Comment by benbenolson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by benbenolson | Hacker News Reader

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It would be the height of insanity to not read this piece and be wary of the combination of ideologies that can lead to fascism, and to draw parallels to modern times. I can't comment much on the individual points because I've never lived in a fascist country, but they do seem to lead to a combined ideology that would further the reaching powers of an aspiring fascist.

As an American, however, I can't help but think that the increasingly bold steps that our government is taking towards authoritarianism is making this piece all the more relevant: both parties are guilty of increasing the strength and powers of the government, as well as unnecessarily using the might of the military for nebulous gains. No longer do political candidates debate individual issues; instead, they appeal to a persona that the populous wants to see. Some might simply call it "entertainment", not "politics." This is an unnerving trend.

Were our federal government less powerful overall: financially, legally, etc., pieces like this would be less pertinent due to the "spreading out" of power that Italy nor Germany never had.

Here's a novel thought:

At least some of the points Eco mentioned do not require an authoritarian government to implement. For example, selective populism and racism were alive and well in the South prior to the 60's, and happily administered in a democratic system. It took, yes, a powerful government to break it up.

Removing all power from the government transforms a nation into a state of nature that empowers such fascist and elitist groups to suppress marginalized groups in the same way an authoritarian government would. This is why many neo-fascists and alt-righters pay lip-service to libertarian (or classically liberal) ideals and the two groups often overlap in practice, because a truly stateless nation would allow the "weak" to be dominated by the "naturally strong", ie., this or that better poised group.

Counter-intuitively, a state is required to maintain individual liberty, I think.

PS: To be fair, I think most people who are libertarian do not want the state of nature. For example, libertarians, AFAIK, want a government that protects property rights for example. Yes, I think if one considers Snowden's revelations, these developments don't enable the state's protection of individual liberty arguably. As we've seen, they haven't been very effective while instead are very compromising of individuals' rights.

It comes down to details, but blanket removal of all power the state just places power in the hands of the de-facto elites. It's a delicate balance we have to strike and yes debate.

"Counter-intuitively, a state is required to maintain individual liberty, I think."

Why is this counterintuitive to so many people? This was one of the prime reasonings by almost all Enlightenment-era thinkers for the reason for a government, including it being beautifully laid out in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The key line is "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men".

It's like people forget how govt. evolved, just completely ignore feudalism, monarchism, tribalism etc. The reason we have democratic govt. is as a reaction to systems like that - creating an entity more powerful than all single groups but accountable to all (in theory). Of course, it turns out power always finds a way to concentrate, but that's just life, and why it's so important to have a strong and critical civil society as a bulwark against the concentration of power.

To expand on your point, calling Mississippi circa 1950 "democratic" is, while not technically wrong, extremely misleading. Systematically denying the less privileged half the population access to the vote, both by legal means and by extralegal coercion up to and including murder, does not generally lead to what we now consider to be democratically elected governments.

The "tyranny of the majority" can be as harsh as the tyranny of any single strongman, but it's important to note how closely that process is tied to systematically de-legitimizing other voices and perspectives.

There's the important question of what the state does, rather than just how much state you have in absolute terms of people employed or percent of GDP. Most of the world's "big governments" have fairly small deep security states (little surveillance, no secret police, no arrests without evidence, etc.), while the world's premier "small government" society has the world's most massive security state.

This is not a coincidence! The more social hierarchy you wish to maintain with your state, the more violence your state must wield. When you want to eliminate systematized violence, on the other hand, you come to understand that you need to actively combat social hierarchies and inequality.

>"This is why many neo-fascists and alt-righters pay lip-service to libertarian (or classically liberal) ideals"

In my experience, they don't. They viciously mock libertarians as pathetic effeminate cucks who insincerely argue for classic liberal values because they lack the spine to stand up for what they truly believe in.

I think this is mostly projection, because they are mostly former libertarians.

unnecessarily using the might of the military for nebulous gains

I would say those actions were 'half-hearted' due to the risk of angering the public.

But if we're going to use the military, I would like it to be in a decisive and overwhelming manner with a well defined objective.

To do that, we must be willing to accept casualty.

If we aren't willing to commit to our goal, whatever that may be, with all the necessary resources, why are we fighting there?

Let just stay home.

With "stay home" plan, the only thing "decisive and ovewhelming" is going to be the enemy's strike., when it's too late.

Today politics are global, requiring constant control and supervision. From East Chinese Sea, to the Baltic Sea, each side is constantly probing the boundaries. Once a weakness in the global enforcement is spotted, another Crimea or Burma or North Korea or Syria flares up.

Global military policy fights fires at the source, when still small, not waiting for the fire to become an inferno, letting itself in into backyard without knocking.

The problem is the manner in which we (the US) have chosen to fight those fires. Attack two nations, at once, without sufficient troops for such action, without a solid plan for how to remove ourselves, killing and dislocating millions of civilians. Followed by attacks on civilian populations while attempting to target specific individuals or small groups, resulting in casualties like wedding parties.

Those fires have become an inferno for the western world in ISIS (recently) and Al Qaeda (the last 20-30 years) precisely because of the way that a large portion of the world's population has been disenfranchised and discarded by the West.

The comment that you commented on didn't say that we should stay home from all wars; he/she said that the government should be decisive about when and where to attack. The final sentence, that we should just stay home, was referring to the wars which the United States chose poorly to become involved in, and which have been drawn out beyond a "decisive and overwhelming" attack.

Global military policy fights fires at the source, when still small, not waiting for the fire to become an inferno, letting itself in into backyard without knocking.

I don't advocate the nonsense that we should all stay at home and do nothing. That's not my position.

But if the American people are unwilling to live with the idea of servicemen dying in some foreign war in the East China Sea or the Baltic, maybe we should take a good look at ourselves and decide how much agony we should endure.

I think the "stay home" comment was more about not actively deploying forces. Home can just as easily be forward deployed base. There's a huge difference between what American forces in Korea and Japan are doing than the forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, South Yemen, and the rest of the Greater Middle East.

Yeah, that's a good point: if force absolutely needs to be done, let it be swift and to the point. Drawing out a foreign war, and then griping about casualties, is no way to keep the peace. Let alone the unknown intentions of said war.

War doesn't work like that any more. "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea." - Mao Zedong. The enemy today is distributed amongst people you don't want to kill. Nobody stands up a big army in one place any more, unless they have absolute air superiority. The last one to try was Saddam Hussein.

The Roman Empire had a solution to this. If a province became too rebellious, they went in with the legions and killed everybody. Today this is considered overkill.

Eco points out that the resistance movement was more of a political exercise in keeping opposition alive than a military success. That was also true of the French Resistance. The efforts of the French Resistance before D-Day didn't accomplish much. They were supported by the Allies primarily so that they could do some key attacks on D-Day to confuse the situation and maintain the deception that the attack was at Calais. The most important function of the Resistance was that they provided the core of the French government once it was back in power. "The Third Republic has never ceased to exist" - de Gaulle.

> The Roman Empire had a solution to this. If a province became too rebellious, they went in with the legions and killed everybody. Today this is considered overkill.

Bingo. Then they mustered out the veteran legionaries there on the now-mostly-depopulated land, simultaneously exporting their own restive, landless population, and installing both a colony of Roman culture, and a permanent garrison.

I was thinking more about the insurgency the Americans had to fight more than invasion.

The answer is still the same, have clear objectives, devote the necessary resource and expertise, and accept casualty in the pursuit of those goal.

If we are unwilling to do those kind of things, then we have no business in waging a counterinsurgency.

The usual buzzwords don't help. Read "Nation Building is an Oxymoron", from Parameters.[1]

[1] http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/is...

great comment, sir. I'm one of those geeks who is into history as much as computer science so I get a particular pleasure in stumbling across contributions like this here on HN.

on a related note, that's a huge factor in why I'd vote Hillary over Trump. I don't think Hillary is a perfect person or candidate, but when I compare to Trump, well, the latter pushes too many of my "disaster-in-the-making" buttons. I increasingly try to think of the next 5 years, the next 20, the kind of world that's better for children, grandchildren, etc. And a big factor in informing that, for me, is to look back on history, whether recent or ancient.

Fair point. Surely my solution would not work against such an enemy, since there is no "head" to attack swiftly.

> both parties are guilty of increasing the strength and powers of the government

Worse: Increasing the strength and powers of the chief executive, at the expense of Congress.

I guess there's a 'not' in the wrong place?

I don't see any misplaced words. Care to explain?

"to not read this piece and be wary" is more clearly written as "to read this piece and not be wary"

I think most readers subconsciously eliminated the nonsense interpretation.

That tripped me up too. Though the author's intention was clearly "to not (read this piece and be wary)", it's easily misread as "to (not read this piece) and be wary".

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