It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
>It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
For my friends - everything, for my enemies - the law.
I used to love this pithy quote but reflecting on it more recently this doesn't seem like something limited to fascists or fascism. Indeed, this kind of thinking is used by those of any political leaning when ideology becomes more important than principles. An obvious example is the USSR.
Authoritarianism is the umbrella term describing the behaviour of both fascist states and various others. AFAIK all fascist states have been authoritarian - but it’s a common outcome anytime the people running the government are replaced en masse.
Good point, and much harder to challenge. If the majority is against an authoritarian there's protests and sabotage of social structures. If the majority oppresses a fringe group, it's often socially encouraged
For these reasons, I personally believe authoritarianism cannot be opposed without a solid foundation of individualism. The problem becomes that explaining ideological nuance is rarely politically expedient or even rhetorically effective. Appeals to collectivism are more easily digested by the masses.
that's kind of what the USA is going through right now but it's more aptly described as "tyranny of the plurality" because Trump didn't win either majority of of registered voters or majority of the actual vote.
Regardless of tiresome partisan hyperbole, I don't regard the substance of this administration's actions as any more authoritarian the previous or the status quo. In the specific instances where state power has been expanded, I regard it as part of the general trend of expansion. The trend is more indicative of the overall incentives and structure of governance, rather than specific political actors. Similarly, partisan recriminations fit with the same pattern.
IMO, Obama claiming the power to assassinate US citizens on US soil (by declaring them "foreign combatants") was primarily different in that he only used it a little bit.
This is a great example of the horseshoe theory of politics [0], which I believe in very strongly. I made a separate post if anyone cares to discuss it. [1]
It’s based on the flawed assumption that politics can or should be understood on a single axis. It can’t and shouldn’t be. That heuristic is wrong.
If viewed on a 2d axis, the “cohorts that appear similar” on the ends of the horseshoe are still on opposing ends of one of the axes, despite being near each other on another axis.
Horseshoe theory has always read like a Pythagorean epicycle to me, an attempt to redeem a broken model. For a reductive political model, I prefer the 2 dimensional Collectivist-Individualist, Authoritarian-Libertarian axes. No need to literally contort the outdated Left-Right spectrum.
An added benefit is you get to avoid annoying semantic battles such as whether Nazis or Fascists are Right wing or Left wing.
Plus you get to add other axes as needed. My favorite, perhaps relevant today, is principled vs. expedient: do we apply principles like this "Rights" stuff impartially, even to people with whom we disagree, or do we just git 'r done?
To me, the horshoe theory is just a step in the right direction. It shows the limits of a straight 1D line to describe politics, and is a stepping-off point for deeper exploration.
Ideally, maybe we would describe a person's politics with something like a tensor, where each value is the person's support of a specific policy.
Hmm. I guess I feel that "The Horseshoe Theory" is worse than useless. It implies that as someone gets "too much" Right or Left, they inevitably become authoritarian, as if centrists cannot be authoritarian. It equates "weirdness" with "bad". I'd argue that we should skip straight to identifying "authoritarianism" as the problem, and the not having weird or even extreme leftist or rightist ideas.
> I see it as the gateway to people realizing that the left/right 1D line, and even the political compass, are ridiculous.
When this theory is used in discourse, it is always a matter of suggesting that the left fringe and the right fringe are equally to be rejected. Stalin and Hitler, communism and fascism, class struggle and racial theory, Das Kapital and Hitler's Mein Kampf, dictatorship of the proletariat and Nazi dictatorship: the righteous liberal democrat must keep his distance from both extremes in equal measure. The golden path lies in the balanced middle. I am tired of criticizing this nonsense. It is an ideological lie.
The trident means that there is just as much ideology, corruption, political dysfunctionality and all kinds of drivers of suffering, misery and resentment in the supposed political center. But it is very well hidden because it wears a kind of ideological cloak: the horseshoe theory.
So to respond to your sentence I quoted above: the horseshoe theory IS the political compass that should be ridiculed.
Absolutely. See "the only moral abortion is my abortion".
Republicans can play all sorts of games because their mistresses will always be able to get an abortion on the DL without consequence, while "single black mom? 25 to life for murder!"
You "think" the end goal is domination? This is someone who incited an violent insurrection to try and override a presidential election and has called king, posted illustrations of himself wearing a crown, and has (again) openly talked of not leaving office.
This is a shameful false equivalency. In the puppet president scenario you outline, the blast radius is, at worst, 4 years? In the case of an insurrection to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, there is a generation or more of democratic order lost.
That depends entirely on your context and frame of reference.
You're describing the blast radius of what was possible in the past assuming that one president was willing to usurp power but only for one term.
In reality, we did go 4 years with a president who wasn't in charge, at least for part of that term, specifically because the public was lied to about his health and some small number of people his the truth. We did not go through 4 years of a presidency after one very much seemed to attempt to take the office despite having lost the election.
In both cases I take huge issue with the intent and the potential outcome. In one case, though, the outcome was real and I lived, for a time, in a presumably democraric society ruled by someone(s) who weren't elected while the one who was elected decreased mentally and physically beyond the ability to rule.
They’re different orders of magnitude. Biden was elected legitimately. Parties can nominate whoever they want, so shenanigans with primaries, while distasteful, are completely legitimate. Likewise, keeping Biden’s mental state from the public is ugly but legitimate. Voters can, and did, punish these actions.
Trump tried to cheat his way to keeping power. Even if you don’t blame him for the violent attempt, it’s well established that he made major efforts before that to change the outcome by more peaceful means that were just as illegitimate.
Playing stupid games within the system means you lose elections and either reform or get replaced. Playing stupid games subverting the system means you don’t have to worry about elections anymore if you succeed. I’m about a million times more concerned about the latter.
Do you not believe Trump was elected legitimately? I totally understand and share many of the concerns over the insurrection and what happened around it, but Trump didn't take office in 2020 and wasn't reelected until 2024.
I must have misread you last comment. I read this as a comparison implying that Biden wasn't legitimately elected but you just meant it to set up the point.
If it’s not an insurrection what it is? What is the organization of thousands of individuals to invade the capital building in protest of election results?
Just because it failed, doesn’t mean it wasn’t an insurrection.
Words like "protest" or "riot" leap to mind. It is more comparable to something like CHAZ in 2020 which could technically be called an insurrection or rebellion, but realistically was more of an unruly protest.
An insurrection would traditionally involve a little planning and a little more seriousness in the attempt. Maybe a plan that could conceivably lead to a change in government.
Obviously. All riots are technically insurrections. They're synonyms. And they are usually protests too; it'd be unusual to have a riot while agreeing with the current direction of the government.
> A riot or mob violence is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people.
> Uprisings which revolt, resisting and taking direct action against an authority, law or policy
See? Riots are by definition rebellions. They're both words for resisting legitimate authority. How do you expect there to be a riot that isn't an insurrection? That's why the lefties aren't getting much pushback on calling it an insurrection. Its a riot. Everyone agrees. Insisting that it use a specific word instead of the usual one is playing a bit of a game to pretend that it is some sort of special riot which is where the pushback starts; but there isn't any question that it is technically an insurrection - all riots are small insurrections.
Try as I might, I really can't understand this mindset. What drives some very reasonable and intelligent people to keep trying to deny and deflect that J6 was not an attempt to prevent a peaceful transfer of power?
Please stop. This is a topic that people have been saying the same things about for over four years. It's not a good topic for HN as people only bring it up for the purpose of ideological battle, which is against the guidelines.
Please stop. This is a topic that people have been saying the same things about for over four years. It's not a good topic for HN as people only bring it up for the purpose of ideological battle, which is against the guidelines.
So you're saying giving a speech with war-like symbolism ("if you don't fight like hell", "we will never give up. We will never concede" "we will stop the steal", "we are going to the capitol") to a crowd which he knew contained people ready for violence, is escalation? Where is the proof that there were federal agents inciting violence (I thought it was Antifa agents? The story changes all the time...).
Does similar Democrat language around BLM at the time of CHAZ/CHOP mean Democrats encouraged insurrection?
Unlike Jan 6th, the CHAZ rioters brought rifles, organized a standing militia, and murdered someone to assert control of the area they seized — which seems distinctly more violent.
Why is the president of the US trolling his own citizens that he will ignore the constitution and act as king a desirable thing, exactly? What is the desired outcome of doing this?
Trump is the one who started it by refusing to acknowledge Biden won a fair election. He whipped his supporters into a frenzy believing the election had been stolen. The reason he didn't use the military is he didn't think they would obey him. It's different now as loyalists have been put in charge.
I don't know whether Trump can accurately be described as a fascist, but its been clear to me since his first term that domination is the only thing that matters to him. The obscene wealth and the swaggering deceitfulness and the gold-plated bathrooms are just the secondary outcomes of his need to dominate.
Domineering father-figure; raised as a sociopath; given a lot of money. Kind of inevitable.
The Democratic Governor of California denounced them publicly and stopped the effort.
Despite Musk raising millions and campaigning viciously against the Democrats the administration kept all of SpaceX contracts and Tesla ev subsidies. In fact the IRA benefited Tesla disproportionately.
Both sides are NOT the same. One is fascist and the other is not
Joseph M. Arpaio – Former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Trump Supporter
Ray Smith III – Trump Attorney
Cathy Latham – Fake Elector, Coffee County GOP Leader
Robert Cheeley – Trump Attorney
David Shafer – Fake Elector, Former Georgia GOP Chair
Mike Roman – Trump Campaign Staffer
Shawn Still – Fake Elector, Then-Georgia State Senator
Scott Hall – Atlanta Bail Bondsman
Misty Hampton – Former Coffee County Elections Supervisor
Steve Lee – Pastor from Illinois
Harrison Floyd – Black Voices for Trump Leader
Trevian Kutti – Publicist from Chicago
I'm sure this was just Democrats following the law, with no bias, right?
This kind of narrative that you're forwarding now where the Republican Party are fascists and Trump is a threat to democracy is exactly the kind of mentality that was used to elicit this enormous persecution of Trump and officials near him.
Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room is always ignored:
The Democrats shovel hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to large unions in order to secure their support and win elections. This is textbook corruption.
The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.
Policy difference not partisan squables or payback for supporting his opponents. Most Democrats feel Unions are important to help workers (union and nonunion) earn more.
To base the decision on what companies to invite to an EV summit on whether they support the Democrats' favorite constituents is pure politics. The only policy difference here is one which helps the Democrats win elections.
It doesn’t matter what Democrats think about unions. This wasn’t a union summit or a summit on party values—it was about EVs. Tesla is the world leader in EVs and the top American EV manufacturer. Excluding them because they don’t support unionization — an issue tied to massive political support for Democrats through campaign contributions and institutional backing—is indefensible. It undermines the purpose of the summit through rank politicization and partisanship.
As for the claim that Tesla has racial discrimination issues—that’s a distortion. Nearly every major company gets hit with discrimination lawsuits because civil rights law has been weaponized to make that outcome nearly inevitable:
> The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.
Why shouldn’t the recipients receive these grants other than that they are Democrats? What about their projects makes them not meritorious?
If you can't see the opportunity for corruption and bias here, then there's nothing I can do to convince you. This is always a story when people call Republicans corrupt or fascists and say the Democrats are not. They have absolutely no impartiality in the way they look at the world.
There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.
Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?
Wait. What do you think about Hegseth's signal and atlantic reporter issue? That is wildly worse and where is the court case that absolutely should be happening?
we are not banana republic (just yet, getting there though) so anyone that breaks a law under a given statute you file charges, run an investigation and punish if law(s) are broken. if memory serves me well there was one :) can’t say the same for Hegseth et al but night is young so-to-speak…
The prosecution record, where Trump and dozens of his allies were prosecuted, is the record of a banana republic.
Like I said there's hundreds of thousands of regulations which hold the potential for criminal sanction. They could have found her guilty of something when she deleted those emails. The SDNY DAG found a way to charge the developers of Tornado Cash with running an illegal money transmission service when they didn't even hold it in custody of any funds, they simply published code. They stretched the law to incredible lengths to get someone they wanted. And they couldn't find something to pin on Hillary Clinton? Ridiculous.
They didn't for political reasons and you're naive or dishonest for believing otherwise.
Yes it was them following the law and being unbiased.
Many of the people involved in prosecuting them are Republicans. Trump is the most corrupt president we've ever had and many of his allies are similarly corrupt.
These days they know they just have to follow the maga line to get out of jail free. The Attorney General of Texas was so ridiculously corrupt he was about to be impeached by Texas Republicans but then he just claimed it was a witchhunt against maga got Trump on his side and suddenly impeachment was cancelled and he's polling a win in the next Senate primary.
Also Trump supported an attempted violent coup in addition to things like telling the Georgia Secretary of State to find him votes after the voting.
Trump has been described as a threat to democracy by many leading conservatives and Republicans. Many of them have had their careers ended and been slandered by former associates despite being conservative who had dedicated decades to the party while Trump doesn't care about ideology or party or outcomes only himself.
> in a series of interviews published Tuesday, saying the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals.
> He also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment.
> Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly told The Atlantic he’d asked Trump. He added, “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler
Copy-pasting my response to a similar partisan talking point:
--
There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.
Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?
--
What you're claiming is absolutely absurd. This idea that Trump leads a criminal enterprise and everyone affiliated with him is corrupt and that's why so many were prosecuted and not that this is the same politicization of the justice system you see all over the world and Democrats, with the tacit support of establishment Republicans, trying to imprison their opponents.
I also want to make it absolutely clear that it is all about framing. From your beltway-manufactured frame, Trump instigated January 6th, and this amounted to insurrection. But a much more reasonable framing is that leading Democrats instigated over 500 riots in the summer of 2020, and are instigating the current riots too:
Kamala Harris even tweeted this out, to bail out rioters:
> “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”
Of course the mainstream news media journalists who are all unionized and thus economically aligned with the Democratic Party barely cover this or criticize it.
Yeah, only the issue here is that @realFascists are in opposition to Trump. And reading this text in that light - it check out and not really a news.
Also, frankly, you folks need to stop monopolizing these topics, based on highly polarized ideological filter, because even before Trump there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself. There are sure many other options to what Musk offers and if Trump is there to break up that monopoly and open up the market, then it is a win situation.
>there was dissatisfaction about how Musk monopolized NASA contracts on the promise, that he would deliver more efficient and cheaper solution, while in reality the result is that NASA is currently paying more for Musks private solutions, than when it had to do it by itself
SLS, NASA's rocket, costs $2.5 billion, PER LAUNCH.
That’s all very nice but according to Trump this only suddenly became a problem only a few weeks ago due to some reason. So whatever you are saying has absolutely no relevance to this decision making. If Musk continued licking his boots he’d be doing fine..
I think double standards would be a better term than hypocricy. Hypocricy would imply the pretense to be bound by certain rules, but the whole point of fascism is that those in power are not bound by any rules. They only make rules to bind others. I don't see any hypocricy in the openly advertised corruption of the current administration, it's just plain evil of the “we do it because we can” sort.
I think the end goal is domination. From https://mastodon.social/@JuliusGoat/109551955251655267 :
It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.
It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.
It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you’re able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue — the greatest.
https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-0...