I’m done, I’ve been banned for expressing a different opinion (without insulting or personally attacking anyone), I’ve been accused of evading a ban with multiple accounts (this is my only account I’ve ever had on any lemmy instance), I’ve had people selectively ignore my comments and accuse me of things which I never said, and I’ve had people ignore valid criticisms and keep attacking me.
Reddit has many issues with trolls, one-sided discussion, and just general bullshit, but many Lemmy instances are way worse. The newfound freedom of Lemmy has attracted many extremists, from both sides, and many of them are moderators, who are more than happy to remove any contrarian opinions. This results in discussions being echo chambers
They deleted a comment in which I quoted the first line of the Wikipedia article on social democracy. The reason given was “misinformation”.
Fascism is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, forcible suppression of opposition.
I can very much see how that would apply.
Isnt that just authoritarianism, not specifically facism?
Sort of yeah, although authoritarianism doesn’t have as much implication to a centralized autocracy or dictatorial leader.
I think one could argue that the mods are a centralized autocracy, but it’d be hard to argue there’s a dictatorial leader, perhaps, unless there’s some “main” mod. Idk. I’m fairly new to this whole Fediverse thing, just came in a week or two ago from Reddit.
Also, imo, political labels are just sort of… subjective. There’s wiggle-room in definitions and practices. I think the reality of what is happening matters more than what label we use to describe it, but the label we do use helps people understand what we’re talking about. Although, sometimes, it obviously also misleads, as the connotations and implications and definitions vary.
But I would agree with you that “fascism” is often too easily equated to authoritarianism that isn’t necessarily far-right in the same way. It’s just a convenient colloquial shortcut, essentially.
I would argue that fascism is indeed characterized by those things, but fascism is associated with the right, not the left. You’re not a fascist if your trying to create equality for all, even if your actions are crazy. It’s something else, but not facism.
Well, it’s gonna be hard to accurately label all the mad authoritarian bastards we’ve had.
Some called Stalinism “red fascism”, but yes, I do get your point.
My point is rather that, like “literally”, “fascism” has started veering away from the prescriptive, “official” meaning it has, and more towards a (colloquial) generalised term for autocrats and authoritarian behaviour. Colloquial language is what it is, unfortunately.
Yeah I know. I think it’s mostly people new to the topic not understanding the nuances. But that still worries me since it seems wrong to lump communists in the same group as fascists. Seems almost sinister imo. The two groups could not stand for more different things.
It’s problematic that a lot of people conflate communism with fascism and/or authoritarianism.
Communism might be ideological, sure, but it’s not a form of government, it’s an economic system. No, I don’t believe any preplanned economy (which “real” communism sort of requires) would work in this day and age. However, I can definitely imagine it working in the far future.
It’s not especially well explained how the economy works in Star Trek, but that is communism, and I don’t see much fascism there.
(CCCP was autocratic communism, just so we’re clear on what their system of government was.)
I believe it’s largely due to the red scare. Which is also why so many Americans and (wannabe-American libertarians) conflate “socialism” with “communism”. The same people also have a milder issue, conflating “capitalism” with “market economy.”
I literally had a guy tell me “fascism is preferable to communism”. And this guy lives in Finland and was from an academic bourgeoisie family, so should have basic education on what fascism actually is.
But no, they don’t fucking get it.
I used to wonder, as a younger man, how on Earth the Nazi ever gathered enough support. I thought it’s maybe one of those “fool me once” things, and people in the early 20th century weren’t as connected or literate as we are.
But now it’s happening again? Despite us having seen what happened last time? Despite us having unlimited connections to literally the whole world and it’s information?
It just… depresses me so. I want to fight the windmills, but always having to fight alone is exhausting.