This also applies to a much broader group of political doctrines than only "fascist".
No question. A personal rule of thumb I have is that you can't really expect much change to come from people who have the power, even if they're philosophically opposed to those very same circumstances. People who are doing well within the present system or circumstances are sensitive to the slightest perturbation in that system or circumstances, nevermind a dramatic upheaval. Just on the way to work this morning, I was listening to a podcast about the housing crisis in "blue" (e.g. left-leaning) cities in the US, caused in part by "NIMBY-ism" in overwhelmingly Democratic, liberal, wealthy places like the coastal California cities and the Northeast.
The democracy had already failed decisively with Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. One could argue it failed even before that as parties opposed to the democracy (Nazis and KPD) already constituted a majority of the Reichstag before Hitler's appointment, and for several years prior the Chancellor had governed by decree as there was no majority in the legislature for any government or program.
Yes, definitely. By the time of Munich, everybody was already on the river heading for the roaring waterfall. The time to act was before that, maybe long before.
Run-of-the-mill despotism is absolutely preferable to the genocidal, starting-apocalyptic-race-wars kind.
That's unquestionably true, but I don't know if the drafters of the Munich Agreement knew what they were in for. Many of the things that make "nazi" and "fascist" such incendiary words today hadn't happened yet. I'm not sure what I would have done at Munich in '38, even if I was allowed to use my knowledge of the future. As you say, though, a regular ol' military junta would have been better than what we got.
I want to pick this apart a bit, because I've been following you and aelf (and I typically agree with the both of you). To me this is an example of someone preferring direct action (aelf) and someone preferring to talk things through (you). It's a "skin in the fight" vs. "no skin in the fight" kind of deal. I don't do this to put you down but the thread seems to have a hard time accepting aelf's very basic statements of what they're surrounded by, and what they have to live with.
I'm not speaking for "the thread", whoever that is. My comment was that separating behavior from ideology or character may make it easier to address the behavior. For example, if we say a person is racist, we're commenting on their character. If they're not a committed racist, we're making them defend a position they may not actually care much about in the first place. Even if we're right, and they really are a committed racist, we're not going to accomplish anything by attacking them, anyway. By attacking someone, you make them defend; I can't think of a situation where that isn't true.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by "direct action", but talking and taking action are not mutually exclusive. I think that these anti-democracy and anti-liberty laws Texas recently passed need to be fought, even as we talk about why they're so bad. (This also might be a good time to talk about why we should have been more irate back when Mitch McConnell refused to even let Merrick Garland be considered by the Senate after he was nominated by President Obama. I know this isn't the topic of this thread, not exactly, but there's a
direct line from There to Here. It's not even some kind of complex maze of Byzantine political maneuvering, in this instance: Mitch McConnell blatantly upended the Constitutional process for confirming Supreme Court nominees in 2015, and 6 years later, Roe v Wade is under threat. A-to-B-to-C, and we're a step closer to becoming the Republic of Gilead. But I digress...
)
Claiming that anyone who claims a certain label is "thick" ties into that. The same for any claim about Dylan Roof (or whoever). The judge in his case considered him highly intelligent, according to reports. How do you square your assumption with that?
I'm curious what the judge was referring to, I didn't follow the trial in detail. But, in short, I say Roof is a douchebag because he gunned down a church full of people in an effort to start a race war. That's it. I don't think it matters whether he's good at chess or is well-spoken or has read
Moby Dick or is a good listener with his girlfriends. If it turns out there's some other explanation for his behavior, if he's diagnosed with a mental illness or something, I might amend my opinion.
You assume these people aren't (what is typically considered to be) intelligent. Some of them won't be. They're people. People range. But there will be (what we commonly consider) smart people in these groups too.
If you're referring to my dismissal of an "intellectual vanguard" in the American far right (e.g. people who might approach genuine fascism), I'm curious to know who that could be. There was no leadership evident in Charlottesburg or on January 6th, and I think it's both telling and a bit predictable that, afaik, nobody has stepped forward to claim either one after the fact.
Not only is it dangerous to write them all off as not very bright, it is used by people to diminish the threat of what these people can represent. "oh they're just thick" is a handy explanation, but it doesn't actually help when said person is terrifying someone(s), or committing actual violence.
I'm not "writing them off." I think ignorance is incredibly dangerous, and me calling someone dumb doesn't diminish the danger they represent. If anything, it heightens it. I think ignorant people probably scare me more than anything. I think Dylann Roof, and the people at Charlottesville and the January 6th attack on the Capitol are all incredibly dangerous, and I use them as examples precisely because they've already demonstrated just how dangerous they are.
Am I right? Not necessarily. But the problem here is you're using these assumptions of yours to argue against aelf who has a far more direct contact (and separate culture) to specific things going on in the US, that you yourself are (presumably) somewhat removed from. I follow (on social media) journalists and activists that were active at Charlottesville and the like. Some are people that live in these places. They're not some disassociated person from somewhere else there for a purely ideological reason. They're there because they're local. And these "boneheads", as you put it, put these locals in actual, measurable danger. Right-wingers will downplay this, or flat out excuse it, but it's dangerous to talk about how these Unite The Right folks (or whoever else) aren't intelligent because it precludes the alternative. That some of them are.
So I guess a question I'd want to ask is: why do you assume this?
The proof is in the pudding. What did Charlottesville accomplish? What did January 6th accomplish? What did Timothy McVeigh or Dylann Roof accomplish? If their goal all along was getting sent to prison, then well done, I suppose. Could've done that without killing people, though.
Anecdotally, I've tried all sorts of conversation techniques, and absolutely nothing has helped even one iota. This is the problem in relating individual scenarios to anything greater.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy what you do works for you, or is at least the best path to success. But I don't think it should be taken as more than that, because we have plenty of examples knocking around that any amount of polite, constructive discussion has had absolutely zero impact on.
It's something that takes energy. Time, and patience. It's something that might work on friends and colleagues, but not anyone more distant than that. And
fascism in particular is a tricky one, which stories
like this showcase (I'd dig up the actual Tweets but the author is very active on Twitter and it would take a Long Time). Conservatism isn't fascism, right? There may be links, there may be demographics where things overlap, but handling one isn't like handling the other.
I was quick to point out that the person I was talking to was a colleague and not a fascist. If anyone has stretched my anecdote too broadly, it wasn't me. Also, I used the story about the Saudi men partly because, just by coincidence, I'd heard the story that very morning, but also because it demonstrated that those conservative men already held the belief that it's fine for women to work outside the home. Nobody explained it to them, nobody changed their minds, they already believed it. They were just afraid to express it, nevermind act on it, because nobody had talked to them about it.
In the story in the Reddit post you linked, do we suppose the guy with the Nazi memorabilia changed his ways and/or beliefs after getting kicked out of the bar? To be clear, I don't blame the bartender for not wanting to deal with it. He's got a business to run. I'm just saying his refusal to deal with it probably didn't do anything helpful, and when he says, "you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people" I think he's wrong on three counts*.
* (1) Their arguments probably aren't reasonable, they're almost assuredly misinformed and illogical; (2) ignoring them doesn't do a thing, it's just convenient in the moment - but the bartender isn't a social worker or a civics professor, he's got a business to run; (3) for most of them, their end goal is to live a reasonable life, whatever they think that is - the villain is usually the hero of his own story.
My point was purely rooted in the notion that these people don't have two braincells to rub together. I appreciate later on in your post you clarify that ignorance is dangerous (fully agreed there), but in my opinion it's dangerous to call smart people not smart, because it creates an expectation that they cannot come up with things themselves.
