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After promoting a core tenet of fascism for 50 years, the academic left is now shocked and surprised to see a resurgence of fascism. A core tenet of liberalism
by api 8y ago
After promoting a core tenet of fascism for 50 years, the academic left is now shocked and surprised to see a resurgence of fascism.
A core tenet of liberalism is that we are all human. We are what we have in common, not our differences, and we all have at least moral equality and equality before the law. The quest for material equality is a natural progression of this thinking, though there is much room for disagreement on the "how" and "why" questions there.
If we are instead those things that divide us -- race, religion, history -- then we are all balkanized into little groups with no common interest. Equality becomes impossible.
Why is this hard to understand?
I've noticed a pattern in history that seems to date back to the 70s. The left pioneers bad ideas, and then the right takes them to production at scale. I first noticed this with the Intelligent Design and other neo-Creationist movements in the 2000s and how they employed postmodernist attacks on objectivity and the validity of reason and induction. Now we see it with the alt-right taking identity politics to it's natural conclusion and mainstreaming it.
- lucisferre 8y agoI'm really struggling to understand the point your are making here. What exactly is the core tenet of fascism that the academic left is promoting?
- EpicEng 8y agoI don't want to speak for the OP, but there are numerous examples of left wing identity politics turning into tyrannical regimes. See: Mao, Stalin. Of course the right has done its fair share as well on this front.
- api 8y agoIt's the same ideas. That's my point. These are right wing ideas regardless of their labeling.
- api 8y agoTwo really: (1) Group identity (race, religion, culture) superseding individual identity. (2) The idea that knowledge and even fact can be culturally relative or in its softer form the idea that it's impossible to think objectively about such things separately from your cultural identity. #1 gave us resurgent white nationalism, since if my identity is "white" before my individuality it's the natural next step. #2 gave us neo-fundamentalism, science denial, and "alternative facts." What if its just not my culture to believe that excess CO2 causes climate change? Who are you to force your cultural values on me? If we are all groups and our only truths are group-truths, the next step is for all groups to declare war against each other to determine whose group truth is superior. "Triumph of the will" etc. Nothing is true, so there is only power. These are not liberal ideas. They are fascist ideas. For some weird reason a subset of the academic left is marketing them as such.
- candiodari 8y agoRemember how "fake news" became a big thing under the last few things of Obama, when everybody knew Trump and even Yiannopoulos were going to have control of the organisations arbitrating fake news ? And now, of course, we have seen the effect of this control. But does the left now realize freedom of the press is more important than eliminating stupidity/racism ? HELL NO ! The left, at this point, is heavily supporting and pushing up the very organisations repressing them. Point a gun at a leftist, they say HAH! Pull out a gun and then shoot themselves in the head ...
- dang 8y agoWould you please stop using HN for this sort of generic ideological tangent? It's off topic here. Nothing that begins "After promoting a core tenet of fascism for 50 years" can end well. Ditto for right-left smiting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html