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Comment by cyanydeez | Hacker News Reader

optimistic, this requires the arc of history to bend towards non-fascism.

Yeah, as Norm Macdonald put it:

> “It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

Well, there will at least be historians in other countries covering the downfall in detail, if there is indeed a bigger downfall than has already happened.

Democracies are pretty good at studying the failures of other countries and learning about them.

‘and learning about them’

I’m not at all convinced about this part.

To be fair, they said learning _about_ them, not learning _from_ them.

Optimistic, this requires a civilization to have a history.

>the arc of history to bend towards non-fascism.

From wikipedia: "Fascism [...] rose to prominence primarily in Europe of the interwar period"

So what were humans doing for all the thousands of years after the advent of recorded history but before that?

Fascism with a different name

Fascism always collapses, the question is only how much will remain by the time that occurs.

And whether or not what replaces it is any better. Historically speaking, widespread democracy is still a recent development.

That's always an open question. Fascism does frequently collapse into other authoritarian regimes, too. But fascism itself will always fail.

It is a movement motivated by the petty grievances of cowards and fools, and the same hate and violence they project outward always turns inward at the end.

What definition of fascism are you using? Is China fascist?

> What definition of fascism are you using?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

> Is China fascist?

What a strange and completely irrelevant question.

China is also fascist by the usual four measures (cult-like worship, hyper-nationalism, a merciless surveillance apparatus and the glorification of military strength), but that has nothing to do with fascism in the USA.

I was more interested in the claim that fascism always collapses because China feels like a durable counter-example. But if you don't classify China as fascist, it is irrelevant.

Fair. Though based on previous experiments fascist regimes aren’t that stable and competent, they have a tendency to self-destruct once they are in power. It’s a sad state of affairs that is considered optimistic

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