Nazism is fascism, corporations and the wealthy LOVE fascism because that means they get more power and less regulation. Remember what Benito Mussolini, the founding father of modern fascism and all around shitbag, said about it:
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Mussolini might have said whatever, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say corporations and the wealthy like fascism, as it tends to be horrible for the economy. Mass consumption gets heavily impacted in such regimes. But that also depends on how you define fascism, because I’ve seen a lot of people lately refer to libertarians and even some liberals as fascists and that just doesn’t hold up. Not wanting to shift the balance in order to address systemic issues does not make someone a fascist.
The wealthy like few regulations and open borders for trade, without proper paths to citizenship so they can pay lower wages locally and exploit lower human rights standards abroad.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s fair. The entire word “libertarian” was created to distance themselves from liberals.
Otherwise these ‘libertarians’ would have just been liberal and defended liberalism (human rights), and liberal society might have been able to fight off the mammon.
If you aid conservatives/confederates and the corporate cause, it is not unnatural to be associated with them.
kmacmartin@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Libertarianism is a traditionally left wing philosophy that started in the 1800s. They’re also typically pretty big on human rights and equality.
The more modern America-centric “tea party” libertarians fit what you’re saying, but they didn’t create the term.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
The second paragraph is ultimately what libertarians are and as such how I engage them.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Well yes, because liberals believe in state enforced equality while libertarians believe in equality as a moral prerogative but one that cannot be imposed through laws and regulations because the state should not have the right to impose any form of laws that dictate morality or way of living etc. At least that’s my interpretation of it from conversations with libertarians.
So that means that libertarians will be against the use of state power to right systemic wrongs. Which I wouldn’t qualify as helping fascists but a lot of progressives do, which is imo a little bit intellectually dishonest.
The real problem though is that the US only has two parties so you have to choose one that overlaps with most of your views and for libertarians that ends up being the GOP due to the fact that their own party is an insane clown show worst than the GOP. But at the same time I’d like to point out that libertarian adjacent members of the GOP in the past are the ones who have made the biggest strides for human rights in the US. The party it is today is unrecognizable from the one it was 60 years ago. Hell, even 20 years ago.
But calling libertarian fascist just devalues the definition of the word, which the real fascist use to their advantage.
InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 1 month ago
We are just treating libertarians for what they are. Not by what they claim to be.
libertarianism fertilizes right wing conservatism, is that it advocates against balancing systems of control (government). This means that since there is no entity intervening in affairs, there is nothing keeping a more excessively authoritarian entity from emerging. This is an oversimplification, but basically right-wing authoritarians want to weaken authority (even more benevolent ones) so that they can take additional power. (Again oversimplification, I also don’t like considering groups as monoliths)
Basically proto rightwing forces, can march in lockstep with libertarians because they both initially advocate for the removal of governing,regulatory, and policing institutions.
Thus I think this is what causes people to see libertarians and conservatives as overlapping, as both initially support the same goals and probably can be found in similar spaces. Once prevailing (more benevolent, or less malevolent) insutituions are removed, by joint action of libertarians and authoritarians, the authoritarins break with the libertarians and can now install their definately more malevolent instituion. (This malevolence may be incidental or the end goal, it depends)
If libertarians don’t want to be seen as fascist, then they should stop welcoming them.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Well yeah, “liberal” has come to mean “progressive” or at least the Democratic Party establishment, which has drifted pretty far from OG liberals. Classical liberals restricted themselves to negative rights (freedom from), whereas modern liberals believe in positive rights (freedom to).
I consider myself a libertarian and a classical liberal. I strongly disagree with both major parties, because neither prioritizes anything I care about.
I think the issue is that the Libertarian Party does a terrible job representing libertarianism. They focus too much on the “less taxes” angle when it should be focusing on less protectionism. Here are some changes I’d like to see related to corporations:
Yet the LP focuses on the first and ignores the rest.
Don’t willy nilly lump libertarians with corporate hacks. Yes, we align on a few issues, but the principles behind where we align are very different, and a libertarian would also push for a bunch of changes the corporate hacks don’t want.
squid_slime@lemm.ee 1 month ago
I agree—fascism, as I see it, is capitalism in a death spiral. Capitalist economies aren’t able to offer stability or continuous growth. Once things start hitting the upper end of the bell curve, we will see corporations and the managers of capital (politicians) pulling and pressing all the buttons and levers in a frantic effort to maintain course. This won’t work. As a last-ditch effort, fascism is employed by the ruling class as a means to strong-arm agents of revolution, as workers see wages become incapable of maintaining pace with inflation.
All this is to say: capitalism is deeply flawed. The corporations would prefer a muted underclass over the revolutionary type we can expect in the coming years. And to repress a revolutionary workforce, fascism will be used.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I don’t know if he came up with the thought himself or if he’s repeating someone else but Zizek has said various times that capitalism is in constant crisis, and that’s how it reinvents itself in order to stay functional. I have no doubt that we are in such a crisis and in the midst of its reinvention. And look I know socialists and Marxists get accused of being deterministic but if we look at history, through the decades capitalism is integrating socialism into it. I think at some point it will simply be socialism. We’re just not there yet, I think that won’t happen until human labor has no value.
squid_slime@lemm.ee 1 month ago
A few points: Capitalism hasn’t freely integrated socialist ideas. Each idea has been won through workers’ struggle. Even after the fact, those wins are clawed back by the capitalist class. They will capitulate as a means to defend against revolution—which flows back into your Zizek quote: capitalism’s way of reinventing itself. But capitalism, as a political philosophy, will always maintain a ruling class and an underclass to exploit.
This is why we must continue to struggle, and why we should not see these small capitulations as proof that socialism will evolve naturally from capitalism.
Kichae@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
The reasons why the wealthy like liberalisation matters, though. The reasom the wralthy want more wealth matters.
Money is power. The wealthy are competing to have the most power. Eventually, that turns to taking control of the state. So, the wealthy will back free trade and deregulation right up until they, personally, are in a position to attempt a coup. After that, regulation and trade barriers work for the particular rich folk who have taken control over the state.
Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I don’t think history agrees with what you are saying. From what patterns I notice , dictators rise because they become popular with the masses thanks to the exploitation of grievances both real and perceived, and only when it seems inevitable that they will wrest power from the established order do capitalists align with themselves with the fascists in order to protect their interests and their own heads. The wealthy tend to be one of the first targets for any dictator, as they are the ones who have the means to unravel their power.