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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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What place is that? Conservatism at it's core is about maintaining the aristocracy/hierarchy. That's what it started as, and it's never wavered from that mission. All of the claims towards 'conserving what is good' or 'fiscal responsibility' or 'protecting individual rights' are just that: claims. They have never acted in ways that would back those claims up unless their actions also helped maintain/promote the aristocracy. The rest is just noise and propaganda designed to make their positions sound palatable.
I don't see any place for that in a healthy political system.
I disagree with you, but respectfully. Conservatism is basically just people who, for a variety of reasons (not all of them bad), generally vote for the status quo. This is human nature. Progressives are willing to push forward but also sometimes without regard to some of the consequences. Also human nature. Some people are bold and some people are timid. Having both around in a balanced way helps us all move forward with careful thought. That system is good overall.
The problem is that conservatives are really moderate democrats now. The modern Republicans are not conservatives. They are fascist cultist morons. I believe I explained myself fairly well in my first post. You might want to read the whole thing next time :)
I disagree that it is "good" overall. Conservative policies have always stood in the way of any movement to treat all people equally because the status quo benefits a sections of the population. Slavery. Racism. Sexism. Etc. None of these needed to be "conserved" and we would be a better society if we had been able to address them sooner. Also, conservative power structures when threatened by progress default to authoritarian in brutal fashion. The Holocaust. The Civil War. The Inquisition. Etc. And this is just in the West.
The modern Republican is not an aberration. It is the final form of Conservatism.
I have seen no proof that the consequences of rampant Progressivism are in any way equal to the horrors of rampant Conservatism. The idea that we need to validate Conservativism to "balance out" Progressivism seems to me to be a dangerous myth that is paid for with the blood of oppressed people.
There have been many cases in history where the forces in society seeking positive change have caused untold damage to their societies. The French Revolution started out with the oppressed peasantry seeking liberation from a decadent and constrictive nobility, but ended in hundreds of people getting their heads cut off before the pendulum swung back and Napoleon took control, and briefly created one of the biggest empires in European history. Napoleon was less conservative than the Ancien Regime but he certainly wasn't a revolutionary.
Another example is the Bolsheviks, who started out as oppressed workers in Russia who wanted liberation from an exploitative and authoritarian tsar, but as soon as they actually gained power, were usurped by a complete megalomaniac who sent thousands of people to labor camps, destroyed most of Russia's social institutions in order to subsume them into the state, committed numerous genocides (some more direct than others), and destroyed Russia's demographics and long-term economic prosperity with a breakneck-pace industrialization. Joseph Stalin's ideological offshoot, Mao Zedong, also did similarly horrible things in China, like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, despite starting out as the leader of a peasant rebellion seeking liberation from literal feudalism.
Apart from the Nazis, who can only debatably be considered "conservative" considering they didn't really wanna conserve much of anything about society, conservative insanity doesn't tend to be anywhere near as destructive to society in the short term as progressive insanity is. Instead, conservative insanity causes society to completely stagnate, remaining behind socially and technologically while other societies rush ahead, as happened to Tsarist Russia.
Seeing all this, you'd have to be either biased or stupid to deny the necessity of conservativism in society. Progress is often necessary, today included in many areas, but society must have a conservative wing to prevent the progressives from changing things which are better off left alone.
Nazis were “debatably” conservative my ass, fucking sad that this filth is already spreading on the fediverse
Fascism is linked to conservatism through an extreme form of it. The United States has had six Presidents whose policies and practices identify them as part of the Fascist wing of politics. William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, John Tyler, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump.
What did the Nazis want to conserve, exactly? They hated Christianity, they hated free-market capitalism, they wanted to wipe out half the continent and settle it with Germans, and they wanted to completely reshape every aspect of society around the state. They didn't wanna conserve shit, except maybe the Junkers' economic dominance.
Every German soldier had "Got mitt uns" (God is with us) on their belt buckles.
Most Nazis were Christians.
The idea that the Nazis hated Christianity is silly. Some upper-echelon Nazis might have, but the overall members of the Nazi Party were Christians. Including the participants in the Holocaust. They were doing it because Martin Luther said so.
By this logic, the Soviet Union was a Christian nation because the vast majority of their soldiers believed in God during WW2.
The nazis were overwhelmingly christian tho. They even formed their own special form of it that literally just takes out the jews.
The soviet union specifically prosecuted christians, so trying to say they were the same is wild
Using Christianity for propaganda reasons doesn't change the fact that the Nazis wanted to restructure the German people's belief system around their pseudoscientific racial theories and state-worship. Another thing to note is that the Nazis hated the Catholic Church, which about half of Germany followed, and didn't tolerate Protestant sects which went against their ideology. Following Christianity was absolutely not a priority for the Nazis. They'd have absolutely gotten rid of it if they could.
Hierarchy. And reactionaries are still right wing, even if they want to recreate an imagined past of hierarchies rather than just conserving the existing ones.
I didn't say they weren't right wing, only that they weren't conservative. Going backwards isn't conserving anything.
The NAZI Party originally sought to conserve the right of white Germany (they didn't view Jewish people as white) and their Roman Catholic religious power. Prussia was part of the Holy Roman Empire and the NAZI Party in part wanted to bring that back in their early days. Popes Pius XI (1922–1939) and Pius XII (1939–1958) led the Catholic Church during the rise and fall of Nazi Germany while the Catholic-aligned Centre Party voted for the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Adolf Hitler additional domestic powers to suppress political opponents as Chancellor of Germany. Hitler and several other key Nazis had been raised as Catholics though they became more hostile to the Church in their adulthood. Article 24 of the National Socialist Program called for conditional toleration of Christian denominations and the 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty with the Vatican guaranteed religious freedom for Catholics.
Eventually, the alliance fell apart and Nazis sought to suppress the power of the Catholic Church in Germany. Catholic press, schools, and youth organizations were closed, property was confiscated, and about one-third of its clergy faced reprisals from authorities; Catholic lay leaders were among those murdered during the Night of the Long Knives.
Anti-Semitism was present in both German Catholicism, and anti-Semitic acts and attitudes were infrequent in Catholic areas. After the alliance's failure, Catholic priests went on to play a major role in rescuing Jews. The Catholic church rescued thousands of Jews by issuing false documents to them, lobbying Axis officials, and hiding Jews in monasteries, convents, schools, the Vatican, and the papal residence at Castel Gandolfo. The Reich Security Main Office called the Pope a "mouthpiece" for the Jews and in his first encyclical (Summi Pontificatus), he called the invasion of Poland an "hour of darkness". In his 1942 Christmas address, the Pope denounced race murders, and in his 1943 encyclical Mystici corporis Christi, the Pope denounced the murder of disabled people.
Even so, in the post-war period, false identification documents were given to many German war criminals by Catholic priests such as Alois Hudal, frequently facilitating their escape to South America. Catholic clergy routinely provided Persilschein or "soap certificates" to former Nazis in order to remove the "Nazi taint"; but at no time was such aid an institutional effort. According to Catholic historian Michael Hesemann, the Vatican itself was outraged by such efforts, and Pope Pius XII demanded the removal of involved clergy such as Hudal.
An apple is a fruit but not all fruits are apples. So stupid.
What did the Nazis want to conserve, exactly? They hated Christianity, they hated free-market capitalism, they wanted to wipe out half the continent and settle it with Germans, and they wanted to completely reshape every aspect of society around the state. They didn't wanna conserve shit, except maybe the Junkers' economic dominance.
Also I can tell you have absolutely nothing of value to add since you defaulted to calling me a Nazi because I made a pretty clear observation. Nah, don't bother explaining shit on the political discussion sub, just say everyone you don't like is evil. It's like I'm back on Reddit
Dude, word roots are often far from their eventual meanings because language evolves. No one with a clue thinks of conserving when they say conservatism. If you want an argument over semantics, maybe there’s a linguistics sub? If you want to talk politics, you don’t just get to decide a word must only literally reflect its etymological root, rather than taking into account the actual actions of people and parties who have called themselves conservatives for the past 50+ years.
The fact of the matter is that "conservative" means that one tends to be resistant to change, and that most self-proclaimed conservatives run on platforms of resisting change. The Nazis, meanwhile, changed nearly everything about their society. Also, words have meanings.
You’re right, but every reputable linguist in 2023 recognizes that over time, the meanings of those words change because of how they’re used by the population speaking the language. You’re right, words have meanings, but those meanings change. Sorry you haven’t kept up.
The nazis are reactionaries which means they want to go back to feudalism. If you knew about how horrible feudalism was you would have supported the french revolution and the october revolution.
Although it can be said that the Nazis coopted the aesthetics of feudalism in much of what they did, and that people like Heinrich Himmler actually did wish to return to that kind of society, I don't believe it can be said that the Nazis actually wished to return to a legitimately feudal society. The main difference is that under Nazism, the most important thing in one's life was meant to be the Aryan race and the state, while under feudalism, the most important thing in one's life was religion.
The things the revolutionaries did to the people of France and Russia were straight up evil. Committing mass murder and establishing a cult based around yourself is just plain evil, doesn't matter what your intentions are or who you're rebelling against. Revenge against oppressors isn't a valid thing to base your policies on and destroying the fabric of society in order to rebuild it based on your ideal always has completely horrifying outcomes.
Fascists shared many of the goals of the conservatives of their day and they often allied themselves with them by drawing recruits from disaffected conservative ranks, but they presented themselves as holding a more modern ideology, with less focus on things like traditional religion, and sought to radically reshape society through revolutionary action rather than preserve the status quo. Fascism opposed class conflict and the egalitarian and international character of socialism. It strongly opposed liberalism, communism, anarchism, and democratic socialism.
MAGA Republicans today practice Fascism, Donald Trump was a Fascist Conservative by definition. The NAZI Party was a Fascist Party that modern Fascists idolize. That doesn't mean that MAGA Republicans are equal to members of the NAZI Party, they are not. It is better to call them by the type of politics they practice, which is Fascism, a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Yes, this is true, just like communists share many goals with Bernie Sanders. You wouldn't call communists liberal or call Bernie Sanders a communist though. They are completely different things with some overlap.
Being anti-communist is a characteristic of every ideology to the right of communism and being opposed to anarchism is a characteristic of every ideology above anarchism. Opposing class conflict is also a characteristic of any ideology which doesn't advocate socialism. None of this really narrows fascism down very well.
By what fucking definition?
While MAGA Republicans are certainly populists, definitely believe the nation to be above the individual, and their leaders act like they want a dictatorship, they are not expansionist enough to be anything like the original fascists (In fact, they actually tend to believe the US needs to stop involving itself in foreign affairs) and they're also not very totalitarian, often wanting the state not to interfere in economic matters. By contrast, old-school fascists wanted private enterprise to be subordinate to the state, in a system designed as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism which they called corporatism. Calling MAGA Republicans fascists is not true, nor is it very useful, and throwing that term around only lends credence to their assertion that we're just a bunch of snowflakes who can't handle people disagreeing with them. It is more useful and more accurate to call them by the more broad term "right-wing populist" instead.
MAGA Republicans' policies and ideals match fascism on every level. They have nothing in common with traditional Republican values. There isn't a political ideology called populists, that is the nickname for extremist politicians be they communists or fascists.
You won't win this argument here though. These people don't know the difference between conservativism and US Republicanism.
I think you bring up very good examples. The communists in China with their cultural revolution is another example of progressive policies gone wrong. Children undergoing sex change operations and later regretting it could possibly be viewed as one in a few decades. (Examples of these do exist and their stories are heartbreaking.)
While I do agree that handing out hormone treatments like candy is a bad idea and we need to do more unbiased research into how best to treat children with gender dysphoria without potentially making their lives worse, please stay real here. Nobody allows or advocates for children to undergo actual sex change operations. I also wouldn't consider this to be on the same level as what communists did in Russia and China, or what the revolutionaries did in France.
I strongly suggest reading Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind. He makes an excellent case that, from Edmund Burke to now, conservatism has been about preserving historical hierarchies. Men over women, straight over gay, white over Black, religious over not, etc. The status quo just tends to be full of hierarchies we haven’t rooted out, so their claim seems believable even though it’s false.