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Fascism can't mean both a specific ideology and a legitimate target
- johng 1y agoA surprisingly well thought out article for once. Was worth the read.
- mallowdram 1y agoIt has no basis in psychological discourse, politics is by nature illogical. So creating logic games from arbitrary metaphors (what politics is based in and especially when each side is calling the other with the same arbitrary label) is like creating a card game that only let's the house win. https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/irrationality.htm https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/irrationality.htm
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- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> It has no basis in psychological discourse, politics is by nature illogical The paper you cite is entirely unempirical. It’s using the same methods you criticize in the article.
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- mallowdram 1y agoAre you kidding, it deals with phenomena and beliefs, do you understand the illusion of beliefs? What phenomena is?
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- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> it deals with phenomena and beliefs Fair enough, in a formal manner it’s empirical. As a work, it’s political philosophy. Not science. Which makes it odd as a counterpoint to arguing the article in question is too aloof. (Also, conflating irrational and illogical is unfounded. Nature is irrational. Per Caplan, individual agents may find it advantageous to act illogically. It doesn’t follow that one can’t use logic or rational thought to characterize the system.)
- mallowdram 1y agoIt's philosophy, Michael Huemer is a philosopher, not a "political philosopher" which is oxymoronic. Nature is neither rational nor irrational, nor is it logical or illogical. By nature, irrational things or behaviors are not logical, which means politics has no basis in logic-derived axioms as propagated by Alexander. Please adhere to a scientific, or axiom-based argument. Your replies are extremely irrelevant.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> not a "political philosopher" which is oxymoronic What would you call someone who waxes philosophy on politics? > By nature, irrational things or behaviors are not logical Lovely, so logic—by your construction—is useless given nature itself, lacking the ability to understand, is not rational. (You’re mixing up sub-definitions of rationality. None of this is relevant, however, to the broader topic.) > Please adhere to a scientific, or axiom-based argument Was this written by AI?
- mallowdram 1y agosorry, I've tuned you out. Probably I'm not an AI considering typos and agreement errors.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> I've tuned you out Robust counterargument. To conclude the thread, yes, you obviously can reason about politics in the same way one can reason about anything else that doesn't behave rationally, like fish, through to things which can't reason at all, whether they be oceans or planets. Moreover, one can logically characterise that which behaves illogically in the same way we can mathematically characterise and constrain the behaviour of fractals and fluids and other objects which are, fundamentally, impossible to precisely describe.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago> politics is by nature illogical. It is, but only for those who know neither logic nor politics. > So creating logic games from arbitrary metaphors So don't create them. > arbitrary metaphors [are] what politics is based in and especially when each side is calling the other with the same arbitrary label. That's true for the R/D circus but it's not true for politics in general, it's not a law of nature, it's just a fact of present day politics. More importantly, framing that fact as something inevitable renders the framer incapable of recognizing its utmost importance as a piece of evidence that can help a diligent investigator uncover the political truths hidden behind it.
- mallowdram 1y agoNothing you're stating is empirically valid. The framer has no valid framework. There are no such things as empirically valid statements in political science, as the field is composed of subjective narratives. There are no such things as political truths.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago> Nothing you're stating is empirically valid. Oh, yes it is, there's history to learn from, just because you're unaware of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. > The framer has no valid framework. If you understood the comment you replied to, you'd realize that "the framer" there refers to you, so your statement above means "mallowdram has no valid framework". Ironically, it's true - you lack a valid framework because you lack knowledge of logic, history and politics.
- mallowdram 1y agoThere is no relationship between history (which is subjectively narrated), logic (which is an abstraction) and politics (what are arbitrary). If you had an understanding of what history is, you'd understand it has no scientific validity. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537995/how-history-gets-things-wrong/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537995/how-history-gets-thin... As there is no scientific basis for history, and there is no logic to politics (it is irrational), nothing stated by Alexander is valid.
- o11c 1y agoThat's not my impression at all. The logical "contradiction" it spends all its time talking about only applies if everything is strict binaries, and falls apart if we start addressing how much for every single point. Or to pull out another example: what level of overstep is necessary for it to become acceptable (praiseworthy?) to throw your shoes at George W. Bush?
- foogazi 1y agoI don’t read Scott often but it was a disappointingly lukewarm “meh” for me
- mallowdram 1y ago[flagged]
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago'But I don’t think the answer can be “violence is permissible when you can classify someone with a loaded term so vague that people regularly use it to describe expedited restaurant permitting”. ' This, I think, is the main point of the article. I don't disagree, and I tend to argue for at least trying to talk to people, but I admit that I am concerned about how much I am hesitating on even discussing some subjects with people.
- PaulHoule 1y agoEven George Orwell who fired a rifle at fascists eventually concluded that "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’" https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... I think the Charlie Kirk thing scared people straight for a few weeks but I've definitely seen an uptake of submissions to HN about various tempests in teapots such as the recent drama about an open source project that was big in 2005 and only niche since 2012 or something about waffles and now a laptop maker that tweeted a link to the wrong thing or something. There is still this emphasis by certain on canceling people at conferences and stuff because they are "fascists" but a lack of recognition that the democratic institutions that they like so much are putting "fascists" in power throughout the world -- and if they want it to be different they're going to have to stop dehumanizing people who vote the wrong way and talk to them. The message of "you are bad", "your society is bad" just doesn't sell, in fact Black people don't want to hear about they weighed down by the legacy of slavery, they want to maximize the life that's in front of them. Thing is that people find meaning in believing "society is bad" so it serves the interest of this selfish meme to put "fascists" in power; the Heritage Foundation or the Federalist Society or Fox News couldn't have done a better job engineering a fifth column for the left which would keep the right in power permanently.
- tastyface 1y agoIn what sense is the current administration not a fascist one? They are consolidating plenary authority in the executive, erasing democratic norms, enacting lawfare against political enemies with the DOJ, abducting undesirables to torture camps in legally untouchable countries, pardoning convicted insurrectionists, and treating Blue areas like enemy territory -- up to and including military occupation. This is unprecedented in American politics since the Civil War. Not everyone to the right of the "far left" is a fascist, but the administration in power undeniably has a fascist core. And people who actually study this stuff professionally largely agree. "We are in the process of the second American Revolution which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
- mystraline 1y agoWe have an actual consistent way to define fascism. And yeah, people who throw that name as a slur for "something you dont like", helps nobody. Now, how to define the metrics are outside of my comment, including the current administration. But Ive been seeing quite a few of these seem to match here in the USA for quite some time. And now, more seem to match quite well with historical fascist movements. https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause 4. Supremacy of the Military 5. Rampant Sexism 6. Controlled Mass Media 7. Obsession with National Security 8. Religion and Government are Intertwined 9. Corporate Power is Protected 10. Labor Power is Suppressed 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption 14. Fraudulent Elections
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> We have an actual consistent way to define fascism One, a 14-point checklist is functionally worthless in politics. Two, why is Britt the final say on what fascism is? Three, this list is extremely ambiguous. When does criticism cross into disdain, interest into obsession, grim tolerance into rampant acceptance? Everything on that list is accurate as a retrospective tool. But for contemporaneous measure, it falls short by failing to propose clear tests.
- mystraline 1y agoChecklists are absolutely important, as one can compare various governments across those metrics. And those can be seen as a percentage as to compare scientifically. You added 'final say what fascism is' to create a controversy where there is none. That was never the claim. This was a set of commonalities of previous historical fascist governments. And you add in an ad hominem to Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt. His study is in this realm, giving proper credence as an evidentiary start of analyzing fascism. And yes, the abbreviated list I copied and pasted pales into comparison to the source. But I find many on HN dont bother to read linked articles, and instead create strawmen of the copied text. After reading tge posts so far, well, point made.
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- daft_pink 1y agoI think the issue is that Americans associate fascism with the Axis powers in WW2, but it’s difficult to see Trump mass murdering minorities or invading Europe even though his policies have some elements of fascism. Those elements seem to align with historic American isolationism and populism and thus be more benign than the conditions that led to WW2.
- joyeuse6701 1y agoThe administration has openly flirted with military action in South America and Greenland.
- Jtsummers 1y agoIt's actively performing military action in South America, not just flirting with it. Flirting would be rhetoric, positioning ships and aircraft. We're using aircraft to kill alleged drug runners, but with no evidence provided that they even were drug runners (not that I think that would be sufficient justification, but it's better than "because I said so").
- daft_pink 1y agoEvery American administration in recent memory has engaged in military action. He doesn't have plans to seize the entirety of South America. He just wants to depose a dictator and it's not even clear he will actually do it. He's just putting pressure on it to happen.
- Hizonner 1y ago> it’s difficult to see Trump mass murdering minorities or invading Europe No, it's actually not. Although it's really more about the people running Trump. Trump by himself would be totally ineffectual.
- alphazard 1y agoPeople hurling the word fascist around always seem to have some kind of authoritarian bent themselves. This makes sense because those people have to worry about how their own brand of authoritarianism is different from fascism so that they can adequately pitch it to others. Meanwhile, most of us see policies that are obviously authoritarian, don't worry about which brand, and oppose them for the usual reasons: no one should have that power, or we don't know how to organize humans to use that power safely, or it will normalize giving away a different power, etc.
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- seneca 1y agoAbsolutely true, and well said. Communism and fascism have always been two heads of the same hydra. They always appear together, and vie for the same radicals as potential followers. Benito Mussolini himself was originally a Marxist revolutionary.
- larkost 1y agoI have a hard time with this, and I don't think that you understand the word fascism well enough. Rather I think that what you really mean is that Communism has always wound up in authoritarianism. Fascism of course starts in authoritarianism, and I think that is where you get confused. So some definitions: Authoritarianism: a political system where a smaller group winds up with power, often with a military (or a monopoly on violence) to enforce that power. Often characterized by laws that are selectively enforced one some people, or "some who the law protects but does not bind, and others that the law binds but does not protect". Communism: a philosophy of government where the government holds the "means of production" in the name of the people. In practice this devolves into a singular group ("the Party"), controlled by relatively few people deciding what is best for people, and this usually winds up in authoritarianism in anything larger than a small community (where individual social pressure can keep it in check). Fascism: a philosophy of government that starts with authoritarianism, but goes hard into picking out groups of people from within the country as "the enemy" and blames all of a societies ills on those people (Mussolini picked socialists and labor unions first, Hitler also started with socialists and the disabled before moving on to Poles, Gypsies, Jews, and others). Part of this is also picking a chosen people, and creating a nationalist image around those people (True Italians for Mussolini, "Aryans" for Hitler), while at the same time projecting those people as the victims of the minority that is being blamed. Violence against these enemies is justified as being right (often in religious terms), and any check on that violence is portrayed as evil (e.g.: due process). So the Soviet Union was actually less fascist than the U.S. was at the time (not saying the U.S. was fascist, but we certainly blamed black people for a lot). E.g.: the U.S.S.R. often mostly-correctly propagandized how much better the few black people that were in their country were treated. But the Soviet Union certainly was more authoritarian than the U.S. was.
- nyeah 1y agoI guess the point is that we can torture this until it appears to be a mind-bending paradox. Alternatively we might just remember the basics: "Even if you disagree very strongly, don't injure, imprison, or kill each other at will, like lunatics. Follow the law instead."
- asacrowflies 1y agoThe law like us code title 18 sections 2381 thru 2385
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- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- krapp 1y agoPolitical violence has never been entirely unacceptable in the US. The country was born and bred in violence, slavery and genocide. Descended upon and torn apart by European colonizers with the rabid ferocity of hyenas. America, perhaps alone, defines a free state by its capacity for political violence. Americans have romanticized political violence as an ideal for centuries in the archetype of the armed rural patriot, the New World version of ancient Rome's yeoman farmer, waxing romantic about watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants. The US has blood soaked into its floorboards. Political violence against fascists has only become morally questionable as fascism has become normalized. The article is correct that political violence is extremely bad, but it has also always been acceptable (or at least easy to culturally compartmentalize) against certain groups. That is the norm, not some idealized abstract notion of politics entirely encapsulated within rhetoric and debate, which has only recently been broken by "the left." A country that burns crosses and shoots up synagogues and bombs abortion clinics, where the police and ICE kidnap and kill with impunity, that sends the military into its own cities to kill immigrants and harass political dissidents, that builds concentration camps for "enemy combatants" in undeclared wars, has no right to clutch its pearls over actual white supremacists and neo-nazis - unambiguous fascists - taking what they themselves would freely give.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago> Political violence against fascists has only become morally questionable as fascism has become normalized. As fascism has become normalized, or as the term has? If you're going to label expedited restaurant registration as "fascism", then violence against fascism had better not be normalized.
- krapp 1y ago>As fascism has become normalized, or as the term has? Fascism. The normalization of the term has followed the normalization of the politics. >If you're going to label expedited restaurant registration as "fascism" I haven't done anything of the sort.
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- biophysboy 1y agoThis is a tedious article re-iterating a common point that fascism is a catch all term. Political words and phrases are not going to be used in strict adherence to deductive syllogisms. People vary. In any case, here is a quote from Stephen Miller, who inspired this blog post, naming and shaming a nebulous enemy: > They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble. And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.
- foogazi 1y agoSource ? Or else I’ll think you got this from a 1940s black and white propaganda video
- biophysboy 1y agohttps://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2025-09-21/segment/04 https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/cnr/date/2025-09-21/segment...
- jaredcwhite 1y agoMaybe Miller got it from a 1940s black and white propaganda video. He seems to eat that stuff up.
- imglorp 1y agoIsn't "political violence against fascists" basically a fallacy in practice, at least in the current US? Almost all the physical violence we've seen so far has been performed by the fascists. The Left are almost strictly defined by their desire to follow the laws and morals and work within the system. The Magas seem to revel in disrespecting those structures. To suggest otherwise seems like a false equivalence.
- BiteCode_dev 1y agoOne thing is certain, I can't remember a time in my life were this matter was a serious and regular debate by the general american public like today.
- FrankWilhoit 1y ago"Morality" is about immorality, about justifying punishment/persecution, about drawing lines that someone is on the wrong side of. Ethics is (nominally) universal; morality is about identity and therefore about exclusion. Morality is a weapon: that is why the people who like it like it.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago"Morality" is about immorality... Ethics is (nominally) universal; Ethics is moral philosophy. Most of the time these terms are used interchangeably but your description of the accepted difference is inaccurate and inflammatory. Ethics is the moral standard accepted at community level, not quite universal. Morality is the projection (or rejection) of parts of ethics on individual level. In itself, morality is not a weapon and it's not about exclusion, at least no more than ethics can be. > Morality is a weapon: that is why the people who like it like it. Ironically, you are trying to blame moral people for being immoral because they like the "weapon" called morality... You speak from the view point of your morality that rejects morality and it gets funny.
- atmavatar 1y agoIt's fascinating seeing the extent to which Republicans have monopolized both violence and victimhood. The entire article seems to be a standard exercise in bad faith commonly seen from right-wing pundits. Here, labeling certain individuals on the right as fascists is claimed to necessarily also be a call for violence against them. The only example provided for this claim is a reference to a musician in the middle of WW2 sporting a "This machine kills fascists" sticker on his guitar, as if wartime propaganda from 80 years ago is still relevant today. I certainly haven't seen any relevant individual on the left calling for violence - whether that be people with significant followings in media and especially not among elected individuals. In contrast, not only do I see pretty significant calls to violence from the right (e.g., Trump's rallies calling for violence against media members, his speech on 2021-01-06 whipping his crowd into a frenzy before the attack on the capitol, the "enemies within" speech he just gave to top military brass, etc.), but we're also seeing ICE becoming increasingly violent. The claims about attacks on freedom of speech are similar. Those on the left organize protests and boycotts against people they disagree with, thus exercising their own freedom of speech. Occasionally, such actions have resulted in individuals losing their jobs and their reputation. I won't claim that cancel culture doesn't go too far sometimes or get started over some incredibly petty things, but by and large, it's a movement that relies entirely on exercising speech as its mechanism. Contrast this again with actions on the right. We have a sitting president launching lawsuits against anyone who says something he doesn't like. At the same time, he's directed his FCC secretary to threaten removal of broadcast licenses and interfere with business mergers of anyone using speech critical of Trump. That is textbook government censorship. And no, Biden's administration requesting things on social media being taken down is not the same thing unless you can demonstrate said requests were also accompanied by threats of government action. It probably shouldn't have happened, and it definitely should have resulted in political consequences of some sort (it did), but it's not the same thing without threats being levied.
- olelele 1y agoThat musician is woody guthrie, he was writing songs for the organized left in the US, what is on the guitar has nothing to do with europe. He was active when the US persecuted the entire left and workers movements for the capital owners. He was concerned with american fascism.
- sxzygz 1y agomallowdram, in a flagged dead post, noted: > Logic is inapplicable here. Politics is arbitrary, and labels/categories are worse than arbitrary, they are random. Broadly speaking, at some level, I agree with them. There is no machine that will flash an indicator when pointed at a “fascist”. Yet certain intelligent people are always willing to use pure reason to confront a world that does not admit such scientific classification. The retort is always, “You know one when you see one.” The is a definite humility that is lacking in such debate, as if everyone shares a logically necessary psychological reality. None of these thinking persons, of any stripe, are prepared to do the work of articulating, with nuance, where the logical consequences of another contradict their own, and more tellingly, where interpretations of words/labels/categories are themselves foundational in arguments. People, myself certainly included, are not free with their energies teasing these details out, and are instead more than ready to indicate, in laborious, technical detail, why they are right. This is a very sick time in shared discourse. I want people to pause and ask if this intellectual turmoil is indeed useful in the present moment or is irrational behaviour forced by economic, social, and environmental anxieties of our time.
- gsf_emergency_4 1y agoHello again! I try to tease some details here (please note that the biological allusions are not meant to be "rational") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545841 >There is no machine that will flash an indicator when pointed at a “fascist”. Perhaps a reference to a certain Soviet farce? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza!#Animated_remake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin-dza-dza!#Animated_remake (2013) Online, the best we can do is try to be right about the kind of questions to ask.. (& pay heed to emotivism, like you say)
- olelele 1y agoIn my book using state power to abuse the weak is the essential thing to being fascist. Isn't Stephen Miller behind the ICE raids?
- olelele 1y agoThrowing flashbangs at children
- tastyface 1y agoHe's also behind the bombing of civilians in international waters: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/29/stephen-miller-venezuela-drug-boat-strike https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/29/stephen-mill... And he's been itching to do it since the last administration: https://archive.is/QBh3p https://archive.is/QBh3p
- tastyface 1y agoWhy did the mods turn off flags for this article? Why did the mods not turn off flags for this other recent article, which garnered a lot more upvotes and had a pretty active discussion going? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45454026 This smells like yet another example of "enlightened centrist" moderation bias on this site. The userbase voted; leave it flagged, and leave your politics out of it.
- silexia 1y ago[flagged]
- amai 1y ago[flagged]