Neo-Nazi wins Primary for GOP in Illinois 3rd congressional district

[Lexicus]

It's truly amazing because I've yet to encounter even a single counterexample; every accusation conservatives make about the left is a form of projection.

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html

You might be interested in this essay. Disclaimer, I don't agree with everything the dude argues.

A fascist, like anyone said to have a firmly-defined ideology of any sort such as that, has to actually HAVE a coherent ideology, platform, and vision that matches up to, or very close to, the political identity being stated. Trump has no coherent ideology, platform, or vision AT ALL that's even remotely apparent. He's just drifting along on a wind of policies of convenience, bluster, flip-flopping, and blaming everyone and anyone for his endless mistakes...

Trump is too stupid to really be a fascist or whatever, but his administration is still building fascism in the United States.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

There's nothing 'centrist' about Trump. He's a fascist.

Fascism is centrist, on the left-right economic scale.

 

[Dachs]

frankly this administration has entirely too few bundles of sticks to qualify as proper fascists

 

[Lexicus]

Fascism is centrist, on the left-right economic scale.

Baloney.

 

[Berzerker]

if free markets are right and state ownership is left, where does that leave fascism?

 

[El_Machinae]

Fascism is centrist, on the left-right economic scale.

We know that the left-right scale doesn't hold utility for very long in any discussion, but it's a mixture of policies. I'd not really call it 'centrist'. We're not really sure what centrist is, but it's a little too freedom-loving to really jive with fascism.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's almost like fascism is a combination of left-wing and right-wing policies

Not really. Corporatism and autarky are all pretty traditional right-wing goals. They've fallen out of favour in the age of neoliberalism, but that's, what, twenty, thirty years? Certainly, outside of the English-speaking world, Trump's economics would be unambiguously within the bounds of the reactionary tradition.

 

[Cutlass]

Fascism is centrist, on the left-right economic scale.

Fascists suppress the rights and wags of labor, let businesses do whatever they want, have no environmental or consumer protection regulations. Allow, even assist, monopolies. All consistent with the far right wing. And suppress popular political participation. Minorities and women have few to no rights, and are expected to do what they are told, and shut up about it. There may be a welfare state, but it is minimal.

The difference between the fascists of the 1930-40s and the Republicans today is that then the goal was the power of the state, and capitalists could do whatever they wanted, so long as the state got what it wanted. While now the goal is the power of the oligarchs, and so long as the capitalists get what they want, the state can do whatever it wants.


The change is in who is running the show. Not how the show is being run.

 

[Tahuti]

if free markets are right and state ownership is left, where does that leave fascism?

Yet free markets aren't by definition right-wing and neither is state ownership by definition left-wing. Free markets can potentionally increase economic equality and there are numerous instances where state ownership co-exists with capitalism and also with right-wing governments.

Fascism is extreme-right because it unambigiously asserts the viability and desirability of social inequality. It supports state ownership to that particular end, so Fascism is far-right, not in spite of it and much rather, because of it.

 

[stinkubus]

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/conservatism.html

You might be interested in this essay. Disclaimer, I don't agree with everything the dude argues.



Trump is too stupid to really be a fascist or whatever, but his administration is still building fascism in the United States.

Thanks for the link. Very interesting read.

 

[Traitorfish]

Fascists suppress the rights and wags of labor, let businesses do whatever they want, have no environmental or consumer protection regulations. Allow, even assist, monopolies. All consistent with the far right wing. And suppress popular political participation. Minorities and women have few to no rights, and are expected to do what they are told, and shut up about it. There may be a welfare state, but it is minimal.

Moreover, it's extremely selective. Nazi Germany may have offered some degree of insurance for "German workers", for example, but reserved for itself the exclusive right to decide who did and did not qualify as a "German worker", and as a matter of course excluded "non-Aryans", socialists, the disabled, the "work-shy", addicts, homosexuals, and people they just plain didn't like.

As Tahuti observed, this, like everything else in fascism, is intended towards deepening divisions within society, towards strengthening hierarchies and disparities of power, not towards reducing them. It's fundamentally anti-egalitarian in its goals, and therefore, when considered as politics rather than simply as policy, fundamentally right-wing.

 

[Cutlass]

Yet free markets aren't by definition right-wing and neither is state ownership by definition left-wing. Free markets can potentionally increase economic equality and there are numerous instances where state ownership co-exists with capitalism and also with right-wing governments.

Fascism is extreme-right because it unambigiously asserts the viability and desirability of social inequality. It supports state ownership to that particular end, so Fascism is far-right, not in spite of it and much rather, because of it.

The economic right has never been about 'free markets'. They are just masters of marketing, and have stolen the phrase. Their policies are never actually free market policies.

 

[Bootstoots]

In a very strict economic sense, you could think of fascists as being roughly centrist towards its favored group of people. But "right-wing" is usually not used in a strict economic sense. Historically, it means support of social hierarchy - originally support for monarchs and the aristocracy in Europe, and then moving from that to support for the newer powerful classes (e.g. industrialists) and then to nationalist movements. In that sense fascism is very much right-wing.

It is kind of confusing that (American-style) libertarians and fascists are both described as right-wing though. Libertarians do implicitly promote a hierarchy by supporting a system that leads to entrenched inequality, but obviously it's a very different system from fascism. That's just one of the problems with the left-right scheme. Often I'll say "economically right/left" to talk about economic policy specifically, but I wish there were an unambiguous shorthand for it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It is kind of confusing that (American-style) libertarians and fascists are both described as right-wing though. Libertarians do implicitly promote a hierarchy by supporting a system that leads to entrenched inequality, but obviously it's a very different system from fascism. That's just one of the problems with the left-right scheme. Often I'll say "economically right/left" to talk about economic policy specifically, but I wish there were an unambiguous shorthand for it.

It's not very confusing when you consider that American-style libertarians tend to oppose actual libertarian ideology. They've just re-branded class warfare. They wear the mantle of libertarians but in reality they want to use the mechanisms of state to enforce their own rights at the expense of the rights of others as many other right wing ideologues do.

In my estimation (and yours, going by your second sentence), most 'real' libertarian policies are de facto giveaways to the rich, even if the purported purpose is to lessen government interference. Absent government intervention, those with money and power trample over everyone else. By 'real' here I mean policies that actually lessen government interference rather than just shifting the interference such that it directly props up the wealthy. The latter is what American-style libertarians actually practice.

 

[Lexicus]

but obviously it's a very different system from fascism.

It's anything but obvious to me. All the paeans to property have a clear meaning: when democracy threatens property, out come the jackboots.

 

[Bootstoots]

It's not very confusing when you consider that American-style libertarians tend to oppose actual libertarian ideology. They've just rebranded class warfare. They wear the mantle of libertarians but in reality they want to use the mechanisms of state to enforce their own rights at the expense of the rights of others as many other right wing ideologues do.

In my estimation, most 'real' libertarian policies are de facto giveaways to the rich, even if the purported purpose is to lessen government interference. Absent government intervention, those with money and power trample over everyone else. By 'real' here I mean policies that actually lessen government interference rather than just shifting the interference such that it directly props up the wealthy.

I mean, there are libertarian true believers who strongly oppose any government support for business and deride the Republican Party as crony capitalists, who employ libertarian arguments selectively without even resembling 'real' libertarians. Many of them believe (contra the evidence) that private charity would be sufficient to support the poor if the government got out of welfare, and that if we only had a real free market, anyone who was willing to put in the effort could establish a comfortable living for themselves. It's a delusion, of course, but there are quite a few people (e.g. Reason magazine and much of the Libertarian Party) that do sincerely believe it.

It's anything but obvious to me. All the paeans to property have a clear meaning: when democracy threatens property, out come the jackboots.

I mean, the outcomes can be similar - basically property is kept as the fundamental right to which democracy comes second, so they tend to support a democratic state that isn't allowed to do much of anything. Of course, if push comes to coup, we know what side they'll be on.

But then again they do legitimately support civil liberties and aren't at all nationalistic. The authoritarianism extends only to protecting property. That really is quite different from fascism.

 

[Lexicus]

But then again they do legitimately support civil liberties and aren't at all nationalistic.

This has not been my experience. Most of the (modern American) libertarian intellectual patron saints, like Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard, were quite open racists and sexists. And even the ones who aren't nationalists tend to believe in human inequality, demarcated by something like IQ rather than race or culture. After all, the successful among us are simply our betters, and attempts to enforce any kind of social equality are tyrannical because try as we might we just can't make everyone the same. Almost without exception, right-libertarians I've interacted with have had right-wing views about social issues.

The authoritarianism extends only to protecting property. That really is quite different from fascism.

Meh. More issues than you might think are relevant to "protecting property." Libertarians have traditionally opposed the civil rights movement, for example, on the basis of protecting the prerogatives of private property owners. They oppose feminism on similar grounds- contracts are sacrosanct, and the state enforcing all this "equal treatment and equal pay" nonsense is a form of tyranny.

This is really the only "new" thing about the modern American libertarian movement. It's perfectly in keeping with the long right-wing political tradition stretching back the French Revolution - what it adds is the insistence that there is something insurgent, something rebellious, about what is essentially a defense of power and privilege.

Increasingly, I am seeing the two-spectrum model for politics as actually worse than a single-spectrum model. Economic and social issues can't be so readily separated. And frequently economic issues are simply a proxy or cipher for how someone believes society should work. As an example, the early classical liberals were 'left-wing' in the sense that they wanted free markets because they believed free markets would lead to social equality. Modern free-marketers tend to be right-wing because they believe free markets give proper scope to what they see as natural inequalities between people, whereas "government tyranny" always results from attempts to make equal what can never truly be equal. Free-market politics are as often about reinforcing social inequalities of various kinds as they are about free markets for their own sake.

 

[Berzerker]

It's anything but obvious to me. All the paeans to property have a clear meaning: when democracy threatens property, out come the jackboots.

Who wears the jackboots when slavery and fascism threaten property?

 

[El_Machinae]

I can't use percentages, but I will say that are reasonable portion of the self-proclaimed Libertarians that I know tend to be fairly civilly libertarian as well. Open borders, no restriction on marriage, Etc. But it will look sometimes like they are aggressive, because they will also support the right to work with who you choose to work with instead of being forced to assume a customer base.

 

[stinkubus]

That's literally the entire game. It's opposition to civil rights dressed up in the language of freedom.