Thanks for posting - I disagree with the article, which means that it was worth reading. I think this is a pretty uncharitable view of what centrism is. And it also over-values ideological purity....
Thanks for posting - I disagree with the article, which means that it was worth reading.
I think this is a pretty uncharitable view of what centrism is.
arguing for a specific position requires collecting evidence and arguing for it. Centrism, simply requires repeating some of what A is saying and some of what B is saying and mixing them together.
And it also over-values ideological purity. There's this sort of theme that if centrists were more honest with themselves, they'd admit that they don't actually believe what they're saying.
Third, it makes it easier to suck up to those in charge, because the concept of the “center” can easily move along with shifts in power. A staunch conservative will have to undergo a major change of political philosophy to get a place in liberal administration. A centrist can simply espouse a few more positions from the conservatives and a few less from the liberals and fit in just fine.
This is an enormous advantage of centrism, and this sort of compromise means that politics is working well.
Overall, you can tell that Mr Swartz was 20ish when he wrote this - it very much comes from a 20ish-year-old's perspective.
As I've gotten older I've stopped valuing a centrist perspective. I used to be the embodiment of compromise, always looking for the most middle of the road solution. Frequently, this was so I...
As I've gotten older I've stopped valuing a centrist perspective. I used to be the embodiment of compromise, always looking for the most middle of the road solution. Frequently, this was so I could feel superior to both sides by acting like an arbiter of reason.
The reality of it was that I had no value system to rely on. I treated A and B with equal validity because I lacked either context or judgement to process which one made sense to me. At a point in my life I made an effort to actually understand each topic so that I could pick either A or B based on their merits and the greater context of my own perspective. And it turns out all of my considered decisions were almost always A and never B.
There are a lot of subjects in our current political climate that don't have a practical compromise, and it's healthy to be able to be able to discern which is correct using your own rhetoric and reasoning skills. If one side says 1 + 1 = 2 and the other says 1 + 1 = 3, the correct answer isn't 2.5
Of course not everyone has to be either a diehard anarcho-communist or a theocratic nationalist with no in between, most people fall within that spectrum. But it's about finding out where your fall on that spectrum vs being a normalized echo of the voices you can hear. Not blind idealism, but having ideals.
I think the issue is that most choices aren't "fascism or not fascism", but rather a case of finding the compromise that solves as many people's problems as possible. For example, with covid, the...
Exemplary
I think the issue is that most choices aren't "fascism or not fascism", but rather a case of finding the compromise that solves as many people's problems as possible.
For example, with covid, the choices were never "let the virus rampage freely, or completely cure it". Instead, there were a lot of complex choices and cost-benefit analyses to be made. Locking down reduced the spread and therefore reduced the pressure on hospitals and kept more people alive, but it also cost a lot of people their livelihoods and severely damaged the education of many children. Locking down earlier and harder may have reduced the spread further and left more people alive. Opening up earlier or reducing the lockdown measures may have improved education outcomes or meant fewer people were left jobless. Financial measures like furlough helped a lot of people who were in work, but implementing something more like UBI might have helped more - but it would have cost a lot more at a time when the economy was already struggling. The British "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme was designed as a boost to restaurants - how do we evaluate something like that in terms of economic costs, costs to livelihood, and costs to public health? What weights should we be giving to the results? And this is all decision-making with the benefit of hindsight - what should our attitudes to risk be when making public health decisions? The British government approved a covid vaccine relatively early compared to other governments - this paid off, but was ultimately a risk that they had to evaluate.
And that's just covid. Climate change is another big issue where there are some obvious wrong answers, but there are also a lot of complex, contradictory answers that might work, but have different tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs are often ideological. Do we try and stimulate the economy with green subsidies, or do we attempt degrowth with its potential economic costs? Do we value local, sustainable, but less efficient solutions, or do we aim for efficiencies of scale and impose top-down solutions? Do we try and solve the immediate problems with solutions that will have long-term impacts like nuclear power? Do we force unpopular but necessary decisions now, or wait for the public to democratically support them?
The other side to most of these answers is not fascism, or letting the earth slide into chaos, or doing nothing about a global pandemic. (Well, often that side also exists, but we shouldn't let it dominate the discussion so often.) The other side is just a different approach - one that we might disagree with for very good reasons, but one that might allow for reasonable compromise if we have that discussion.
Fwiw, I don't think this is "centrism" per se (I don't think centrism really exists, and the handful of people who do claim to be centrists are typically apathetic, contrarians, or ideologies trying to masquerade as something they're not), it's just how democracy can and should work.
Of course I agree generally with your examples, because you curated them for the "centrist" approach. That's because you selected the "extreme agree" and "mildly agree" where the middle is "medium...
Of course I agree generally with your examples, because you curated them for the "centrist" approach. That's because you selected the "extreme agree" and "mildly agree" where the middle is "medium agree".
There are not the actual arguments being had (while I am not in the US, I am specifically thinking of the US here, but it's definitely applicable in other places).
The arguments that are being had (including by crazy people elected to Congress) is:
Does the COVID virus exist.
Does climate change exist.
This is my "a bit of fascism" thing. The arguments aren't around "what is the best approach to solve the problem". They are around "does the problem exist" and to go halfway on that makes no sense.
My point about the "fascism" is especially around the GOP and Jan 6 stuff.
Edit: I will never go half way of "should the LGBTQ community get rights", regardless of centrists or democracy.
Yes, nutjobs exist, but it's a mistake to build our political ideologies around them. I'm using the UK and Germany as my political touchstones - in both of these countries, the "does COVID...
Yes, nutjobs exist, but it's a mistake to build our political ideologies around them. I'm using the UK and Germany as my political touchstones - in both of these countries, the "does COVID exist"/"does climate change exist" contingent is so small as to be political negligible - yes, it's there, and yes, occasionally it'll get brought up because in a group of several hundred politicians, there'll be at least a couple who'll take any random position there, but what's important is that they don't drive discussion. And in both these countries, the discussion is largely driven with the assumption that these issues exist, but with disagreements on how fast to go, how strong to go, what concessions to make etc.
I don't think America is a useful comparison point here - it's like bringing up Lincoln City when discussing who's going to win the Premier League. American politics is broken in a whole host of ways, and centrism is surely the least of their worries.
You're right about issues like LGBTQ rights, I agree that there are points on which there can be no compromise. But I suspect in practice, this represents a minority of relevant issues - the majority of issues are ones where compromise is possible, and often necessary.
EDIT: I also strongly disagree that I selected the "extreme" and "moderate" options on these points. I tried to go for a mix of different opinions, and I don't think there's any linear scale that could be drawn here, particularly for environmental issues, where technological, economic, ecological, international, local, and humanitarian viewpoints are all regularly in conflict with each other. I've been in groups where supporting nuclear power is mostly a leftist thing, and I've been in groups where it's considered relatively conservative/regressive. My point with those examples was really to demonstrate that there is no easy political continuum of goals, where the more left you are, the more you want to do an environment or whatever. Rather, there are a lot of different long-term goals, values, desires, beliefs, etc, and single issues like climate change are typically seen through those lenses.
Great post. The "do we do fascism or don't do fascism" thing is a decent way to start the conversation and illustrate a logical extreme, but in real life almost no decisions are like that.
Great post. The "do we do fascism or don't do fascism" thing is a decent way to start the conversation and illustrate a logical extreme, but in real life almost no decisions are like that.
I’d make the case that “anti-fascism” ticks many of the boxes of the characteristics of a fascist movement from Umbero Eco’s “ur-fascism” essay as do quite a few non-violent movements such as the...
I’d make the case that “anti-fascism” ticks many of the boxes of the characteristics of a fascist movement from Umbero Eco’s “ur-fascism” essay as do quite a few non-violent movements such as the Macrobiotic Diet..
I think ‘fascism’ is at best an unhelpful word at it is a tool for othering right out of the fascist playbook. If I was king I’d turn off your internet for a week if you use that word.
For every fascist there are 10 cosplayers and 100 people that people on Mastodon call fascists such as: landlords who raise the rent, landlords who don't raise the rent, the police department,...
For every fascist there are 10 cosplayers and 100 people that people on Mastodon call fascists such as: landlords who raise the rent, landlords who don't raise the rent, the police department, TERFs, schools that ask female athletes to track their periods to avoid ACL tears, people who want to ban abortion, people who want prayer in schools (funny Hitler wanted to stamp out Christianity and restore Germanic Paganism), banks that charge excessive fees for a bounced check, all Republicans, even people like Mitt Romney. I heard sci-fi writer Charlie Stross call Keir Starmer, leader of the labor party, a 'fascist'.
The left has no monopoly on this bullshit, as President G. H. W. Bush turned in his membership card for the NRA after the leadership of the NRA called federal law enforcement officers "jackbooted thugs".
(1) The use of that word is primarily a form of dehumanization and othering, the kind of thing that fascists loved to do back in the day. They'd love words that can applied to any person that can automatically strip them of their dignity, personhood, validity of viewpoint, etc. (2) Yell "fire!" in a crowded auditorium enough and people will plug their ears and it will be that much harder to get through to them when there really is a fire (3) You might say the Jan 6 rioters are "fascists" and if you squint it looks so but "anti-fascist" was so popular before Trump came on the scene that people who wanted to cosplay as people in a WWII movie had contracted it to antifa long before (or were they cosplaying as the villains of a 1948 novel by George Orwell who used neologisms as a weapon to constrict human thought?)
There are 100 other things you could call those people, and I suggest you dig a little deeper into your vocabulary.
Obviously, I agree that "fascist" is over-used and that whenever you use the term, you really should think hard about whether the person is really a fascist, before calling them a fascist. If we...
Obviously, I agree that "fascist" is over-used and that whenever you use the term, you really should think hard about whether the person is really a fascist, before calling them a fascist.
There are 100 other things you could call those people, and I suggest you dig a little deeper into your vocabulary.
If we start calling literal fascists X-ists, the euphemism treadmill will catch up and make X-ists a pejorative for disliked politicians. Just like "retard" was a euphemism for idiots, and "special" was a euphemism for retards.
Meanwhile, when they are literal fascists, there's no need to dig around for a less-accurate term just because calling them "fascist" is politically incorrect. Call a spade a spade.
funny Hitler wanted to stamp out Christianity and restore Germanic Paganism
It's basically impossible to say what Hitler wanted, because he was a populist politician (i.e. a liar) and has made conflicting claims. The Germanic Paganism thing is mostly still alive, in my experience, because evangelists desperately cling to the "Hitler was an atheist!" thing, as a proxy argument for Christianity alongside the USSR being an atheist state. That said, it basically doesn't matter - Hitler was a fascist because he was doing fascism, not because of what he privately believed.
I don’t recommend replacing “X is an A” with “X is in a B” because I think people frequently use that construction to dehumanize other people. (e.g. perhaps “X is an illegal alien”, or “X is a...
I don’t recommend replacing “X is an A” with “X is in a B” because I think people frequently use that construction to dehumanize other people. (e.g. perhaps “X is an illegal alien”, or “X is a racist”, or “X is a criminal” or “X is a n4r” or “X is a transphobe”) but repetition of a slur divides a population between an ingroup and an outgroup. See
for a basic criticism. Joe Biden denounced “semi-fascist” elements of the Republican Party and the epithet was thrown right back at him immediately. Use of that word stops people from thinking and people use that epithets like that mimetically, simply because they hear other people using them. (And really want kind of person do “anti-fascists” think Biden is? Do they ever have a kind word for this rich, white, old, cis man who wants to “refund the police”?)
What should you do? Books on how to have communication about difficult topics (Nonviolent Communications, Parent effectiveness training, Crucial Communications etc,.) list numerous rubrics such as “use I statements.”
Specifically you can call out specific things that these people did, e.g. “Trump incited and attack on the U.S. capitol building.”) that makes it clear that you disapprove anybody attacking the U.S. capitol building (e.g. the categorical imperative applies, I disapprove of fascists attacking the U.S. capitol building, or self-proclaimed anti-fascists attacking the capitol building.).
Thus if you want to stop doing fascism, stop yourself first. You might think that seeing communists (Eisenhower!) under every bush got the John Birch Society what it wanted after 50 years and that “anti-fascists” can get to the brink of power in another 50 years by that playbook but no, if you use the right’s tactics the right wins because you have a great point that fascist is not something you are, fascism is something you do.
No it wouldn't. That would be true of the term "nazi" (which is why the term "neo-nazi" exists), but not "fascist". Fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism, not a WW2-era organisation. What is...
This would mean someone who is literally connected to the WWII Axis powers in some way shape or form.
No it wouldn't. That would be true of the term "nazi" (which is why the term "neo-nazi" exists), but not "fascist". Fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism, not a WW2-era organisation. What is your definition of fascism?
But I know what you mean because your use of "literal" is, well, not literal.
No, I mean people like Matt Walsh, who are literally, literally fascists. As in, if they ever managed to control government then it would lead to e.g. trans people being literally executed en masse, because that is their current desire. And gays. And, eventually, black people and latinos. Note that this is all assuming Matt Walsh et al somehow obtain and maintain power, which is a hell of an assumption.
Just to be clear: the NSDAP were fascist in 1931, you can participate in a democratic political process and still be fascist - after all, Hitler was elected before he burned the reichstag.
That's fair. The "metaphorical literal" is a pox on language and I despise it. If I use "literally" then please assume I mean "textbook/dictionary definition of this phrase, I'm not using a...
I'm not really interested in political discussion, I just find it interesting how the meaning of "literal" changed over time.
That's fair. The "metaphorical literal" is a pox on language and I despise it. If I use "literally" then please assume I mean "textbook/dictionary definition of this phrase, I'm not using a metaphor here" or that I made a mistake and would like to be corrected.
I'm not dying on that hill, but I'm pretty sure no one here is really discussing the usage of those terms in 1931.
I bring it up in response to the implied common argument, which goes something along the lines of "if they're fascists then why are they participating in the political process and following rules instead of publicly executing Jews on the streets?". But we can factually observe that that's a mischaracterization of fascists, as in 1931 the fascists also followed rules. Fascists pretending not to be fascist is a very common element of fascism, and yes I know this is an unfortunate sentence that brings sentiments that one must be very careful not to mis-apply in politics.
So what I'm trying to say is that fascists exist in US politics (as quite a minority but they exist nonetheless). I'm saying this in response to the implied statement that we don't have fascists.
In any case, you can keep using "literal" in any way you choose. Sorry to interrupt.
I still don't quite understand this statement. Is it referring to the "literally connected to WW2"? When you say "connected", I assumed you meant as an organisation, and that "connection" doesn't mean merely sharing an ideology. Or "ideology", depending on whether you consider fascism an ideology.
While I think that Swartz was a fantastic individual, this blog post strikes me as a little bit ignorant and perhaps even mean-spirited in places. If I rightly interpret what he says, it appears...
While I think that Swartz was a fantastic individual, this blog post strikes me as a little bit ignorant and perhaps even mean-spirited in places. If I rightly interpret what he says, it appears as if he pictures there to be two true schools of political thought—one of leftwing purity and another of rightwing purity, and the only explanation he offers for somebody holding a political outlook belonging to neither is that, rather than being capable of independent thought, they blindly choose ideas offered by each in an attempt to appear reasonable, without understanding such concepts. Chinese Room politics.
I don't know—as I type this I feel as if my interpretation of his point is just as uncharitable as I perceive his views therein to be—I'm just struggling a bit to find a nicer way of looking at what he's saying. Please do chime in to correct me!
You can--and most do-- have reasoned positions that fall roughly in the center of a nebulous "left" and "right", but a common critique of "centrism" is that it is an argument to moderation, where...
it appears as if he pictures there to be two true schools of political thought
You can--and most do-- have reasoned positions that fall roughly in the center of a nebulous "left" and "right", but a common critique of "centrism" is that it is an argument to moderation, where its positions aren't the product of reason/principle/a framework of ethics, but instead relative to the positions of some demographic.
You can argue that child brides are a bad thing because often the child suffers. You can argue child brides are a necessary part of your culture, or (...I should've picked a better example) that it economically leads to less dead children by transferring wealth from successful older men to starving families.
The critiqued Centrism would look at those two positions and make its position from there. Child brides, but only with the parents permission, or a state-minimum bride-dowry. And if demographics shift in the future the details can be adjusted.
The charitable take of Swartz is that he's explaining why that sort of Centrism is convenient or popular. You don't need to go through the effort of finding policies you support. Your positions will be relatively safe, and you can easily readjust them if the wind changes.
The centrism described in the article is essentially the false balance bias applied to politics. Which I agree, is pernicious. Unfortunately, some Americans (and this is the view of an outsider)...
The centrism described in the article is essentially the false balance bias applied to politics. Which I agree, is pernicious.
Unfortunately, some Americans (and this is the view of an outsider) are so disillusioned by hate and imposture that the mere idea of taking into account the specificity of an issue with an open mind can lead to public condemnation. So an indiscriminate "anti-centrist" view can have pernicious results as well.
The author mentions that being a "centrist" can be a way to "maintain friends on both sides". To which I am thinking, yes, this is bad. But, given the difficulty of navigating intensely polarized contexts, I am not sure I would be too harsh on them. This variety of "centrist" is, essentially, adopting a worldview that allows them to live their lives with less anxiety and aggression. I may disagree with that posture, but I am not sure I would condemn them either. Americans are keen to form teams they either hate or belong to. And, if someone decides they don't wanna belong to any, there's still a box for them to be more efficiently hated. America is tough.
What does centrism look like in a political system with more than two poles? Does it even exist?
I would say yes, if by "centrism" you mean a worldview that molds itself to whoever is currently in power (as the author established). But I wouldn't call that centrism, I'd just call it "hypocrisy", or "opportunism".
It made me cry reading this. We really lost so much from Aaron's death. This isn't even the best thing he ever wrote, but I can't help but wonder how he might be inspiring me today if he were...
It made me cry reading this. We really lost so much from Aaron's death. This isn't even the best thing he ever wrote, but I can't help but wonder how he might be inspiring me today if he were still alive.
Thanks for posting - I disagree with the article, which means that it was worth reading.
I think this is a pretty uncharitable view of what centrism is.
And it also over-values ideological purity. There's this sort of theme that if centrists were more honest with themselves, they'd admit that they don't actually believe what they're saying.
This is an enormous advantage of centrism, and this sort of compromise means that politics is working well.
Overall, you can tell that Mr Swartz was 20ish when he wrote this - it very much comes from a 20ish-year-old's perspective.
As I've gotten older I've stopped valuing a centrist perspective. I used to be the embodiment of compromise, always looking for the most middle of the road solution. Frequently, this was so I could feel superior to both sides by acting like an arbiter of reason.
The reality of it was that I had no value system to rely on. I treated A and B with equal validity because I lacked either context or judgement to process which one made sense to me. At a point in my life I made an effort to actually understand each topic so that I could pick either A or B based on their merits and the greater context of my own perspective. And it turns out all of my considered decisions were almost always A and never B.
There are a lot of subjects in our current political climate that don't have a practical compromise, and it's healthy to be able to be able to discern which is correct using your own rhetoric and reasoning skills. If one side says 1 + 1 = 2 and the other says 1 + 1 = 3, the correct answer isn't 2.5
Of course not everyone has to be either a diehard anarcho-communist or a theocratic nationalist with no in between, most people fall within that spectrum. But it's about finding out where your fall on that spectrum vs being a normalized echo of the voices you can hear. Not blind idealism, but having ideals.
Yeah, like the right choice between "not fascism" and "fascism" is not "a bit of fascism".
I think the issue is that most choices aren't "fascism or not fascism", but rather a case of finding the compromise that solves as many people's problems as possible.
For example, with covid, the choices were never "let the virus rampage freely, or completely cure it". Instead, there were a lot of complex choices and cost-benefit analyses to be made. Locking down reduced the spread and therefore reduced the pressure on hospitals and kept more people alive, but it also cost a lot of people their livelihoods and severely damaged the education of many children. Locking down earlier and harder may have reduced the spread further and left more people alive. Opening up earlier or reducing the lockdown measures may have improved education outcomes or meant fewer people were left jobless. Financial measures like furlough helped a lot of people who were in work, but implementing something more like UBI might have helped more - but it would have cost a lot more at a time when the economy was already struggling. The British "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme was designed as a boost to restaurants - how do we evaluate something like that in terms of economic costs, costs to livelihood, and costs to public health? What weights should we be giving to the results? And this is all decision-making with the benefit of hindsight - what should our attitudes to risk be when making public health decisions? The British government approved a covid vaccine relatively early compared to other governments - this paid off, but was ultimately a risk that they had to evaluate.
And that's just covid. Climate change is another big issue where there are some obvious wrong answers, but there are also a lot of complex, contradictory answers that might work, but have different tradeoffs, and those tradeoffs are often ideological. Do we try and stimulate the economy with green subsidies, or do we attempt degrowth with its potential economic costs? Do we value local, sustainable, but less efficient solutions, or do we aim for efficiencies of scale and impose top-down solutions? Do we try and solve the immediate problems with solutions that will have long-term impacts like nuclear power? Do we force unpopular but necessary decisions now, or wait for the public to democratically support them?
The other side to most of these answers is not fascism, or letting the earth slide into chaos, or doing nothing about a global pandemic. (Well, often that side also exists, but we shouldn't let it dominate the discussion so often.) The other side is just a different approach - one that we might disagree with for very good reasons, but one that might allow for reasonable compromise if we have that discussion.
Fwiw, I don't think this is "centrism" per se (I don't think centrism really exists, and the handful of people who do claim to be centrists are typically apathetic, contrarians, or ideologies trying to masquerade as something they're not), it's just how democracy can and should work.
Of course I agree generally with your examples, because you curated them for the "centrist" approach. That's because you selected the "extreme agree" and "mildly agree" where the middle is "medium agree".
There are not the actual arguments being had (while I am not in the US, I am specifically thinking of the US here, but it's definitely applicable in other places).
The arguments that are being had (including by crazy people elected to Congress) is:
This is my "a bit of fascism" thing. The arguments aren't around "what is the best approach to solve the problem". They are around "does the problem exist" and to go halfway on that makes no sense.
My point about the "fascism" is especially around the GOP and Jan 6 stuff.
Edit: I will never go half way of "should the LGBTQ community get rights", regardless of centrists or democracy.
Yes, nutjobs exist, but it's a mistake to build our political ideologies around them. I'm using the UK and Germany as my political touchstones - in both of these countries, the "does COVID exist"/"does climate change exist" contingent is so small as to be political negligible - yes, it's there, and yes, occasionally it'll get brought up because in a group of several hundred politicians, there'll be at least a couple who'll take any random position there, but what's important is that they don't drive discussion. And in both these countries, the discussion is largely driven with the assumption that these issues exist, but with disagreements on how fast to go, how strong to go, what concessions to make etc.
I don't think America is a useful comparison point here - it's like bringing up Lincoln City when discussing who's going to win the Premier League. American politics is broken in a whole host of ways, and centrism is surely the least of their worries.
You're right about issues like LGBTQ rights, I agree that there are points on which there can be no compromise. But I suspect in practice, this represents a minority of relevant issues - the majority of issues are ones where compromise is possible, and often necessary.
EDIT: I also strongly disagree that I selected the "extreme" and "moderate" options on these points. I tried to go for a mix of different opinions, and I don't think there's any linear scale that could be drawn here, particularly for environmental issues, where technological, economic, ecological, international, local, and humanitarian viewpoints are all regularly in conflict with each other. I've been in groups where supporting nuclear power is mostly a leftist thing, and I've been in groups where it's considered relatively conservative/regressive. My point with those examples was really to demonstrate that there is no easy political continuum of goals, where the more left you are, the more you want to do an environment or whatever. Rather, there are a lot of different long-term goals, values, desires, beliefs, etc, and single issues like climate change are typically seen through those lenses.
Great post. The "do we do fascism or don't do fascism" thing is a decent way to start the conversation and illustrate a logical extreme, but in real life almost no decisions are like that.
I’d make the case that “anti-fascism” ticks many of the boxes of the characteristics of a fascist movement from Umbero Eco’s “ur-fascism” essay as do quite a few non-violent movements such as the Macrobiotic Diet..
I think ‘fascism’ is at best an unhelpful word at it is a tool for othering right out of the fascist playbook. If I was king I’d turn off your internet for a week if you use that word.
How should we refer to fascists? Literal fascists do exist in US politics, you don't deny that, right?
For every fascist there are 10 cosplayers and 100 people that people on Mastodon call fascists such as: landlords who raise the rent, landlords who don't raise the rent, the police department, TERFs, schools that ask female athletes to track their periods to avoid ACL tears, people who want to ban abortion, people who want prayer in schools (funny Hitler wanted to stamp out Christianity and restore Germanic Paganism), banks that charge excessive fees for a bounced check, all Republicans, even people like Mitt Romney. I heard sci-fi writer Charlie Stross call Keir Starmer, leader of the labor party, a 'fascist'.
The left has no monopoly on this bullshit, as President G. H. W. Bush turned in his membership card for the NRA after the leadership of the NRA called federal law enforcement officers "jackbooted thugs".
(1) The use of that word is primarily a form of dehumanization and othering, the kind of thing that fascists loved to do back in the day. They'd love words that can applied to any person that can automatically strip them of their dignity, personhood, validity of viewpoint, etc. (2) Yell "fire!" in a crowded auditorium enough and people will plug their ears and it will be that much harder to get through to them when there really is a fire (3) You might say the Jan 6 rioters are "fascists" and if you squint it looks so but "anti-fascist" was so popular before Trump came on the scene that people who wanted to cosplay as people in a WWII movie had contracted it to antifa long before (or were they cosplaying as the villains of a 1948 novel by George Orwell who used neologisms as a weapon to constrict human thought?)
There are 100 other things you could call those people, and I suggest you dig a little deeper into your vocabulary.
Obviously, I agree that "fascist" is over-used and that whenever you use the term, you really should think hard about whether the person is really a fascist, before calling them a fascist.
If we start calling literal fascists X-ists, the euphemism treadmill will catch up and make X-ists a pejorative for disliked politicians. Just like "retard" was a euphemism for idiots, and "special" was a euphemism for retards.
Meanwhile, when they are literal fascists, there's no need to dig around for a less-accurate term just because calling them "fascist" is politically incorrect. Call a spade a spade.
It's basically impossible to say what Hitler wanted, because he was a populist politician (i.e. a liar) and has made conflicting claims. The Germanic Paganism thing is mostly still alive, in my experience, because evangelists desperately cling to the "Hitler was an atheist!" thing, as a proxy argument for Christianity alongside the USSR being an atheist state. That said, it basically doesn't matter - Hitler was a fascist because he was doing fascism, not because of what he privately believed.
I don’t recommend replacing “X is an A” with “X is in a B” because I think people frequently use that construction to dehumanize other people. (e.g. perhaps “X is an illegal alien”, or “X is a racist”, or “X is a criminal” or “X is a n4r” or “X is a transphobe”) but repetition of a slur divides a population between an ingroup and an outgroup. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
for a basic criticism. Joe Biden denounced “semi-fascist” elements of the Republican Party and the epithet was thrown right back at him immediately. Use of that word stops people from thinking and people use that epithets like that mimetically, simply because they hear other people using them. (And really want kind of person do “anti-fascists” think Biden is? Do they ever have a kind word for this rich, white, old, cis man who wants to “refund the police”?)
What should you do? Books on how to have communication about difficult topics (Nonviolent Communications, Parent effectiveness training, Crucial Communications etc,.) list numerous rubrics such as “use I statements.”
Specifically you can call out specific things that these people did, e.g. “Trump incited and attack on the U.S. capitol building.”) that makes it clear that you disapprove anybody attacking the U.S. capitol building (e.g. the categorical imperative applies, I disapprove of fascists attacking the U.S. capitol building, or self-proclaimed anti-fascists attacking the capitol building.).
Thus if you want to stop doing fascism, stop yourself first. You might think that seeing communists (Eisenhower!) under every bush got the John Birch Society what it wanted after 50 years and that “anti-fascists” can get to the brink of power in another 50 years by that playbook but no, if you use the right’s tactics the right wins because you have a great point that fascist is not something you are, fascism is something you do.
No it wouldn't. That would be true of the term "nazi" (which is why the term "neo-nazi" exists), but not "fascist". Fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism, not a WW2-era organisation. What is your definition of fascism?
No, I mean people like Matt Walsh, who are literally, literally fascists. As in, if they ever managed to control government then it would lead to e.g. trans people being literally executed en masse, because that is their current desire. And gays. And, eventually, black people and latinos. Note that this is all assuming Matt Walsh et al somehow obtain and maintain power, which is a hell of an assumption.
Just to be clear: the NSDAP were fascist in 1931, you can participate in a democratic political process and still be fascist - after all, Hitler was elected before he burned the reichstag.
That's fair. The "metaphorical literal" is a pox on language and I despise it. If I use "literally" then please assume I mean "textbook/dictionary definition of this phrase, I'm not using a metaphor here" or that I made a mistake and would like to be corrected.
I bring it up in response to the implied common argument, which goes something along the lines of "if they're fascists then why are they participating in the political process and following rules instead of publicly executing Jews on the streets?". But we can factually observe that that's a mischaracterization of fascists, as in 1931 the fascists also followed rules. Fascists pretending not to be fascist is a very common element of fascism, and yes I know this is an unfortunate sentence that brings sentiments that one must be very careful not to mis-apply in politics.
So what I'm trying to say is that fascists exist in US politics (as quite a minority but they exist nonetheless). I'm saying this in response to the implied statement that we don't have fascists.
I still don't quite understand this statement. Is it referring to the "literally connected to WW2"? When you say "connected", I assumed you meant as an organisation, and that "connection" doesn't mean merely sharing an ideology. Or "ideology", depending on whether you consider fascism an ideology.
While I think that Swartz was a fantastic individual, this blog post strikes me as a little bit ignorant and perhaps even mean-spirited in places. If I rightly interpret what he says, it appears as if he pictures there to be two true schools of political thought—one of leftwing purity and another of rightwing purity, and the only explanation he offers for somebody holding a political outlook belonging to neither is that, rather than being capable of independent thought, they blindly choose ideas offered by each in an attempt to appear reasonable, without understanding such concepts. Chinese Room politics.
I don't know—as I type this I feel as if my interpretation of his point is just as uncharitable as I perceive his views therein to be—I'm just struggling a bit to find a nicer way of looking at what he's saying. Please do chime in to correct me!
You can--and most do-- have reasoned positions that fall roughly in the center of a nebulous "left" and "right", but a common critique of "centrism" is that it is an argument to moderation, where its positions aren't the product of reason/principle/a framework of ethics, but instead relative to the positions of some demographic.
You can argue that child brides are a bad thing because often the child suffers. You can argue child brides are a necessary part of your culture, or (...I should've picked a better example) that it economically leads to less dead children by transferring wealth from successful older men to starving families.
The critiqued Centrism would look at those two positions and make its position from there. Child brides, but only with the parents permission, or a state-minimum bride-dowry. And if demographics shift in the future the details can be adjusted.
The charitable take of Swartz is that he's explaining why that sort of Centrism is convenient or popular. You don't need to go through the effort of finding policies you support. Your positions will be relatively safe, and you can easily readjust them if the wind changes.
The centrism described in the article is essentially the false balance bias applied to politics. Which I agree, is pernicious.
Unfortunately, some Americans (and this is the view of an outsider) are so disillusioned by hate and imposture that the mere idea of taking into account the specificity of an issue with an open mind can lead to public condemnation. So an indiscriminate "anti-centrist" view can have pernicious results as well.
The author mentions that being a "centrist" can be a way to "maintain friends on both sides". To which I am thinking, yes, this is bad. But, given the difficulty of navigating intensely polarized contexts, I am not sure I would be too harsh on them. This variety of "centrist" is, essentially, adopting a worldview that allows them to live their lives with less anxiety and aggression. I may disagree with that posture, but I am not sure I would condemn them either. Americans are keen to form teams they either hate or belong to. And, if someone decides they don't wanna belong to any, there's still a box for them to be more efficiently hated. America is tough.
I would say yes, if by "centrism" you mean a worldview that molds itself to whoever is currently in power (as the author established). But I wouldn't call that centrism, I'd just call it "hypocrisy", or "opportunism".
It made me cry reading this. We really lost so much from Aaron's death. This isn't even the best thing he ever wrote, but I can't help but wonder how he might be inspiring me today if he were still alive.