Jon Stewart: "Calling someone a fascist is the highest form of resistance so you gotta time it just right."
(CW: self harm) ::: spoiler spoiler Stalin nailed the perfect burn in 1945 and that's why Hitler self-yeeted. :::
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IDK I think he's right tbh. As an appeal to authority here's a Vijay Prishad article arguing the same thing: The Far Right of a Special Type. It's about how 'fascism' doesn't really accurately describe these far right movements taking and holding power across the world, that they are able to accomplish their class interests without abandoning the democratic process or forming bands of brownshirts. As another appeal to authority here's Papa Parenti arguing the same thing about Reagan.
In that paper, Prashad is arguing that liberals have co-opted the term fascism in an attempt to distance themselves from the far right (Much like Stewart is doing in this video). He doesn't do anything meaningful to argue why people in power right now are not fascists, he just offers a new term which he argues better encompasses a situation where the public believes liberals are separate from conservatives, and only conservatives could be fascists. He describes how fascism has become normalized and fully integrated into the political system, and asserts that means it isn't fascism but something else. I wrote a longer response to why I disagree with this below.
In the lecture, Parenti spends the entire time describing fascism and pointing out how it's basically the same thing Reagan has done or wants to do. Towards the end he tries to differentiate them, but I believe he falls into the same trap Prashad is falling into, likely due to a lack of understanding, or in Prashad's case a rejection of, settler colonialism as the driving economic force of the US. To me, it seems like both of them are consistently describing the US each time they describe the fascism they claim is different from whatever is going on in the US, and justify the alleged separation by saying "in the US, they don't have to do things the way they did in Italy or Germany because they can use the bureaucratic mechanisms to get the same goals accomplished."
I think they attempt to make this distinction due to not understanding that European fascism developed from the US synthesis of settler colonialism, which has held through since the foundation of the US concept until today.
One could argue about diffuse “nazism” of settlerism of americans (majority agreed, in general, that indigenous didn’t deserve the lebensraum, and they’ve won), is kinda pre-nazism. But at the same time you have vigorous debates about white admission for irish and whatever. No cults of personality or yearning for retvrn 2000 years ago (but cult of law). It’s meaningless to call american fascist, it’s like post fascist (or , they’ve won and been fucking around for 100 years, when the natural class conflict re-established itself (and then was crushed by treats-epidemics of empire). It’s a transposition of history which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Usa is doing empire things and internal worker suppression things, not fascist things.
Current euro far-right is just blaming neo liberalism outsourcing on changing demographics, as you can conveniently point to them occurring concurrently, and avoid offshore money disappearance discussions, as it happens everywhere concurrently you get similar vibes of american and euros.
Also, why would you pay brownshirts to beat up striking immigrants (as the most exploited class of workers), when you have migration enforcement police, they’ll behave themselves, after all, what are taxes for (state absorbed that function, whatever)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: