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America is in danger of Fascism
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Lefty Memes
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Original Nazi party literally used USA tactics as an example to follow
That still doesn't prove the claim "America was always fascist"
Partially because being copied by the Nazis doesn't intrinsically mean you're fascist (they copied a hell of a lot of things, including but not limited to fascism)
And partially because that doesn't cover the "always" part at all
A lot of racist, fascist shitbags have cooped a great many things over the years.
I assume you're referring to couping, as opposed to storing chickens
Your statement may be true, but also doesn't prove the original claim
The definition of fascism is not when someone is racist, or when someone does a coup
The whole "fascism is when thing I don't like" is exactly the thing the commenter above me was complaining about
They meant "co-opted"
O'Brian is messing with the pattern buffer again.
Yeah, but in the case of The U.S. the things the Nazis copied were the fascist things.
The Nazis were inspired by the American Eugenics movement. Fun fact the Eugenics movement was probably more popular in the U.S. than it was in Germany.
They were also inspired by segregation for black people. I think most people would agree that at the time racial segregation was an improvement over how The U.S. treated black people at the founding of the country; when there was an even more intense form of racial hierarchy in the form of chattel slavery.
The U.S. was also founded on the genocide of the Native Americans. That continued past the founding in the form of manifest destiny. More fun facts Hitler justified his invasion of Russia in the terms of manifest destiny.
That’s a short list of some of the fascist things the Nazis took from the U.S. that stretch back to its founding.
What did the Nazis take from America that wasn’t fascist?
Those are fascist things, but they do not make fascism. Dictatorial rule is pretty core to fascism. Yes, it shares similarities to fascism, but it is not fascist. It also shares traits with a ton of other political idiologies that it does not totally meet the definition of.
For an example of insufficient conditions, Skyrim is a first person game where you fight enemies, sometimes while shooting. It is not a first person shooter though, even though they share traits it it. You must meet all traits to be that thing, not just some of them.
At this point we’re just begging the question. If fascists could get what they want and call it democracy. They would do that. Throughout most of American history with rare exceptions our “democracy” has been captured by capitalists/corporate interests.
If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck then it’s a fucking duck.
Look if this is something that makes people who still hold onto American exceptionalism uncomfortable then I would say perhaps America has not “always” been fascist. There have been times of exception. However I want to emphasize those have been the exception rather than the norm.
Basically the only exceptions have been during times of intense civil unrest. During the civil war, the civil rights movement and, perhaps WWII on an international level.
The BLM protests were the largest movement of civil unrest in american history. We got Nancy Pelosi kneeling in kente cloth and Genocide Joe as president in response. The question remains if the U.S. can shed what remains of its fascist history. Because to do so would cost those corporate/capitalist interests something.
Well said.
If it was fascist at that time, would it have been less fascist when America had legal, designated concentration camps of black slaves?
I understand the instict to dismiss it and maybe "always" will be a step too far but i think a lot of Americans are in denial the extensive cross over between early 20th century USA and nazi Germany. I'm not even just talking about how hitler literally based the Jewish ghettos and anti Jewish laws on the black ghettos and Jim crow or Germany's Eastern expansion and extermination for land being modeled on Americas Western expansion:
The economics of fascism is croney capitalism, with mass privatisation of public assets, ultra low tax for the rich, pitiful wages and endless toil for everyone else, huge corporate subsidies, handouts to the rich and a merger of the corporate and the state. Some of the state might even be outsourced. Whatever way they set it up, the result was always that.
I'm not even saying that from a presumed position of my country being better. I'm from the UK and the East India company/royal west African company being a corporate state is about purest form of fascism you can get. Thats before you get to all the rest of it. Our biggest export is class subjugation.
Cope
Don't know why you're getting down voted. Hitler literally said he looked to the US Army's genocide of Native Americans as a proof of concept for his own Jewish Holocaust.
I'm making the yanks uncomfortable.
To be fair, Russia is as big as it is because of genocide too.
Lefty Memes sees heavy Liberal traffic, in my experience.
But what does that have to do with the definition of fascism? That is an evil action that inspired a fascistic government.
Doesn't really prove much. If the meme said "the US has always beaten down its minorities" or something like that, we wouldn't be quibbling over the wording here.
I'm sorry but how is that unique to the US, that's literally all of human history and all humans in human history have always had an "other'".
What makes the US of any more note, if anything, is just the level and formalization of such disgraceful treatment of the "other" that, started with the colonialization of America and the slave trade that boosted it.
Do I think it could be said that this is not the first time that such a thing has happened in history? It's just this cycle, who knows how long these Cycles go, and hopefully it's when we eventually evolve to get off of.
They didn't say it was unique to the US?
they even copied the segregation tactics the us was using against blacks, except they used it against jews.
it was rightly treated as worth of national shame for generations for nazis, but when it comes to the us it was just an oopsie sorry but we aint doing it anymore. except they kind of are at home and moreso abroad.
In art i use tactics by bob ross, am i now as great of a painter as bob ross? Am i now bob ross? No! See how your argument is shit?
I don't think your argument is making the point you want to make 😆
Parts of the definition do not make the definition. Are you intentionally obfuscating? Just because some actions share fascistic traits doesn't de facto a fascist country make. Perhaps educate yourself on the definition of fascism?
i mean theyve always been openly couping and subjugating the rest of the world. its just been successfull for their own population for most of this time.
as the meme says, its just ran out of space to expand and its now fucking over their own people and allies instead.
what fascists are doing right now in the us is not much different from what they have been doing to south america, africa and east asia for quite some time now.
Imperialist ≠ fascist
America was often imperialist, only had periods of fascist political movements and has been transitioning for a while.
they are not the same thing per se, but imperialism is a fascist strategy. genociding brown people or otherwise oppressing them for money sounds pretty fascistic to me.
its just that its on a worldwide stage now, so the in-group is even more insulated from seeing it.
Racism is not fascism. Imperialism is not fascism. Nationalism isn't facism. They are characteristics that sometimes or often lead to facism. Facism has a fairly explicit definition. Things can be a part of each other and overlap each other without being each other.
If I make a snowman, that doesn't mean that the carrot is a snowman or every snow sphere is a snowman. You can say that when you see me laying out the carrot with 3 balls of snow and a hat, it is leading to a snowman, but it has not always been a snowman.
But yes, facism is a huge danger and on the rise all over the world. Not even just in white western countries either.
when racism, imperialism and nationalism have been a main part of a given country's identity for decades, yea thats fascism, and its precisely my point here!
don't forget US segregation laws inspired the nazi treatment of the jews, and you havent changed much in that aspect since then, honestly. i don't even need to say anything about nationalism, even americans can see it clear as the day. these things don't lead to fascism, they are the alarm bells.
fascism is rising outside the west because of how tight of a grip you have on us and how you meddle with our electoral system (eg. imposing dictatorships on us). milei is widely and openly supported by western institutions. brazil has seen a lot of meddling for bolsonaro to succeed, also somewhat in the open. i could go on about this one.
What is it with Europeans and making up lies about America to make themselves feel superior?
It's been 85 years since WWII. I like to think we've made at least some social progress in that time. We've stopped segregating, for a start. Affirmative action is the latest thing U.S. conservatives are up in arms about which means we must be doing something right. And say what you will about slavery in America but we did not murder them en masse.
I beg to differ. Sure, there's a certain demographic that loves their guns and their trucks and their flags and their homophobia, but they're far from the majority. Most Americans I've met actively despise them. I'd also question whether nationalists ("my country is the best so your country should become part of mine") as opposed to patriots ("I love my country and want to work to make it better by copying ideas from yours") have been present in any meaningful capacity before the Cold War. I'm also not at all sure it was present in any meaningful capacity between the end of the Cold War and 2015.
i'm not european
Good to know. Can I assume everything else I said is correct?
So I’ve had this issue too, it’s because we can’t agree on the definition.
I use the definition in the dictionary and based on that, US could fall under it, kind of loosely but technically correct.
Which dictionary are you reading? A key component of fascism is a dictatorship. You can argue about controlling oppositional voices or segmentation of society in the US, but a dictatorship is pretty core to fascism in any definition I've seen. And yeah, our voting system sucks that still doesn't make it a dictatorship.
dictatorship was happening outside their own borders for the longest time. kind of why you guys pay so much money to keep a military almost bigger than every other in the world combined.
inside the us the blacks have seen the boot way more. ask any awake black person if its been a democracy for them.
or ask central, south america, africa and east asia if the repeated coups over the decades are anything less than dictatorial.
Yeah, that's grasping really hard. Even if we assume the it isn't a democracy because voting was unfair, it still isn't a dictatorship because power was being passed around to different people. Also, outside has nothing to do with the definition of a dictatorship.
its not. look up your own history of installing brutal dictatorships in the aforementioned places.
and of bullying the third world into neoliberal capitalism with very exploitative terms or else. it doesnt matter we have "elections" if the us is the one always calling the shots.
Dude, that is not fascism. That's imperialism. Those are totally different things and Fascists are not the only imperialists, nor are Fascists imperialist by definition. Fascism is something specific, not just "evil" government.
they do implement fascism out here. both sides of the same coin.
fascists are the only ones to practice imperialism to nearly this extent after the industrial revolution.
How did you come to this conclusion? This is absolutely made up to make your argument seem stronger than it is.
who else
Monarchies have been for most of history. I get you put in the stipulation of after the industrial revolution, but still monarchies are top dog. Yeah, Fascists did too, but I'd say the US did more, although you're arguing that the US is fascist, but you're arguing it because the starting point is Fascists are imperialist.
its just that the worldwide reach of the regime makes it easier to insulate the in-groups from ever seeing any of it happen. for this reason north-americans have a hard time grasping at how miserable you guys are truly making our lives, and how brutal the genocides you sponsor for money and influence truly are.
the genocide and general oppession of brown people outside the imperial core looks very fascist to me, its a step up from just imperialism.
I know perfectly well it's bad. A "step up" from imperialism? It is imperialism, although it's less brutal than historical imperialism. Just look at India under British rule, for example, or the sugar plantation islands under all the imperialists of the past. Imperialism has always been horribly brutal. That doesn't make it all fascist. I don't think many would argue the British monarchy was fascist. It was an imperialist monarchy.
I was talking about the forceful oppression of opposition. That is an element that has existed in the US for a long time.
US has had no dictator yet but a president has much more power than a prime minister.
If you consider fascism to be a spectrum, then US has always had these elements. Dictatorship is basically the end of said spectrum.
I like Umberto Eco on this one. I'm in my 50s. We've checked many of these boxes throughout my life, and for some others you can point to various moments in our history, many but not all of them recent. Certainly enough to satisfy the meme.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism#Umberto_Eco
https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Yeah, those are traits of fascism, not a definition of fascism. Anyway, yeah the US has met many of them throughout its history. So has almost every other nation. The term is useless if you just call everyone fascist. The US has not met most of them at any one particular time. You can't just take that list and say some traits were met in this period, some others in this other period, etc. and then say they covered all the traits at some point in time so must be fascist. That's not how that works.