The far right has been very successful at getting normal conservatives to cover for them over the last 50 years. The actual ideas of fiscal and social conservatism are only partially aligned with fascism.
I suppose you could say packing the wad into the cannon after the gunpowder is an indirectly related development to the lethality of the cannon ball subsequently fired from the cannon….
….but I prefer to see it as one continuous gigantically stupid process beginning with centrists priming the chamber with gunpowder via repeated thrusting of a neoliberal austerity rod to crush the working class and then packing in a wad of rightwing conservatives to shape the social upheaval towards meaninglessly violent vectors when the inevitable explosive juncture is reached.
The cannonball loaded last is the dead brain weight of all the fascists gleefully rolling down into the breach of their fiery demise.
The cannonball is what kills people usually (though many a centrist has died in the process of packing the gunpowder in and setting off a premature explosion), but all the steps are necessary to firing the cannon.
That is… A very involved analogy. The thing is people who are actually committed to conservatism inside classical liberalism aren’t fascist. They want a functioning democracy with rights. Fascists have been a mess of corrupt oligarchs stealing everything that isn’t nailed down every time we’ve seen them in history. The three biggest warning flags have been a collective ideology held above helping the poor/disabled/marginalized, (like nationalism); getting too friendly with corporations, which begins to create the oligarchy; and racism to give the masses a common enemy.
So while fiscal and social conservatism are the public rallying cries, they aren’t actually much in line with fascism. Which is why our would-be oligarchs are spending so much money to make conservatives feel like they have to vote Republican or else.
So while fiscal and social conservatism are the public rallying cries, they aren’t actually much in line with fascism.
Social conservatism is, at best, fascist-adjacent. Singling out social minorities for harassment and legal persecution is very closely akin to fascist scapegoating.
Oh it’s certainly not a pretty picture. But if we go around attributing everything to fascism then that’s what we’ll end up with because nobody will be able to see it coming. And they’re always trying. Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it but because of the American experience with it and the modern reaction to most of it’s ideas being debunked by science. We tied it up with the civil rights movement and weaponized it. But it spent something like 300 years happily living within the realm of liberalism. So while I don’t like it, it is not in and of itself fascism.
Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it
Please cite your sources because I have never seen a scrap of evidence that social conservatism is anything but thinly disguised hate and fear of the other weaponized into political ideologies.
Cite what? The entire existence of modern political philosophy? Look nobody is denying that it gets misused. Nobody is denying that it’s thoroughly debunked. Nobody is denying that Republicans are using it exactly as you say.
But if you want to deny that a sizeable portion of Democrats are conservatives who have beliefs about traditional family homes because they believe it’s better for the people involved then you’re ignoring an entire demographic just to paint something as purely far right. Going straight to the extremes is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.
I was not trying to dispute that Democrats are the “good cops” to the Republican “bad cops” and often implement just as draconian and cruel policies in the name of austerity of whatever dumb bullshit as do Republicans.
I consider centrist democrats conservative, especially from a perspective of leftism that is bigger than the US both in geography and time.
When people talk about a cannonball causing destruction, they often don’t focus on describing the gunpowder and wad loaded into the firing chamber, just the cannonball.
The three biggest warning flags have been a collective ideology held above helping the poor/disabled/marginalized,
Explain conservatism to me in terms of the specific real world policies it pushes for in opposition to progressive policies specifically designed to help poor/disabled/marginalized people with a better social safety net?
Because y’all are literally on the wrong side 99% of the time with this, conservatism is fundamentally a “fuck you I have mine” philosophy dressed up by hacks like Jordan Peterson to seem intellectual and thoughtful. It is a joke on the whole at least in places like the US, it is no more than a mask used by selfish broken people to spread suffering.
You’ve misunderstood. I’m not a conservative. I’m not trying to defend conservatism. I’m just trying to explain why it isn’t the same thing as fascism. Conservatives on the long scale are simply those who resist change for whatever reason. For the last 70 years that’s been racial equality and helping poor people. Which incidentally, lines them up really nicely to be recruited by authoritarians and fascists.
They believe, as part of fiscal responsibility, that everyone is responsible for themselves and their family. That the government helping them actually reduces that family’s ability to get out of poverty. The important thing to notice here isn’t the logical imbalance, but that they believe they’re helping. Obviously we aren’t talking about the extremists who are more than happy to demonize the poor and marginalized. The far right has a completely different set of ideologies. That’s why they have to pay Jordan Peterson to convert normal conservatives.
They believe, as part of fiscal responsibility, that everyone is responsible for themselves and their family. That the government helping them actually reduces that family’s ability to get out of poverty. The important thing to notice here isn’t the logical imbalance, but that they believe they’re helping
These beliefs are just a thin veneer of bullshit, both for conservatives and for rightwing extremists because the hate and exclusion is the point. I see no evidence that rightwing extremists are ideologically any different than normal conservatives at a fundamental level, they just have different ideas about tactics and the tone/rhetoric they actually are willing to publicly commit to (instead of doing it behind closed doors like normal conservatives/republicans). Conservatives will always roll out of the red carpet for fascists, they are intellectually lobotomized by their ideology in a way that has been shown throughout history to be essential for the rise of fascism to power, thus my cannon metaphor.
I consider it all part of the same firing process even if the cannonball is usually the fascists.
I think you’re confusing the Republicans with Conservatism. Fully half the Democrats hold these conservative ideas too. And they certainly aren’t rolling out a red carpet.
I suppose you could say packing the wad into the cannon after the gunpowder is an indirectly related development to the lethality of the cannon ball subsequently fired from the cannon….
….but I prefer to see it as one continuous gigantically stupid process beginning with centrists priming the chamber with gunpowder via repeated thrusting of a neoliberal austerity rod to crush the working class and then packing in a wad of rightwing conservatives to shape the social upheaval towards meaninglessly violent vectors when the inevitable explosive juncture is reached.
The cannonball loaded last is the dead brain weight of all the fascists gleefully rolling down into the breach of their fiery demise.
The cannonball is what kills people usually (though many a centrist has died in the process of packing the gunpowder in and setting off a premature explosion), but all the steps are necessary to firing the cannon.
That is… A very involved analogy. The thing is people who are actually committed to conservatism inside classical liberalism aren’t fascist. They want a functioning democracy with rights. Fascists have been a mess of corrupt oligarchs stealing everything that isn’t nailed down every time we’ve seen them in history. The three biggest warning flags have been a collective ideology held above helping the poor/disabled/marginalized, (like nationalism); getting too friendly with corporations, which begins to create the oligarchy; and racism to give the masses a common enemy.
So while fiscal and social conservatism are the public rallying cries, they aren’t actually much in line with fascism. Which is why our would-be oligarchs are spending so much money to make conservatives feel like they have to vote Republican or else.
Social conservatism is, at best, fascist-adjacent. Singling out social minorities for harassment and legal persecution is very closely akin to fascist scapegoating.
Oh it’s certainly not a pretty picture. But if we go around attributing everything to fascism then that’s what we’ll end up with because nobody will be able to see it coming. And they’re always trying. Social Conservatism is a moral cesspool of hate not because that’s inherent to it but because of the American experience with it and the modern reaction to most of it’s ideas being debunked by science. We tied it up with the civil rights movement and weaponized it. But it spent something like 300 years happily living within the realm of liberalism. So while I don’t like it, it is not in and of itself fascism.
Please cite your sources because I have never seen a scrap of evidence that social conservatism is anything but thinly disguised hate and fear of the other weaponized into political ideologies.
Cite what? The entire existence of modern political philosophy? Look nobody is denying that it gets misused. Nobody is denying that it’s thoroughly debunked. Nobody is denying that Republicans are using it exactly as you say.
But if you want to deny that a sizeable portion of Democrats are conservatives who have beliefs about traditional family homes because they believe it’s better for the people involved then you’re ignoring an entire demographic just to paint something as purely far right. Going straight to the extremes is considered a logical fallacy for a reason.
I was not trying to dispute that Democrats are the “good cops” to the Republican “bad cops” and often implement just as draconian and cruel policies in the name of austerity of whatever dumb bullshit as do Republicans.
I consider centrist democrats conservative, especially from a perspective of leftism that is bigger than the US both in geography and time.
Then why are you only talking about the most extreme parts?
When people talk about a cannonball causing destruction, they often don’t focus on describing the gunpowder and wad loaded into the firing chamber, just the cannonball.
Explain conservatism to me in terms of the specific real world policies it pushes for in opposition to progressive policies specifically designed to help poor/disabled/marginalized people with a better social safety net?
Because y’all are literally on the wrong side 99% of the time with this, conservatism is fundamentally a “fuck you I have mine” philosophy dressed up by hacks like Jordan Peterson to seem intellectual and thoughtful. It is a joke on the whole at least in places like the US, it is no more than a mask used by selfish broken people to spread suffering.
You’ve misunderstood. I’m not a conservative. I’m not trying to defend conservatism. I’m just trying to explain why it isn’t the same thing as fascism. Conservatives on the long scale are simply those who resist change for whatever reason. For the last 70 years that’s been racial equality and helping poor people. Which incidentally, lines them up really nicely to be recruited by authoritarians and fascists.
They believe, as part of fiscal responsibility, that everyone is responsible for themselves and their family. That the government helping them actually reduces that family’s ability to get out of poverty. The important thing to notice here isn’t the logical imbalance, but that they believe they’re helping. Obviously we aren’t talking about the extremists who are more than happy to demonize the poor and marginalized. The far right has a completely different set of ideologies. That’s why they have to pay Jordan Peterson to convert normal conservatives.
These beliefs are just a thin veneer of bullshit, both for conservatives and for rightwing extremists because the hate and exclusion is the point. I see no evidence that rightwing extremists are ideologically any different than normal conservatives at a fundamental level, they just have different ideas about tactics and the tone/rhetoric they actually are willing to publicly commit to (instead of doing it behind closed doors like normal conservatives/republicans). Conservatives will always roll out of the red carpet for fascists, they are intellectually lobotomized by their ideology in a way that has been shown throughout history to be essential for the rise of fascism to power, thus my cannon metaphor.
I consider it all part of the same firing process even if the cannonball is usually the fascists.
I think you’re confusing the Republicans with Conservatism. Fully half the Democrats hold these conservative ideas too. And they certainly aren’t rolling out a red carpet.