Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Campaign 2020 U.S. House Select Committee on the J6 Attack

You use the word "fascist" the same way Republicans use "socialist".

With little regard for what it means and none for the man you use it to describe.

But I guess "fascist" is the new blue anon catchphrase for everyone who disagrees with them.

All that's needed is to take the accepted "14 Points of Fascism" and apply the test to him.

The Fourteen Points of Fascism

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.


2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of \u201cneed.\u201d The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.


3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.


4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.


5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.


6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.


7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.


8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.


9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.


10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.


11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free _expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.


12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.


14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

---It's easy to wave hands and dismiss this as a Lefty mirror image of the knee-jerk reactionary rhetoric of the Right until you apply the litmus test.

Well? How many of the above does Ron DeSanti score?

I completely agree. Establish the standard, then apply the facts to that standard. There are other matrices to describe Fascism, but this is a pretty good one. I note that it was published well before the advent of Trump, so there is no argument it wasn't a neutral set of considerations.

This is a discussion of rhetoric. I am, quite frankly, tired of the lazy approach of saying "both sides do it", without specifying what that "it" is.

A legitimate argument can be made that "both sides" (whatever that means) applies pejorative labels willy-nilly. But the response is not "they both do it", but to dig into the realities.

Accepted by who? All who Googled a 20 year old article?

I expect someone could write up the accepted "points of communism" and black list all sorts of folks it deemed communists.

But that could never happen here.

So you seem to be answering all these questions about Ron DeSantis to your own satisfaction and deeming him guilty as charged and sentencing him to fascist hell.

What if he disagreed with you on one or more points...which I'm pretty sure he would.

Why do you need to dehumanize your political opponents with tags like Nazi and fascist?

Does that make it easier to exterminate them?

All this talk about the VA is interesting. The Republicans have been trying to privatize several things that are now social costs. When Trump went after the Post Office he wasn't against mail - he was against paying for the Post Office. The same thing was something the VA went through as well (a run at privatizing the VA). The really strange thing is that the Dems didn't seem to give a damn in either case. Both of those agencies have been under the privatization gun and its screwed both of them up. That was the reason, for instance, of forcing the Post office to prepay any employee starting on the day they got hired (that was a congressional move to help privatize which was recently stopped). The current guy running the Post Office, when appointed by Trump, tried to throw out all the sorting machines. I firmly believe he did that as a start to privatize the Post Office. Luckily there were employees who rescued several of them. They are now back in operation. The guy, however, remains because, I guess, Biden just can't bring himself to fire the people who insist on keeping him on and he can't do that on his own.

Still, the Dems seem particularly silent on certain things. Privatization, and efforts to bankrupt the Post Office were both efforts to destroy the agencies involved. I remember when Trump had a bunch of rich doctors telling him how to destroy the VA at mar-a-lago as, at the time, the news actually covered that one. The doctors involved just didn't like socialized medicine for ANYBODY!

Basically the Republicans would prefer to privatize EVERYTHING which tax dollars now support. This has been going on for a very long time and, I guess, simply not entertaining, or interesting enough for our media to report on.

Incidentally, at the risk of repeating myself, our normal news services do not lie, they just don't report everything. I think that Vice is the best source for the news. Take a look at vice.com and viceland.com

The Constitution only grants certain rights and privileges to the US Government.

Many feel that it has overstepped its bounds. We call them conservatives.

Many feel that it should do much more. These are the liberals!

And that's what all the excitement's about.

I disagree about the Dems not doing anything, sorry.
And here's the interesting part...BOTH Republicans AND Dems made strident efforts to IMPROVE the VA. Dubya's SecVA was Anthony Principi, one of the best SecVA's to ever hold office, and his successor, also a Republican, was appointed by Obama.
Both had their share of problems and issues but during that time period Karen and I both noticed a distinct arc of improvement in quality of service.

By the way, one of Obama' first acts of office was to give a 10% across the board pay increase to VA staff.

Then why are you ranting and raving about VA services being in the dump and Republicans stripping benefits and services?

That isn't what I said.
I said that given a chance, Trumpers WILL do their level best TO strip benefits and services, starting with the disloyal.
And I did not say that VA services ARE IN the dump.

In fact I said that in the last fifteen to twenty years they've improved.

Strange one would believe the fundamental characteristics of fascism or communism would change over time. It turns out some things are in fact invariant over time.

The test is objective. Test Joe Blow. Nope, he doesn't meet the requirements. Test Gov De Santis. Yep he meets most of these. So your contention is no one should label him a wanna be fascist, even though he meets the standards, we should hug his independent minded authoritarianism and give him a pass to do whatever he wants .... well .... because .... he may be offended if people find out what he is???? Should I continue typing with extensions of that argument in other realms???? Here's how the facts and truth of it works ... if he is a white guy, you say he is a white guy (unless you or he are offended), if he is a Jew, you say he is a Jew (unless you or he are offended), if he meets the criteria of being a fascist, you say he is a fascist (unless you or he are offended).

Of course he would object, but he can not escape the facts, he may denigrate them and reject their validity, but facts are invariant. They are what they are. But to claim they are not facts .... well ... he would have a problem with reality.

No one but you (and Hitler) mentioned extermination. Just saying