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Ed The Fascism Checklist, Trump 2025

Given that mainstream Republican social policies under Nixon and Reagan are now supposedly Communist, I see no problem with calling MAGA Fascist (because it obviously is).
The point is to warn as well as describe
 
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Seriously, the argument that Trump isn't fascist because the System doesn't allow him to be is an argument for him being a fascist.
Anyone honestly trying to claim that Trump wouldn't like to a Fuehrer if he could?
He's certainly acting like he already is
 
dann said:
So, apparently ...???
If some random dude on Twitter doesn't use the word fascist right, that doesn't make the word anymore meaningless than when Trump and MAGA don't use the word right.
As for Rowling, she appears to be all over the place. At least on some topics, her views are anti-fascist, e.g.:
Click to expand...
Rowling pals around with and funds open nazi Posey Parker, and has engaged in holocaust denial.

If that's not enough, then Reinhard Heydrich wasn't a nazi.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
Rowling pals around with and funds open nazi Posey Parker, and has engaged in holocaust denial.
If that's not enough, then Reinhard Heydrich wasn't a nazi.
Click to expand...
I considered writing that she was "fascist-adjacent" on some topics, but I'm not sure that's the right term.
She doesn't appear to be more fascist-adjacent than many other bourgeois democrats. In many respects, fans of representative democracy and fascists are very much alike. They both appeal to (more or less extreme) nationalism.
Hitler wouldn't have objected to Kennedy's slogan:
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."
It appeals to all brands of nationalism/patriotism, and criticizes the materialism of ordinary citizens:
'The state is not there for you to ask for handouts. You're there to be useful for the state and its interests. Not the other way around.'
(Handouts are for billionaires only.)
 
Why do we have to give them every benefit of the doubt?
Would it not be up to Trumpers and spreaders of right-wing ideology to demonstrate how they in no way espouse fascist ideologies (instead of making Nazi memes at every opportunity) ?

If they don't want to be call Nazis, maybe don't lean so heavily into White Supremacy, Great Replacement, Eugenics, Totalitarianism, etc. etc.
 
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I don't give anybody the benefit of the doubt. See the quotations from Wiki.
Pointing out what advocates of representative democracy have in common with fascists is not the same thing as excusing them. On the contrary.
I don't think J. K. Rowling leans "heavily into White Supremacy, Great Replacement, Eugenics, Totalitarianism, etc. etc."
Banning transgender persons from using public bathrooms is grotesque, but that appears to be one topic where she is most in line with fascists.
See also:
The mistake of left-wing anti-fascists (RuthlessCriticism)
1. Taking sides with the democratic state against the fascist variant of bourgeois rule
2. The invention of a “true democracy”
The case of the lesser evil
Conclusion
Click to expand...
Why democrats fail at the criticism of fascism! (RuthlessCriticism)
 
time.com

White House Launches ‘Trump TV’ Amid Feud With Press

Critics labeled the 24/7 feed as “state run” media as its launch coincided with traditional news outlets being banned from the White House.
time.com time.com

is banning free press and replacing it with state run media on the checklist? it’s got to be right?

yeah, it’s extremely stupid and hard to take seriously, but absurd stuff like that keeps happening over and over and everyone seems to shrug. so keep arguing about terminology like it matters if that helps you feel in more control of this. but you’re not in control, the fascists are. and this is what they do
 
Regnad Kcin said:
JFK's "Ask not..." is fascist? No, it's a speechwriter's rhetorical construct, designed to be a call to think beyond one's general self-interest, not replace it.
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Presumably. Nevertheless, it's the perfect illustration of what the Fascist Manifesto actually said. And yeah, that one too was packaged in the easier to swallow slant of thinking beyond your own self interest, and more about the nation.
 
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dann said:
Why democrats fail at the criticism of fascism! (RuthlessCriticism)
Click to expand...
Did you actually read it? No. of course not. Because it's actually a deranged rant against democracy itself, not just fascism, and not even just the Democrat party. I mean, it's not even long. Just skip to the paragraph conveniently labelled "4".

And it's irrelevant anyway, since it's even spelling out at the end that it's an association fallacy -- and with Hitler at that, not with fascism -- via not much more than both favouring a capitalist economic system and a national state, not with anything he said in paragraphs 1 to 3. None of which are a defining characteristic of fascism or any other particular system, as opposed to anything else than I guess Trotsky's version of international communism. But really, it's just the dumbest Reductio Ad Hitlerum, aka, Goodwinning his own message, that I've ever seen.

And it even tells you in paragraph 2 that 'every textbook analysis of fascism is wrong', so his opinion isn't based on any expert sources, but trumps those. (In his delusional mind.)

Frankly... the only ones dumber than the one posting that crap is anyone taking it as some authority to refer to.
 
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dann said:
I considered writing that she was "fascist-adjacent" on some topics, but I'm not sure that's the right term.
She doesn't appear to be more fascist-adjacent than many other bourgeois democrats. In many respects, fans of representative democracy and fascists are very much alike. They both appeal to (more or less extreme) nationalism.
Hitler wouldn't have objected to Kennedy's slogan:
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."
It appeals to all brands of nationalism/patriotism, and criticizes the materialism of ordinary citizens:
'The state is not there for you to ask for handouts. You're there to be useful for the state and its interests. Not the other way around.'
(Handouts are for billionaires only.)
Click to expand...
She's as nazi adjacent as, say, Franz von Papen. And that's only if I'm being overly generous.
 
dann said:
I don't give anybody the benefit of the doubt. See the quotations from Wiki.
Pointing out what advocates of representative democracy have in common with fascists is not the same thing as excusing them. On the contrary.
I don't think J. K. Rowling leans "heavily into White Supremacy, Great Replacement, Eugenics, Totalitarianism, etc. etc."
Banning transgender persons from using public bathrooms is grotesque, but that appears to be one topic where she is most in line with fascists.
See also:

Why democrats fail at the criticism of fascism! (RuthlessCriticism)
Click to expand...
You whould read her books some time. Her bad guys come straight from the pqges of Der Stürmer.
 
dann said:
So, apparently ...???
If some random dude on Twitter doesn't use the word fascist right, that doesn't make the word anymore meaningless than when Trump and MAGA don't use the word right.
Click to expand...

Oh, please forgive me. I wasn't aware every proper use of the term must be approved by you. Which really does make the term absolutely useless.
 
dann said:
Banning transgender persons from using public bathrooms is grotesque
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure nobody has ever suggested banning transgender persons from using public bathrooms, the dispute is solely about which ones they should use. The issue is not a political one, so Rowling's political views (well to the left, I believe) are immaterial to her position on it.
 
dirtywick said:
yeah, it’s extremely stupid and hard to take seriously, but absurd stuff like that keeps happening over and over and everyone seems to shrug. so keep arguing about terminology like it matters if that helps you feel in more control of this. but you’re not in control, the fascists are. and this is what they do
Click to expand...
0bfa214f-08be-441e-bcc8-668767ff69bd_300x330.jpg

Big question for me is why anyone would even suddenly try to deny they're fascist to begin with. It's been settled for 40+ pages.
 
Pixel42 said:
I'm pretty sure nobody has ever suggested banning transgender persons from using public bathrooms, the dispute is solely about which ones they should use. The issue is not a political one, so Rowling's political views (well to the left, I believe) are immaterial to her position on it.
Click to expand...
The issue is very much a political one. The right have stirred up a fake controversy about trans women to gin up their base for political gain, and all it's done is put trans women and cis women who don't have big breasts, a big bum and a small waist in danger from people who are acting out of irrational hatred.

It's as political today as it was when the nazis pulled the same trick in the 1930s.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
You whould read her books some time. Her bad guys come straight from the pqges of Der Stürmer.
Click to expand...
Hmm? I'm only familiar with a few of the grotesque caricatures they used, not with their articles. If you're that well read in Nazi propaganda, please do elaborate and enlighten the rest of us.

I personally would have guessed that J.K.Rowling's villain just follow the traditional simplified style of villain we used to have for thousands of years. You know, before the very recent idea that everything has to be "complex", meaning that the villains must be bad at evil, and the heroes must be bad at being good, to the point where they often look more like the other way around. For thousands of years nobody needed to know why Homer's cyclops wants to eat the humans, instead of respecting the hospitality rules. He just is the bad guy.

And that continued straight through the middle ages, renaissance and modern era. And doubly so in stories for children and teens. Nobody needed the witch to have some complex reasons for wanting to eat Hansel and Gretel. She just does. Nobody went into some complex motivations or childhood trauma or being unfairly stereotyped for why the big bad wolf goes after Little Red Riding Hood. He's just a stand in for a child molester. (Perrault even tells you just that in the last paragraph of his version.) Etc.

And yes, for better or worse, the tradition had been to make them repulsive or animals, so it's easier for children to understand that they're the bad guys.
 
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