Honestly, I think fascism can manifest from both leftist and right wing points of view. Like a lot of fascists organizations started as workers organizations who gathered together for better working conditions, compensation, and security, and down the line were convinced that racial minorities, jews, and immigrants were the cause of their problems.
A lot of the formally left wing people turned fascist I've known started from the point of view of capitalism, globalization, and wealth inequality being the causes of their problems, and overtime were convinced that this meant immigrants, erasure of their culture (white/American/Christian) and evil cabals of jews/queer people/atheists/satanists/etc.
Basically if you rally behind strongmen, aim for religious/cultural/racial dominion, and aim for the elimination of a certain group of people as a means of achieving your goals, you might be a fascists, and the path towards that can start from anywhere.
edit: yeah, I think going to delete this post soon. Many people seem to have taken this post as an opportunity to point the finger and rip at each other, as well as construe any negative action as "fascism" when the whole point of my post was to be introspective. Seems like a lot of people simply read the first sentence and decided to go to town instead.
Fascism absolutely is both left and right. Fascism is defined as “extremely authoritarian, intolerant, or oppressive ideas or behaviour”.
Let’s have a look at the current “left”. Pro-censorship of any and all opinions that they don’t agree with. Trying to make laws that outlaw things they disagree with. Encouraging riots and harassment and violence against people they disagree with. Blame white people for all the problems in the world.
Can anyone explain how fascism as defined above could apply to the right extreme? Apart from the Nazis? Its really descriptive of the far left. Although oppressing non-cis/het relations is stereotypically right
EDIT: kind of important, fascism was auto-corrected to racism, corrected now
@luthis@Whirlybird, Racism, xeno- and homophobia have nothing to do with political orientation, but with personal aversions, fears and problems. They tend to be people, either indoctrinated by religion or looking for a strong leader because they lack their own ideas or initiatives. For this reason they are aligned in their vast majority with the fascist ideology and to a very lesser extent in the leftist sphere.
A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
The emphasis on race and economic / social regimentation are the major break from the left.
That's literally the whole American "MAGA" movement. They want Trump or someone like him as an absolute dictator and have no problem taking rights away from people.
Right. All the thousands of "god emperor" and "president for life" memes really make me confident in that...
Not to mention also the "helicopter ride" memes which were popular for a while. Face it. The right loves strongman populist authoritarians just as much as the tankies do.
@Whirlybird@Roundcat, Fascism is not a political system, but a system of oppression, in which a minority or a single person decides the rules for the rest, it doesn't matter if it is called dictatorship, democracy or communism, which in these circumstances is always a mere label. In real communism and real democracy, it is always the vast majority that dictates the rules, not the other way around. This is why capitalism always favors fascism, it is money that dictates the rules, not people.
I’m not sure where you got your definition of fascism, but I think the more formal definitions of it would say otherwise. But! Your definition, I think, is more in-line with how we use that word in the modern times. So, I’ll stick with it.
I think the left side fascism is lot harder to spot whereas the right side fascism is very obvious.
The extreme rights literally go around waving the nazi flag. They’re obvious fascists.
The extreme left has a different approach to fascism. They’re like, “Oh what you say is offensive, and it’s not nice. You need to be nicer and say these things. You’re hurting people’s feelings.” But by doing that, they’re effectively taking away speech and enforcing their world views on others. They’re just as intolerant of opposing views and will happily snuff them out. The cancel culture that has become the main weapon of the extreme left is most certainly fascism.
I also don’t believe extreme left are for being actually nice, they only want to push their specific agendas in a fascistic manner since they happily ignore other marginalized population and will even make fun of them. They are not nice people. For example a straight white man (which I am not) could be struggling to live for any reason. Could be illness, could be abused, anything really. But just because he is in the category of the straight white man, they’ll just insult him and how he deserves what happened to him, all the while ignoring everything else about him. He isn’t the oppressor, he isn’t the one who did wrong. Does it matter? No. That’s prejudice. And no one will defend those people, because if you do, you’re also not a nice person and must be cancelled. Guess which group does defend them? The extreme right. I wonder which side he’ll pick then.
Yeah, I definitely felt the same. As a bona fide straight white male, I felt pushed to the right by the left, despite also being against prejudice, being pro-lgbt, supportive of minorities, and for preserving culture (that last one is actually very anti-left if you consider history). But I have learned that the things we hear are almost exclusively the extremists on one side opposing the extremists on the other side, and both feed each other. Everyone seems to forget there is a nice moderate just-left-of-centre position where people pay for healthcare with their taxes and aren’t royally fucked by corporations.
That meme that musk posted ages back where the left keep pushing further and further left, to the point where they claim that people that were moderate left and haven’t changed their position at all are now far right, is spot on.
When a small but dedicated group of vocal people started unironically and emphatically believing the planet was a pancake, I lost a significant portion of my lingering reserves of hope for the future of mankind.
Extremist politics and all the associated mindsets have long since jumped a row of sharks in my mind by comparison.
From my limited understanding, it mostly seems like misattribution of all the very obvious chaos and uncertainty about “grand” events like climate change, economical strife, etc.
It’s less that someone holds pancake planet as their sole belief but more a web of interconnected beliefs that would explain the true cause of these nebulous events if they were true.
Not that it makes the outcome any better that people choose a more palatable ideological narrative over reality but there is a part of me that recognizes ignorance would be more blissful.
could you remind me which part of Marxism exactly it was Stalin was implementing, other than claiming to be in line with Marxism? a dictatorship of the proletariat perhaps?
Participating in a violent overthrow of capitalism? ✅
Establishing an authoritarian socialist dictatorship that rules with an iron fist? ✅
Seizing land and property by force? ✅
Purging anybody and everybody that didn’t fall in line under the guise of being “anti-revolutionary”? ✅
Destroying the environment, cities, culture, and people to bring about the social climate necessary to bring about communism™? ✅
Committing genocides to get rid of “anti-revolutionary” groups? ✅
Pumping propaganda about Marxism? ✅
Ruling as the dictator of the the communist party that supposed to rule on the “behalf” of workers? ✅
He’s a Marxist and there’s literally nothing you could say to change that.
Many Marxists are damaged enough to actually believe that Marxism isn’t authoritarian when it inherently is. Authoritarianism ≠ fascism. Fascism is just one of many ideologies that are authoritarian, Marxism is among these ideologies.
Marx had two things: a critique of industrialist society, and a plan for how to fix said society. His critique was valid, his solutions were questionable. I don’t think you’ll find many socialists today who consider themselves Marxists.
Stalin cherry-picked what he wanted from “Marxism” and left behind the things he didn’t like. That doesn’t make him a Marxist, it makes him a Stalinist, and there’s literally nothing you could say to change that.
Stalin was a dictator - which is antithetical to the core principles of communism. You cannot be both a communist and a dictator, they are diametrically opposed.
It’s a shame Lenin died right after the establishment of the USSR, he disdained everything Stalin became.
Communism is and isn’t authoritarian. The establishment is, and the struggle to prevent regress into capitalism is, but for the people who aren’t trying to exploit others, it isn’t.
Authoritarianism ≠ fascism
Authoritarianism + ultranationalism = fascism.
Communism isn’t anything like fascism. Communism, by definition, rejects nationalism, and considers every proletariat family, regardless of nationality and ethnicity. The only enemy of communism is the bourgeoisie (dictators and fascists foremost)
There are authoritarians in every country. I don’t get the appeal - you have to think less I guess? less responsibility? - but lots of people seem eager to give up their voice if they think the person getting the power will use it against the people they don’t like.
The key is to get them to realize that eventually someone who doesn’t like them is going to get the power - maybe? But I think I’ve also heard that some of these preferences are down to physical brain structure that determines sensitivity to fear and empathy
Good point but id back it up a bit and ask first if they are prepared to change their mind, no point “debating” someone if they are narrow minded and adamant they know their shit. Kinda why i stopped doin the whole religious debate debacle, im not gonna change their mind.
I saw a video from Ronnie-boy who equated Fascism with the left because Fascism is government control and the left wants government control. I’ve found with the most far right, any “-ism” is a leftist idea, except for conservatism. That one’s all about freedom.
As someone who is fairly into ideologies I can tell you, that national-socialism or nazism, which is a sub-ideology of fascism isn’t called that for no reason. If you look at it closely it does take a lot home from nationalism, but socialisim as well. These are right-wing (with some exceptions) and left-wing ideologies respectively and both can take extremes. This is why a lot of people in the sphere call the fusion of these two the “Third Way”, meaning it’s between the extreme left and extreme right and opposite to Centrism, which is between the calmer ends of the two sides. This means that nazis are neither right nor left-wing, at least as seen in european politics, in the exteremely polarized american political climate they (or at least their grossly dumbed-down interpretation) could be considered extremly right wing, but I think american politics are stupid anyway. And now to answer the question (pretending I didn’t just saw a question where there wasn’t any) anyone who calls nazis leftists just has a politcal bias against them and tries to make them appear even worse by blending them with those goddamn liberals. Okay but seriously, people really shouldn’t dumb down “old enemies” because that just means that they didn’t learn anything.
Nazis are right wing in a European political context, that is not really a discussion in academia. This has nothing to do with current American politics, this is established history.
The only people claiming that they are left wing are right wing fascists who tries to distance themselves from the term (while doing everything in their power to emulate them), and that is done by both European and American fascists.
You’re “fairly into ideologies”, but you’re not well versed on political literacy. It seems like you got your idea of where Nazism sits on the political spectrum from the PoliticalCompassMemes subreddit (where “nAzIS ARe aUtHCENter” is the most commonly promoted talking point).
First and foremost, “third way” isn’t even the correct term to use here. You’re most likely referring to the term “third position”, which is an honest mistake in terminology, but that term refers to a different thing than third way entirely.
“Third way” refers to the more social liberal side of centrism. “Third position” is in reference to fascist tendencies to reject the binary notion of either standard socialist economics and/or laissez-faire free market capitalist economics. This comes with an important caveat: rejection of “typical socialism” and “typical capitalism” doesn’t mean you’re neither left-wing or right-wing, as we don’t really, in terminology, use your stance on socialism and capitalism as an inherent way of noting whether you’re left-wing or right-wing.
Some people might hear this reference to Nazism and assume this means it’ neither left-wing or right-wing, but this is a misinterpretation of definitions. Nazis most certainly were not free market capitalists, but they weren’t socialists either. However, the methods in which you run your economy are not necessarily the prime dictator of being left-wing and/or right-wing, like I said.
Nazis have historically been, and to this day still are, placed on the far-right end of the political spectrum due to upholding hierarchical doctrines within society because left and right are not “socialism vs. capitalism” as much as they are “egalitarianism vs hierarchy”. Nazis didn’t take hugely consistent economic positions, but they still were extremely hierarchical, and that serves as the basis of considering their ideology far-right.
Unless you want to argue that Nazis are not fans of rigid hierarchies (which would be foolish to do so), then you should, in some capacity, be able to acknowledge them sitting on the far-right end of the polspec.
Also, one more thing to mention. Leftists tend to be socialists because it’s an egalitarian mode of production. However, you can still support a less regulative corporatist economy like Nazis did while not being any degree of egalitarianism. Just stating this so people don’t misinterpret me as saying that “leftists aren’t inherently socialists”.
You are probably right about the third way/position thing, it’s just that I haven’t informed from english-speaking sources, so I’ve never been really sure of the correct translation. This might just have completly screwed up the meaning of my comment. As for the rest I don’t oppose the idea that nazis are more right than left, I just say they incorporate enough ideas of the left-wing, both cultural and economic to be called a blend of the two sides.
Nazis took nothing from the left wing other than some rhetoric they used to gain popular support from the working class. Their politics were more inspired by European colonialism than anything else. Lebensraum is basically just manifest destiny applied to Europe.
Wanting equality in the workplace alongside worker-owned production and supporting a hierarchical ultranationalistic society with totalitarian rule are the same coin?
They’re not the same. They’re not “the same coin”. Not even close. They’re not even each others opposites, they can’t be since they’re very different things.
I had typed a lengthy response but in the end I just advise you to read up before you use these words.
After doing that, you should also look at the Scandinavian states and decide for yourself if those are socialists, capitalist or something in between. And if you come to the conclusion that they’re leaning more to socialism(guided market) then anything else then look for signs of fascism in their government since you state “they’re the same coin” then there must be something.
Now look for those same signs in the recent history of the US. You should at least find: a wall, “America first” and a storming of the symbol of government and embodiment of democracy. Now look for signs of socialism in the US society.
You’re close, but socialism is like mid-left, and leads to many benefits. That’s the sweet spot. Go too far and you get fascism again under the guise of equality. Everyone is equal when everyone is dying of starvation and gulags.
that’s rather surprising. Maybe it’s just dependant on location, but here, everybody calls lefties commies and right wingers nazis. That is, if they are being disagreeable to whichever side they are talking about. Most of the time they don’t just label everyone with a different opinion than them as extremists
So the thing about calling right wingers nazis, is right wingers who seemingly have no qualms about people with actual nazi paraphernalia supporting the same causes and going to the same marches, but the second this is pointed out their retort is "what! we're not nazis! the nazis were the national socialist workers party! it says socialist right in the name! Ergo the socialists are nazis!
I think they mostly believe the way that some people on the left treat black people is worse than dislike from typical racists. They call it the bigotry of low expectations. Actually acting as if black people are lesser and unable to do the things white people are expected to do. It’s true there are people like that but it’s prevalence is questionable.
For clarification it’s because they don’t believe in the fact that systematic rasicim exsits or anything like that so in their world black people all end up in the worst places to live due to choice and ignorance rather being a byproduct of a system ment to bring any person of color down
I think they might be talking about stuff like “it’s wrong to expect black people to be on time for meetings” which was a quote I heard from someone who I believe meant well. There is a reasonable argument on both sides of that probably, but it left a bad taste in my mouth
Yeah. It’s not circumstances due to active oppression, but the assumption that black people cannot operate in a white man’s world at the same level so they need all kinds of accomodations. Like I said, I don’t know the prevalence but is absolutely a real thing and worth calling out.
I think he means more the way some white knights will belittle minorities in the process of trying to defend them. Using arguments about them being oppressed because of basic societal expectations that the particular white knight assumes they’re not capable of.
You’ll know it when you see it, it’s really strange to hear.
Both liberals and conservatives are basically servants of capitalism first, and derive their beliefs from rationalizing the state of the world that capitalism has created.
Conservatives believe that capitalism is the ‘natural state’ - so nothing needs to be done about the unequal outcomes.
Liberals believe that the unequal outcomes are unfair, but rather than attacking the source (capitalism), they try to solve it by ‘babying’ those they see as victims of the system, which doesn’t really help.
edit: I want to note that the source I linked has high right wing bias (mediabiasfactcheck.com/law-liberty-bias/). I do believe that our opponents sometimes see our weaknesses clearer than ourselves, but still felt like pointing this out because they start blaming stupid shit for the systemic racism in the USA towards the end.
The point is, both parties point at each other and workers as individuals to avoid pointing at capitalism.
They decided that the financial success of a certain group of people can be fully attributed to these people exploiting the rest of the populace, and therefore the world will only benefit if they get rid of these people.
Yup. Doesn’t sound like anything modern day leftists and socialists would say.
I think confusion comes in to play because at some point, socialism turns into authoritarianism, which isn’t far off from both totalitarianism and fascism. None of that is good.
I didn’t say that. Just that socialism, when taken to an extreme, is. Technically no form if government is inherently the evil three, but they can all become one of them.
You’re the one claiming it’s a strawman; ignoring the fact that’s not using the fallacy correctly, the burden of proof lies with you. And, no, “their profile pic contains colorful flags that make me uncomfortable” doesn’t count as proof.
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