venue for attainment. If we must die, so be it. This preoccupation with oppression is morbid, decrepit, pathetic, disgusting, weak. ‘Waaah I’m being oppressed, they’re such big bullies!’ No! Where does this degenerate mindset come from!? The masculine, heroic, life-affirming mindset is: ‘Bring it! Who dares think they can ‘oppress’ us? Us, victims? Laughable!! We are forged in resistance! Even the lowliest state is just another arena for becoming! We will never beg!’ But I’m sure this slithering, cynical cowardice that so pervades the Anglo mind will find a way to make anything bright and glorious, dull and empty. At least to their quotidian minds. As someone immersed in the right, I think I can make this clearer. But in order to confirm for oneself, immersion is required. Otherwise you may simply restate your own predisposition without grasping it at all. Most people (particularly on the left I find, as confirmed by Jonathan Haidt’s research) are incapable of passing the Ideological Turing Test. They revert back to thinking their own position the default one. First of all, historical fascism was simply a technology invented to combat Communism. It doesn't necessarily have a long-term shelf life. For example, Nazi Germany was fascist during wartime, but the goal of the NSDAP was a Volkisch Reich (basically 'people's republic') which included such things as social welfare. Generally speaking, people use 'fascism' to mean totalitarianism. In fact it pisses me off how often it's used to mean just about anything. Fascism has very clear elements without which it cannot be considered fascism. A list such as this one is made my lily-livered fannies who have no right-wing instinct: www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.htmlSo we can toss that out. Along with most other pussified, external ideas of what it is. Fascism requires: 1) An aesthetic/spiritual rather than material ideal, masculine and martial in nature. Absolutely key. Without that it may not be called fascism, only some sort of totalitarianism. 2) Essentialism. Race, sex, identity etc are inborn. Biological determinism, basically. Opposition to the leftist ideas which emphasise fluidity. 3) Nationalism (ethnonationalism). The nation, meaning the land, people and culture in an organic sense, with historical ties. This requires that contrary elements are removed. 4) Folk revival. Clearing away degeneration and restoring the connection between the land, the race and the culture. Bringing back historical elements to revivify it: symbolic, legendary, traditional. 5) Hierarchy. 6) Total mobilisation. The collectivism of fascism is with a goal in mind, so fervently wished for that all absolute command is required. Out of this comes the total state and a supreme leader. A sense of people as forces of nature, contrary to humanism, is felt, implacable heroes rather than the sort of pathos attempted by communists and other leftists. Aesthetic power, opposite to the deliberate drabness of the left. And this mobilisation and statism also implies heavy nationalisation, of course. 7) Anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois. Opposed to ‘the money power’ as of banking, internationalist finance etc. 8) Anti-modern. Including democracy, all forms of liberalism (including economic), egalitarianism, etc. Though in this sense it does not mean regressive, but that the future and its technologies should pick up where the classical world left off, in ethos, arresting the degeneracy of post-Enlightenment modernity. This is seen best in the Nazis, with their mix of primordial symbolism and impressive technology. Of these, #1 and #4 are most key. These give rise to its entire character and aesthetics. So it’s totally absurd to equate neoliberalism – cultureless bourgeois centrist globalism – with an extreme right-wing movement concerning anti-modern, anti-materialist nationalism. To shed further light I can critique fascism from my own position.
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Post by Tundra on May 2, 2016 21:30:49 GMT
Well I shall clarify a few things the Emperor seems to get wrong.
1. I am Romanian. Yes? So I have political rage in my system. I am not one of these domesticated farm animals. I lived through a bloody revolution in 1989. Unlike the British public who is by and large desensitised to the brutal reality of life on earth and prefers to cuddle puppies and donate to charity to soothe their concern but god forbid they discuss it over dinner--oh no, that's not done.
It's OK though, people commonly mistake me for a Brit on internet fora because my English is superior to the natives. I'll take that as a compliment.
2. I assume it's me you refer to as the disgusting pathetic feminine leftist since I am the only other person in the conversation apart Steven--you didn't accuse him of the same, as he is male...So Emperor..please point out where it is EXACTLY that I said outright or even more subtly that upon assessment of a current terrific state of affairs I conclude the response and strategy is collapse in fear to the ground or even attempt pacifist edulcoration, hippie egalitarianism.. Where have my statements been indicating I intend to do nothing about political oppression. Or even not become an oppressor myself. Or that I don't assume warfare as, not just a motor of civilization, but a necessity for victory on planet earth. It seems to me you have made a series of confusions between your perception of the left, the program of the Labour as it currently stands, and my own position as a strategic member of Labour because it's the lesser evil in a battle with Satan himself.
There's nothing defeatist in the current Left. There's nothing weak and morbid in trying to escape and fight with all means necessary the most powerfully oppressed human farm civilization has ever produced; to reverse the destruction of human value in a domesticated neoliberal herd; to reverse the dehumanizing hopeless erosion of freedoms to a level former empires could have only ever dreamed of. There is nothing pathetic about wanting to save humankind. Assessing your enemy correctly is just stage one. It's a massive endeavour, also, when the minds of many have been replaced with state propaganda and simple programs of iterative performance and arrivism.
As a matter of fact I couldn't be further from egalitarian myself. I know the spirit you speak of, but you distort it. Mass of contradictions and poor analysis. Romanticized right.
Look in American culture, the vultures of contemporary history. "Aesthetic power"--well they fucking define it. There's no more captivating portrait of military manly power than Hollywood. Self serving celebration of performance and violence. Are they good? Are they sustainable? Is their civilization "meritocratic"? Do they promise a great future?... NO. It's a culture that presents most of the fascist features you find laudable on the surface; (1, 2, 3, 5, 6) a brilliant military power the genius of which is to be appraised. That is constantly murdering free thought, those who oppose it, keep people like you and me in the shadows, powerless... Suppress thinking, discourage philosophy, cultivate obedience, disingenuity. It's what happens when you apply the right in capitalism. It is the right. As it manifests. Not as your idealism defines--fuelled by eclectic readings and delusions of power. "EmperorTim".
Fascism requires an aesthetic ideal and US invented it, for this millenium. Race and sexism dictate, rampant. So does nationalism. Dick Cheney's American Exceptionalism? .. I don't know what how folk revival is significant to any power. As someone interested in power, I couldn't care less for popular culture of the past. If anything, the soundtrack to victory can only ever be violent, majestic, elegant. Wagner? Rachmaninov? Bach? Aphex Twin? Folk music is defeatist. Myopic. Small. Pathetic. Emasculated.
Hierarchy? Isn't this completely universal to all power systems? And aren't all systems power systems?...Fascism is not defined by hierarchy anymore than life itself is.
Mobilisation? Sparta? It happens now. I don't believe the post-Enlightenment lies of equality, human rights, a world that Jesus himself imagined. It's all circus for the crowd to go along. To go along with the systematic crimes. To participate in the war, and exploitation, and theft that economy is. I believe the dictate of mobilization to a common goal is innate to a complex system like human society, it's a consequence of the fact that all live creatures compete for survival over resources and the translation of that in human reality is cannibalistic international politics. The powerful eats the rich and the powerful needs the support of the mass in its pursuit.
"anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois". You can't be that and a powerful state. Military is created and motivated by wealth and the only system that creates it is capitalism. Neoliberalism is a type of capitalism that in fact sits very well with hyper military masculine states that are highly unequal, "aesthetic" (culture mass produced to hypnotise, distract and brainwash the masses) on the inside but deploy "leftist" values at speech level to pacify the workers.
Anti-modernism is innately incompatible with powerful states. The drivers of civilization are always the most progressive war machines that kill whole other nations in their predatory creative pursuits. The creation born of imperial pogroms is a paradox for simpletons but a confirmation of natural law.
The fact you quote the Nazis as an example of your ideal type (folk and anti-modern) is further proof of what I'm saying: they never lasted long. US empire, which is the most martial fascist entity ever--is very progressive. It's in the nature of successful power that it drives innovation, it needs it, and fuels it further. It is also essentially materialistic, or will be absolutely on a planet resource driven where nothing is achieved without material power. Anti-material civilizations like India have been lovely but consumed by voracious invaders like the British. Materialist, progressive power prevails. Nostalgia is defeatist, weak, pathetic, morbid, decrepit.
Nietzsche himself, the man you seem to admire but have ingested so chaotically, hailed the future. But then he would have never committed such a crass error of confusing the utopian definitions in one's political aspirations with currently accepted realities.
"Anglo mind will find a way to make anything bright and glorious, dull and empty. At least to their quotidian minds." I agree with this. I notice this every day. It's astounding how civilization can produce such domesticated serfs. It's almost as if the values of womanhood (nesting, petty conquests, decoration) have applied to all. On purpose. Domestication of the herd was necessary.
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