#proto fascism

[fashionlandscapeblog]

I am not a religious person, but if I was, I would easily believe the Evangelical Christian far-right/MAGA people ruling Florida and other states making laws forbidding children and young people to learn anything against racism or history of racism in the US, banning anything remotely endorsing diversity or anything they consider 'woke' or social (they are banning and satanizing rainbows in schools, for Christ's sake), banning books that talk about the Holocaust, making it legal for kids to work, are the Antichrist themselves. These people have passed so many evil laws against minorities, it's not funny.

Now a doctor can deny healthcare to anyone they wish, based on their 'ethical views', which is so ambiguous that it could actually mean ethnic minorities, not just queer people (how 'ethical' is to deny healthcare to anyone in the first place? It's a fundamental contradiction). The Republican Party has already started a genocide against trans people and they have started it with laws that are essentially forbidding their existence and denying them healthcare, which will cause a lot of them to commit suicide, something that is already a problem in their community, because society doesn't accept them, let alone if they aren't allowed to transition.

I am pretty sure that if Jesus resurrected today, these MAGA people would crucify him again for being too 'woke' and a sinner loving commie (reminds me of The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov). These people are talking even about banning women's rights to vote, they are criminalizing trans and gay people. Believe me, they already came for trans and gay people, the next big target is women (they already started with anti-abortion laws). When the Nazis rose to power, trans people were the first ones they targeted and exterminated, then came the Jews and ethnic minorities, gay people, then came communists and political dissidents. When something batshit crazy like this starts, at the end no one will be safe. But of course, this will all be dismissed as 'paranoid' and 'exaggerate' by the majority, that's exactly how and why fascism advances.

Even though there are so many urgent problems to solve like for instance climate change, poverty, etc, these people are focused on finding scapegoats (trans people are literally only 1% of the population, but they are, according to them, the biggest 'threat'), making laws and all their political discourse about them, deviating the attention of the general population away from the really important issues. This has happened before in history and that's what the right always did.

You guys need to stop watching this happen and should begin to seriously protest this, because if this continues, it will be catastrophic not just for your country, but for the whole world, given the power of the US.

[nanshe-of-nina]

For one example, fascist ideology depends on nationalism, so applying it to places before the development of modern nationalism (that is, the 18th and 19th centuries) is questionable.

True, fascists often admire older civilizations, such as Sparta and ancient Rome and both had some proto-fascist elements. But even so, the Spartans and Romans did not have nation-states and so, they were not nationalists in post 18th century sense of the word nor proper fascists.

Nor did they have a concept of race. The ancient Greeks and Romans did not feel a sense of kinship to Celts, Germans, Slavs, or Thracians vis-à-vis Egyptians, Assyrians, Armenians, Jews, Phoenicians, and Persians; indeed, it was usually just the opposite, because the latter groups all had written languages, cities, and social stratification.

Fascism is a specific kind of bad thing, requiring specific kinds of strategy to counteract, rather than a swear word. Something can be extremely bad but not fascist. For example most of the big historical crimes of colonialism were carried out by people it would make no sense to call fascist, in fact sometimes by proponents of democracy.

[czolgosz]

well to clarify might is right was written by an anarcho-egoist which is why with claw and fang focuses on anarchy so much. idk why i just assumed everyone would know this

[rachelraygifs]

Every time Starship Troopers (the novel) comes up you get the science fiction brain trust to show up to opine something like: "how is [the most fascist thing youve ever heard] fascist?"

[monsata]

Or, if you prefer:

[makiruz]

Will it surprise anyone to learn many TERFs do fake claiming?

[spaghettioverdose]

It's really funny to think that China would constantly be looking to steal technology from the US when they're lightyears ahead of the US. Why would China steal trash? China is able to mass produce cheap electric vehicles that don't randomly explode into hellfire. China is far ahead in military production. China's economy is growing rapidly while the US is drowning in its stagnant cesspool of proto-fascism and is about to desperately cannibalise its own allies as its hegemony finally crumbles apart.

Buddy no one wants your shit anymore.

[ferdifz]

So I google-searched for "1925 Monkey Trial" and the Web pointed me to Wikipedia: Scopes trial - Wikipedia

Monkey Business

This year is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes "Monkey Trial." How odd it must have been to live in a time when a set of religion-rationalized conservatives rejected science, logic, and evidence to confirm an unsustainable worldview in the face of profound social, cultural, and economic change.

How. Odd.

[wordsandrobots]

I was writing something else broadly about fandom experience but got thrown off by Current Events, so here's some more thoughts on McGillis and fascism. Spoilers for Iron-Blooded Orphans (maybe I should just say not to read my posts until you've watched it?).

On the one hand, I stand by the position McGillis' internally-stated objectives and ideology do not fall neatly into what we usually mean when we talk about fascism or even really a proto-fascist philosophy like Nietzscheism. He doesn't believe a particular group of people is inherently superior or better suited to ruling. He seems to believe instead that everyone has potential for greatness and most simply lack awareness of this fact. The masses aren't sheep, in need of protection or illumination. They're unfairly restrained beasts, blind to their own power.

But it's slippery, isn't it? Because his effort to bring about the level playing field he imagines necessary to unchain himself and others is couched in appeals to an imagined past. The notion his faction holds the truth of Gjallarhorn, contra the reality of the present, that's *very* fascistic. And I wonder how much of this can be traced to expressing individualistic ideals within a hierarchical, aristocratic system.

Gjallarhorn is dedicated to enforcing rigid class and ethnic divisions. It's certainly the larger part of the fascist-coded elements in IBO, simply by virtue of being an oppressive colonial police. Even if we were to strictly define 'fascism' as 'colonialism turned inwards on the imperial core', we're provided plenty of instances of them trampling over the Earth blocs as well as the colonies.

From a writing perspective, this makes for an interesting comparison between McGillis and Char Aznable. In Char's Counterattack, it's clear the erstwhile Red Comet does not believe in the Neo Zeonic cause as such. He overtly resents 'playing the clown' for the sake of inspiring the troops he requires to enable his plans. Char's overall arc throughout the first Gundam run is of a man searching for a cause and more often than not failing to stick the landing (at least, that's my read on it). In the end, he acts purely out of despair and spite, dragging hundreds along for the ride.

Yet when it comes to McGillis, while there are similar disjuncts between what he says publicly and his private thoughts, he doesn't resent being the centre of attention. He revels in the performance and the chance to act out his fantasy of being the new Agnika Kaieru. It's affirming for him to have people follow him. Which raises the question of whether he could have realised his beliefs in a coherent manner. I mean, that's not a question, exactly. The answer is obviously no, given he is ultimately revealed as extremely vulnerable to the emotional contradictions of his position.

Still, one of the things about fascism is that its contradictions and hypocrisies are irrelevant compared to what it actually *does*. I find it easy to script an alternate version where McGillis wins and everything collapses into dictatorship, in the name of his nominal egalitarianism. Struggle is key to his ideology: the powerful will always come out on top. He'd simply have removed the long-term stabilising factor provided by an aristocratic system. Anything that followed would necessitate a turn towards authoritarianism. Essentially, as sympathetic as McGillis may be framed, he remains ruthless and obsessed with strength.

Ah. That's it, isn't it? The main crossover between McGillis' individualism and fascism: a regard for strength above all else. It's a dicey thing to bake into a character, because although strength may be framed as protective or useful, making it a virtue always carries immediate exclusionary power. And for McGillis we have it positioned as a flaw, as the source of his loneliness and his rejection of those who care for him. Let's not beat around the bush: he is wrong, textually. Both his own failures and Tekkadan refute the position he holds. The slipperiness I mentioned is a deliberate choice, his thoughts and words juxtaposed with his actions and the results, to evoke a man who does not see as clearly as he thinks he does.

There is a dishonesty to McGillis, in the sense he doesn't acknowledge anything going against what he wants to believe, until it's too late. And perhaps that is where he truly is possessed of fascistic thinking. He has to be correct, regardless of what he does, regardless of what others say, because to be otherwise would crack the foundations of his self. 'I am a strong person', 'I am a good person', 'I am the right kind of person'.

Not a class, nor a bloodline, but a strong individual, possessed of a drive to strive and fight - possessing, that is, the only qualities he was willing to make room for in his brave new world.

[librarycards]

people getting surprised that the main appeal of fascism is comfort… some of you weren’t roma proto-jewish theater kids with a fixation on ‘cabaret’ that bordered on self-harm and it shows

[straynoahide]

they possibly mean the part about male modesty in The Metaphysics of Sex, idk if anything more specific. I haven't read the entire book.

Feminists literally ruined everything that’s attractive in men. There’s nothing hotter than a guy behaving a little crazy. Like tailing your car all over town until you stop just so he can ask you out. Idk I guess I like everything that’s considered toxic masculinity or whatever it’s called. Women have been so brainwashed. This is not creepy behaviour, it’s just a guy that likes you shooting his shot. So much more fun than sending a dm on instagram or something. I like them crazy, period.

[merlinmerlot]

We finally finished the fifth elephant.

I wish I could say after my 2nd reading I enjoyed this book, but unfortunately it's marred by painful pacing and deeply frustrating overtures to any of the actually good scenes.

Read more for my full thoughts:

Fifth Elephant is a book that struggles with its identity in a way I haven't seen in previous watch books, and it's made all the more maddening by the fact that out of the twenty million things the book tries, there is some stuff of substance! But you can never quite get a handle on any of them because the book is so damn busy!

I struggle to pinpoint a main theme in this book. Is it about fascism, the consequences of long distance communication, or gender and race in conservative society? The book doesn't doesn't stay with any of these concepts for long enough, which results in a muddy plot.

Is it about the past, the future, history, belief, traditions, what it means for things to stay the same and yet change, and what that means for truth? But that feels like well traveled ground, especially with Men At Arms and Feet of Clay, and honestly, this book doesn't sell this well enough to me, because while it’s Telling me these things, it's not actually Saying anything with them.

While Pratchett makes a point to give Klatch space to breathe, and make it a country on its terms (though, admittedly, he falls into orientalist tropes), Uberwald is plagued by Western exceptionalist writing choices. Why does Pratchett connect ideas of the future to Ankh Morpork (a proto-capitalist state), and imply that Uberwald must be forcefully pulled along with it? Why are there multiple scenes about how much the people of Uberwald hate living there, that they want to go to ‘modern’ Ankh Morpork, without really scrutinizing Why that is? Why is the fact that Ankh Morpork has become Such a global economic power not explored in a critical way, at least not thoroughly? (Especially since I Know Pratchett is capable of it. He did it with Jingo.)

I think the biggest crime this book does, though, is with its characterization of Vimes. I can't fathom the ‘why’, but for some reason Pratchett leans into the hyper-masculine noir traits of Vimes' character. They’ve always been there, but while the other books took a satirical spin to it, there's a certain romanticizing of it in this book. Vimes’ violent, ‘beastly’ nature is bad and Scary, but oh, isn't it Cool and Dark and Edgy too? Look how this strong, bloody man frightens the townsfolk, smokes a cigar while he shoots a man to save his poor wife. This is tolerable in bite sized portions, but in Fifth Elephant it's like sickening sweet. Why does Vimes kill a man in the streets, on purpose, (the first time he does that in the climax of these books!) and it's hardly addressed! (Yes, Wolfgang deserved it. But when So Much of Vimes' character is delegated to Not giving in to the Easy Choice, why is this decision not given the space it needs? Especially RIGHT after Jingo!)

There's just this strange sense of a focus on masculinity in this book that wasn't in any of the others. Like, why is it that in the Uberwald book, we spend more time with Carrot chasing Angua then with Angua herself? Why the hell is this not an Angua book? Why, in every scene where she has to confront her problems, whether that be her family or otherwise, must she be saved by a man? 

And all of this is a shame because there Are some scenes I really enjoy in this book! I love when we see Sybil and the wedding pictures, I love Vimes getting chased by werewolves. I find Inigo a really fun character, and I LOVE MARGOLOTTA. The parallels between the clacks towers and modern day communication, the little crumbs here and there of spy media tropes, the addiction metaphors, the werewolf family! But that's the kicker! We never spend enough time with Any idea! And none of it connects well enough together! Which is crazy, because Jingo and Feet of Clay were both such Cohesive stories. 

Regardless. I’m looking forward to The Truth because I really missed Ankh Morpork in this book. And Also Vetinari. (who, funnily enough, is hardly in this book. I guess he took up too much space in Jingo).

My final thoughts: Vimes should have had a daughter instead. 

[anarchotolkienist]

Reading Joe Mulhalls' book about post-war British Fascism, and this formulation surprised me. Stealing ideas? As if fascists are somehow distorting and taking the ideas of these men from their legitimate inheritors (presumably some kind of non-Fascist political movement), when said men are, in order: An enthusiastic member of the Nazi party who remained a Nazi after the war, A racial theorist who criticised the Nazis from their right, A proto-Fascist and dedicated anti-Semite, the father of German nationalism, and An enthusiastic member of the Nazi party who created legal justification for Nazi crimes.

[communistkenobi]

im an undergrad student who was thinking about specializing in studying fascist movements in North America for my masters and ive really enjoyed reading your book commentary - you connect things that I'm not always aware of in ways that are really comprehensive and appreciate

Do you know of any researchers who are moving things on the topic right now (most of the books ive read are around 20+ years old, unfortunately)?

(sorry if any of this is unclear/grammatically incorrect/weirdly worded - I'm super sick rn)

thank you! I'm really glad to hear that :)

For contemporary writing, I'm currently working through some of Alberto Toscano's work - he has a really interesting article from 2021 on fascism from a Black radical/Marxist perspective where he summarizes various historical analyses of fascism from Black (particularly US) thinkers and activists. One thing I especially appreciate is that he complicates Aime Cesaire's formulation of fascism (i.e., "european colonialism come home") as incomplete when applied to settler colonial contexts, especially the United States - one of Cesaire's articulations of fascism is that (to paraphrase) "one fine day, the prisons begin to fill up, the Gestapo gets busy" and so on, and Toscano, working through Angela Davis and George Jackson, responds with (again I'm paraphrasing) "the prisons are already full! The Gestapo is already here!" etc. Toscano also has a new book that just came out in 2023 called Late Fascism, which explicitly addresses the current moment. I only have a physical copy of that so I can't share a pdf unfortunately, and I still need to get around to reading it lol.

These are also a couple random articles I found insightful:

Carnut (2022). Marxist Critical Systematic Review on Neo-Fascism and International Capital: Diffuse Networks, Capitalist Decadence and Culture War - does what it says on the tin

Daggett (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire - talks about car culture as a site of modern reactionary political movements, links climate denialism with (proto-)fascist movements

Parmigiani (2021). Magic and politics: Conspirituality and COVID-19 - this one does not mention fascism explicitly, but imo the intersection between new age spirituality, anti-vaccine sentiment, and qanon/q-adjacent conspiracies are pretty important to understanding contemporary fascist social movements, so I'd still recommend reading this

Finally, this isn't an article but I found this recorded lecture about the history of Qanon pretty interesting. I don't think the author gives particularly insightful answers on how to solve the problem of far right conspiracies in the Q&A portion but I found it to be a helpful summary

Otherwise I've been focusing a lot on decolonial scholarship more so than fascist scholarship - this is again guided by Cesaire's argument that Europe/The West broadly is inherently fascist. These works aren't contemporary, but you can look at this post for some of the readings I linked on decolonial scholarship if you want to go that route. Those are serving me more for theoretical frameworks to guide contemporary analysis, not analysis of contemporary events directly

also idk if I need to put this disclaimer, but just in case this leaves my blog: this isn't a full throated defense of/apology for everything in these articles, I'm not claiming they're sufficient to understanding the present moment, these are just some of the things I've been reading recently and have found helpful in some way or another. a lot of contemporary work I have read (much of which isn't linked here because I don't think its very good/do not have it on hand) focuses on populism and authoritarianism as central analytical terminology, which i think does a lot of work to exceptionalize and mystify fascism as a historical and political process/project originating from European colonialism & Western imperialism, but these terms are endemic to the field so you have to contend with them no matter what

good luck with your studies!

[methed-up-marxist]

it's good then that you were so upfront about loving fascist cock and thinking i was a piece of shit and yelling at me for being uncomfortable with you saying having sex with fascists that hated you was the best. you don't hide it by saying it's a joke, you just straight up hated me for thinking that sounded like something you were doing to hurt yourself and ESPECIALLY for me saying i would not want to do it myself

Anyway look at all I've written here on the body-fascism of certain quasi-heterosexual community's of heterosexual* men who are clearly deeply interested in trans women and yet aren't in dialogue with our specific discourses of identity.

Combined with my drawing out, in a delezian way, the ways in which we are all fascist a little bit and how these micro-fascisms work through mobilising sexual desire.

Can you see how a conversation about me having sex with a meth head who frequently threatened me with extremely intense violence due to paranoid structure in his mind produced by stimulant psychosis lead to an account of the semi-fascist nature of that paranoia while still needing to allow this struggling poor, queer, drug addicted crossdresser trying to take care of his Maori girlfriend but unable to do much for her because of what drug addiction had done to him.

And yes I took account of my sexual investment in this situation even as I tried to take care of him and tried to help him get back to some semblance of normality - I cooked for him because he'd been starving himself, I helped tidy his room because it was causing him immense distress, I held him as he cried because he wished he was a girl. And I enjoyed it and I refuse to deny my enjoyment of it.

You are taking the psychic structures I had to build so as I could be there for someone at the bottom of his life - structures of enjoyment - so yes I enjoyed being with someone who was experiencing proto-fascist modes of relating to the world (paranoid thinking, imagining secret enemies who control everything, outbursts of violence against people he doesn't understand his co-connection with)

This guy wasn't any more of a racist than you or me, he took care of a Maori lesbian who he loved and loved to the best of his abilitys.

If you see me being exhilirant and estatic about how my proximity to a set of micro-fascisms provided me the libidinal investment to be able to take care of this person even as he threatened me with explicit violence and just conclude I'm in some simple alignment with the more macro-fascisms. idk where to begin a dialogue with you, it seems my potential to be a person has been completely evacuated

I don't know who you are but you clearly know a lot about me as a person and that you can deploy this complex chapter in my life into me just being some prolific fucker of like commited fascists is well its precisely the fascist logic where any proximity to the unclean makes you unclean yourself.

I would never fuck a police officer, I would never fuck a fascist, I would never fuck anyone whose racism takes the form of out right statements of racism.

I don't know who u are, but u know who I am and it should lead you to some respect for the complicated situation u are clearly using to attack me

[ceasarslegion]

From what i know about WW2 history as well as film history i do wonder if the "giant monsters, big mechs, advanced tech, existential threats to the whole of mankind, and the children will save the world" trope that is so ubiquitous in anime has anything to do with shifting social polarities in post-war Japan. I never really noticed it until a Kingdom Hearts boss guide pointed it out to me, but you don't really see that trope much in western media, unless it's media clearly inspired by anime like how Pacific Rim is basically a third culture kid director's live action take on Neon Genesis Evangelion. Meanwhile, that kind of larger-than-life existential sci-fi is in absolutely everything in Japanese pop culture.

Anime culture really came about in post-war Japan. You can see a lot of proto-anime in their cinema before and during the war, but anime really became ANIME afterwards, with all the unique forms of storytelling and artistry that is specific to anime. It's not like other forms of animation, it's really it's own beast, right down to the art style that isn't used anywhere else.

And I mean, it makes a weird sort of sense, if you think about it. You don't come out of what Japan went through without some serious nation-wide intergenerational... something. Isolationism, imperialist fascism, 2 atomic bombs, realizing they need to change with the world or it will leave them behind, thrusting themselves into the tech sector to try to get away from that sordid past, but the foundations that created that sordid past are still there in their grind culture that is somewhat reflective of the old samurai. There is undoubtedly a weird pull there, where one side is pulling them towards the future, while the other towards tradition, meanwhile if you live in modern Japan your grandparents probably remember being A-bombed.

Technology is rarely if ever portrayed as anything less than positive progress in anime. It's always a tool to destroy this organic monstrous enemy homegrown in Japan. Even if there's some really bad caveat to its use (like in, again... Neon Genesis Evangelion. I wish I could turn my shitty coworkers into LCL), it's the ONLY way to defeat it. It's a necessary evil, and therefore a public good. Technology usually represents the future in sci fi, and the fact it's usually teenage and young adult heroes who wield it I don't think is a coincidence.

And then you grow this media presence that becomes known for its use of giant monsters and fighting robots and kid heroes who spit in the face of tradition to rip them apart with laser beams. The jokes about Dragon Ball Z super saiyan fire balls are funny, but I wonder how much those things come from this desire among the younger post-war generations to break from this isolated traditionalism that led to their role in the axis atrocities of WW2, and how much they've been uncritically looking to the future to do so, by any means necessary?

Godzilla is the personification of both the Nazism and the bombings it led to, after all. Like he wasn't just a big scary lizard, he was the monster they had to defeat to preserve themselves from destruction.