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Comment by boapnuaput | Hacker News Reader

Fascism is seductive. It has little idological substance aside from that needed to apologize for promoting the ethnostate, and instead operates on style and spectacle.

We let our teenagers become broadcasters, influencers, reviewers, and players, but failed to teach them how to avoid being parasocially suckered, influenced, gaslit, and used as pawns.

Perhaps we need to craft an educational system which is more substantial. Or perhaps we need to teach early grade-school civics and ethics, so that teenagers will have had a round of memetic inoculation before being introduced to modern cryptofascists. I certainly think that my scant lessons in high school were crucial in helping to rebut some of the stupider strains of online thought today, like sovereign citizenship, flat-Earth astronomy, or (the modern flavor of) the Lost Cause.

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Fewer members of this generation are learning ethics through religion. I'm not religious and I don't believe that religion is necessary for ethics, but I do recognize that religion was a traditional vehicle for introducing young people to an ethical system.

Grade-school civics is one solution, but I think there are some other family- and community-based ways (religious or otherwise) we can raise the next generation with a strong ethical code.

There can also be secular ethics classes in early high school. I had one in my private school. We covered virtue ethics, deontological ethics, utilitarianism and briefly outline some modern material. Won't give people a great understanding but should at least introduce them to the concept and give them a foundation they can use to learn more

Teaching a particular brand of ethics (religion) over 18 years while a child is growing up as a member of their community is very different from teaching a survey about different ethical systems at a high school level crammed into a semester. The outcome of the latter is "there's a lot of different ways to look at things." No moral compass has been installed.

I say this as a Philosophy degree holder. Arguably I have a lot of ethical training and it shapes some very abstract thinking, but learning all these systems and poking at them does not make me an ethical person.

Personally I got lucky that my parents instilled some decent values in me and taught me to value critical thinking skills. I'm not really sure what the solution is, an awful lot people are not getting that today.

>It has little ideological substance

Fascism is an attempt to preserve tradition and meaning in an increasingly chaotic and senseless world. It creates order by demanding a return to organic hierarchical structures and by eliminating threats to a meaningful existence. Fascism is clearly incompatible with modern values which place the individual first. Individualism atomizes people rather than seeing them as part of a whole, and indeed today people lack the feeling of togetherness that is brought about by striving collectively for a higher cause. Some people can experience it fleetingly in the modern world—soldiers, for example—but it’s rare that a fire rages within anybody anymore. Everyone dedicates their lives working toward some cause and under some underlying pretense, but what is it that gives your life’s work meaning and to what end does your effort go? Now put yourself in the shoes of the teenagers who are so seduced by fascism or any other system that promises to give meaning to life. It’s not hard to imagine that in those turbulent formative years one would favor a way of life that, on one hand connects you to your past (culturally, geographically, spiritually), and on the other hand provides some hope that your efforts today are not going to be in vain—what meaning does your life’s work have if you expect the next generation to tear it down? You say fascism has little ideological substance. Its substance, to use your frame, is the preservation of meaning. Odds are, your ideology is rooted in modern norms that stand at odds with nature. They deprive the world of meaning. I would argue that that is worse than fascism.

This is an interesting cryptofascist argument: The world has meaning, and denying that meaning is an artifice which leads to alienation and atomization.

A counterpoint: There is obviously no such thing as meaning in the traditional/religious/corporatist sense. Chomsky, Wittgenstein, Gödel, Tarski, etc. hammered this particular peg into the ground last century.[0] Additionally, the natural/artificial divide doesn't matter; there is no such thing as an artificial society.[1] Therefore this "return to organic hierarchical structures" is a fascist resurrection myth, and "eliminating threats to a meaningful existence" is fascist fear of the Other.[2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski's_undefinability_theore... is a reasonable entrypoint to these concepts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto...

Different societies can be more or less functional with respect to a given set of values.

And besides, if someone complains about something being artificial, I'm not sure what matters is the appeal to nature so much as complaining about the thing being rigid and insufficient.

The word 'fascist' in your post doesn't seem to mean much. I can replace it with 'bad' and it doesn't seem the change the meaning.

"this [...] is a bad resurrection myth, and [...] is a bad fear of the Other."

Do you mean memetic inoculation or memetic indoctrination?

Children already get a whole lot of the latter, civics and ethics are entirely the latter, and it is the rebellion against this indoctrination that gets us this angsty memery.

This memery is mostly harmless... the unexamined angst, anxiety, rage, and isolation is not.

I would be very interested to see what a true memetic inoculation program would look like, though. I feel like my own immunity is developed entirely from exposure, with frequent bouts of illness and overcoming.

Not that I necessarily disagree, but I quaver at the thought of a government that understands memetics well enough to craft such a course. Defense can so easily turn to offense...

Also offers someone to blame for the problems that matter most to young males.

No girlfriend ? Race mixing and feminists.

Poor upbringing ? Foreigners.

Lack of respect ? Political correct culture.

What is "ideological substance"?

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