Fascism was never stopped. Can never be stopped. Fascism is not a political ideology, it is an expression of human psychology.
If someone in your life is becoming a fascist, like is happening in many of our lives, do you get a gun and kill them? Does that solve fascism in your life? Perhaps you merely punch them until they stop being a fascist. Is this really actionable advice?
Fascism is growing because people are afraid of an increasingly uncertain future that they have no power over. Threatening them with violence will only make them more afraid and draw even more on what fascism offers them. The people in our lives need love, not violence.
Fascism is not a political ideology
“Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement […]” (wiki, although I’m sure you’ll soon tell us that Wikipedia is not a valid source because you don’t understand the difference between using Wikipedia as a source on Lemmy vs. in a scientific article)
The people in our lives need love, not violence.
The people in my life aren’t Nazis
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.
What the – and I simply can’t emphasize this enough – fuck does it have to do with PuRiTy TeStInG if I don’t want to associate or spend time with people whose political ideologies would fucking literally have me stripped of human rights if not outright murdered because of my gender and/or gender identity? What sort of an obligation do I have to keep those people in my life if they have publicly stated opinions that make it clear that I may not actually be physically safe in their presence?
And no, I don’t have a way to “check the percentage of people I’ve known in my life that are now brainwashed” either you utter cabbage, I just don’t knowingly associate with extremists conservatives let alone literal Nazis. If somebody I know turns out to have fallen off the deep end, I just don’t keep associating with them. See, no magical PuRiTy TeStEr required?
So yes, great, good on you for being so accepting of people, I unironically commend you for that, but even though I have no idea who you are or what your background is, this comment – like a lot of the hugbox let’s defeat the nazis with love bullshit I’ve seen earlier – definitely feels like it’s coming from someone who’s got no experience with being on the receiving end of bigotry or misogyny. Easy to be a bit more understanding and accepting of Nazis when you wouldn’t be one of the first people they’d shove in a camp.
Edit: and I’m saying this as an avowed lover of hugboxes of various kinds. “Cute but will fight”
You seem to be absolving them of any responsibility here. Brainwashing isn’t magical, they have simply been convinced to be evil.
People are afraid of a uncertain future? When was it any different in the past? When did people have power over the future that we do not have today?
Climate change is a terrifying prospect with billions of people expected to be forced to move within our lifetimes. The people who claim not to believe it the loudest are in fact the ones most fearful of changes that they can not control. For only one example.
You act like the world is static. It is incredibly dynamic. All periods in human history are not interchangeable. Your point doesn’t seem to be that this point in history is not especially fertile for fascism, it’s that every point in history is equally fertile.
People are afraid of a uncertain future?
Who made the future uncertain?
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
