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Comment by salmon30salmon | Hacker News Reader

You mean like the guy who murdered an opposing protestor in cold blood? Oh wait, that was a self-proclaimed antifacist. What's more fascist than using violence to force your belief on others?

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> What's more fascist than using violence to force your belief on others?

Many things. Using violence to spread your beliefs is not the sole preserve of fascism and is not the primary identifier of fascism either.

Can you give some examples of those many things?

I don't know about whether this is an accurate summation of the source material, but the source material is a pretty good definition of fascism (Umberto Eco's writing on ur-fascism)

http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-...

Many hard left movements (and sometimes even soft left groups) have used both mass violence and thuggish targeted violence to promote their agendas and intimidate rivals. The practice has a long, long history that predates even the soviet union and the Bolsheviks (who were extremely fond of vicious violence to edge their way into power). Claiming that violence for the sake of forcing one's beliefs on others is a uniquely fascist habit is historically ignorant or just biased and dishonest.

At this point people throw around the word fascist at the drop of a hat. Commonly used these days to mean using violence to suppress, intimidate and silence. I'm sure there was a more nuanced historical meaning once but that is being lost.

That was my point. The violent actor in the above referenced incident was a self-described leftist. The post I was responding too laid blame for the riots on the right wing protestors

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