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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Modernity under the rubric of fascism has to involve the radical anomie and alienation of the capitalist mode of production, right? I don’t think modernity can be understood as simply any new idea or practice, but rather as shorthand for accelerating social change with a material basis that produces people who are alienated from the new forms coming into being and who craft for themselves a mythic past designed to confront what they don’t like about modernity—those are your fascists. I don’t know if the antebellum south had material or cultural conditions sufficient to create that dynamic. Yeah, I think the mythic past as a blueprint for society is a big part of it. Fascism interprets the alienation created by capitalism as degeneracy/decadence, in fact that may be the biggest tell of facism, channeling escalating class conflict into a conflict over a loss of social morality by "degenerate" (marginalized) groups within a society, and stating that absent those elements, a more pure, correct social order would prevail. If you just expand fascism to extend to all nationalist movements with racial elements, it loses value as a label. Like, I don't think you could call the Young Turks of the CUP fascist, since their aims were towards a fundamental reordering of society, but they used nationalist rhetoric and ethnoreligious fear as part of their campaign to consolidate power. They were a reaction to modernity, but coming from the collapse of the old Ottoman social structures, not industrial capitalism like Germany and Italy were. The CSA weren't fighting for an imagined past, they were contesting for a political system that was at that point under threat. Just because the system was evil, doesn't mean it was fascist. E: In fact, echoing other people in this thread, I don't think something should be defined as fascist unless it is specifically a social reaction to capitalism in the modern sense. Otherwise it's too easy to just define any autocratic and expansionist society as "fascist" Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 14:05 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 13:59
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But was the British Raj a fascist state then? Or the Imperial German administration of Namibia? Or the Belgian Congo? All of these states existed at a point in history well past the CSA and were all equally founded on theories of racial superiority as justification for their policies and acts of violence, and all were explicitly white supremacist states. I'm not sure what explanatory power calling the CSA a protofascist state gives. I think I agree with the definitions of fascism as a modern phenomenon of mass politics more. Maybe even to the point that fascism requires telecomunications as a way of quickly deseminating the emotional affect the regime depended on to keep people motivated. E: Whereas I think people who argue that Hindutva ideology in India is essentially fascist are correct. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 19:39 on May 8, 2021 |
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May 8, 2021 19:31
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I mean, I guess the Diggers could be if you consider any movement advocating for equality and common ownership of property as akin to communism, but that's a broad brush.
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May 9, 2021 02:45
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Both fascism and communism are products of human social structures and human culture, so it's not like they need to be seen as entirely seperate from earlier social orders. That's sort of the issue I have with broad definitions of fascism that would encoporate something like the CSA. If you are casting that broad a brush, then is Israel a fascist state? Was the Reagan and Clinton US, through voter suppression and the war on drugs/crime, a protofascist state? You have people in this thread insinuating that China is a fascist state, which, whatever else it might be, would seem to reduce the label to almost meaninglessness if we accept that. At least as useful as "what is fascist", is "what is not fascist?", and a lot of these definitions feel like you could put almost any modern nation state into the structure with a little bit of fudging.
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May 9, 2021 03:32
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Because Maoism is still a communist ideology? Would you say the Soviets were fascist too? What makes China a fascist state, but Israel not a fascist state? What makes China a fascist state, but not Saudi Arabia? Also, looping back to an earlier point, what do people think of the Hindutva movement in India? Is it fascist, or just hardline ethnoreligious? Is there a difference? Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 04:03 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 03:59
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:There seems to be aspects to fascism that involve a mythos of rebirth from collapse, a capturing of the youth's attention towards that cause, and a focus on devoting an individual's professional and private life to advancing the state. Did the CSA have these aspects front and center the same way that Spain, Italy, or Germany did? The CSA seemed to be more focused on keeping the status quo and letting old white interests coast by, but I am open to evidence to the contrary. yes, neoconfederates are probably properly understood as a fascist movement. But, as was my point above, fascism should have more explanatory power than "not liberal democracy" if it's going to be a useful conceptual category.
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May 9, 2021 04:02
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So at what point did China stop being a Maoist society and become a fascist one? What features do you think mark China as fascist that apply now but did not apply in the 50s? Great Leap forward and the cultural revolution were both explicitly modernist movements against traditional Chinese society, so they don't really fit into this fascist framework that we have up here. Would you define Stalinism as fascist? Is fascism analogous to authoritarianism or dictatorship? Is the Juche of North Korea a fascist government? E: vvvvv that's what I was referring to, yes. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 04:20 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 04:12
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Would you then say that the Spartans, who's society was founded on oppression to the point that the slaughter of their under caste was a yearly coming of age ritual, were a fascist society then? They indisputably had an extreme "Us versus them" dynamic in their society, and were constantly worried about helot revolts. But I don't think that that would be enough to make them fascist. E: back, I would say that if you were to define the CSA as protofascist, you would have to look at whether or not you would consider the Spartans that as well, what it would mean for the definition if protofascism goes back to the ancient world Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 05:30 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 04:55
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Yeah, I think I would say that would be a defining feature for m: Fascism is a product of industrial and post-industrial societies, and I don't think it would make a lot of sense to apply it as a label to pre-industrial societies that legitimately feared peasant or slave revolts (which is really what the CSA was).
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May 9, 2021 05:30
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Kavros posted:I'm going to think that saudi arabia makes a much easier to make a case for "if it isn't technically fascist, it just reeks of fascism 24/7" -- Israel more feels like 'illiberal ethnonationalism is transforming this system into fascism in progress, please stand by!" and it has spent my politically active years alive doing a bunch of weird mask-off somersaults of varying severity as it descends into post-democracy whose systems of republic feel like a gritty, rusted-out engine throwing a rod and starting to vibrate too heavily to ignore. Saudi Arabia, in contrast, is all the way there in that whole brutally authoritarian thing with the government having burrowed into every artery of society and business to serve the interests of the chosen holders of power, and directs every exercise of media, speech, and society towards the permanence of those power structures. I actually think this is a good point, because I've often thought that fundamentalist movements (in Chrisitanity and Islam) as being similar and related to fascism as ideologies, pulling from a religious versus ethnonationalist mythic pasts. Modern fundamentalist movements would be totally incoherent to adherence of their religions during the golden ages they imagine returning to.
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May 9, 2021 05:36
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This is what I find problematic of the fascist label, it's vague but also morally charged. China, because it is an authoritarian state is labelled fascist, but India, where there government is undertaking land reforms to benefit corporate agriculture, throwing indigenous people of their land, and demonizing Muslims to the point of having literal murderous pogroms to distract people and shore up support, is still an ally against the totalitarian enemies. I don't think China is fascist. Being authoritarian isn't enough, and the colonial projects in Tibet and Xinjiang are literally analogous to things the US and Canada did to their indigenous populations. Would you say that Canada or the US were fascist or protofascist states? Or is it the suppression of dissent? Because the US does that too, for its marginalized populations.is China just further down the scale than the US? I think China is acting in a colonialist, imperialist manner, but I don't think that's analogous to fascism.
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May 9, 2021 10:00
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Ok, so looping back, was the continental scale ethnic cleansing of Canada and the US fascist in nature? Was the period of belligerent expansionism than the US undertook aroundd the Spanish-American war fascist? E: This century literally kicked off with the US declaring a war that it's leader defined as "with us or against us", and issued as a pretext, along with totally fabricated evidence, to obliterate two nation states in endless wars. This also coincided with a massive increase in three militarization of domestic police, and yes, an increased targeting of dissent. Again, the definition of fascism seens to fall to "not liberal democracy", even at the US continuously stretches that definition via voter suppression and gerrymandering. Beelzebufo fucked around with this message at 23:44 on May 9, 2021 |
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May 9, 2021 11:02
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May 9, 2021 11:13
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Brutalist McDonald's, what's your opinion on Modi and the Hindutva movement. For me, it has the hallmarks of a fascist movement in ascendance, even if it hasn't entered it's totalitarian phase yet.
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May 9, 2021 21:00
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