Holy ********* Crazy

[Dill]

(05-31-2017, 03:10 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Xxlt didn't feel so when he decided to post a "PSA" to insult my views and put me next to fascists (who are not inherently right wing either).

They don't need you to make excuses for them. I know exactly what it was designed to show. Anyone who doesn't agree with them is a fascist. Just like anyone who doesn't agree with their (ie Griever in another thread) is a racist. Just like anyone who doesn't agree with them is a sexist or a bigot.

It's getting really tedious to go on this board (or really most places on the internet these days) and all it is, is a big circle jerk of Trump hate, and if you don't agree, you will be called some of the worst things imaginable regardless of the fact that fascism and belief in personal rights and free will are pretty much opposites. That's the MO these days.

Just getting real old.

Well I can understand your frustration somewhat. Trumpsters do get called fascists and racists and sexists and so forth. I am not sure which threads you are referring to, but taking the accusations case by case, sometimes Trumpsters are called racist for defending racist policies or statements by Trump. So whether the accusation is unfair depends on what the Trumpster is claiming or defending.

As far as fascism as a political epithet in the US, you are right about the misapplication. Virtually ALL fascist movements in Europe are statist. They subordinate individuals to the state, arguing it is the state which provides individuals with their "destiny" and the will of the state is embodied in the will of an immensely capable and visionary leader. Outside the state the individual is nothing. That is why fascist states are totalitarian, nothing is outside them, no civil society. And all fascisms reject the notion of universal human equality. Further, virtually all such movements love to embed individuals of all ages and both sexes in military-style, uniformed units, and then drill them to instrumentalize body as well as will. 

Few Americans go for this sort of thing. And Trump is not the kind of self-disciplined leader such a movement requires. American conservatives are mostly classical liberals. Individuals guide their own destinies in a free market. The state's role should be minimal--national defense, courts, police. Negative liberty, not positive. But right wingers also tend to be authoritarian, especially regarding law and order and foreign policy. That, among other things, is why people make Nazi analogies. And that is why one can generate lists of similar policy goals, from tightening immigration to opposing racial equality to loosening gun control to the hypernationalism of putting Germany/America first.