Folks stumble defining fascism because there's usually a generalised assumption that fascism is a fixed state. This this is not the case, it is a fluid political process reflected in different movements and times in history in context of capitalist crisis and social breakdown. There is no checklist; it has to be understood in its own historical context.

Despite the lack of checklist, the primary agent for fascist movements and repression is always a takeover of the state and its transformation via purges, intimidation, indoctrination, and retaliation to bring the existing bourgeois state in line with the fascist programming of choice, along with a curbing of individual freedoms and liberties generally.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48795972)

what do you do? wait for every single deportation case to drag through district courts until you leave office having achieved nothing? and let the opposition firebomb and agitate, accept their designation of you as literal hitler? or maybe try everything you can WITHIN the law, not even departing from it, to attempt to save the country, even if it is a little more aggressive than anything we've seen in 80 years (but definitely NOT the most aggressive actions ever taken by presidents to neutralize foreign threats from within, in fact far from it)?

what do you do?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48795993)

LMAO brother, you asked him to tailor his definition of facism (which is the broadly accepted academic definition, on the nose) to your extremely narrow TRUMP=SAVIOR HERO argument that whittles down all the issues to panicky “they’re sending us criminals!” boomer arguments and borderline conspiracy theories about foreign agents. you are the reason why XO old-timers laugh at the level of discourse on the great bort these days. your reponse is on par with the shit my 70 year old high school-educated uncle spams all day on facebook.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48797647)

(also i did not ask him to tailor his definition of fascism, in which i am entirely uninterested)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48797851)

Fascist movements tend to be the state's purchase of their mercenary force to pwotect them fwom the scaowwy people with their scaowwwy thwots and different stwuff to their own stwuff - who keep asking for a system that's not rigged against them.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796019)

naturally the wealthy and elites freaked the fuck out and went all in on identity politics. that suited the people tacitly backing trump just fine for a while because it took the heat off and he kept the focus on divisive social politics. but now that’s where he’s at, he is running the government like a retard and trashing market security so they’re turning on him. a recent anonymous poll of peteoleum execs of all people found they’re savagely against trump now — it won’t be long until the corporate interests turn on him and start backing the next centrist dem/pseudo obama to maintain the staus quo. trump is dumb and bad for business and that’ll ultimately be fatal to the ‘movement.’

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48797662)

A lot of words to conclude that "it's whatever we say it is."

Fuck your stupid civil religion. You assholes had your chance, and you blew it. Times are changing and just screaming "they're Nazis!!!!!!" like the histrionic bitches that you are is not going to work this time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48802711)

What is Fascism?

TRIBUNE 1944

Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’

One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.

It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework, and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships. Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people:

Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.

Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn) maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. Some Catholic journalists maintain that Socialists have been the principal collaborators in the Nazi-occupied countries. The same accusation is made from a different angle by the Communist party during its ultra-Left phases. In the period 1930-35 the Daily Worker habitually referred to the Labour Party as the Labour Fascists. This is echoed by other Left extremists such as Anarchists. Some Indian Nationalists consider the British trade unions to be Fascist organizations.

Communists: A considerable school of thought (examples, Rauschning, Peter Drucker, James Burnham, F. A. Voigt) refuses to recognize a difference between the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same people. Leaders in The Times (pre-war) have referred to the U.S.S.R. as a ‘Fascist country’. Again from a different angle this is echoed by Anarchists and Trotskyists.

Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky's own organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. This was widely believed on the Left during the Popular Front period. In their ultra-Right phases the Communists tend to apply the same accusation to all factions to the Left of themselves, e.g. Common Wealth or the I.L.P.

Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;

War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with pro-Fascist feeling.

Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’ to anyone who wishes for a military victory. The supporters of the People's Convention came near to claiming that willingness to resist a Nazi invasion was a sign of Fascist sympathies. The Home Guard was denounced as a Fascist organization as soon as it appeared. In addition, the whole of the Left tends to equate militarism with Fascism. Politically conscious private soldiers nearly always refer to their officers as ‘Fascist-minded’ or ‘natural Fascists’. Battle-schools, spit and polish, saluting of officers are all considered conducive to Fascism. Before the war, joining the Territorials was regarded as a sign of Fascist tendencies. Conscription and a professional army are both denounced as Fascist phenomena.

Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all described as Fascist but not by the same people.

* * *

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.

1944

THE END

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48795983)

I'm pretty much sober, have been for years. It's great.

I don't have kids because I'm taking care of my dying father - I'm actually back in the US about half the year now. I left years and years ago after taking care of my mother through her 2 year cancer battle - she was given 6 weeks originally, so it was pretty fucking amazing. After she died in front of me as her stomach was ripped apart by the spreading tumors, we buried her, and I left the country for a career opportunity I couldn't say no to. Amazingly, my world was pretty fucked up there for a bit. I'm glad I'm healthy now and I'm a much better person for all the shit I've been through and have put myself through.

What's your excuse for acting like a wee bairn?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796296)

need to run otherwise would give more time to a response - maybe later.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796301)

How is this guy - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2025/mar/28/its-cold-as-shit-us-vice-president-arrives-in-greenland-video - a thing?

Feel like the larger problem is the seething hatred on all sides. I don't see a path towards diffusing everything.

Maga isn't durable, but what will be left.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796321)

https://youtu.be/tm0juqBgG08?si=cU39H7bOxtDgEuQq

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796324)

"Liberal" as a label mutated into a bizarre Eldritch entity you could only describe as "TWD"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796322)

the left know that when chill, fratty straight white males are left to run everything as nature intended, they prove to be the most lenient and evenhanded to be ruled by (that's actually how we got into this mess; post-Enlightenment aristocratic euro males came mistakenly to believe that everyone is as capable as themselves of being rational and impartial, and in a spirit of noblesse oblige gradually extended the franchise and too many rights to people who cannot handle them).

whereas 'leftism' is ultimately like being ruled by the proverbial 'scorned woman,' a menstruating Jewish hysteric full of burning ressentiments (race resentment, class resentment, sex inferiority resentment), and always ends in the killing fields and mass slaughter.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796638)

there has been no "right wing reactionary violence" and mainly what we've seen is fat libs wiping their asses on parked Teslas

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48796933)

homosexual phobia, an irrational fear of homosexual people. OP claims this is a rampant feature of trump's second term. The president, his cabinet, the federal government at large, and americans in general are irrationally TERRIFIED of homosexual people.

OP won't defend this absurd claim, because he (and we) all know that the word isnt meant to mean what it means. Its intended to signal any disapproval of queering, or the pornographic remaking of american society in which every interaction, every relationship, from pre-school through hospice, must in some way reflect or celebrate anal sex.

Don't like picture books that feature anal sex in government mandated elementary schools? Homophobia. Reject gay men cruising in army barracks, because its bad for troop morale? Homophobia. Feel some disgust at adult men disfiguring female opponents in martial arts? Homophobe. Don't feel its the US's international mission to encourage homosexual behavior in every nation on earth? Extreme irrational fear of homos.

This is explicitly how OP defines "fascism", rendering every other word in his rant disingenuous and worthless. You either support, with your dollars, your voice, your whole self, the celebration of anal sex... or youre a fascist.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48798839)

What I said is that there is no checklist - it has to be looked at in its own historical context. Homophobia and the maligning of tertiary groups is a common characteristic of historically fascist movements. If there's a sentiment against a fringe group, the administration will leverage that, blow it up out of proportion to further entrench the "us" versus "them" mentality in order to keep the proletariat busy fighting amongst themselves.

Keep going poppet.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48802401)

1. Begin motivated by a pressing need to contain, exclude, and brand a certain group of people, who think certain things, as evil. The enemy, the bad guys, the heretics, the sinners, etc.

This is a really important step that often gets little attention. Liberalism seems to *need* the outgroup. I think because, as I will demonstrate in this post, it is at heart a mimicry of a certain kind of evangelical Christianity, with the same premises. The world is fallen and sin-stained. There is an elect of the holy ones. The holy ones know they are saved. Their justification was not through works, but simply through faith, and the mysterious grace that somehow chose them to be "better than". They can only identify as saved in juxtaposition with the damned. There is, naturally, a certain neurotic anxiousness about this - and the stakes are very high. It's important to never quite lose your grip on who the damned are, in order to reassure yourself of your status as among the saved.

(I could write a lot more about this anxiety. Id focus on how nebulous and uncertain liberal salvation is, which only increases the inner turmoil among believers, always without any certainty that they really have achieved it, further motivating their need to find heretics anywhere, everywhere. This helps explain why leftism is so much more evangelical and universalist that rightism. Much of the right is content to ignore leftists, let them be, never see them again. The left, on the other hand, is *driven* to find and identify righters).

Point 1 took a lot of words, because it's really important. It motivates everything that follows.

2. Brand this outgroup EVIL. There's no need to do any more work here. Evil is evil, by definition. The bad guys aren't inconsistent, or illogical, or necessarily duplicitous. Their arguments don't fail. The fruits of their systems do not need to be measured or valued. It's all just evil.

Deploy a word for evil with as little Christian baggage as possible. While you mean evil or sinful, say racist. Say Facist. Say Nazi. Say Redneck. Say stupid or dumb.

It does not matter that many of these words have definitions that make the allegation false. (E.g. "The Nazis were a historical political party, Im not one of them." "Fuck you Nazi!") It only matters that you are using some substitute for evil.

3. Now you've got an outgroup, you've got your branding. Often that's enough. Within lib circles, within the 'church', you need no more. "Did you see that stuff online about the celeb? Total Nazi." "Really? Gross. I used to like his music. Fucking nazi."

Or "Why would you go to place X? Want to be around racists? That's who lives there." "Totally! I have to go, because my parents live there. It sucks."

But sometimes, on the edges of the church, libs either interact with unbelievers, or amongst each other. They may be trying to convert someone. But more frequently, they are trying to jockey for position, show they are closer to the center of salvation than another lib, farther from the circumference of darkness.

And this can involve having to *explain* why Evil is Evil.

It's fucking pointless of course. Evil cannot be argued with, merits no argument, and is definitionally bad. But it's never an argument a lib could "lose", so its not really an argument. Its just a show of words, a series of claims.

That's what goes in above with OP. You can pick at any of the words or claims. I picked at homophobia. "America is turning Fascist (not Italian, not following Mussolini - but morally EVIL), because.... it is homophobic."

You can pick at homophobia, a ridiculous word at first glance. OP doesn't mean the bad guys (Trump voters) are irrationally terrified of homosexual people. He does mean they are evil.

Press against the pretense of argument (they are evil because they are scared of gay people), and it collapses. He will substitute another, different argument just as a placeholder. It doesnt really matter, none of it will make sense.

Here it is: They are facist / evil, because they are homophobic, which I will now redefine as meaning they create negative outgroups of classes of people.

You'd puzzle for hours if you took this "argument" as face value. Outgroup X is bad and evil and wrong because they create outgroup Y and say they are bad and evil and wrong? So I should agree that Outgroup X is bad and evil and wrong for doing this [identifying outgroups as bad and evil and wrong]?

You spin in circles in your college dorm room or seminar class or whatever, until everyone just leaves.

You've stepped forward, been branded SINNER, an acceptable outgroup member, and the lib feels a little better, a little more assured that zhe is among the saints.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48802590)

^I disagree.

What interests me more is your reliance on personal attacks and mass assumptions over things I didn't actually say. You are reflexively defensive, and that makes sense.

And naw, I'm pretty sure there's a strong contingent of trump supporters who are irrationally fearful over people's holes and which consenting holes are being used by whom and in what costume they enjoy people's hole's in. That doesn't make them evil, inherently. Bless their little hearts.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48802697)

after I pointed out that demonizing a group cannot be any great sin for you, because it's precisely what youre doing, you shift the complaint.

do you notice that? Now it's not demonization that is the problem. Its (in your order)

- taking over the government

- spreading fear

- authoritarianism

- militarism

- hypernationalism

It'd be another long post to answer these in turn, and you'd probably find a fresh complaint next. Suffice to briefly address the first on your list.

Trump's admin is a "party taking over the government" by... winning elections last November? That is now the first item in a checklist of "Fascism" or "psychosis"? He's taking over the government because his party won the white house and congress. Its the opposite of what you intend fascism to mean.

You'd lose this argument, if it were one, because its patently ridiculous. You'd move quickly to some other point, and we'd go on forever.

Its the constantly moving targets that I was writing about above.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48802704)

You say I claimed homophobia is a RAMPANT FEATURE OF TRUMP'S SECOND TERM. Wait, shit, I looked again and I didn't say those words. Weird. I was providing a definition without additional color. Seems like you're blowing shit out of proportion making up lines of thought so you can feel safe and happy in your anger and ego. I would say trans and homophobic policies are one of many shitty characteristics of this clown show, though.

So, here it is: There seems to be fascism about, because the gov't is using the common fascist threads I referenced above to push down and control the proles to protect itself from revolution (of some sort) - the cocktail of which is unique each time. Telling that you topped homophobia first, though.

For there to be fascism, there seems to me to be a need for mass psychosis likely stemming from forcing people to live and react in a constant state of panic or fear. They used to be distracted with their screens and plastics, now they can be distracted hating each other.

And you misunderstood the 'taking-over' line. Yes the folks he whipped up into a populist wave voted for Trump - way to go - and now he's dismantling the governments infrastructure from within, in order to reinforce his own power while keeping you busy arguing about somebody else's holes.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48802831)

Im obviously enough of an onlineguy to read your claim, think about it, and weigh it. I didnt introduce any evidence to support your claim. I just looked at your evidence, whether it was homophobia or "taking over the government". I picked two, I guess, because they jumped out at me.

Each of them is specious. Even in a state of heightened disagreement with me - you agree with that much, because you either distance yourself from the claim (thats not what I meant!), or posit miscommunication (you misunderstand me!).

I could go through each and every piece of evidence in support of the US becoming psychotic and fascist, but I dont want to write it and you don't want to read it.

If we give each other enough good faith, we'd allow that neither is a zealot or really stupid. Presupposing that, I suggest you look at the internal irony in your position. The main thrust of your point is that people are being turned into demonizers, being panicked, being stoked into fear and hatred, made psychotic.

People like that tend to see large ominous forces at play (the onset of Fascism!). They tend to disvalue others' rationality or common humanity (psychotics!). They tend to react defensively (why the personal attacks?!). They tend to see things entirely black and white (there's nothing good about Trump!).

In sum, youre doing everything you diagnose as fascistic.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5700388&forum_id=2:#48803043)