356
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
356 points (94.1% liked)
News
23367 readers
2966 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Actually, the person you are responding to is correct - the far-right is too incompetent to gain power on their own. Power has to be handed to them by liberal regimes that can't handle working-class revolt without the indiscriminate violence the far-right offers. That is why states always treat the far-right with kid gloves and allows it to fester - the ruling elites know that they might need them someday.
Oh of course, it's the "liberals" who are the real enemy.
I'm afraid they are - and always have been.
The only thing that makes fascism possible is liberals "reaching across the aisle."
Call it pedantry if you want, but the fascists themselves are what truly "makes fascism possible".
Yes, there are plenty of folks have culpability in allowing these fucks gain control, from short-sighted collaborators who just want profit, idiots who think "they can't really be that bad", but there's an extent to which I think we should be careful about victim-blaming well-meaning (but naive) folks who believe that Liberty and Justice will win the day (being misled by whitewashed historical narratives who erase the boots on the ground required to make social and political changes - and the organization necessary to resist the rise of fascists).
I get your point, and clearly (from the paragraph I just typed) agree to an extent - I just think it's reductive to the point of undermining the movements against fascism when "liberals" all get thrown in the same basket.
Your analysis is almost there... but it's missing something crucial - it's missing an understanding of what the status quo actually is.
The people who are truly culpable for fascists existing are the people who need fascists to exist. Just look at the proto-fascist institution you are most familiar with - the police. The police did not invent itself - it was invented by a ruling elite that required the violence only a fascist element could provide. Fascism is not some aberration of the classical liberal nation-state - it's an inherent feature.
When those who benefit from the status quo is threatened by revolt from below it is this fascist element that will provide the violence that secures the safety of their power and privilege - in fact, sometimes they will literally hand the reigns of the state over to this fascist element (as happened in mid-20th century Germany, Italy and Japan). And it never happens without the acquiescence of the (so-called) moderates, centrists and, of course, liberals.
We can hate fascists as much as we want... but fascists did not breed themselves, school themselves in the most depraved forms of violence and then let themselves off the leash.
We don't disagree: there's a short-sightedness that causes folks to say things like "once the boomers die out, things will be great". There are systemic issues that gauze the greed and fear and violence, and the folks that get swept up in these movements are in large part products of their environment, as we all are.
So we need to change the environment, but otherwise well-meaning folks don't want it to change because they benefit from it, even when they are vaguely aware that there are monsters out there that keep it that way. I'd like to think there's more liberals/moderates who would be allies against fascism if this kind of thing can be communicated in a way that doesn't alienate folks, but I'm also sympathetic to arguments that fiery language is necessary to rattle people out of comfort zones... So in sum, thanks for the good discussion.
Sure thing.