3 ms·

This comment can only originate from someone who has lived in democracy all their life. Having travelled the world for most of my life, and saw dictatorship at

This comment can only originate from someone who has lived in democracy all their life. Having travelled the world for most of my life, and saw dictatorship at work, I think a lot of HN and Twitter evil sensors need serious calibration. It's like looking at somebody with diabetes and saying they have terminal AIDS.

diordiderot 4y ago
These days HIV is much easier to live with than diabetes.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure __terminal__ AIDS is not easier to live than diabetes. In fact, it's probably not easy to live for long.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The two most famous Fascist movements in history replaced democratic governments after initially attacking them as failures for decades beforehand and promising to return the nation to greatness and save it from failure. They did (most of) the famously bad stuff they are remembered for after they took over and abolished the democracy and its institutions, so no one could stop them. Many of the people they killed would have lived in democracies all their life. And became targeted because they stood in the way of them politically in that democracy. So I feel a blanket rule of "you can't call anyone a Fascist in a democracy" is not particularly historically insightful or useful, no matter how many countries and/or dictatorships you've visited.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  That's not the point of my comment. The point is that today we use those words without any notion of the scale they imply. So they lost their meaning. To me it's the other side of virtue signaling, easy words to toss around to get an ego trip without having to think too hard about the nuances of the world. And you can only do that precisely because you live in a free society, because the people you are calling fascist will not kill you for doing it. Because you have the education to do so. Because you have the time and energie to do so. Because you are safe with the medium and your audience to do so. And because you don't have a fascist as a leader that is so obviously so dangerous that calling someone fascist on tweeter in comparison would make you feel stupid since it's so obviously dispropostionate. The point is, the people doing that are immature, unexperienced, and use a word that meant to target the horrors and evil of this world to attack what are merely bad people. It's not a political statment that they are making. It's a demonstration of how naive, ignorant and arrogant they are. And it's an insult to people living with actual fascists every day, that one does from the comfort of their sofa where they can get food delivered and watch youtube video. You can call someone fascist in a democracy, but then they must have in their political program the same thing as Mussolini or Hitler did. The burden is on the person to quote Main Kampf (which I doubt their read) or show similar live actions and show the parallel. And it cannot be a single thing, it's a collection of ideas and behaviors. A racist or a pro life or somebody going to a book burning is not diserving the title. Because it's only one thing. Everybody is doing ine thing somebody else find terrible. It's a very, very high bar to pass.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Yeah a super high bar apparently: > World Fascism: a Historical Encyclopedia notes that "Although he was authoritarian and ruled dictatorially, Pinochet's support of neoliberal economic policies and his unwillingness to support national businesses distinguished him from classical fascists. See, if you sell the nationalized companies to your family, and they profit from selling your countries resources abroad, then you're no true Fascist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos.

diordiderot 4y ago

These days HIV is much easier to live with than diabetes.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
I'm pretty sure __terminal__ AIDS is not easier to live than diabetes. In fact, it's probably not easy to live for long.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The two most famous Fascist movements in history replaced democratic governments after initially attacking them as failures for decades beforehand and promising to return the nation to greatness and save it from failure. They did (most of) the famously bad stuff they are remembered for after they took over and abolished the democracy and its institutions, so no one could stop them. Many of the people they killed would have lived in democracies all their life. And became targeted because they stood in the way of them politically in that democracy. So I feel a blanket rule of "you can't call anyone a Fascist in a democracy" is not particularly historically insightful or useful, no matter how many countries and/or dictatorships you've visited.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
That's not the point of my comment. The point is that today we use those words without any notion of the scale they imply. So they lost their meaning. To me it's the other side of virtue signaling, easy words to toss around to get an ego trip without having to think too hard about the nuances of the world. And you can only do that precisely because you live in a free society, because the people you are calling fascist will not kill you for doing it. Because you have the education to do so. Because you have the time and energie to do so. Because you are safe with the medium and your audience to do so. And because you don't have a fascist as a leader that is so obviously so dangerous that calling someone fascist on tweeter in comparison would make you feel stupid since it's so obviously dispropostionate. The point is, the people doing that are immature, unexperienced, and use a word that meant to target the horrors and evil of this world to attack what are merely bad people. It's not a political statment that they are making. It's a demonstration of how naive, ignorant and arrogant they are. And it's an insult to people living with actual fascists every day, that one does from the comfort of their sofa where they can get food delivered and watch youtube video. You can call someone fascist in a democracy, but then they must have in their political program the same thing as Mussolini or Hitler did. The burden is on the person to quote Main Kampf (which I doubt their read) or show similar live actions and show the parallel. And it cannot be a single thing, it's a collection of ideas and behaviors. A racist or a pro life or somebody going to a book burning is not diserving the title. Because it's only one thing. Everybody is doing ine thing somebody else find terrible. It's a very, very high bar to pass.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Yeah a super high bar apparently: > World Fascism: a Historical Encyclopedia notes that "Although he was authoritarian and ruled dictatorially, Pinochet's support of neoliberal economic policies and his unwillingness to support national businesses distinguished him from classical fascists. See, if you sell the nationalized companies to your family, and they profit from selling your countries resources abroad, then you're no true Fascist. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, at least it's an ethos.