• SomeGuy
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    9 months ago

    Most of those are quite business as usual for capitalism though. Calling it fascist while good for drawing a parallel isn’t entirely true. Its peak capitalist settler colonialism which is pretty close but not entirely fascist. Communist parties are still legal, people still have some civil protections (not many, but far more than you’d have in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy). The US is basically diet fascist. Not quite fully there, but doing as much as it can to get close to it.

    Like I said, if the left actually got its shit together then the US would happily fully implement fascism but really that is the only reason it hasn’t fully done so.

    • The US is absolutely fascist toward indigenous and black people. Communist parties aren’t illegal (because pretending that they have freedom of speech and association is required to uphold their national myth), but if they’re led by black people (e.g. the Black Panthers), they’re brutally repressed. It may not be fascist from the perspective of the settlers, but having a relatively privileged ethnic majority and heavily persecuted ethnic minorities is a core part of fascism

    • freagle
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      9 months ago

      Most of those are quite business as usual for capitalism though. Calling it fascist while good for drawing a parallel isn’t entirely true.

      This is going to come down to what words mean, which is dependent on your ideology. As it turns out, European fascism IS capitalism - it comes from capitalism, it protects capitalism, it is required to maintain capitalism, it uses techniques developed through capitalism, it does not destroy capitalism nor replace it. So what’s the difference between ideological European racialized capitalism, as a historical phenomenon, and European fascism? From a materialist stand point, literally nothing. From a propaganda standpoint, it’s that the violence of capitalism is turned towards Europeans.

      Its peak capitalist settler colonialism which is pretty close but not entirely fascist.

      Again, settler colonialism is fascism, just directed at non-whites.

      Communist parties are still legal

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

      people still have some civil protections (not many, but far more than you’d have in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy)

      They had civil protections. The idea that this is a distinguishing feature is the perspective of white person living in a fascist empire that has been indoctrinated to believe that those other fascists are the real fascists. Just look at the civil liberties of blacks, indigenous, women, queer, and other oppressed groups in the USA.

      The US is basically diet fascist

      The USA birthed the Third Reich ideologically and scientifically. The Third Reich studied the apartheid of the USA and applied it. They studied our eugenics programs and applied them. They studied our enslavement, our prisons, our management of indigenous genocide and they replicated it.

      When the Third Reich was defeated, the USA protected its members, it’s distributed them all over the Western hemisphere through Operation Paperclip and distributed them all over Europe through Operation Gladio. They incorporated the Nazis into NATO leadership.

      The USA isn’t diet fascism, it’s the fascist reservoir from which other fascist movements have historically emerged and to which those movements recede.

      • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        The USA isn’t diet fascism, it’s the fascist reservoir from which other fascist movements have historically emerged and to which those movements recede.

        Thank you. Instead of putting things into arbitrary idealist categories we should be looking at material ways that these things emerge and spread.

      • Anarcho-Bolshevik
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        9 months ago

        So what’s the difference between ideological European racialized capitalism, as a historical phenomenon, and European fascism?

        Fascism was the predominantly petty bourgeois and militant movement that the haute bourgeoisie promoted to institutional power to secure capitalism. If there were no meaningful differences between European racialized capitalism and European fascism, that would logically imply that the Kingdom of Italy was already fascist in the 1910s and earlier, making the March of Rome redundant.

        From a propaganda standpoint, it’s that the violence of capitalism is turned towards Europeans.

        Umm… the Fascists were very violent against North and East Africans. I feel like you must already know this since you’ve clearly read some history, but to be honest it almost upsets me to see somebody overlook this.

        I know that this is only part of your post, but I feel too uncomfortable to address anything else right now.

        • I don’t think they were overlooking the violence against non-European peoples; “from a propaganda standpoint” is the key phrase, i.e. the Europeans who didn’t care about violence against non-Europeans only started caring once other Europeans became targets as well, and this is used as propaganda to suggest that Hitler and his ilk were “worse” than European settlers who murdered non-European indigenous people