2 ms·

>Just call them what they are: totalitarian-authoritarian personalities, whose roots lie deep in the desire to be free of the perceived "filth of others". The

by krapp 3mo ago

>Just call them what they are: totalitarian-authoritarian personalities, whose roots lie deep in the desire to be free of the perceived "filth of others". The word for that is "fascist."

MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
Fascism is a loaded word that will get completely negated by glib idiocy. Totalitarian-authoritarian personality is more fitting, because in fact as a personality it can arise in any individual - not just those wearing brown shirts and marching around in jackboots, seeking conformity with a clean ideal. Totalitarian-authoritarianism is a meme - a kind of virus, which can be just as easily discarded as it can infiltrate a social organ. Fascism™ ~= Totalitarian-Authoritarianism© Fascism is a mark of trade of the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, who demands the right to be copied (in order to attain conformal cleanliness). You can find it in yourself, if you care to look - but you may (or may not) be identifiable as a fascist. The broader issue is that absolutes are unattainable. It is absolutely impossible to have a clean society, free of the filth of others. We humans depend on filth to perpetuate our species. Sure, boot out the fascists if you feel that is keeping you un-clean. But in so doing, you will establish your own totalitarian-authoritarian personality. The key is not to resist - it is futile - but rather, instead, replace. The solution to any totalitarian order is simply to build another one, right on top.
- cocacola1 3mo ago
  Or crypto fascist; that’ll have them threatening to sock you in the face if Buckley’s any example.
  - MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
    Or, just identify it as a personality - a facade, a facsimile, a fake being put in place to shield from perceived filth. Anyone is capable of manifesting this personality. Anyone is also capable, of replacing it with something else. Calling someone a fascist tends to lock them in an immutable argument - calling out their fake personality, drops the shield and it turns to dust.
    - mindslight 3mo ago
      > Anyone is capable of manifesting this personality Okay, but we have a large segment of the population currently manifesting this to some particular ends, wreaking untold havoc on our country. Do you have anything specific and constructive to say about how to undermine that movement? Like sure, I'm receptive to the idea that fascists (autocratic authoritarians) don't really like being called fascists (autocratic authoritarians). But it's not like trying to meet the current crop in the middle has been working either. In fact I'd argue it's their own pattern of supporting whomever claims to uncompromisingly represent them, while actually utterly conning them, is exactly how they've gotten themselves into their situation. They seem hopelessly incapable of analyzing policies to foresee the outcomes, meaning that compromise is impossible - one could even propose policies that 100% match their professed desires, but that still wouldn't be good enough without also banging their partisan drum. So ultimately the way I see it is that the useful idiots still flying their Grump flags in 2026 are never going to be reached regardless of what kid gloves we might use. So we just need to call it what it is so those still sitting on the fence might see what's at stake - including people who may still be assuaging their own conscience with preposterous labels like "conservative".
      - MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
        > Do you have anything specific and constructive to say about how to undermine that movement? Yes. You rub their face in it. Dignity is the Lynch pin in modern American politics. Everyone demands their own bit of it. What a "conservative" thinks is dignified versus what a "liberal" thinks is dignified, is of zero consequence when you have actually spotted the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, in either case, or indeed .. in any case. There is a backlog of rejected dignity in American politics. It starts with war crimes prosecutions, because the public are in very serious danger of letting their war criminals get away with it. Totalitarian-authoritarianism can be spotted by the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violation of human rights at massive scale. What the war criminals do to other nation states, they eventually do to their own. ICE is an extension of crimes against humanity already committed, and now refined for local application. And both sides are doing it. So, you just simply don't let either side get away with it. War crimes are the exact opposite of human rights - a government committing war crimes on other states is denying the human rights of its citizens, also. So, constructively, if you want to do something about all the "useful idiots" consider whether you might be an idiot, or totalitarian, or authoritarian, or none of the above - particularly when it comes to the crimes of the state from which you gain survival. An easy way to express the solution is to demand that there be no more secret, or unknown, war crimes. In this you will make your own local change, and it'll infect others, too .. Remember, the wars are the reason for all the local human rights abuses at home. If there weren't a fetid desire to bomb cultures considered inferior into oblivion, the local culture would be being attended to in equitable ways. "Your streets are ruined because your state profits more from ruining (other nations') streets than building them (locally)."
- weakfish 3mo ago
  It's a fair point that it's become one of those words that doesn't really _mean_ anything anymore in common discourse. Like Marxism. For all intents and purposes, Marxism is basically "anything I don't like that's left of center." I mean, anyone who claims with any level of seriousness that Democrats are Marxist have _zero_ clue what that means.
  - MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
    I think the issue is more that there is so much loaded emotion in the image of a 'real fascist' that you're just adding another layer to the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, which is itself utterly fake. Cut to the bone - point out that it's just a personality they're inventing. It's not really who they are. It's just a cowardly shield they're wearing because they are afraid.
- krapp 3mo ago
  >Sure, boot out the fascists if you feel that is keeping you un-clean. But in so doing, you will establish your own totalitarian-authoritarian personality. The key is not to resist - it is futile - but rather, instead, replace. The solution to any totalitarian order is simply to build another one, right on top. Oh, that's what's happening here. The only real fascists are the people opposed to fascism. OK. My bad, I didn't see the game. Made the mistake of answering in good faith. Carry on.
  - MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
    Oh, so dramatic, in the lunge towards rejection of an argument you seem to have misunderstood! Well, look. You don't stop hatred with more hatred. You don't stop war with more war. You don't stop stopping by stopping stopping. It's an endless spiral. Instead, look at it like this - don't lock horns with the totalitarian-authoritarian circumstance. Investigate and expose the crimes which resulted from it, though. And be relentless about it. Not resistive.
    - cindyllm 3mo ago
      [dead]

by krapp 3mo ago

>Just call them what they are: totalitarian-authoritarian personalities, whose roots lie deep in the desire to be free of the perceived "filth of others". The word for that is "fascist."

MomsAVoxell 3mo ago

Fascism is a loaded word that will get completely negated by glib idiocy. Totalitarian-authoritarian personality is more fitting, because in fact as a personality it can arise in any individual - not just those wearing brown shirts and marching around in jackboots, seeking conformity with a clean ideal. Totalitarian-authoritarianism is a meme - a kind of virus, which can be just as easily discarded as it can infiltrate a social organ. Fascism™ ~= Totalitarian-Authoritarianism© Fascism is a mark of trade of the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, who demands the right to be copied (in order to attain conformal cleanliness). You can find it in yourself, if you care to look - but you may (or may not) be identifiable as a fascist. The broader issue is that absolutes are unattainable. It is absolutely impossible to have a clean society, free of the filth of others. We humans depend on filth to perpetuate our species. Sure, boot out the fascists if you feel that is keeping you un-clean. But in so doing, you will establish your own totalitarian-authoritarian personality. The key is not to resist - it is futile - but rather, instead, replace. The solution to any totalitarian order is simply to build another one, right on top.

cocacola1 3mo ago
Or crypto fascist; that’ll have them threatening to sock you in the face if Buckley’s any example.
- MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
  Or, just identify it as a personality - a facade, a facsimile, a fake being put in place to shield from perceived filth. Anyone is capable of manifesting this personality. Anyone is also capable, of replacing it with something else. Calling someone a fascist tends to lock them in an immutable argument - calling out their fake personality, drops the shield and it turns to dust.
  - mindslight 3mo ago
    > Anyone is capable of manifesting this personality Okay, but we have a large segment of the population currently manifesting this to some particular ends, wreaking untold havoc on our country. Do you have anything specific and constructive to say about how to undermine that movement? Like sure, I'm receptive to the idea that fascists (autocratic authoritarians) don't really like being called fascists (autocratic authoritarians). But it's not like trying to meet the current crop in the middle has been working either. In fact I'd argue it's their own pattern of supporting whomever claims to uncompromisingly represent them, while actually utterly conning them, is exactly how they've gotten themselves into their situation. They seem hopelessly incapable of analyzing policies to foresee the outcomes, meaning that compromise is impossible - one could even propose policies that 100% match their professed desires, but that still wouldn't be good enough without also banging their partisan drum. So ultimately the way I see it is that the useful idiots still flying their Grump flags in 2026 are never going to be reached regardless of what kid gloves we might use. So we just need to call it what it is so those still sitting on the fence might see what's at stake - including people who may still be assuaging their own conscience with preposterous labels like "conservative".
    - MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
      > Do you have anything specific and constructive to say about how to undermine that movement? Yes. You rub their face in it. Dignity is the Lynch pin in modern American politics. Everyone demands their own bit of it. What a "conservative" thinks is dignified versus what a "liberal" thinks is dignified, is of zero consequence when you have actually spotted the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, in either case, or indeed .. in any case. There is a backlog of rejected dignity in American politics. It starts with war crimes prosecutions, because the public are in very serious danger of letting their war criminals get away with it. Totalitarian-authoritarianism can be spotted by the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violation of human rights at massive scale. What the war criminals do to other nation states, they eventually do to their own. ICE is an extension of crimes against humanity already committed, and now refined for local application. And both sides are doing it. So, you just simply don't let either side get away with it. War crimes are the exact opposite of human rights - a government committing war crimes on other states is denying the human rights of its citizens, also. So, constructively, if you want to do something about all the "useful idiots" consider whether you might be an idiot, or totalitarian, or authoritarian, or none of the above - particularly when it comes to the crimes of the state from which you gain survival. An easy way to express the solution is to demand that there be no more secret, or unknown, war crimes. In this you will make your own local change, and it'll infect others, too .. Remember, the wars are the reason for all the local human rights abuses at home. If there weren't a fetid desire to bomb cultures considered inferior into oblivion, the local culture would be being attended to in equitable ways. "Your streets are ruined because your state profits more from ruining (other nations') streets than building them (locally)."
weakfish 3mo ago
It's a fair point that it's become one of those words that doesn't really _mean_ anything anymore in common discourse. Like Marxism. For all intents and purposes, Marxism is basically "anything I don't like that's left of center." I mean, anyone who claims with any level of seriousness that Democrats are Marxist have _zero_ clue what that means.
- MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
  I think the issue is more that there is so much loaded emotion in the image of a 'real fascist' that you're just adding another layer to the totalitarian-authoritarian personality, which is itself utterly fake. Cut to the bone - point out that it's just a personality they're inventing. It's not really who they are. It's just a cowardly shield they're wearing because they are afraid.
krapp 3mo ago
>Sure, boot out the fascists if you feel that is keeping you un-clean. But in so doing, you will establish your own totalitarian-authoritarian personality. The key is not to resist - it is futile - but rather, instead, replace. The solution to any totalitarian order is simply to build another one, right on top. Oh, that's what's happening here. The only real fascists are the people opposed to fascism. OK. My bad, I didn't see the game. Made the mistake of answering in good faith. Carry on.
- MomsAVoxell 3mo ago
  Oh, so dramatic, in the lunge towards rejection of an argument you seem to have misunderstood! Well, look. You don't stop hatred with more hatred. You don't stop war with more war. You don't stop stopping by stopping stopping. It's an endless spiral. Instead, look at it like this - don't lock horns with the totalitarian-authoritarian circumstance. Investigate and expose the crimes which resulted from it, though. And be relentless about it. Not resistive.
  - cindyllm 3mo ago
    [dead]