When things get extreme they get similar.

‘Extreme’ is a vague word, but when you’re talking about communism and fascism (or more generally ‘far-left’ and ‘far-right’ ideology), that’s a false generalization known as ‘horseshoe theory’.

There are many clear counter-examples when talking about communism, like the entire school of anacho-communist ideologies and the existing societies stemming from them (including the Zapatista territory in Mexico with a population of around 360,000, or the FEJUVE federation in Bolivia, or the many anarchist communes around the world).

As for the more authoritarian versions (Stalinist, Maoist and related ideologies), despite their strong one-party systems, they are still extremely different to fascist ideologies in their goals and how they use their strong state to achieve them. To say ‘they are the same in many respects’ would apply just as equally to liberal capitalist states like the USA and allies, with their infamously militarized police, constant wars and imperial militarism, strong cult of nationalism (for the US, it’s centered on the Founding Fathers), mass imprisonment and state interference in bodily autonomy.

If the citizens weren’t tacitly benefiting, in any way from the resource extraction of the bourgeoisie, maybe you’d have a point there; but since they do, you don’t

Someone tacitly benefiting from a state’s imperialism doesn’t stop them simultaneously being victims of the absolute horror that is capitalism. That’s a big part of why even in the most exploitative regimes there are millions of anti-capitalists who engage in international solidarity. The capitalist class like to pretend there’s some national unity at play when they screw over the proletariat, but it’s all clearly bullshit.

Just fuck off if you’re gonna go to bat for a settler before you waste any more of both of our time.

I don’t bat for settlers. I’m publicly replying to your public reply, because it was sectarian in a way which is harmful to the international socialist movement. If you think this conversation is wasting your time, then just ignore it.

If I remember correctly, the admin (a US Lolbertarian) finally closed it down, among other reasons, when they realized the resident nazis there were not just joking to troll da libs and actually believed the things they were saying about ‘jewish shapeshifters’. They wanted a free speech haven, and so they got the people we collectively told to shut up.

Why would it? It seems like it would just be similar to the circlejerk forums they’ve have for decades, alienated from the mainstream and unable to normalize their ideas and recruit so easily.

It sounds as if you’re using the atrocities of the French bourgeoisie as a way to excuse nationalist bigotry against a people. The French state is imperialist and colonist, the French citizens are mostly victims of capitalism, not the settlers.

Obviously it’s a different situation with French people overseas, but we’re not in that context.

I don’t believe that fascism can be defined as an ideology, because fascists aren’t ideologically coherent.

It very clearly can’t be one coherent ideology, just like liberalism isn’t, just like communism isn’t. I’m definitely not trying to claim even those individual types (e.g. Italian Fascism, Nazism) are consistent, internally logical, or any of that. Rather, there are common themes, ideas and features which group them together and distinguish them from other ideologies. These groups form a model of relationships between values, ideas and behaviors.

The reason I bring historical circumstance into this is because this model acknowledges attributes like militarism and class collaboration as core components of fascism, with the implied question: why did militarism and class collaborationism take hold in some cases (where a fascist regime rose) and not in others (where it fizzles or is defeated)? Historical factors like World War I and the subsequent wave of communist uprisings are related to why fascist ideologies were developed and were supported by many ex-military and bourgeois. And that is why the conservative racist chauvinism in the neoliberal US and Europe is taking remarkably different shapes to the fascist movements of the 1920s, despite those similarities which guide your definition all being present.

An example of this is neo-Nazi movements like Patriot Front and their international equivalents, which do not receive the blessing of the owning class, which are floundering and failing worse than the British Union of Fascists. There are reasons why they can’t replicate the same political strategy and tactics as they did before, and some of those reasons are because we now have different environmental factors. They can’t recruit defeated ex-servicemen en masse, so they now primarily recruit vulnerable alienated nerdy teen boys. They can’t yet (and often don’t want to) earn the blessing of the bourgeoisie at scale because the populations have shifted in a more progressive direction. So then we see neo-Nazi ‘Siege’ tactics emerge, which are inspired by late-1800s Propaganda of the Deed anarchist tactics, and that is not going well for them either.

Then, we have White Nationalist and/or Christian Nationalists as politicians and billionaires. They often don’t want militarism or have military values. They probably don’t want class collaboration (because they’re winning in the class struggle). So like their goals, their tactics and strategies will overall differ to the fascist movements, despite the shared chauvanism.

If you have suggestions on how to adjust or change the definition, it would be helpful.

I worry that it is too broad, discarding what makes fascist movements unique. I believe the part about violence is ultimately redundant, as I assume systematic chauvinism itself makes individual violence and violent repression likely. The definition, in my view, is really just describing a strategy of using chauvinistic hierarchy, and I don’t understand why that is special enough to be called ‘fascism’, if anything that will just trivialize fascist movements and make the word itself banal, since for example xenophobic chauvinism is a strategy used by almost all governments worldwide, and which does lead to domestic violence.

Carl and the Aqua Team make their position on piracy very clear.

https://inv.us.projectsegfau.lt/watch?v=MCTlcJMCSpM

Don’t know why you’d give a joke answer at all, but there’s nothing wrong with unsweetened yogurt (e.g. greek) on potato. Put chives on there, maybe some zataar. Or use it to offset a chilli sauce, make a barbecue sauce creamy. I’d even just have it by itself on fries.

How is that Stalinist? Censorship isn’t some unique rare policy, even 5EYES countries regularly challenge the legality of E2EE.

I wonder if it’s useful to characterize fascism as a political strategy, as it seems this might ignore the historical conditions which form it and guide it (e.g. returning military, petit-booj resistance to the labor movement to preserve their class interests) and therefore inform us of how other classes will generally act as the labor movement grows.

How would you describe fascism as a political strategy? Does this mean, for example, using scapegoats (like racial minorities and queer folk) as a threat to rally for dictatorial powers?

1) Ideologies are frameworks which guide actions, not a list of symptoms.

Ideologies are formed by material conditions in history, not just a group of ideas put together. That’s why neoliberalism and fascism are also distinct, despite all the surface-level similarities we can see around the world.

Fascism wasn’t just invented by someone saying ‘why doesn’t one person have all the power and get rid of minorities’. Fascism grew out of the conditions of the 1910s in Europe during a wave of socialist and communist uprisings which threatened the bourgeois, quelled by returning soldiers from WWI. That’s why it’s militaristic and ultranationalist, that’s why it’s anti-communist and anti-liberal.

2. This list ignores other core traits, including those listed in the very next sentence after that quote, such as anti-communism anti-liberalism and anti-democratic ideas, class collaborationist, traditionalism w/ selective modernism, primary support base among the petit bourgeois, denouncement of ‘[haute] bourgeois capitalism’ despite often working alongside the haute booj to subdue the lower class.

Fascism is born out of anti-communist sentiment in the petit-bourgeoisie (lower owning class), while two of those countries are ruled by communist parties. Russia is a haute-bourgeoisie capitalist state, not class collaborationist or petit-bourgious. China and North Korea openly dominate the haute booj rather than vice versa. Contrast these all against fascist states.

3. Saying ‘Check’ for cases which clearly don’t check:

• The CPC (‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’) and WPK (Juche) are not far-right. They’re both generally considered far-left, and certainly not far-right (FWIW, ‘left’ and ‘right’ are a poor model for understanding politics).

• Ultranationalism is not ‘lots of nationalism’, it’s when a country “asserts or maintains detrimental hegemony, supremacy, or other forms of control over other nations (usually through violent coercion) to pursue its specific interests.” North Korea clearly doesn’t have control over other nations.

• China does not believe in militaristism.

• What natural social hierarchy do these states believe in?

• Russia is individualist, not collectivist.

• What regimentation is there?

Some of those other points are debatable (such as congress party structures with a president being dictatorships, where fascists explicitly denounce that as liberalism), but these are some which are just blatant.

I’m being pedantic because lives are at stake, and recognizing different ideologies is how you learn to combat them.

But if you want to treat it like a joke, go ahead. [edit: redacting petty insult]

If you’re going to complain about people knowing what they’re talking about, you should at least use the right words to describe things.

You can call Russia, China and North Korea dictatorships, but each of those three are just literally not fascist. Fascism arises from different circumstances and acts differently, even if there are surface similarities to notice, and those differences are important to understand if we want to analyze them and prevent them happening here. Russia, in particular, is important to understand when looking at the USA’s current neoliberal nightmare.

I doubt Russia is much better but it’s probably at least slightly better.

Regardless of what one thinks of the USSR (and there’s plenty to be critical of), its fall was disastrous and is the reason why it’s now filled with billionaires doing just billionaire things and at prolonged war with Ukraine. I can’t think of any way it is now better. The place was pillaged and the people screwed over even worse than they had before. “Shock therapy” is what they call the liberalization process.

With the exception of Belarus, the Eastern European states adopted shock therapy. Nearly all of these post-Soviet states suffered deep and prolonged recessions after shock therapy,  with poverty increasing more than tenfold. The resulting crisis of the 1990s was twice as intense as the Great Depression in the countries of Western Europe and the United States in the 1930s.

The cost to human life was profound, as Russia suffered the worst peace time increase in mortality experienced by any industrialized country.  For the years 1987 and 1988, roughly 2% of Russia population lived in poverty (surviving on less than $4 a day), by 1993-1995, it was 50%

This is a good point. The pseudonymous internet is like a confessional booth. I can bluntly say all my political beliefs here with little-to-no consequence that I can’t solve by registering a new account. There’s no risk of alienating a friend or family member who disagrees. As an extreme case, I’ve met a couple of people online who can be legally killed for their political views (e.g. not following the state religion). So the internet can provide more comfort in free expression and therefore more people arguing over differences.

I’m starting to feel like all this hate and division is manufactured

Even putting aside biases or conspiracies, mass media and (for-profit) social media has an economic incentive to get people passionate and interested and viewing more ads. So there are systematic factors at play, which I’d say are enhanced by digital technology.

Reminder to be aware of darknet mirrors like I2P sites and Tor .onion services - domains aren’t controlled by a company so they can’t just be taken down by a legal request.

For z-lib, the Wikipedia article lists their .onion and I2P addresses (I haven’t verified them so check before bookmarking): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-Library

When we bump up posts that we like instead of relevant ones, those things get the visibility. I think.

Yep, I haven’t actually checked the ‘Hot’ algorithm code (it’s publicly viewable) but I believe so. And there’s another related tough-to-solve phenomenon in any social media site where the most populist, simple, agreeable things are likely to get the most upvotes/likes/etc., and therefore the most reward. So unfortunately, a front page is often filled with low-meaning content like those jokes, or shallow but agreeable populist platitudes (which there’s nothing wrong with if you’re here for entertainment, but is an issue for more serious communities). I think tons of moderation is also the only cure for that, because I can’t think of an alternate bump system that works (for example, forums which use the ‘last bumped’ system reward posts for getting replies, so flame and troll posts that start rapid arguments rise to the top instead, and posts often just say ‘bump’!)

As in, I don’t see what would be done besides tons of moderation or short post restrictions. Something I don’t find feasible

I agree. There could be tricks like auto-moderation software detecting replies that a comm/instance staff considers to be an issue (e.g. a reply just saying ‘this’ or ‘lol’) and auto-replying with a caution against low-effort posting, but false positives could be a pain so it all comes back to more moderation staff in the end. It’s ultimately a network with a very open and growing community, unless you’re in a smaller private community. And Lemmy enables those to be created, so I can be happy with that if I ever want to create a more serious place.

I don’t notice that issue with ‘comm’, but maybe that’s just because I’ve been around it and using it for years (just like the indistinct word ‘sub’ becomes meaningful and distinct in context once you see ‘subreddit’ a few times). It was a bit odd the first couple of times I saw it because I already associated the term with ‘communications’, like ‘send out comms’.

Liberalism (I don’t mean that as in ‘left wing’ or ‘progressive’, I mean it as in ‘the Enlightenment political ideologies about liberty which the USA was founded upon’) is founded on ideals like free speech and political association. They won’t be prosecuted in the USA for being Nazis, they’re constitutionally protected. Institutions will protect their ability to do this.

It allows us to identify them, but justice will not be delivered by the institutions here. That’s where the community must come in and act, legally or otherwise. They can’t offload their responsibility onto police this time. The community must organize and defend itself against fascists. Them being out and about just means we haven’t made them scared and hurt.