Ben Royce 🇺🇦
Everyone lucid in the West is freaking out about the rise of fascist thinking, well, everywhere.
Why? Didn't we defeat this obscenity 80 years ago after much suffering? Why is it resurging?
The problem is not that people don't learn from history (they don't but it's another issue), the problem is that fascism is always with us. Since the dawn of time, and forever more.
All fascism requires is:
1. ignorance
2. indecency
3. a demagogue to yoke these walnut brains and ride them to power
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
At one time in history every disagreement was settled violently. We've replaced that (officially, of course violent disagreements continue) with courts, the law. We didn't just decide to do this, it took much suffering to get to this better understanding of how to resolve things.
In the same way, we have to get a better mechanism to handle fascism in society. Job #1 is: it can't be tolerated. This is the biggest hurdle, I think, because it's easy to go "hypocrite! you're intolerant!"
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
But I can say this:
Fascism is always stopped. With two mechanisms:
1. Fascism weakens itself as much as its enemies. An ingroup and an outgroup are established, but the ingroup is further subdivided such that lower classes of the ingroup become new outgroups, cannon fodder.
2. Fascism always must expand. Fascism doesn't exist without an other, an enemy, to deliver pain and suffering to. Eventually it bites off too much and after much much suffering for everyone else, it finally dies.
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
Many are familiar with Karl Popper's "The Paradox of Tolerance." If you're not: briefly, if we are tolerant of intolerance, intolerance will grow and kill tolerance.
But it's not really a paradox, it's simple logic: intolerance of intolerance *is* tolerance (a negative of a negative is a positive). The problem is many (not all) intolerant types don't understand they are intolerant. Their indecency and ignorance just "makes sense" so they are incensed when tolerant folk go after them.
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
This confusion works for those who are hateful and *know* what they are doing, it becomes a wedge issue to further divide: "see! They are hypocrites! They don't tolerate you while they speak of tolerance!"
So what's the solution.
Well I don't know. But there needs to be one.
Because we know what preceded WWII, and we see the parallels today. And we are doomed to repeat this loop forever, to monumental suffering, and possibly the death of civilization, unless we figure out a mechanism.
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
So there's the lesson: fascism is suffering for us, one way or another, forever. So it is always far better to nip it in the bud early, when it is small, rather than wait, obliviously, and have to face it when it grows larger and is much more dangerous.
This is why we are repeating history: "this isn't a big threat," "just wait and it will go away on its own," "too much effort, can't be bothered," etc.
And then you simply face something worse later.
So a thesis to contain fascism:
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
Domestically:
Every act of racism. Every instance of misogyny. Every bit of homophobia. Every aspect of transphobia. Classism, religious bigotry, etc: it needs to be stomped out up front.
If you let it slide, it builds to Trump.
Internationally:
Every little Transnistria. Every little invasion of Georgia. Every little swiping of Crimea: it needs to be stomped out up front.
If you let it slide, it builds and grows to full on invasion of Ukraine, threatening to drag us now into WWIII.
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
Granted, it's possible to be *too* aggressive here.
That casual misogynist might just need a little talking to. While a hardcore reaction might backfire.
And WWIII right up front over a minor land disagreement... yeah, no.
So again, Karl Popper:
"I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise."
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
So there is some finesse here. The difficult task in containing latent fascism is knowing how to react to it. Too harsh and you feed it. Too soft and it grows.
But this is absolutely true and everyone must know it:
You aren't going to have to eventually confront fascism.
It is simply the truth that it is always there to be confronted.
All of us. All societies. For all time.
It's always bubbling under the surface. And it *must* be confronted.
Early, or it grows.
And claims innocence.
9/x
Ben Royce 🇺🇦
Happy #MemorialDay
For all those who gave their lives in the previous struggle against #fascism.
Let us make sure it was not in vain, and that we learn from their sacrifices.
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Ben Royce 🇺🇦
addendum:
*required* viewing for all Americans
for everyone in the world
made by the US War Department at the end of WWII, a discussion between a regular Joe who almost gets seduced by a fascist street preacher, and a Hungarian immigrant who tells him this is how Hitler started, in detail
at a moment of historical clarity, an inspired piece of propaganda
how #fascism rises: divide and conquer with hate, while regular folks go "just crazy talk"
"Don't Be a Sucker"
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