4 ms·

We 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 def

We 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 ago
  Checklists 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.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Checklists are absolutely important Checklists are good, including in public discourse. A 14-point list where every item is ambiguous, is not. It’s not useless per se. Just insufficient as a consistent definition. > you add in an ad hominem to Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt Literally don’t. (Ad hominem would be me saying I hate Dr. Britt and rejecting his checklist on that basis.) Saying I reject Britt as a final authority on a topic I don’t believe we have any final authority on yet is very different from rejecting them in any capacity.
- idle_zealot 1y ago
  Well yeah, fascism doesn't have an actual definition. People even disagree about what it is. Is it a political ideology, a worldview, a form of government, a movement, a type of psychosis? And yet people do retrospectively agree that certain people or groups were fascists. There's an idea in peoples' minds that defies a simple dictionary definition. For an idea like that, we turn to a list of soft criteria. People can and will disagree on that exact set of criteria, or over whether one is met under specific circumstances. But really, that's true of all language outside of hard mathematics. Who gave Britt final say? Nobody in particular, and yet his criteria are often cited and used in more serious discussions of fascism. So a lot of people seem to think his criteria are useful. Language is a collaborative thing, meaning comes from diffuse and tacit agreement. If you expect that some power authorize and enforce a rigid definition of any political or sociological term, prepare to be deeply disappointed when you realize that nobody can provide such solid and concrete definitions of any terminology, even words you think you understand. What's democracy? Capitalism? Authoritarianism? Socialism? They're all defined by tacitly approved sets of criteria invented by an unofficial source and iterated upon by academics and misconstrued by and to the broader population.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > Well yeah, fascism doesn't have an actual definition That’s my point. OP said “we have an actual consistent way to define fascism,” and that’s simply not true. That doesn’t mean we can’t call out fascism in real time. But it does mean that everyone who disagrees with you isn’t necessarily a fascist.
wang_li 1y ago
That list is just things that the author doesn't like and is super vague anyway by using loosely defined abstractions.
drivebyhooting 1y ago
I feel like you snuck in some of your pet issues into that list.
- walls 1y ago
  The (linked) list is from 2003 and the points are copied directly.
PaulHoule 1y ago
Umberto Eco has published a better list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism but it's hard to find a functioning organization that doesn't have some of his characteristics because a certain in-vs-out distinction is necessary to an organization surviving as much as a cell needs a membrane. "Anti-fascism" as it as practiced today ticks at least eight of the boxes.
- gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
  >as much as a cell needs a membrane. Then maybe it's time to move beyond the membrane and start thinking about evolutionary corrections to the membrane :) E.g ion-channel-, purine-/aromatic-heterocycle- based signalling systems, all of which are subject to (epi-)genetic control (bearing in mind that eukaryotes have an extra-- nuclear -- membrane) >"Anti-fascism" as it as practiced today ticks at least eight of the boxes. This is why I consider antifa & other forms of representative identarianism (a mediocre implementation of eukaryotism, imho), including democratic socialism as promoted by Orwell*, as being right-wing. *who has been equivocal about any non-emotivist definition of fascism: https://archive.today/latest/https://msteenhagen.medium.com/george-orwell-on-fascism-401fc8ab186d https://archive.today/latest/https://msteenhagen.medium.com/... >Someone who felt and expressed this fascistic feeling, according to Orwell, was the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Writing A Vision in 1925 Yeats described his idea of utopia: "every detail of life hierarchical, every great man’s door crowded at dawn by petitioners, great wealth everywhere in a few men’s hands, all dependent upon a few" Ironically.. meritocracy (which one can argue IngSoc is..) seems left-wing to me. This suggests that we should distinguish meritocracy from "meritocratic feelings" The (political) "great man" is a paradox: he apparently overcomes (vertical) evolution but is a slave to emotivist realities. This paradoxical messianism appeals to identarians of all stripes-- vestigial in 1984 as a semi-nonymous BigBro-- The nonpolitical great man is a more subtle paradox: the great wealth supposedly concentrates unbelievable agency, but history has shown that this kind of agency is negative-sum-- if the wealth acquisition was not a pure side-effect of the agency. (Will SamA be great because he is rich or rich because he is great? News in 2 decades' time!) "We" require open-ended or at least higher-order paradoxes to bypass "stasis of the meritocratic dead-center" . https://youtube.com/shorts/SRp6MKh-_ZM https://youtube.com/shorts/SRp6MKh-_ZM
ThrowawayR2 1y ago
And why should we accept this list as a definition? Like Unberto Eco's list, there does not appear to be evidence that it is broadly recognized as a definition, other than it being frequently being reposted by partisans. In fact, a casual search suggests that the supposed author (From your link, "Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt") is neither a Ph.D nor educated in political science: https://danielmalmer.medium.com/the-long-complicated-history-of-the-14-defining-characteristics-of-fascism-e366412932f https://danielmalmer.medium.com/the-long-complicated-history... so it cannot even be used as an appeal to authority. This seems to be confirmed by the publication from which the list is taken, (note the different spelling of the first name): "Laurence W. Britt is a retired international businessperson, writer, and commentator. He is the author of 'Fascism, Anyone?' (FI, Spring 2003), the most reprinted—and most pirated—article in the magazine’s history." (https://secularhumanism.org/authors/laurence-w-britt/ https://secularhumanism.org/authors/laurence-w-britt/). Interestingly, the author seems to have no footprint online other than his fame through this list, so this guy is, in a non-derogatory sense, a non-entity. [EDIT] More searching turns up a post in which comments purportedly by Laurence Britt (#24) also deny that he has academic credentials and also provides more context (#26) about writing the list: https://www.ryananddebi.com/2004/10/16/laurence-britts-14-points-of-fascism/ https://www.ryananddebi.com/2004/10/16/laurence-britts-14-po...

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 ago
Checklists 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.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Checklists are absolutely important Checklists are good, including in public discourse. A 14-point list where every item is ambiguous, is not. It’s not useless per se. Just insufficient as a consistent definition. > you add in an ad hominem to Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt Literally don’t. (Ad hominem would be me saying I hate Dr. Britt and rejecting his checklist on that basis.) Saying I reject Britt as a final authority on a topic I don’t believe we have any final authority on yet is very different from rejecting them in any capacity.
idle_zealot 1y ago
Well yeah, fascism doesn't have an actual definition. People even disagree about what it is. Is it a political ideology, a worldview, a form of government, a movement, a type of psychosis? And yet people do retrospectively agree that certain people or groups were fascists. There's an idea in peoples' minds that defies a simple dictionary definition. For an idea like that, we turn to a list of soft criteria. People can and will disagree on that exact set of criteria, or over whether one is met under specific circumstances. But really, that's true of all language outside of hard mathematics. Who gave Britt final say? Nobody in particular, and yet his criteria are often cited and used in more serious discussions of fascism. So a lot of people seem to think his criteria are useful. Language is a collaborative thing, meaning comes from diffuse and tacit agreement. If you expect that some power authorize and enforce a rigid definition of any political or sociological term, prepare to be deeply disappointed when you realize that nobody can provide such solid and concrete definitions of any terminology, even words you think you understand. What's democracy? Capitalism? Authoritarianism? Socialism? They're all defined by tacitly approved sets of criteria invented by an unofficial source and iterated upon by academics and misconstrued by and to the broader population.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Well yeah, fascism doesn't have an actual definition That’s my point. OP said “we have an actual consistent way to define fascism,” and that’s simply not true. That doesn’t mean we can’t call out fascism in real time. But it does mean that everyone who disagrees with you isn’t necessarily a fascist.

wang_li 1y ago

That list is just things that the author doesn't like and is super vague anyway by using loosely defined abstractions.

drivebyhooting 1y ago

I feel like you snuck in some of your pet issues into that list.

walls 1y ago
The (linked) list is from 2003 and the points are copied directly.

PaulHoule 1y ago

Umberto Eco has published a better list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism but it's hard to find a functioning organization that doesn't have some of his characteristics because a certain in-vs-out distinction is necessary to an organization surviving as much as a cell needs a membrane. "Anti-fascism" as it as practiced today ticks at least eight of the boxes.

gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
>as much as a cell needs a membrane. Then maybe it's time to move beyond the membrane and start thinking about evolutionary corrections to the membrane :) E.g ion-channel-, purine-/aromatic-heterocycle- based signalling systems, all of which are subject to (epi-)genetic control (bearing in mind that eukaryotes have an extra-- nuclear -- membrane) >"Anti-fascism" as it as practiced today ticks at least eight of the boxes. This is why I consider antifa & other forms of representative identarianism (a mediocre implementation of eukaryotism, imho), including democratic socialism as promoted by Orwell*, as being right-wing. *who has been equivocal about any non-emotivist definition of fascism: https://archive.today/latest/https://msteenhagen.medium.com/george-orwell-on-fascism-401fc8ab186d https://archive.today/latest/https://msteenhagen.medium.com/... >Someone who felt and expressed this fascistic feeling, according to Orwell, was the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. Writing A Vision in 1925 Yeats described his idea of utopia: "every detail of life hierarchical, every great man’s door crowded at dawn by petitioners, great wealth everywhere in a few men’s hands, all dependent upon a few" Ironically.. meritocracy (which one can argue IngSoc is..) seems left-wing to me. This suggests that we should distinguish meritocracy from "meritocratic feelings" The (political) "great man" is a paradox: he apparently overcomes (vertical) evolution but is a slave to emotivist realities. This paradoxical messianism appeals to identarians of all stripes-- vestigial in 1984 as a semi-nonymous BigBro-- The nonpolitical great man is a more subtle paradox: the great wealth supposedly concentrates unbelievable agency, but history has shown that this kind of agency is negative-sum-- if the wealth acquisition was not a pure side-effect of the agency. (Will SamA be great because he is rich or rich because he is great? News in 2 decades' time!) "We" require open-ended or at least higher-order paradoxes to bypass "stasis of the meritocratic dead-center" . https://youtube.com/shorts/SRp6MKh-_ZM https://youtube.com/shorts/SRp6MKh-_ZM

ThrowawayR2 1y ago

And why should we accept this list as a definition? Like Unberto Eco's list, there does not appear to be evidence that it is broadly recognized as a definition, other than it being frequently being reposted by partisans. In fact, a casual search suggests that the supposed author (From your link, "Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt") is neither a Ph.D nor educated in political science: https://danielmalmer.medium.com/the-long-complicated-history-of-the-14-defining-characteristics-of-fascism-e366412932f https://danielmalmer.medium.com/the-long-complicated-history... so it cannot even be used as an appeal to authority. This seems to be confirmed by the publication from which the list is taken, (note the different spelling of the first name): "Laurence W. Britt is a retired international businessperson, writer, and commentator. He is the author of 'Fascism, Anyone?' (FI, Spring 2003), the most reprinted—and most pirated—article in the magazine’s history." (https://secularhumanism.org/authors/laurence-w-britt/ https://secularhumanism.org/authors/laurence-w-britt/). Interestingly, the author seems to have no footprint online other than his fame through this list, so this guy is, in a non-derogatory sense, a non-entity. [EDIT] More searching turns up a post in which comments purportedly by Laurence Britt (#24) also deny that he has academic credentials and also provides more context (#26) about writing the list: https://www.ryananddebi.com/2004/10/16/laurence-britts-14-points-of-fascism/ https://www.ryananddebi.com/2004/10/16/laurence-britts-14-po...