What is Fascism?
NOTE: the text was not written by me and is from reddit user Merari01. The only changes were minor formatting for readability. I would merely link to reddit if they had a way to highlight comments, but they do not.
The original post.
This is it. Fascists are, largely by definition, utterly valueless. Germans are efficient. Nazis were just Nazis. Like MAGA. Valueless
Completely correct.
Fascism is inherently an empty ideology. It stands for nothing. It believes in nothing. It strives for nothing.
Except power.
Fascism must lie, it must deceive, it must play to baser beliefs like racism, because it just has nothing tangible of value to offer.
Democratic socialism, for example, believes that a better society for all is achievable and that through collective effort we can all prosper. It has methods, plans and empirically verified scientific research supporting the fact that when you lift a people up out of poverty and give them the means to improve themselves, they will overwhelmingly do so and in return give back to society.
But fascism must hate verifiable reality, because reality proves that fascism is a downward spiral circling a drain that ends in suffering, poverty and a broken society. So fascism lies and tells you that, actually, it is the fault of the people who want to improve society somewhat that you can’t get a job, healthcare or clean air and water. One of the primary mechanisms fascism has to ensnare its base is that it, exactly like a cult, gets its believers to be openly antithetical of demonstrable reality. See: MAGA and vaccines, health & safety, climate change, etc. etc.1
Fascism, like all populist movements, is at its base a great con. Designed to concentrate all power in a handful of elites and an ever shrinking circle of the “acceptable citizen”. Fascism attacks the arts, attacks journalism, it sets neighbour against neighbour and has you fearful of coming under scrutiny of the regime.
Fascism will in the end always self-destruct. You can not run the machine of a society by stripmining every asset it has, by throwing a spoke in its every cog. The problem is of course that before it inevitably falls down, it must cause untold suffering, because that’s how it perpetuates its abusive cycle.
Fascism is a parasite on society.
ED NOTE: the footnote is especially insightful and is something we must all keep in mind.
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An interesting phenomenon of fascism to note is that the lies it tells are often not meant to be believed. They are a loyalty test. MAGA knows that Trump lies. The point is that repeating the lie shows fealty to the in-group. MAGA will spin on a dime and hold the exact opposite viewpoint to the one they had yesterday when Trump lies and contradicts a previous edict. This is because it doesn’t actually matter that they believe or not believe what Great Leader says. What matters is that they show obedience. ↩