Comment by Snargorf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Snargorf | Hacker News Reader

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It's pretty trivial to apply these signals to nearly any collectivist social movement.

1. Action for action's sake - Black Lives Matter protests to block highways.

2. Exploit the fear of difference - Those horrible racist uneducated people are nothing like us, we can't let them take the country! This is basic tribalism and it applies to every major social movement.

3. Rewritten: "To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Anti-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be good, moral egalitarians. This is the origin of anti-fascism."

Here I've applied them to Western progressivism, but if you deny the basic assumptions of any collectivist social movement you could apply them. Scientology, communism, socialism, fascism. Switch a few unimportant words and there you are with the same meaningless parallels.

The human mind is a great pattern matching machine but has a problem with false positives.

EDIT: It's important to remember when comparing Trump to old fascists that the people who defeated those fascists enacted Trump's policies. For example, in 1945, immigration policy in all western countries was effectively, "whites only".

So if you're gonna notice parallels between Trump and Hitler, you have to notice even closer parallels between Trump and the people who defeated Hitler. You should also notice the differences: Trump is an isolationist who wants to start wars less than Hillary - a lot like pre-WW2 America.

I agree: "The human mind is a great pattern matching machine but has a problem with false positives."

But, I think you have stripped the context from the quotes you offer, and in so doing, made them applicable to anything.

For instance, regarding point (1), you're stereotyping the BLM protests. Read their website and it's all about intersectionality and inclusion and a bunch of other academic buzzwords. It's not really about protest for protest's sake: specific demands have been given. And it's not anti-intellectual, which is the context you removed from point 1.

You have done a similar thing with the next point. The original point is about fear of intruders from outside the nation

I would agree that there are parallels of certain parts of, say, the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seattle_WTO_protests) with this synopsis of fascism. A lot of that was action for action's sake: dress up in black and break store windows.

But take, on the other hand, the OWS protests. It was partly because of the authoritarian tendencies of other protest movements that OWS adopted various egalitarian habits - not addressing crowds with bullhorns, the consensus process, etc. (For more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street#Main_organi...).

In sum, I think you're not being careful about your reasoning, and you are reasoning backward from the answer you want ("a pox on both their houses"). We're not talking about mere groupthink, smug activists, or misguided protesters. We're talking about actual fascism.

> The original point is about fear of intruders from outside the nation

It doesn't have to mean physical intruders though, that certainly wasn't what the Nazis were mainly concerned about.

> We're talking about actual fascism.

Which is, I would argue, on a spectrum. Groupthink isn't really benign IMHO.

Nice attempt, but:

1. I won't speak for BLM, but protesting in a visible way is not action for action's sake.

2. this is just an old joke. No, those who oppose racism don't think racists are an inferior race. Also, they oppose racism, not racists.

3. Anti-fascists lacked many things, but identity was rarely one of them. Anti-fascists were communists, anarchists, catholics, jews, monarchists... I don't think that there ever was such a thing as an "anti-fascist identity" during the relevant years, and even now, I don't know of anybody who identifies themselves purely as anti-fascist without other connotations.

> 1. Action for action's sake - Black Lives Matter protests to block highways.

But that isn't "action for action's sake," it's action that is derived from one particular theory of change. BLM blocks highways because they believe that by doing so they can effectively draw attention to both their issues and their movement. The action is deliberately chosen to advance decided-upon strategic goals, not simply a reflexive flexing of muscle.

Eco also highlights part of "action for action's sake" as a deliberate repudiation of intellectualism, which is an odd thing to say about a movement like BLM which emerged in large part from universities. Intellectuals can find a role to play in BLM that they could never find in a fascist movement.

You're missing the central point of the article, which is that Ur-Fascism is not an ideology or even a set of policies. It's a method of discourse and a political aesthetic.

Every political party and movement has supporters who feel this way. The problem is when they control the party.

BLM certainly emphasizes action for its own sake, but they don't run the Democratic party. Likewise, individual liberals might speak to a fear of "horrible racist uneducated people are nothing like us," but if you watched the DNC the message is one of unity: reach out to those people, don't drive them away.

You can dispute and justify all you want, but there's a reason that apolitical historians are coming out to point out current fascist threat.

Your points are valid, but that kind misses the major thrust of the argument... which is that facism isn't based on a shared set of common principles or political thought, facism is in the authors opinion not linked to specific beliefs...

as for trump being a facist, i think the primary reason he wouldnt be a facist is he doesnt really seem to have any strong interest in athoratarian centralized power... in fact if anything unless kaisich is actually just flat out lying, he is pretty open about wanting to minimize his day to day control and be more of a symbol for the movement... thats extremely un-facist

Another article was posted in one of these threads about phases or stages of fascism. Authoritarian/dictatorial regimes are one of them. The nationalism, xenophobism, and other traits of the Trump campaign have fascist elements. That doesn't mean he would be a fascist leader but it paves the way for it down the road.

Actually, the Kasich offer makes his fascist tendencies clearer to me. Trump is not interested in actually governing or implementing policies, he's interested in having a massive adoring audience.

Like historical fascists, he doesn't care what policies get him that power and adoration. He'd be happy running an isolationist government, but just as happy militantly dropping nuclear bombs in the Middle East.

The one consistent in Trump's political "career" is a worship of power. He's obsessed with winners and losers, and if you're winning he likes you. If you criticize him, he hates you and will try to destroy you, whether it's legal or not. I don't think he could, as president, tolerate a free press.

It's pretty trivial to apply these signals to nearly any collectivist social movement.

It's certainly trivial when you cherry-pick three phrases out of a 5000+ word essay.

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