• алсааас [she/her] ( alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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    2 years ago

    For those who don’t seem to get it:
    No, this meme does not mean that you can’t temporarily halt fascist electoral victory, but rather that fighting symptoms and portraying that as a “victory over fascism” completely disregard the root cause (as liberalism often does)…

    Tho I’m ngl, the NFP seems to be pretty based, at least relative to the usual neolib bs

    ie.: Fascism is a built-in function of capitalism and thus bourgeois “democracy”. Capitalism turns to fascism when threatened, so as long as you aren’t ready to give up the private ownership of the economy, you will not be able to get rid of fascism (paraphrasing Bertolt Brecht here)

    sheesh, I often forget, that libs and revisionists actually believe in bourgeois democracy. If you are open to changing your mind I can recommend “Reform or Revolution” by Rosa Luxenburg

    EDIT: @trolololol@lemmy.world made me aware of an ebook-specific link

      • 1st of all there is no such thing as a communist country, as communism describes a state-, money- and classless society.

        Then I think you are conflating two very different things: what I think you are alluring to, simply describes a more centralised and ruthless approach at achieving and keeping alive a revolution. (and arguably betraying it, but that does not constitute fascism)

        Fascism is a very different thing. Basically it’s the act of “unifying” a group of people or nation against a caricature of a “common enemy”. It seeks the suppression of proletarian class struggle by forcing collaboration and integrating society into one “corpus”. Corporatism is a core tenant of fascism, which is (imo) very well depicted through unions being forced to merge with (or be disbanded into) private companies, because “such distinctions are obsolete when we stand united as one Volk”. Those class distinctions never disappear, but the whole charade is basically based on that premise.

        Ofc this all serves the protection of capital by fooling the working masses and suppressing labour or simply “undesirable” elements of society…

    • BestBouclettes ( BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ) 
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      2 years ago

      LePen is much smarter than Trump, she’s also very patient. She knows that given the current state of things, she will get there eventually. Her party gained recognition and the right wing propaganda works like a charm.

      The victory of the left is good but, we have cancer and I don’t think they’ll be enough to properly fight it, especially since they have roughly 3 years to the next presidential elections and only a relative majority. The ruling party has already started getting in the way of them forming a government.

        • BestBouclettes ( BestBouclettes@jlai.lu ) 
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          2 years ago

          My comment wasn’t a criticism of yours, more like additional information 😁.

          Here we can really feel that something is really not right. Given that France follows the US with roughly a ten year delay, I fear that our next elections might see the rise of something similar to trumpism.

          As you said, we’re definitely not out of the woods yet…

        • faercol ( faercol@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
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          2 years ago

          I don’t think 2016 is the right comparison actually. It was not a presidential election, but more something akin to midterms I guess?

          The true question now is 2027, which is the next presidential election. Since 2017 (and even before I’d say) the far right has been gaining influence year after year. They have been in the second round of the last two presidential elections, and with a margin that’s getting lower and lower. And even in those elections, they had a majority in the european elections, and they have more seats in congress than they had before this election. (Previous one was in 2022).

          Tldr: they are gaining weight, and the next big potential moment which will probably look a lot like 2016 in the US will be the 2027 presidential election

  • Emotet ( Emotet@slrpnk.net ) 
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    2 years ago

    This is exactly how it’s supposed to work in a functioning democracy.

    Where ideally everyone, but at least a critical percentage of citizens is educated enough to recognize the pattern of deceit and false, but easy answers to very complex questions from extremist parties.

    Where established parties don’t feel the need to pander to the votes of extremist parties by cooperating and adapting points pushed by extremists.

    Where the average citizen doesn’t feel left out by the system and is tempted to align themselves with extremist parties in order to protest the current reality of said system.

    Where the system implements safeguards to not allow the system to be taken hostage by extremists.

    Would be nice, eh?

    • Prunebutt ( Prunebutt@slrpnk.net ) 
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      2 years ago

      May I introduce you to the idea of POSIWID?

      There are more ways to structure a society democratically than with representational democracy. Other, less fundamentally hierarchichal ways of implementing democracy aren’t as prone to fascism developing.

      • The Cuuuuube ( Cube6392@beehaw.org ) 
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        2 years ago

        Also fascism is ultimately the grand conclusion of capitalist neoliberal democracies. Fascists seek to amass, consolidate, and wield power. Liberal democracies fail to resist this amassment because the purpose of a system is what it does, and neoliberals ultimately want it to be possible to amass power in the hands of their wealthy corporate cronies. They are ultimately fascists not because they implement fascism but because they are willing to tolerate fascists implementing fascism as long as they get to benefit from it. Obviously this systems theory stuff is complicated. That’s the point of studying systems.

        Anyway. This was a long comment when I fundamentally agree with you. I just want people to think about ur-fascism, where it comes from, and what to do about it

    • I think this is where the accelerationists are coming from, and I don’t think they’re wrong, at least in terms of identifying a problem. From their point of view, the system is the problem; it both inevitably trends towards fascism and actively and forcefully resists reform due to a network of entrenched interests. Thus, whether it arrives today or tomorrow, fascism IS coming, and the net violence could be decreased by just ripping off the band-aid and letting the whole damnable thing burn so that something new can take its place.

      I don’t think I agree with the solution; there’s no guarantee that what replaces it won’t be worse. The problem statement makes a lot of sense, though. It certainly feels truthy.

  • naevaTheRat ( naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 
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    2 years ago

    What they managed to do is pretty cool though. Like yeah all the structural issues remain but centrists working with leftists to keep fascist out of the gov? Pretty rad! Broad leftist unity on the ballot at least? Pretty rad!

    I’m pretty sure the leftists know the stakes, don’t shit on solidarity.

  • kibiz0r ( kibiz0r@midwest.social ) 
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    2 years ago

    Probably worth teasing this apart.

    There are:

    • Fascist political candidates

    …which can be formally appointed or rejected by voting

    • Fascist organized groups

    …which may attempt to physical seize power regardless of political climate, if the physical conditions seem right, but have a much easier time if the political conditions are favorable too

    • Fascist cultural concepts

    …which proliferate regardless of political and physical conditions, and can really only be managed through social norms, which are themselves often reinforced at the ballot box

    Just because voting only directly impacts the first problem doesn’t mean it has zero impact on the other two.

    In fact, it’s really hard to win the cultural battle and cast fascism as a niche extremist philosophy if it keeps almost winning elections.

  • Tbh, I think the democrats are at least partly responsible for perpetuating this idea in the US, because they benefit from being the adults in the room relative to the republicans. Basically since '16, a huge chunk of their pitch has been “we’re not the republicans”. They’ve relied on the republicans being fascist to make the sell for them, and I think that the centrist auth Dems really love it because it means that they don’t have to really make any big, challenging promises that would piss off their corporate or billionaire donors, they don’t have to walk back any authoritarian power grabs, they just have to point at the fascists and say (correctly) “these psychos want to kill you, I don’t.”

    If the democrats get elected, they get a mandate to just kick back and not implement fascism. If the Republicans get elected, then the democrats get a sudden boost of engagement and cash as the fear fatigue is replaced by real, actual fear. In either case, the centrist auth faction of the democratic party aren’t going to be rid of their fundraising cow, thank you very much, even if the cow is actively planning to murder them.