3 ms·
George Orwell: What Is Fascism?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Animats 2y agoOrwell.ru? Orwell: "Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come." Fair enough.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoThen we will find many Fascism countries in today's world. The strong bullies the weak, that's what happens when there is no authority above the states. A jungle.
- foogazi 2y agoHas there ever been an authority above the states ?
- 082349872349872 2y agoKennedy proposed one, but was cancelled for his efforts. > if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor —not a new balance of power, but a new world of law— where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved. —JFK (one might even argue that he and Khrushchev were able to establish a beachhead of cooperation, but note that the latter also found himself cancelled, shortly after Kennedy's)
- krapp 2y agoI don't know what you're implying. His head just did that.
- 082349872349872 2y agoReworded; is it clearer now? (I guess if I'm implying anything, it's that supernational arrangements are not only difficult from the normal entropic point of view; they've also proven difficult because some people are hostile to them: at times even violently hostile)
- Animats 2y agoThat was the plan for the United Nations. Get all the major powers who won WWII to work together to clamp down on anybody else with conquest plans.
- 082349872349872 2y ago> The strong bullies the weak I suspect that's part of what Orwell meant by "it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions".
- Animats 2y ago> The strong bullies the weak. The big problem is when that becomes a desirable state of affairs. That's the story of Russia, run by the "hard men", or 'siloviki' for well over a century, with occasional brief outbreaks of liberalism. After the USSR went down, the market for goons dried up. There were many unemployed siloviki. Putin, laid off by the KGB, used to drive a cab in Prague. But the siloviki were able to turn that around. First was the era of the oligarchs. Then Putin got the oligarchs under control. Now he's a de-facto emperor. 24 years in charge so far. Xi Jinping (16 years) and Benjamin Netanyahu (16 years) are similar. All of them are worse at their jobs than others who have occupied the same office.
- r00fus 2y ago> Xi Jinping (16 years) and Benjamin Netanyahu (16 years) are similar. I don't see how China's ascendancy to the 2nd largest economy and largest manufacturing capacity is nothing short of amazing. All while being detested and feared by the US and the "west".
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoA moment earlier this post was ranked No.5 for one of my accounts but I simply cannot find it with the other account. This is strange.
- genman 2y agoLet's put it mildly: posting an url about Fascism on domain controlled by a Fascist state is a little bit controversial.
- lolinder 2y agoLooks like it got flagged off the front page [0]. HN will downweight posts when they receive enough flags even before applying the [flagged] label. I pretty much expected this to happen. I posted it because I think it's interesting that even in 1944 the word was basically just used as "a swearword" (to quote Orwell), but since it touches on politics it's unsurprising that a critical mass of people didn't want to see it on the front page. [0] https://hnrankings.info/40476278/ https://hnrankings.info/40476278/
- newzisforsukas 2y agohttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
- 082349872349872 2y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40476904 (or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism ) seem much better see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Spode#The_Black_Shorts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roderick_Spode#The_Black_Short... Viewing themselves as the saviours (an end which justifies many many means) of some granfalloon is a common theme. In one of Benigni's movies, a group of italian Fascists are discussing a new german fascist textbook, in which one of the word problems says something like: a cripple costs the state so much per year, a cretin so much, etc. How much could the state save if n thousands of cripples and m thousands of cretins were eliminated? "But that's horrible", cries an italian woman, "making children do algebra, at such a young age!" I suspect a true fascist (although a true economist might send a false positive?) would not understand why the woman's objection is generally thought to be gallows-humorous.
- mikrl 2y agoMy opinion was, and after reading this remains, that fascism is a political doctrine or modus operandi, but not an ideology. The ‘classically fascist’ regimes were simply devoted to this doctrine, in the same way classical communist regimes were dedicated to the doctrine of collectivisation. Their similarities (nationalist, state capitalist, militaristic) perhaps naturally aligned them more with the doctrine of fascism, but this doctrine is by no means unique to any one form of government. You could have liberals, socialists, even anarchists ‘doing fascism’ without being ideologically fascist.
- orwin 2y agoFascism is weirdly hierarchical ideologically (it create new hierarchies that did not exist before, sometimes destroying old ones), but also polycratic and feudalistic. It sold image of organization and preparedness, but in fact was an organized mess where almost everyone was politicking at his level, to climb higher. That's a tidbit i learned from "Libres d'obéir : le management, du nazisme à la RFA" (i don't know if you can find it in english though)
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoI think it's a symptom of all large enough orgaizations.
- mikrl 2y ago>where almost everyone was politicking at his level, to climb higher This is one of the factors, I consider to be part of this doctrine. The willingness to subvert or destroy an existing power structure (democracy, monarchy, etc) in favour of autocracy and at-all-costs acquisition or consolidation of power. Another factor is murderous disdain towards the out-group, and the unfavourable side of the strong-weak, virtuous-degenerate axes.