ToastedPlanet

The people in my life aren’t Nazis

I know the right-wing infosphere has brainwashed multiple members of my family. I don't have a way to check the percentage of people I've known in my life that are now brainwashed. I know that my life would have been lesser had I not met every single one of them. I don't see the people in my life as a purity test, they're still the same people. What happened to them is a reminder that we must first and foremost defeat fascism, the political ideology.

We defeated the Nazis, but not their ideas. Fascism is a collection of ideas, so it's an ideology and a political one at that. People had to invent these ideas. They were not an inherent part of human psychology. Fascism is a collective puzzle that we all have to solve together.

Violence in self-defense is necessary to stall for time. However, no matter how many fascists die, if fascist ideas are not defeated then there will always be more fascists. There is no benefit in breaking the social contract of tolerance first. We are in an information race, so the spreading of true information is always more useful than violence.

People should defended themselves regardless of the political ideology of their attackers. Once that's done for the day though it's back to spreading socialism. Fascism is growing because neo-liberalism denies people the ability to solve their economic problems. Which in our case are caused by late-stage capitalism. edit: typo

Thankfully in the long term we've chosen love where as the fascists have chosen hate. So eventually the fascists are the ones who will be tired. Unfortunately we don't have time on our side to wait for that.

Your argument is a 1:1 match to arguments made by red fascists, ie tankies, ie authoritarian communists. It was easy for me to spot because I have seen it before. Hopefully it will now be easy for you to spot as well.

It calls for the preservation of an in-group by the extermination of an out-group.

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Fascists deserve fascism, but they deserve to be the victims of it.

It's not self-defense if the fascists haven't done anything violent or destructive. Unfortunately the fascists in the US have been doing violent and destructive things and are close to completing their takeover of our democracy. As an exmaple, there were January 6th rioters and organizers who were arrested and imprisoned. However, there are plenty of people who would meet criteria that would make them varying degrees of fascists, but haven't done anything yet.

There are overt fascists who espouse fascist ideology and talking points, but haven't performed acts of domestic terrorism like January 6th. There are people who want their prejudices validated and want to return to an imaged past. There are people who have bought into the lie that minorities are the cause of their problems instead of systemic issues. There are people in the Republican Party who are neo-cons who want to work with the fascists. There are people who shout both sides further to the left of the neo-cons. There are neo-liberals who want to keep things the same despite our downward spiral into fascism.

A christo-fascist regime is being built primarily thanks to the actions and inactions of people using our system without directly hurting anyone or destroying any infrastructure. The fascist movement is spreading ideas, violating democratic norms, upending the guard rails in our democracy, filling the government with like minded individuals, and in the case of Trump, violating the law and stalling out the court system. The Supreme Court ended the rule of law on July 1st, 2024, not by shooting people, but with the stoke of a pen.

The fascists build the system to target groups for elimination in a way that doesn't directly harm anyone until the system is in place. Your argument calls for the elimination of people based on political ideology.

they tend to target the least dangerous people first.

The enemies of fascists are at the same time both too strong and too weak. They claim the out-groups they target are both inferior to and a threat to the in-group. According to the fascists the out-groups must be eliminated to preserve the in-group. And the in-group is justified in eliminating the out-groups because of the in-group's superiority. This is a contradiction, because a superior group should have nothing to fear from an inferior group.

The fascists divide the population into in-groups and out-groups as a mechanism of control, usually based on physical characteristics. As part of their crusade against out-groups they actually have to destroy the out-groups. But the fascists need an out-group to exist in order to stay in power. If there is no threat to the in-group, then there is no use in having a fascist strongman.

To solve this problem, fascists have to repeat the process of dividing the population into in-groups and out-groups. The Nazis divided people into a extensive racial hierarchy from the get-go. This process repeats itself until no one is left. It is not a slippery slope, but rather the nature of fascism as a self-destructive ideology. Inevitably the fascists are defeated military or destroy the entire population. In the end, no one meets the ideal qualifications of a superior human that the fascists imagine.

Your argument does the same thing with ideology. It calls for the preservation of an in-group by the extermination of an out-group. The out-group is both a threat to the in-group and yet inferior. Rather than striving for purity of the body your argument seeks purity of thought. It is the same outcome sold with a different scam. Once everyone considered to be too fascist to be allowed to live has been killed the next out-group will be on the chopping block.

There's a popular adage that says, scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. The neo-liberals will be deemed to dangerous to keep alive because they obstruct systemic change and their ideology leads to fascism. The progressives will be deemed well meaning, but under closer examination they aren't left enough. Their policies don't allow workers to seize the means of production.

The social democrats, while socialists, believe in democracy. And what is democracy to the far left but an incubation chamber for fascism. The democratic socialists are also open to a political socialist revolution, ie democracy, and cannot be trusted by the far left. What are socialists but people who believe in an ideology that is only a stepping stone to communism. Communists who want a stateless society are simply deluding themselves according to the authoritarian communists. The authoritarian communists believe only an authoritarian dictatorship can preserve the worker's revolution.

We move so far left we end up wrapping around back to the far-right in the form of authoritarian communism. The most substantial difference between the red fascism your argument is proposing and the fascism we are seeing in the US today is that they divide people on different metrics. These ideologies are all self-destructive because there is no stopping point. No one is good enough by any metric, and so what these ideologies are really saying is that we are all better off dead. No one deserves fascism because life is worth living no matter our flaws.

We are experiencing late-stage capitalism because neo-liberals refuse to change our institutions. Unless we do something, the US is going to have an oligarchy of billionaires that rally around a christo-fascist dictator.

I am not arguing the current state of our country is a bump in the road. I am arguing for a strategy that amounts to a last ditch effort to avert fascism. The fascist movement will not go away if Biden wins this election. Voting for Biden is only the first step that has to be done if we want to prevent our country from becoming a christo-fascist dictatorship. Neo-liberalism got us into this mess and the longer we stick with neo-liberalism the larger the fascist movement will become.

All we are getting by electing Biden is 2024 is a chance to elect people with better ideas and a willingness to use political power to make systemic changes in 2026 and 2028. We need socialists and progressives in political positions. There is no value in giving up early. We might as well vote because we get the same result if we try and fail as not trying. edit: typo

We should defend ourselves from fascists who break the social contract of tolerance. However, if we preemptively target individuals based on ideology we end up with the same problem as the fascists.

Organizing people into a hierarchy based on political ideology has the same issues as a hierarchy based on any other metric. Each time the least desirable group is removed from the population the next group in the hierarchy is at the bottom. By the logic that the most far-right group deserves extermination, we eventually remove every group of people. Even the furthest-left group eventually becomes the furthest-right group by process of elimination.

Are you a bot? Keep saying the same thing without addressing what I’m saying.

Is there anything I could do to convince you otherwise? I have refuted these arguments multiple times. No matter how many times they are repeated they are still just as flawed.

you are claiming that you either vote for Biden or democracy ends

I am claiming that we have a chance to save democracy by voting in Biden in 2024. It is not a guarantee, but it will be possible to elect candidates who are not neo-liberals or fascists in 2026 and 2028. If Trump is elected in 2024 democracy will end. We would not even have this opportunity if we did not live in a democracy.

if there is no real practical choice, there is no real democracy.

Averting fascism and death camps is a real choice. Having the opportunity to build a better society is a real choice. There is still democracy for now.

edit: Also, the option to end democracy is a choice. It's an option that can happen in a democracy. And there are fascists who want to choose this option. We need to out vote them.

At the core of self-destructive ideologies like fascism is the idea that we are all better off dead. By asserting that anyone can deserve fascism we are agreeing with that idea and we are conceding the idea that life is worth living.

We had primaries this year. As per usual the incumbent president won their primary. Now the American people have two choices for president. With Biden we have a chance at electing progressives and socialists in 2026 and 2028. We will not have that opportunity with Trump.

I believe people are going to do the right thing this November. We need to be vocal and vote. But no matter what happens, no one deserves fascism. We're all still people.