But this time it's different because America is exceptional.

We're a shining city on a hill

Neither is pointing out that a couple thousand neo-nazis support anti-immigration rhetoric.




It's not, but in the short term, there's not a good path to it.



Liberal and Conservative. Obviously. The problem is that these perspectives ARE oversimplified identity groups.




When does that ever happen? Fascism needs a good solid group that has significantly more power than competing political groups, and preferable significant instability in the established government. *Right now*, that doesn't exist. Things are too well balanced, and people have internalized the conflict as integral to their identity. It's not like you can just get some charismatic guy up there who is going to change everyone's minds, because it's not about being right or sounding good. It's about liberal/conservatives being a threat to our way of life, and we are going to double down forever, no matter what. But most of all, things just aren't crappy or unstable enough. Populist authoritarian movements generally take root when you get a lot of people dealing with serious problems who are desperate for someone to come and do something about it.

Over a generation this will set us up for serious problems. It won't be fascism, because fascism was an idea that happened once, and will not happen again. History does not repeat itself so neatly. However, popular uprisings around an authoritarian figure happen frequently, and if political infighting gets bad enough for long enough, it could very well make us very vulnerable to a populist leader. I expect, though, that this will end up coming from the left rather than from the right, because the right doesn't have the demographics on it's side, nor is it homogeneous enough.

way more low effort than that

..more like tens of millions of Americans support anti-immigration rhetoric. I guess it depends exactly what kind and severity of rhetoric we're talking about?



Well that depends. What sort of crises are going to occur short term? The timing of an actual authoritarian revolution in the government is hard to predict.



I'm not how this is supposed to mean we can't become fascistic anytime soon. It's not as if you couldn't simplify Germany into left-right groups.



Do you think Hitler changed the minds of the various left parties in Germany? In the Weimar republic, you had six or so major parties that can be easily broken down along left-right lines. And, in this system, parliament was glacial and full of divisiveness. Each political group felt the others were starting from faulty premises and refused to listen. There is a first hand account:



Our current situation is not nearly as desperate as it was then, and many of the old institutions of power are still functioning. However I'm not in the same boat that you need some kind of government collapse and takeover to end up fascistic, or that you can't be a fascist unless you have complete authoritarian control over a government. I think it suffices to simply want authoritarian control, and to pressure the current institutions in that direction. Trump's attack on the media, attack on judges, and creative use of the executive order are all achieving that end. Point being, what will the outcome be if there's an economic collapse next year? Our institutions were able to handle the strain in times past, but I believe the next one will bring out a new level of extremism not seen before.



I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you implying socialism can never happen again, either, because socialism was an idea that happened once, and history doesn't repeat? I don't think that 21st century fascism will have the exact same curvature as 1930's fascism, FWIW.



Uh-huh.

If you look past the degree of authoritarian control Trump has, a huge amount of what he does and represents is exactly the same as what the fascists did and represented. It's important for us to note that it's similar with the term fascist, not as a cheap slander but because of the similar breakdowns of the social order, the similar circumstances of the society, and similar rhetoric Trump puts out are too overwhelming to be ignored.

I listened to fifteen minutes of this :saddowns:

It should closely replicate the feeling of watching your country be overtaken by ******s. Get it? Because a fasces is a bundle of stickzz!

.

Did you quote that passage by Hannah Arendt (without citing her) because you agree with it or because you disagree with it?

Doesn't matter.

She has a long bio on Wikipedia, so if she said it then it's a theorem.

What's the role that elites play in a fascist society? What happens to them? A large part of American right-wing populism is the rejection of elites of various kinds.

The American right-wing rejects academic and professional elites, and the financial elites because they're Jewish or whatever. That's true. There are other kinds of elites which the right wing embraces, though, like the business elite, and their home-grown alt right thought leader elite. There are other elites which they sometimes reject and sometimes support, like judges and prosecutors, as long as they believe in the right things. Ultimately, just like everything else, the question of which authorities should be respected (and which should be extinguished) comes down to whether or not that authority is making the alt right feel bad.

I guess this answer really depends on what you mean by elite. It's not a word that the alt right would use to describe their own guys, it's usually a slur against intelligent people.

Anyway, if you want a list of Nazi elites, you can always start with the Nuremberg trials. I think that provides a fairly good sampling of the role Nazi elites played in a fascist society and what ultimately happens to them. Of course, those were the lucky ones; there were a lot of Nazi elites who, in an earlier time, were found insufficiently Nazi.

[QUOTE=Donald J.Trump]Health Insurance stocks, which have gone through the roof during the ObamaCare years, plunged yesterday after I ended their Dems windfall![/QUOTE]

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/919160558712172544

So this is fascism, then, because Trump is sticking it to those among the business elites that Trump voters despise (namely, those responsible for their high healthcare insurance premiums), while Fox News lionizes other business elites?

I'm still not convinced that that is a manifestation of fascism and not merely populism. It's fascism because it needs to be understood as being part of a larger, non-ideologically motivated ambition (or strategy, for lack of a better word, although I know you say that fascists don't have a grand strategy) of ordering all of society towards satisfying the shifting whims of the dominant, nativist in-group?

Also: I can't be the only one here's who's getting bored of talking about Nazis. Does anyone here have an opinion about the decertification of the Iran nuclear deal?

I want to give my disagreement in my last post a little more content, so that I'm not merely being skeptical without providing any additional arguments.

Many fascists were critics of both 20th century liberalism and 20th century socialist movements. They were suspicious of modernity and its innovations, as well as what they perceived to be the nihilistic and alienating cultural tendencies of liberalism. They sought a form of collectivization as an antidote to that nihilism, yet they were also deeply unsatisfied with leftist forms of collectivization that were dominant, and wanted alternatives to Marxism or Communism (or whatever else).

Which is to say that Nazism (and fascism too) was essentially a cultural movement, in addition to a political movement. The cultural components of it were not merely accidental. Just as Socialist movements in the 20th century aspired to create a "new man", so too did fascist ones. One can look at Brietbart, or other dark corners of the internet, and see that there are extremists with cultural concerns, and that they're drawing from Nazism. Whatever galvanizing power those symbols may have for some people who voted for and who continue to support Trump, I don't think there was a collectivist ethos to his movement. (And though he talked of his candidacy as a movement and a revolution, as Berne Sanders did with his own candidacy, is it even fair to say that it was one?) I don't think that Trump has tried to jettison many of the cultural elements of 21st-century liberalism, having to do with, for example, personal responsibility defined as financial independence from the state.

Populism is neither left-right, good-bad or intrinsically moral-immoral. Trump's populism is a specific kind of populism that just so happens to be alot like fascist populism.

He subverted the candidate selection process successfully, forced the hand of the Republican party, worked around the media base and brought far-right influence directly into mainstream politics and the executive branch. I'd say yes.

Oh, speaking of the rule of law, we should recognize how pardoning Arpaio subverts it, and establishes quite a new precedence for presidential pardons. Part of the rule of law isn't in the full extent authority can get away within the legal system, it's about following the spirit of the rule of law with predictability and evenhandedness. Trump did the pardon to show favoritism to political allies and made it clear in his speech that Arpaio was just "doing his job", meaning Trump thinks it is fine and a-okay for institutional racism to exist.

The issue here being as well that Trump's pardon was forgiving a person whose actions were systemic and widespread violations of the rule of law.

Yeah, I think that's right that there are diverse kinds of populism.

For example, there's a more democratic variety of populism, which sees the ruling political class as operating for the sake of interests which are quite separate from those of the people (as they understand them), and demands that the government function with the interests of the people in mind. That form of populism is fundamentally about increasing the responsive of government to the needs and demands of the people, or, of making society more democratic. I suppose there are circumstances where such a populism could be bad, so maybe it's not intrinsically good. But I think in general we believe that more democracy is better, or at least more legitimate.

On the other hand, I think there's also an authoritarian populism, which is a form of populism where the people, frustrated with the ineffectiveness and irresponsiveness of government, believe that government is incapable of attending to their grievances, and put their faith in a strongman, who claims that he alone is capable of interpreting the will of the people and circumvent government ineffectiveness, by going against the norms and institutions of government. I suppose it's feasible that this variety of populism could have good outcomes, if, for instance, the strongman were benevolent. But it's also fraught with dangers, and in most cases, this form of populism will be anti-democratic, and will effective give cart blanche to an autocratic or semi-autocratic ruler.

This is something you would expect to see in a burgeoning fascist state, but it is not by itself fascism because fascism is not about specific policies.

Fascism is populism. The difference between the two is only a question of scope, magnitude, and scruples.

An orderly society, especially a democracy, demands compromise so people with different beliefs can coexist. Populism is the elimination of compromise. Fascism is the absolute elimination of compromise... for the sake of eliminating compromise. And yes, what I’m saying does imply you could have a left-wing fascism, too (which, no, is not the same thing as Stalinism).

I know I’m repeating myself here, but I feel like I need to drive this point home. I get the impression that you still think fascism was coherent, that they had a specific identifiable agenda and stuck to it, but they didn’t. Fascism is like if your Facebook feed dictated public policy - if not a news article comment section, or even 4chan. The next post quoted below really makes me think you don’t understand this yet.

I am going to add some inline comments in bold:



The only thing you pointed out that’s different from the Nazis is collectivism, but that both assumes collectivism is something inherent to and necessary for fascism. I don’t think it is. Collectivism was definitely something that that the Germans were looking for, shades of European culture and also the fact that German society was being dominated by men who were conscripted in their politically formative years. It was also useful for Germany, because it made their compulsory labor programs more popular. But the US already has a compulsory labor program, so that’s not necessary.

This is called outrage fatigue. It is a PR technique used to make people ignore an issue that they would normally be concerned about.

It's actually called a "Hail Mary pass". I didn't think it would work, but it was worth a shot.

There are broad comparisons to be made between what has been going on in the US and what led to Nazi Germany but I think it's pretty awful when people act as if this is a strictly "right wing" problem.

But on the topic of right wing, and left wing for that matter, I really don't like the description. I mean, I never had a problem describing myself as right wing but the scale really doesn't make sense. A couple years ago I remember hearing someone suggest that they viewed it more as a circle. That sounded interesting but I wasn't sure how it might work. Today I decided to play around with it abit. These diagrams are meant specifically for US politics. Some things included are just for placement, where I see them on the scale, or how I saw them as I went through this process. Republicans are pretty much filler as I don't see them as having enough spine to actually have a clearly defined position in contrast to democrats that are generally very united and clearly positioned.

This first attempt was really just a rough draft. I decided that the modern constitution should be the center and I spread various categories around equally. It seemed pretty good as a picture of what is going on but the biggest problem is that Anarchism and Facism don't go together at all. This circle doesn't work but I was starting to get some ideas.



Even though this second attempt looks like a circle, I broke it. It's really just a left-right sort of deal. The idea behind this one is that the real extremes are Anarchism and Totalitarianism and I decided to place the middle between the two parties. On my scale, Anarchism is on the right because it seems to be the natural flow from Libertarian. Still, it's not a circle and doesn't work but I discovered more to carry forward.



With Anarchism as the new middle, because it's really just a lack of any government, I decided that you can choose the path towards a government that respects individual rights or towards a more communal system. Socialism and Facism are on the near opposite sides of Totalitarianism. Generally this was starting to feel right but the degrees of separation seemed off.



Here I'm still trying to figure out the spacing. I've been trying to split differences and place some things opposite others but it's way off. But, each iteration was helping me and challenging me.



This one didn't last long. I was pretty happy with it except for spacing. Actually, I would have just edited it and made it the final version but I thought it was significant enough in the process to leave. Totalitarianism equally splits Socialism and Fasicm while Democrats equally split Communism and Socialism. Democrats seem very vocal about opposition to Originalism and they really have been for most if not all of their history.



Sixth attempt, legend, and AI file coming below.

In my last attempt (that isn't perfect but good enough for me right now), I added Communism as the opposite to Facism and moved Democrats further from Communism which is more accurate. There are a lot of Socialist ideas in some Libertarian corners but many of these terms aren't absolute and anytime you try to cram a higher order of dimension into a lower one you're going to have issues.

Here's a legend if anyone wants to suggest their own changes. I can't upload the original file here so I'll get it on Google Drive and post a link.

Adobe Illustrator file.

It seems more than a little insincere to say you are tired of talking about a subject immediately after contradicting everybody else at length.

You can challenge my sincerity all you want. But I do have a sincere interest in hearing opinions and talking about what's happening with the Iran deal if anyone has any thoughts about it. And I'm not so bored of the discussion we're having that I'm going to withdraw from it.

I'd actually be interested to know of Trump's reason for withdrawing from the Iran deal amounts to more than the need to spite his predecessor. Although I certainly know that the deal faced fierce opposition from Republicans at the time.

This is kind of a cop out, but you could check Nikki Haley's speech that she gave about Iran last month. From what I've read, Trump hasn't thought very deeply about the Iran deal and isn't very familiar with how it works (surprise!). Haley went against most of Trump's top advisors (who for the most part insisted that Trump should continue to certify) by offering to take it upon herself to formulate reasons for rejecting the deal. She did so, and she outlined them in this speech: http://www.aei.org/publication/nikki-haley-address-on-iran-and-the-jcpoa/

You could also check out Tom Cotton's speech at the council of foreign relations. I haven't yet had a chance to look at it myself:

I've been skipping over or at best skimming the posts on tge topic, but I am assuming that my lack of interest in the discussion is mostly the result of me being rather ignorant and therefore neutral about the subject of 1930's German history.

You might be having problems coming up with a 'correct' circle because such a thing may not be feasible. You're giving one dimension. Any projection map onto one dimension is going to lose information if the original space has multiple dimensions. The dimension of the spaces excludes the possibility of isometries, meaning distances won't be preserved.

Creating a geometric interpretation of political positions would be a project suited for dozens of political scientists working case studies of various ideologies in doctrine and in practice to come up with enough axes to differentiate political views. It would also require tons of statistical data, and would still be prone to ideology.

For instance, it's hard to know very much about Soviet era economic planning because, in many cases, legitimate records don't exist. This is also why actual death tolls of Stalinism are unknown and have to be estimated (which, of course, leads right-wing biased historians to pump up the numbers and left-wing biased to downplay them). Point being, we actually don't know as much hard factual data about the Soviet Union as one might suspect.

So perhaps one can encode more information into a representation that goes beyond a simple 1-dimensional, left-right spectrum, but the price to pay for this is: exactly which more sophisticated representation? All the sudden you are making a ton of choices that are built into the representation itself. So in the end it's actually worse than the "oversimplified" 1d spectrum.

From my point of view, the only people I see who refer to themselves as being on the "right" or the "left" are the ones who are quite confident in their position. Jon`C seems comfortable in owning up to it, the right wing talk show hosts seem to as well (edit: hmm, maybe not. I've heard them bristle plenty of times when it's brought up, and they prefer the term conservative), but Wookie06 maybe does not.

On the other hand, when people refer to the other side, they have no problem at all using the 1d spectrum. E.g., if I am center-right or center-left and I detect that somebody is on the opposite side, I have no problem castigating them as part of "the left" or "the right".

I don’t want to minimize what you’re doing, but other people have tread this ground before. It’s great that you’re figuring this stuff out on your own and you are on the right track.

It seems like you are basically inventing the horseshoe theory here. You can look that up if you want to understand some common criticisms of it.

The missing piece is that political stances are not one-dimensional. There are many factors to consider. Most attempts to graph them are flawed, but none as flawed as the left-right spectrum that was originally invented for and solely useful for describing post-revolutionary French politics. Needless to say, your graphs, and the horseshoe theory you are building towards, only make sense when you are constrained to view politics in this way.

Another missing piece is the training and prejudices we have about political systems. For example, political scientists have understood for a long time that a one dimensional spectrum doesn’t make sense. Moving up to two dimensions works better, where for example you might have one social axis (ranging from liberalism to authoritarianism) and an economic axis (ranging from collectivism to individualism). But this is still problematic. Stalinism was an oppressive system with strong control over industry. But war-time nazism was... an oppressive system with strong control over industry. On a two dimensional political spectrum these two systems should appear in the same spot, but they never do; we reflexively think of Stalinism as “left” and Nazism as “right”, and our graphs reflect that prejudice regardless of actual fact. That’s because despite what we say we don’t really care who is calling the shots in the factories, the factor that affects how we talk about political systems is really who ends up with the surplus at the end of the day.

Found the relevant part of the Haley speech. It's here:



TL;DR: Iran technically hasn't violated the deal, but nonetheless, given its actions in the region, the deal isn't in America's interest, because it prevents us from taking actions that would restrain Iran.

Just to be clear (and I have no feelings on this one way or another): is the TL;DR a statement of fact, made from your point of view, or a summary of the argument put forward by the ambassador?

The problem isn't whether or not I'm comfortable with the language. The problem is the concept of left and right, in a linear sense, doesn't work. At the two extremes we have Anarchy and Facism. Okay, where do Libertarians fall? They're generally near Conservatives and Republicans but they also fall near Anarchists. Socialism and Facism together equals Totalitarianism but moving toward one moves away from the other on the line. Not to mention that the center of the line is completely arbitrary. Anyway, I don't mean to be argumentative. It was just a really interesting exercise to go through.

The cynical position is, of course, that the US government has reserved a list of foreign “bads” to antagonize in the event of unrest.