Very American of you to not know conservatives from fascists
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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If there are 9 conservatives and 1 fascist sitting around a table, then there are 10 fascists sitting around that table.
This argument is pretty dumb. If we follow this logic then American liberals are Marxist because American Marxists tend to support the DNC more often than not... But that's obviously not true, and American liberals don't support such an evil ideology.
If we follow the logic in a different route and assume that 9 racists are sitting on a table with a civil rights activist, they're all civil rights activists... But that doesn't sound right, does it?
Let's try another attempt, if 10 world leaders are in a conference somewhere. Of those leaders, 9 are liberals from democratic countries and one is a dictator, does that make all 10 of them dictators? Of course not.
The issue with this type of argument is that it's based on guilt by association, not even that actually, it's more of guilt by proximity. This is a logical fallacy for all the reasons stated in this article:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
Let's not bring back guilt by association and doom ourselves back to the dark ages due to virtue signaling and ignorance. People should be looked as individuals and judged for their own beliefs.
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There's a difference?
Fascism is more of an approach than a specific ideology. Its only core value is Strength Through Unity - but to achieve that it needs some populist values to unite the people over - which is how you get different flavors of fascism. The original Fascist Party was using nationalism. Racism is also a popular choice (fascism + racism = Nazism), and it seems like rightist values are more prune to it - but leftist values are not safe either, like we have seen in the USSR which based its fascism around socialism.
Conservatism can be a base for fascism, but like all these other values - it doesn't have to be fascist. The rule is simple:
- If you want The Gays(tm) to just stop - that's regular conservatism.
- If you want a strong leader to "stop" The Gays(tm) - that's fascist conservatism.
conservatives oppose social progress and want to preserve the status quo, but are happy to fight for that within democratic bounds, more or less. Fascists want to subvert democracy and install a completely new status quo
want to preserve the status quo,
No different than liberals, then.
Fascists want to subvert democracy
All institutionalized political power is violently anti-democratic - it's literally why you are forced to pay for violent paramilitaries to police you and protect the status quo from anything that can be called democratic with a straight face.
Fascists are not unique in that regards.
and install a completely new status quo
The capitalists that funded Hitler and Mussolini into power did not do so because fascists "install a completely new status quo." The CIA didn't fund fascists into power all over the third world during the Cold War because fascists "install a completely new status quo."
They funded fascists into power because fascists protect the status quo. You know... the status quo liberals and conservatives all love so much?
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Some context:
After Elmo's venture into posting anime stuff on Twitter, this feels rather tame I guess. Or I'm just too jaded to care about this timeline any longer.
Ew "Difendere la famiglia tradizionale" under a blonde anime girl makes me want to hurl.
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I have become so desensitized to the festering dumpster sludge media that the window treatment shocks me the most in this picture
Please stop framing backward-looking nationalists as conservative. They don't want to conserve civil rights, environmental and protective standards, and other granted at status quo. They want society to go back to the 1930s.
Conservatives, from the very beginning, were more interested in conserving their own power, while realizing hiding behind the "conserving our traditions" mask will win them a lot, besides using the "my enemy's hypocrisy is a fatal flaw of their character and ideology, my hypocrisy is human nature" tactic ad nauseum.
Conservatives never wanted civil rights or environmental protections. What alternate dimension did you drop out of?
As I'm from Germany, our constitution was elaborated by a constituent assembly constisting in the majority of conservatives. It granted and grants a lot of civil rights which are questioned by modern day conservatives, such as the right for asylum or secrecy of mail and telephone. Starting from our first government, led by the conservative party CDU, the politics was also constantly pro-European towards integration. Also our first ministry for environment issues was established by a conservative government in 1986.
This backward-looking stupidity is a phenomenon of the last 30 years. E.g. Franz Josef Strauß, the most conservative politician I can think of, was pro technical innovation. As of today, the state of Bavaria still benefits from decisions made under his government. He would rotate in his grave if he knew how his party has become.
I see, I do tend to forget the term is quite broad in its use dependant on time and place.
A lot of people, including the best of the conservative politicians, take the whole "conserving our traditions" façade very seriously.
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I'm sorry but this really doesn't apply to a lot of European political landscapes. In Germany for example the biggest conservative party, CDU, is still very much just annoyingly "conservative", but definitely not "licking the gunpowder residue out of the bullet hole in Hilter's decaying skull".
And the conservative German nazi party (AFD) is in second place in E.U. elections right now. The conservative plague is on the rise globally, including in Europe.
Conservatives are fascists. The more conservative one is, the more fascist one is.
Not arguing with that, just took issue with calling all moderate-conservatives Nazis because no matter how much I dislike them, that's just not true.
And the ~~conservative~~ German nazi party AfD is in second place in E.U. elections right now.
FIFY. Since several years, the AfD is no longer a conservative party.
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Yeah, we have a couple sane right wing parties here in Denmark too, including all three of the current coalition government (one of which calls itself center left, but has been center right to right wing on most issues for a couple decades now), as well as some extremist ones to the right of those.
"The farthest right/most conservative influential parties of all European countries" would be pretty fair though, what with frightening numbers of people voting for AFD, whatever Nigel Farage's current party is called etc..
To be simultaneously fair and insulting, though, they might only be able to name the extremist ones 🤷
The post mentions Meloni who is nationalist (and was even fascist not too long ago). That, driven by nationalist parties, many European parties, not only conservatives, are drifting away further and further into populism is one effect of the problem of normalising populism and nationalism by the media.
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Russia is neither winning nor is their disinformation campaigns that successful. This is because despite their best efforts, when they needed their propaganda to work the most, it backfired and the west is more united than ever. Not only that but the country is basically wrecked due to the invasion of Ukraine
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You're absolutely crazy if you honestly believe that. First of all, talking of "Russia" as a constant for the past 80 years when it's gone from part of the USSR, to liberal-minded capitalist country with talks of joining the EU, to fascist dictatorship just in the last 35 years. There's absolutely no "long term plan to destabilize Europe" in Russia for the past 80 years, and you're being conspiracist and throwing history out the window.
Secondly, as sadly shown in the early 20th century, Europe is more than capable of creating its own fascist movements. You say Russia has been conspiring to push fascism in Europe, but I'm Spanish and the USSR was the only country which helped the Republican struggle against fascism in the Spanish civil war, and after the fascists won in Spain (with the help of the Nazis and the italian fascists while the rest of Europe did nothing) and WW2 ended, fascist Spain was perfectly joined into the international community just a few decades afterwards.
The current far-right movements in Europe are learning their lessons from Trump and Bolsonaro, and have received most of their help and funding from within Europe and from the US rather than from Russia. They're the consequence of one and a half decades of austerity policy, where the socialdemocrats have been complicit in austerity as much as the conservative parties have been. And after corruption schemes being discovered in most christian-conservative parties in Europe, a segment of right wing that used to vote for them but lost their trust, now votes for other right wing parties, including far right. Fascism isn't a tool from Russia to destroy Europe, it's Europe destroying itself from within to further the interests of the wealthy elites.
Tbf, russia is currently financing fascist and right-wing populist movements and parties all over Europe, e.g the AfD in Germany or the FPÖ in Austria.
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You give Russia too much credit.
Europe and USA put themselves on this situation all by their own stupidity.
That's right, there were no flaws in the political system invented 250 years ago and only outside actors in the last 20 years led to a conservative party vs a fascist party.
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That's kind of my point. The US is the problem with our political system. Russia is a factor, but they exacerbated division that was already present. It's actually ridiculous to try and frame it as a problem that wouldn't have appeared if Russia stayed out of our business.
Russia hasn't done nearly as much damage as the capitalist class in America has.
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Nah. Absolutely overhyped.
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My dude I'm far more worried about America's actual Nazis. Russia is just a distraction.
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Russia has had dramatic political influence in this country for a very long time now
Sure, but NOWHERE near as much or as bad as under-regulated capitalism, which has taken over the entire government and caused the needless deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions in the US alone, billions worldwide.
And that's not even counting the even greater numbers that it has left alive but perpetually struggling and suffering!
Yeah, they've been stirring up the local Fascists who are a much bigger problem.
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