You've been looking in the wrong direction, the dangers are coming from the right.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985226#Comment_119985226

I think this cuts to the core of the problem.

When I stated an accurate definition of fascism, you or your equivalent will come along with tiny examples of each part of the description.

For instance, the gassing of protestors. I'm not saying I support it, but to say this means Trump is a fascist jumps to the most extreme definition. Protestors have been gassed by France in the past number of years, and as awful as that is, it doesn't make Macron a fascist.

Similarly, when Trump said, "Only I can fix it", what's more likely? That he's an egomaniacal kind of guy, or that he's like Hitler who would sacrifice tens of millions of people for the sake of an ethno-racial belief?

Which is more likely?

So whilst I'm not justifying those actions you've detailed in your post, they do not align with a political figure that has always believed in fascism and has always wished to implement that kind of ethno-racial militaristic ideology over a number of years.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985251#Comment_119985251

I'm pointing out 'characterized' as its a vague word that can be used in any sense. If you're saying, "You're a fascist if you match EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE" that's one thing, but you're being vague. FWIW, TFG's tried to suppress the opposition via the big lie and the frivolous stop-the-steal lawsuits. Regimentation of the economy via the tax cut for the wealthy and big business. I could go on, about the only one I don't see him ticking is the 'belief in the natural social hierarchy' whatever that means - racial theory? Because he is a racist and has said things like majority black cities are sh1tholes, along with sh1thole countries.

Now, I didn't say 'gassing protestors means your a fascist.' I pointed out that he used gassed to clear for a speech (that no one asked him to make) to show off his 'generals.' Hopefully that clears it for you. Thanks for the definition, the more I look at it, the more its obvious TFG really is a fascist, with a Jewish son-in-law.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985283#Comment_119985283

No.

What you're doing is picking things you don't like about Trump's policies / actions and then re-fashioning them into the definition of fascism.

It's just convenience for you. Label him as a fascist and the hard work is done.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985299#Comment_119985299

Your words, your definition and again, that key word, 'characterized.' I've pointed out TFG's behaviours not just policies match your characterizations. So, by your definition, he's a fascist.

As for picking things, it's Sunday night and these are things I can tick off as I remember them, so they were pretty egregious. There're plenty more examples, like separating parents from children, which might fall under 'performative cruelty' but more likely 'subordinating personal interests.' Who is more interested in children than parents? Yet, TFG's policy suppressed that with his sick theory that this would protect America by discouraging immigration. Much like Bojo and his government's obsession with asylum seekers on dinghies.

Oh, lest we forget, TFG's all over MAGA as a 'movement.' Another word out of your definition. I don't recall Bojo referring to his policies as a 'movement.'

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985343#Comment_119985343

Look, if you think Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are fascists, and should be categorized in Wikipedia and the history books alongside Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Mussolini - fine, just fine, you're welcome to that belief. It's not something I share but you're fully entitled to your belief.

But I'm done with it.

There comes a point when a position becomes so extreme that debating it wastes everyone's time.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985164#Comment_119985164

FFS, you're the one putting them all the same mould. You literally just did that, right here in that post.

Look at thread title, it doesn't mention 'Far right' or 'fascism' in it. Nor does it in the OP. so if you want to have a focused discussion on the particular definition and its scope for that particular term, go start your own thread.

It's a measure of how unpleasant the characters you support are that you have to go all the way to this extreme just so you can use the 'well, they're bad, but they're not that bad' defense.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985138#Comment_119985138

except he does though:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/113647685#Comment_113647685

Sure Hitler wasn't a lot of things contemporarily by traditional definitions, either.

Overheal

MTG assures us, had she planned the insurrection it would have worked and it would have been armed (which it was anyway)

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-makes-shocking-comments-about-armed-jan-6-if-i-organized-it-we-would-have-won/

Tonesjones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119985700#Comment_119985700

I would have ro see her plans written out clearly before deciding if it would have been successful or not.

Presumably she would have put the insurgents through some sort of military and teamwork drills beforehand?

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119986099#Comment_119986099

The people who carried out the insurrection are barely literate scum. There's no way they would ever be successful. No amount of guns or virtue signalling changes this. The modern American right has made a fortune brainwashing and enraging these people. This is the end result.

Reminds me of this photo of Markwayne Mullin, a Republican cowering like a child from the carnage he unleashed.

Igotadose

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119986099#Comment_119986099

She was pretty explicit in her speech given at a right-wing love-in recently: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/12/11/white-nationalists-other-republicans-brace-total-war

Said they'd be armed. Advocated for killing Democrats. Pretty much the speakers, discussions and ideas bandied about at this meeting in NYC exactly prove what the OP here was about, there IS a threat and it's coming from the right. All the usual usual right-wing leaders were there hobnobbing with the AfD and others (Brazilians) all about acquiring power.

Sadly, Steve Bannon was there. His sentence hasn't started yet. Pity.

pixelburp

If one wants to look for a "simple" definition of fascism, then I find Umberto Eco's essay "Ur Fascism" instructive insofar as it breaks the concepts down to 14 tenets and philosophies - going beyond the trite shutdowns that rationalise Hitlers, uniforms or eugenics as the sole indicators. It's messier than that and the ideology is inherently contradictory and emotive.

And having lived through Mussolini's Italy, Eco himself is uniquely placed to consider the trappings of fascism beyond the extremes of nazism or codified laws and suchlike..

“These features,” writes the novelist and semiotician, “cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.”

https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119987234#Comment_119987234

From your link.

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Real Life examples off the top of my head from events in places referenced frequently in this thread, Russia, US, UK .

1 - Wanting to govern by Christian fundamental beliefs.

2 - Resistance to vaccines, science, etc

3 - Lets send a handful of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, or put them on a plane to Rwanda

4 - If you don't agree you hate America or you just aren't believing in Brexit hard enough

5 - Too many to mention

6 - Trying to force a narrative to create this frustration whether by talking about the economy, or immigration or whatever

7 - Like, hello?

8 - Simultaneously claiming the 'Radical Left' as being weak, woke, and ineffectual while also saying that they are controlling society

9 - Begging governors to use the National Guard on protestors and telling them they will look weak if they don't do so

10 - Demeaning anyone who displays empathy and calling them SJW's, virtue signallers etc

11 - Exactly what Putin is attempting to do in Russia

12 - Family photo's with everyone holding guns and tweeting about Alpha males going to Hooters or riding naked in the wilderness.

13 - Attempting to paint crowd at Trump rallies as being evidence of what people in America think and feel

14 - MAGA

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119980301#Comment_119980301

Well so much for the savior of free speech and anti censorship something something, I look forward to you defending Musk for this

The account’s owner, named Jack Sweeney, claims an anonymous Twitter employee told him that the account for his popular ElonJettracker bot was given limited visibility, “to a severe degree,” starting on December 2. Sweeney then went on to post a screenshot, allegedly showing Twitter’s Vice President of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin asking team members to, “apply heavy VF [visibility filtering] to @elonjet immediately.” Sweeney disclosed the information in a Twitter thread which he called, “MyTwitter Files.”

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-shadowban-elonjet-private-jet-twitter-1849882446

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119988596#Comment_119988596

First, [ Keyword: "allegedly" ]. No actual evidence to prove the claim. Evidence matters, I hope you agree.

Second, it's a private company and they can do as they please. So even if we accept the premise that these allegations were true, there's a legitimate argument to be made that specifically tracking one of the world's richest men poses a potential security risk. But there is no evidence to back up these alleged claims.

Third, even if all of the above were false, it wouldn't demonstrate that "the dangers are coming from the right".

Fourth, QED.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119988730#Comment_119988730

'QED'

LOL

GTFO

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119988730#Comment_119988730

As expected, no condemnation of censorship and shadow banning, contrary to your previous virtue signaling.

Censorship is not good on any level, and yet again, I'm consistent in that I oppose it regardless of who is being unfairly targeted - whether it's the left or the right.

You didn't oppose it here, you defended it, proving you're something of a charlatan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119988831#Comment_119988831

You have no evidence to back up your conclusion, only baseless allegations. Anyone can make allegations. What matters is evidence. Your ad hominem at the tail end of your remarks hasn't gone unnoticed, either.

Everyone can see that your flagrant dismissal of the need for evidence speaks volumes.

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119989037#Comment_119989037

Your posts are themselves evidence.

Overheal

Far right activist busts into Barstool sports office to prove how not hateful fox news is or something

https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/far-right-troll-aggressively-removed-after-trying-to-crash-barstool-sports-hq-do-not-make-fun-of-tucker/

Several days ago barstool sports personalities were caught mocking tucker carlson while giving out about how fox news peddles in hate, and how they felt their sarcasm/comedic commentary was being spun at the network to its audience as actual news/soundbytes. This guy, Stein, busts in alongside a half naked man and a 3rd cammer to demand they leave Tucker alone, and so forth. The half naked man keeps shouting "Where's dave" and tries to fight his way past security.

They then stomp outside the doors of the BSS office calling them all 'cowards' for protecting themselves against assault and trespassing, and saying 'they aren't afraid' of Dave (but are clearly terrified of honest criticism)

Part of the audio that provoked a violent response from the far right:

https://twitter.com/MikeSington/status/1600578062898196480?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1600578062898196480%7Ctwgr%5E95354b3592e8795315b77b4bcf02701db7015357%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailybeast.com%2Fbarstool-blogger-francis-ellis-trashes-fox-hosts-on-hot-mic-trafficking-in-hate%3Fsource%3Darticlesvia%3Drss

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119989037#Comment_119989037

Tell us again how drag shows should be stopped because what's actually happening is children are being groomed. No evidence of that yet you did your best Helen Lovejoy impression trying to justify the bigotry on the topic.

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119977803#Comment_119977803

This hysterical woman shouting from the sidelines was communicating directly with the sitting President before Biden's inauguration in this manner.

These are 2 sitting Representatives directly communicating to the right hand man of the President that they should suspend all constitutional process and just hold on to power. She suggests that there are several Republican representatives who felt this way.

This is 1 example of what I mean about the dangers coming from the right.

Igotadose

And in non-US far-right threat news, riots in Brazil from Bolsonaro supporters who are claiming election fraud and calling on the military to install him:

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/supporters-brazils-bolsonaro-try-invade-federal-police-headquarters-2022-12-13/

plus ça change, plus c'est la même

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119989903#Comment_119989903

Speaking of actual grooming this Tennessee Republican

That’s not the grandfather, that’s the dad. She was about 16 when they met. He used undue influence to groom her into marriage,

Rose’s romantic pursuit of a much younger woman over whom he held real authority — not only as a scholarship provider, but also as a foundation board member at institutions Chelsea Doss was part of — raises questions about his ethical sensibilities and attitudes toward power. Those questions are directly relevant to his career in the U.S. House, where he is a Republican member of the Financial Service Committee and legislates on behalf of his constituents and United States citizens as a whole.

https://thewhyaxis.substack.com/p/congressman-john-rose-is-decades

Overheal

Boofs Kavanaugh dispenses with pretenses of being an impartial justice and dines at a partisan gathering with Matt Schlapp and his guests: Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Ginger Gaetz, Sean Spicer, Alex Acosta, Sebastian Gorka, Stephen and Katie Miller, Chad Wolf, Greta Van Susteren and John Coale, Laura Schlapp and Bryan Wells, Brendan Carr, Rep.-elect George Santos (R-NY), Erin and Nick Perrine, Erik Prince, Ziad Ojakli, Peter Davidson, Steve Holland and Ben Terris.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/brett-kavanaugh-raises-ethics-concerns-after-attending-holiday-party-with-ex-trump-officials-hard-righters/

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119991916#Comment_119991916

I know. I've referenced that instance a couple of times in the thread.

Also already showed tweets of one of Musk's new right wing BFF's.

And of course there's this from the devout Trump Fan and Fox News Host.

The Milo she is referring to is of course the guy who said the following.

 'that sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and adult men and women can be "perfectly consensual" and positive experiences for the boys.'

Milo of course also played a significant role at Breitbart (Steve Bannon's) project before stepping down after these comments. He was recently seen stage managing Kanye's public love fest for Hitler and h was also an intern for Marjorie Taylor Green (who has been identified by a right wing advocate on here as being a screaming hysterical idiot). She called for him to be allowed back on Twitter, along with several other 'questionable' characters.

And to close the circle that shows the intertwined relationship between right wing politicians, right wing media personalities, right wing commentators and categorically, unequivocally, far right personalities another of Milo's supporters was this guy.

Andrew is known for setting up the Neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website.

Posters on here, and other commentators on various platforms who use children as pawns in their bigoted hatred of trans people are some of the biggest BS artists on the planet. They do this with the absolute mountains of evidence showing just where harm is more likely to come from. I've already said I would identify it as gaslighting if I thought all of them understood the methodology behind it. Some of them, like Steve Bannon, most definitely do, throw enough sh*t out there and most people won't be able to see where it comes from and at the very least, you can 'both sides' the scene because most people won't pay close enough attention. But the reason that Steve and the likes are successful is because of the foot soldiers, such as those on here, who go to fight for that mindset each and every day. They should be ashamed of themselves to use children in their ideological battle to prevent them seeing fully clothed drag artists reading books while they ignore all of this.

And that is why I started this thread, and continue to contribute to it. This hateful mindset leads to very dark places and it cannot be allowed to fester and grow because if it does, we know where it ends up.

P.S. Your second post about Chief Justices socialising with people who move in similar circles as many of those I've mentioned here is neither surprising, or comforting. The history books will express surprise that all of this happened in plain site. But when it looks like they can get away with all of this, why would they hide it?

TomTomTim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119992159#Comment_119992159

They should be ashamed of themselves to use children in their ideological battle to prevent them seeing fully clothed drag artists reading books while they ignore all of this.

You really are disingenuous. This is the kind of stuff people are rebelling against and rightly so, yet you pretend that it's all harmless fun and that people are just being prudes, and not that people have a serious worry about deviants being near children. Few people think that all LGBT people are a harm to children, but when questionable stuff pops up again and again, and none of you say a thing, you can't really hold it against some people for seeing the association, especially when there's zero denunciation.

https://twitter.com/MiaCathell/status/1602708759729561601

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119992598#Comment_119992598

Doesn’t even provide context for the ‘offending’ quote. The only thing questionable about this content is why it bothers you. I don’t see the point in pointing to their drag photos, that’s not how they presented themselves when invited to the WH.

Overheal

Right wing billionaire troll blocks Ukrainians from signing up for twitter

https://odessa-journal.com/musk-cut-off-ukrainians-from-twitter/

Russia still OK

Tell me how

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119992598#Comment_119992598

When this thread was focused on the drag show topic, I pointed out several instances of similar actions and dress that occur in other spaces such as talent shows, music videos, beauty pageants etc that are similar to the images that are in that tweet, only that tweet shows a drag performer.

The text tweet was sent at 4am in the morning and there is no context as to what the person was replying to but I would bet that it was not referring to literal children.

And that is the point of this performative outrage. What you have shown here is someone who appears to have images shown as if they existed in a particular context or environment but there is no evidence of this happening.

Counter that with the evidence Overheal posted of GOP individuals in Tennessee or what I posted with respect to Cheong and Milo and you'll see a pretty stark disparity between what is actually being expressed, and what is claimed to being expressed.

Hence the thread title, outrage at drag artists with no evidence of them behaving inappropriately with children, ambivalence to literally people advocating for pedophilia or actually having children with someone they likely groomed. And the longer this outrage without evidence goes on, the less it looks the people complaining actually caring about kids actually is the case. Like the abortion thing all over again, adamant they must be born, don't give a toss about them once that happens. It's performative, prejudiced and obvious.