Election

[nosystemd]

Few words have been completely neutered like fascist. My personal interpretation of the word is based on Evola's writings who I'd consider a pretty good source for understanding fascism. Nowadays it could mean pretty much anything.

True enough, though if someone really needs an entire book to define a single word then maybe it's getting overcomplicated. "Love" has a similar problem, though I don't think it's neutered, just muddled. Evola is an odd choice for an authority because the bulk postdates the establishment of fascism itself-- it's like defining agriculture based on quotes from the Grigg brothers (Ore-Ida potatoes).

Based on Smedley Butler's warnings in the 1930s, I define it simply as "replacement of the Constitution with corporate rule". That works for my purposes, it lines up with history, and I don't know any dictionary that insists words can only have the sole definition (many have two or more).

I'm not sure "corporate rule" is exactly the same as fascism, and I'm not certain replacing the Constitution is fascism, though I'm pretty confident that replacing the Constitution with corporate rule is.

I'm doubly certain that we are witnessing it now. But I'm sympathetic to those that insist it happened earlier. They certainly tried. If you know a better word for "replacing the Constitution [and the will of The People] with corporate rule" than "fascism" go right ahead. Either way, it's treason. But that doesn't necessarily make it fascist. It was however, considered fascist I believe, at a time when corporations were plotting similar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_ ... ee_reports and when global fascism was first spreading its wings in Europe. So if people are mistaken about it being fascism, they aren't too unreasonable for it.

The McCormack–Dickstein Committee was a bit like the 9/11 Commission of its day. I'm not here to sell you any theories about 9/11, only the law that passed in the following October.

Here is how I interpret the past 87 years:

* 1933: Business plot, IBM involvement in Germany, Fascism in Italy

* Project Paperclip (went on a long time)

* 1947: Cold War begins

* 1961: Eisenhower warning

* 1970: Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 (War on Drugs begins)

* 1980s: relaxation of election regulations

* 1990-1991: Gulf War, Cold War ends, Gulf War ends, trade agreements are becoming the core of foreign policy

* 1995: Omnibus Antiterrorism Act, similar to Patriot Act written by Biden

* 1998: DMCA poses existential threat to all libraries

* 2001: Patriot Act, War on Terror

* 2007: Amazon controls your books after "purchase", circumvention is a crime. (Short story "The Right to Read" becomes a prophecy instead of a warning)

* 2016: Openly fascist leader elected (feel free to dispute, but IMO it's pretty simple)

* 2019: Police start asking people to put video doorbells on their own homes

2020:

* Police trial program to livestream video from everyone's video doorbells

* Openly corporate fascist and self-proclaimed author of most fascist (and Unconstitutional) law in history elected-- not that I expect anybody to agree.


Proof? Certainly not.

Conclusion? America has marched towards fascism for 87 years and isn't done heading there.

Debate: No it hasn't. We've made progress too.

That summary of the debate isn't at all fair, but IMO that's what I think we are basically debating.

It's not up to me, I expect others to have their own take on it. What I do know, is that Orwell and Bradbury were right about too much. And that isn't really improving.

And this ignores everything that's gone on in South America, Europe, Australia and Asia. If you throw those events in, it's even less encouraging.

Mae (in the comic) has a sentient AI and a demigod watching over, and doesn't have to worry about this. I don't blame Mae, lots of people have ways to be OK with all this. Even if it's just a comic, if we escape to Mae's world (I love reading the comic, 99% of the time and I've read the whole thing) this might all be OK. But I wish it was as reassuring as having a sentient AI and a demigod watching over us. That'd be nice.

But even in Mae's world, Tony's fairly broad apathy reflects the will of The People accurately enough. He could fight this-- but he won't except where it affects him directly.

[τ > π]

We interned Japanese people. We prosecuted "Un-American" activities.
See the RationalWiki (2020-11-02) Corporatism article.

[Deacon]

We interned Japanese people.

So therefore we were fascists? That’s enough?

We prosecuted "Un-American" activities.

I’m interested to learn more.

PS Corporatism isn’t fascism.

[nosystemd]

Corporatism isn’t fascism.

That may not have anything to do with anything that's been said.

Are you implying that if corporations are involved, it is therefore NOT fascism? I have to ask because your statement is very short. Also, this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporati ... orporatism

"Italian Fascism involved a corporatist political system in which the economy was collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level."

Corporatism may not be the same thing as fascism in all instances. I think τ > π's argument is that "we have done fascist things"-- a large part of my own argument is "how many fascist things do we have to participate in before our leaders (at least) are considered fascist?" This is known as a duck test.

My argument begins there, it's the easiest way to do this, but I also think that if we were able to move past the duck test we would likely find further cause for concern. I'm not sure that's necessary, but I do think it would add to the argument.

Personally I'm content with the duck test, because whether it is "fascism" or something that passes the duck test for fascism, it is decidedly un-American and decidedly far from freedom or "liberty and justice for all". That's the real problem here, whatever label we choose to affix to it. Genocide has a similar problem. As long as there are members of a people around to talk about it, politicians can quibble about whether acts of genocide really are, even as the extermination continues.

If this sort of thing applied to simple murder, a person could go around killing while we debated as to precisely what sort of murder it is before we could even say it was murder. That's pretty much the state of global politics, as far as I can tell. Of course self-defence arguments are relevant, but the point is that quibbling for decades on end has taken the place of action-- even when it comes to international war criminals. In a world like that, talk of justice or law becomes a farce, and petitioning for redress of grievances just a weekend hobby.

They hold the anti-war signs in July, then they re-elect the war criminals in November-- and these are the very same people. Peace, Justice, and constitutional rights were left off the ballot for 20 years, and they still have the nerve to call it an election.

[τ > π]

Any fascist activity is sufficient for being fascist. More fascist acts => more fascism. How fascist are we?

[Deacon]

Are you implying that if corporations are involved, it is therefore NOT fascism?

You might be inferring that, but that’s not what I’m implying. While corporations and corporatism both have a “Corp” Latin root, don’t confuse the two. Business will find a way to involve itself no matter what.

[nosystemd]

Business will find a way to involve itself no matter what.

That's why An-caps don't bother me. They seem glib at times, though I have yet to think of a way to make a stateless society work without constant friction between An-caps and An-coms.

They both seem to have a limited scope for caring about things I suppose would likely remain important. Commerce doesn't bother me-- nullifying the will of The People does. The government is meant to be a servant-- if the commercial sector co-opts the government and the people lose that, then the people become the servants. This is the opposite of what was intended (or a least offered).