I remember my hottest take among my “libertarian socialist” friends at one point was when I said that nations preaching the ideology known as liberalism have been behind far more direct deaths than genuine actually-existent-fascism could even aspire to. Told it was bad optics to be comparing liberals to fascists, told it was ahistorical, yada yada. It’s materially true, though. Liberalism has been effectively whitewashed of its bloody, horrific history of violence and neglect because “fascism” emerged as a much scarier seeming alternative, a perfect slippery-slope bogeyman to excuse all of the deadly failings of liberalism.
I remember my hottest take among my “libertarian socialist” friends at one point was when I said that nations preaching the ideology known as liberalism have been behind far more direct deaths than genuine actually-existent-fascism could even aspire to. Told it was bad optics to be comparing liberals to fascists, told it was ahistorical, yada yada. It’s materially true, though. Liberalism has been effectively whitewashed of its bloody, horrific history of violence and neglect because “fascism” emerged as a much scarier seeming alternative, a perfect slippery-slope bogeyman to excuse all of the deadly failings of liberalism.