To be clear, I am only talking about people like the average working class Trump voter. The ones who just got caught by misinformation, and just haven’t been able to find a way out. Trump and all his mates are terrible people, and should be held accountable.

The average voter is another thing. My attitude is that I got lucky, and found out that Trump and his mates are terrible, instead of getting sucked down a rabbit hole of supporting them. Knowing how fascism works, I don’t know if I’d be able to reliably land on the right side if fascism happened in my home country. And if I don’t believe I could reliably spot fascism, I’m not comfortable acting like those who support Trump could have.

This isn’t a discussion of “just be a good person”. I know plenty of amazing, caring people who believe they’re doing the right thing.

This whole idea of “I can’t say is reliably avoid fascism” is based on this, the school that became fascist for a week. As bad of an experiment that was from that teacher, it was an effective way of teaching how people fall for what should be obviously a bad thing.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
      12·
      3 hours ago

      “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre