Catching up on about 10 pages - I hadn't noticed the thread for a while, perhaps due to title change.

Some thoughts (mostly obvious):

Clearly, fascist movements rise in times of economic hardship, and the US is in a situation where inequality is increasing, and will almost inevitably continue to increase in the foreseeable future. The money is there but is travelling upwards, numbers of jobs will decrease and pay will decrease with that. The political centre is unable to do much about it while keeping its financers sweet - 'the market' simply does not react well to increases in state spending to revitalise services or regulation of business and finance. People are already feeling ignored and are looking for answers.

It's here that people often tend to do the easiest thing and, rather than take responsibility (it is a democracy after all) or confront the most powerful folk (who are difficult to oppose), look for someone weaker to blame for everything. It's here that racism can find a platform, along with things like 'deterioration of traditional values', especially when the media, education, culture, welfare etc. are doing little to foster different kinds of alternatives. You've basically had this kind of political consensus for 20+ years among all the major institutions, at the same time as life has been getting worse for a significant number of people, and many people have only developed the tools to lash out in anger.

So I think that this will rise and people will be looking for changes to be made, yet at the moment the narrative is all wrong. And this is a thing about fascism - it's the pretence of revolutionary change but it still comes from the top down, and it's ultimately a way of maintaining existing social hierarchies. The only (but still very difficult) way to really combat it is to develop another alternative to the existing political and economic situation which frames itself in terms of class struggle. The social problems that many people are experiencing are after all the result of neoliberalism and the transfer of wealth since the 1970s from the poor to the wealthy. It's a much more difficult sell, as you have to talk about stuff like whether we should all need to have jobs at all, or cutting down on consumerism to reduce waste of natural resources, and it's constantly undermined by the (commodified) media, dominant political discourse and culture of capitalist individualism. But the sooner people cut their ties with the centre and these vague hopes of paying off national debt, creating new jobs by attracting business and so on, and start thinking about how society can actually work in the future the better. In the meantime, Trump, Farage etc. are there because this hasn't happened to a great enough extent.

As for engaging with racists, well there are racists and there are racists. You don't bother with the hardcore, but any progressive political movement somehow needs to get into communities where resentment is growing and provide different and better answers. People for whom society seems to offer no direction and meaning can drift into fringe groups but don't necessarily stay there. As for Trump etc., you can't exactly deny him a platform, so you have to ask how fucking poor the other side of the debate is right now that his ideas could gain so much traction. The truth is that liberal centrist media and politics are so bereft of ideas these days, and so smugly certain that their way is the only way that works, that they couldn't even see Trump coming and couldn't deal with him (and all the focus on his Russia connections is a continuation of that failure).

Vela wrote:

Not that anyone is saying otherwise, but the highest priority is to protect people from fascists. If fascists get hurt in the process of protecting their targets, too fucking bad.

I'd say that the major concern should be for the victims, not the potential perpetrators of racist violence.

And this is where I think the majority of you are reading me wrong. I'm not interested in protecting the rights of fascist and nor am I concerned if they are hurt.

What has been suggested in this thread wasn't to do with self defence or protecting victims of fascist and racists, it was that we should punch people who's views we disagree with if they express them, in order to prevent them from expressing them. The problem with that is that it simply doesn't work.

Punch them to death. That'll stop them.

It's a little inefficient though, they're all over the place and travel would take time. What we should do is identify them and somehow concentrate them all in one place, then we can punch them all much more efficiently.

Boxing machines? Punching bags in gyms.
Punch a nazi after going to the local super.

How do we know who is a Nazi though? Should we force them to wear some sort of symbol so we can identify them?

And as a basic maxim, when in doubt punch to death.

You mean Goober? I agree, he's... suspicious.

Goober is a Celin Dion fan? Well, now...

It's the Celine Dion thing that's swung it.

GooberTheHat wrote:

Vela wrote:

Not that anyone is saying otherwise, but the highest priority is to protect people from fascists. If fascists get hurt in the process of protecting their targets, too fucking bad. I'd say that the major concern should be for the victims, not the potential perpetrators of racist violence.

And this is where I think the majority of you are reading me wrong. I'm not interested in protecting the rights of fascist and nor am I concerned if they are hurt. What has been suggested in this thread wasn't to do with self defence or protecting victims of fascist and racists, it was that we should punch people who's views we disagree with if they express them, in order to prevent them from expressing them. The problem with that is that it simply doesn't work.

I'll clarify to be doubly sure, but I never once thought you were defending fascists. I would say you were arguing for a higher ideal, but I believe it is an unattainable one in both theory and practice. 

Also as JonB said, some people attribute rises in fascism with economic hardship. I would caution against that view if only because we see a rise in racist facism here, not class based facism. There doesn't appear to be any group in the US at least, that comprises a relatively mixed race facist movement. 

If economic hardship was the root cause, you would see more minority groups represented as the antagonists. This is simply not the case. The hardest hit by poverty and discrimination are also the main targets of the fascists as we saw last weekend.

Wrong, economic hardship is always the root cause for fascism and (successful) minorities are always the scapegoats. I feel like a broken record on repeat but I'll say it again. Rise in fascist beliefs is often preceded by economic malaise. The great depression in the 1930's gave rise to the nazi's in Germany and the fascists in Italy. Trump's rise can similarly be attributed to the crash of 2008. It's no coincedence Trump came after Obama.

Minorities are usualy the scapegoat. Jews and blacks/latinos in the US. The Chinese diaspora in South East Asia are another group who've often been targeted by the local population in times of economic hardship.

Obvious pattern there but there you go.

You can only punch public fascists. If you're a fascist in your own home then no problem. It's only a problem if you act on your fascist instincts. A bit like Pope Francis' view on hats.

Although that's a good slogan.

Tempy wrote:

Just a really dumb question here @JonB - whilst fascism grows in times of economic crisis, why are many of the loudest fascists so economically secure? I was angling at this a ton of pages back when Goober blamed the circumstances for the rise in this line of thinking, when a lot of the circumstances (Immigrants taking our jobs) are largely disproven.

The answer is simple if a bit obscured.
Think Russia's billionaire oligarchy and you get a glimpse of why certain conservatives strive for fanning the nationalist flame. To some it's an ideal model of doing business.

It's how they sell their revisionist economic plans of privatisation to the people. People think the issue is one of nationalist pride and immigrants but in truth it's about shaking up the economy by reshuffling the cards; big deals behind closed curtains.


Naomi Klein calls this tactic the 'Shock Doctrine':
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/10/naomi-klein-now-fight-back-against-politics-fear-shock-doctrine-trump