this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Yeah, people say right-wing when what they mean is authoritarian. There's a guy named Bob Altemeyer that has been studying authoritarianism for decades and he makes a distinction between left wing and right wing authoritarianism.
That'd make sense, but there's a good deal of stuff typically considered left wing (like antimisinformation and gun control) that is authoritarian too. Nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as it's handled fairly, of course.
The troll in me kinda wants to see how people would react if I started calling them righties for wanting to stop hate speech, but I think I know better.
Society requires a socially agreed upon level of authoritarianism to enforce the socially agreed upon ruleset. No system of organisation or control is absent from authority, but trying to conflate functional social authority with forced authoritarianism has been something I'm seeing a lot more from fascist thinkers.
Authority: When the majority tell the government how they wish to be controlled.
Authoritarianism: When the government tells the majority how they will be controlled.
Huh... I see you set a bit of a rhetorical trap there, where disagreeing or countering would make me seem like one of these fascist thinkers. Nice. Might not have been intentional though.
Anyways, I see them as different steps along the same spectrum. Authority is a component of authoritarianism, but the presence of authority is not necessarily indicative of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is authority taken too far.
On that topic, non-authoritarian authority is not always a good thing, nor does good authority necessarily stem from the will of the people. Sometimes the masses really don't know what's best. That said, democracy is probably still the best paradigm humans can manage on a long term.
Whether the will of the masses is "right" or "wrong" is irrelevant, society as a construct is one of cooperation for mutual benefit and improved quality of life through cedeing control and authority to those who represent the will of the majority, so if the masses managed to corral themselves into society then the understanding of the benefit of cooperation is strong in the social consciousness.
A result of this is the understanding that anything that works against the will of the masses to benefit from cooperation is unsustainable because it involves exploitation of the least protected sections of society.
This means that anyone trying to abuse and mismanage social systems for their own selfish benefit (emotional, financial, or otherwise) are objectively harming society. Ergo, anything that restricts the will of the masses by allowing selfish minorities to exploit their way to wealth and power and to further let them diminish the capacity of the majority to benefit from social cooperation is forced without consent, we call these actions "fascist".
Fascism was the default social structure, he who controls the resources controls the society, but instead of that being an elected government of the populace it was one guy and his family that abused their position to maintain that position however possible from the first time an ape stole another ape's rock to a king stealing another king's country.
Society has slowly been slowly wresting control from the selfish individual to support the masses as social consciousness grows, democracy was one of the biggest steps in that direction of taking the power out of the hands of fascists and putting it into the hands of the people. But it's a work in progress, and those that are selfish and want to hold back the progress of social benefit are thusly called conservatives, because they wish to conserve the ability to abuse society for chance to gain more wealth and power than other people as opposed to contributing to society to increase the wealth and power of all the people.
Many of these fascist systems still exist and will take a significant about of time for society to claim more control away from fascist actors, there will always be an ebb and flow of fascism and selfishness in society but that lessens as time goes on. For example, the Democratic electoral system of the US government has been unable to avoid the influence of fascism over the years as evident by legal voter disenfranchisement through first past the post, non-preferential voting, gerrymandering, the electoral college, attempts to limit and remove citizens rights to engage with the electoral system by de-funding postal services and limiting mail voting, etc. These are all fascist claw backs attempting to regain selfish control over societies power structures for their percieved personal benefit.
Capitalism, a system integrated into almost all modern world cultures and societies is also a fascist concession that is a middle ground between kings owning everything in their kingdom to personal ownership and control, of course exploitation is still present under capitalism, because capitalism is just a stepping stone to a socially beneficial system not an end point of social development, it is also one of the last bastions of fascist control over wealth consolidation.
I could go on about how all these developments relate to issues in the social order and the inability for individuals to develop cognisance of the nuances of societies current place in human development but it's starting to feel like rambling.
If anything I hope that something I said resonates and provides context and understanding of the complex weave that is human social development.
Kinda skimmed because that's a really long essay, but:
Fascism is a fairly specific thing. It's not just anything that's not democracy. Overapplying the term is a tool that allows you to condemn reasonable stances as absolute evil. Note that reasonable, used here, does not mean ideal or without caveats. If you can condemn every stance other than your own as absolute evil, that is radicalization. Radicalization can have its use, but it's a dangerous thing. It needs to be focused. What is "Punch a Nazi" when capitalists are fascists too?
I understand that definition of fascism, and you should read the rest of my post for a better understanding of how that fascism operates in modern society. Nothing I've stated goes against those definitions, they've just been tempered with the context of modern society.
And yes, capitalism is 'fascism lite' if you want an analogy. Profit as a concept is inherently exploitative for the purpose of building wealth and power to exploit more people; power that is used to exert authoritarian control over those who rely on that person's willing distribution of their excess resources, and will eventually give way to systems that are better focused on social equality.
You talk about fascism as if it's the pervasive force of evil. Fascism is a relatively recent phenomenon, a specific manifestation of evil. I believe what you're talking about is greed, or hunger for power.
Nothing about fascism is recent, fascism is born of greed and hunger for power, but the act of engaging in self imposed authority through control of power and resources is fascism. I don't think of it as good and evil, these are just the actions of people, selfish vs selfless. Society is humanity moving away from selfish towards selfless, movement in the other direction requires engaging in fascism.
It's only fascism if it comes from the fascism region of Europe. Otherwise it's just sparkling authoritarianism.
Yes, that is the argument you just tried to make. How self aware.
That's one part that I'm not convinced about. I think it can and will happen in isolation, but whether it is stable in the long term and spreads to other countries is another.
One thing that I notice with the communist/socialism gang is that they often simultaneously have faith in the good of mankind and condemn all pro-capitalists and western politicians as evil. Reality is more nuanced, of course.
Anyway, I expect it will be the most robust political and economic systems that will survive and prosper. There are many big challenges (eg. climate change & competition for limited resources), as well as intentionally thrown spanners. Often it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, those who wield the biggest sticks that get to dictate or influence the rules.
My personal hope is that China walks peacefully forward toward a healthy form of socialism and is able to lead the world by example. I have my doubts, of course.
It's already happening in other countries, other first world developed countries have universal healthcare, are looking at reducing full time working hours, implementing UBI not to mention more robust and fair electoral systems.
America still has a very strong Conservative grift slowing the country's social progress, but the need for the masses to survive will always outweigh the need for the individual to be greedy so movement towards social benefit is slow but inevitable.
I'm in one of those countries (no UBI experiments yet). We have worker's councils in large companies and unions, but there is still significant income and (more-so) wealth disparity. On the whole, this is one of those rare cases where the US has helped set-up a better and fairer system abroad than they have at home.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen to the world would be for the US to reform itself - healthcare first. I have bigger doubts here than China, though.
Until such time as they are truly working toward fair democracy and human rights at home and abroad, I think we need more bulkwards against US corporate interests (similar with other countries). Basing international trade purely on business interests and political whims doesn't seem ideal - perhaps we need more principle based international trade, with incentives to improve.
Yes, you are basically describing Hobbes' "Leviathan."