• futatorius
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    5 months ago

    So while fiscal and social conservatism are the public rallying cries, they aren’t actually much in line with fascism.

    Social conservatism is, at best, fascist-adjacent. Singling out social minorities for harassment and legal persecution is very closely akin to fascist scapegoating.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Oh it’s certainly not a pretty picture. But if we go around attributing everything to fascism then that’s what we’ll end up with because nobody will be able to see it coming. And they’re always trying. Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it but because of the American experience with it and the modern reaction to most of it’s ideas being debunked by science. We tied it up with the civil rights movement and weaponized it. But it spent something like 300 years happily living within the realm of liberalism. So while I don’t like it, it is not in and of itself fascism.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        5 months ago

        Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it

        Please cite your sources because I have never seen a scrap of evidence that social conservatism is anything but thinly disguised hate and fear of the other weaponized into political ideologies.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Cite what? The entire existence of modern political philosophy? Look nobody is denying that it gets misused. Nobody is denying that it’s thoroughly debunked. Nobody is denying that Republicans are using it exactly as you say.

          But if you want to deny that a sizeable portion of Democrats are conservatives who have beliefs about traditional family homes because they believe it’s better for the people involved then you’re ignoring an entire demographic just to paint something as purely far right. Going straight to the extremes is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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            5 months ago

            I was not trying to dispute that Democrats are the “good cops” to the Republican “bad cops” and often implement just as draconian and cruel policies in the name of austerity of whatever dumb bullshit as do Republicans.

            I consider centrist democrats conservative, especially from a perspective of leftism that is bigger than the US both in geography and time.

              • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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                5 months ago

                When people talk about a cannonball causing destruction, they often don’t focus on describing the gunpowder and wad loaded into the firing chamber, just the cannonball.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  There are a few problems with that. If you “other” people who aren’t already fascist then you’re likely to push them straight into it. You also run the risk of losing your legitimacy. People will think Anti Fascists just call everything fascism. And finally, that leaves no path back for fascists. If they’re either fascist or progressive then they’ll stay where they are. You defeat an idea by giving its people a path to come back to mainstream society.

                  So you can’t just describe the entirety of conservatism as part of a fascist mechanism and get a good result. It’s not true and it will back fire.

                  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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                    5 months ago

                    So you can’t just describe the entirety of conservatism as part of a fascist mechanism and get a good result.

                    Why not?

                    It’s not true and it will back fire.

                    It is evidently true that conservatism usually leads to fascism, the ideologies share essential elements.

                    I would say treating conservative snowflakes with kid gloves is what has backfired.

                    Shame them for hiding behind hateful and cruel ideologies, point out their ideologies are childish and have been tried repeatedly over history never to the benefit of the average person, and don’t let them ever say they’re dumb bullshit unchallenged.

                    “Reaching across the isle” doesn’t work (Do you need MORE proof of that?), these people don’t want to have a conversation, they want to take away my healthcare so I die, they want to take away my girlfriends birth control and abortion access so she dies in a child birth complication, they want to take environmental protections away so they can poison the land and destroy the nature that supports us all, they want to destroy clean air and water, they want to give all the power to the rich, they want to hurt trans people they have never even met, they tend to be racist af in the policies they support if not the flags they fly… need I go on?

                    Sorry I don’t respect conservatism, it is and will always be the gateway drug to fascism.